Why is Harper insulting the intelligence of Canadians this extensively?!?
I will have many things to say regarding the expulsion of Garth Turner from the ranks of the CPC in the days ahead, but before I start down that long path there is something I feel is in some ways even more important to focus on in this matter even than his expulsion, why and how it was handled internally, and how Turner was told. It is a piece of spin I have heard and seen from every CPC spokesperson on this matter. It is this claim that Harper and his Office had absolutely no involvement in this process whatsoever. This is patently a lie. The only way it cannot be a lie is to believe that the leader/PM has so little control of his party and MPs that they would on their own authority and initiative expel a fellow MP during a minority Parliament, especially when your party is the government. Now, how many examples in our Parliamentary history in all parties at all levels of government can we find another example of the leader being so totally out of the loop that a caucus member was expelled before the leader and his Office were involved in any manner in a minority government situation, even if only to approve the decision beforehand? To the best of my knowledge it has not happened before, and if it has happened it would have to have happened where the party leader had a track record of having little to no control over his caucus/members/MPs/MLAs/etc. Harper has a track record of exceptionally tight management style to the point of being criticized for it being too tight and micromanagement. Harper has the reputation of being exceptionally controlling, so the idea that he would have been left totally in the dark about so important a decision to any minority government is simply not credible, and anyone that is willing to put forward this argument needs to be laughed at with derision for insulting the intelligences of those being told this male bovine excrement.
Now, one may wonder why do I think this point is so important that I address it before any of the other issues involved in the Turner expulsion. Simple. This is something that all the people speaking for this CPC government have said. It is something that is so patently nonsensical that it is clearly untrue. Yet these folks are saying it with straight faces with great protestations that this is the truth despite its clear absurdity. What does it say about these people and the leader and leadership that has them saying such patently untrue things to Canadians in what is a clear insult to the intelligence and awareness of the average Canadian as to why something like this is simply not credible. If a leader and leadership of a party is willing to lie to the public about something as serious as this with such a totally unbelievable claim once, what else will they do so with, especially in things where the dishonesty/impossibility of the claim is not so readily apparent?
This is a man, Harper that is, that is a follower of the same political philosopher that formed the basis of the American neoconservative movement, a man by the name of Leo Strauss. I covered this in another post here. There are two core beliefs of Straussians though that are shown in this matter. The willing to employ the noble lie in the pursuit of holding power and the belief that only the opinions of the elites matter where government and governing is concerned. It is ok to lie to the general public to further gain and hold power, because it is in the service of the noble ends to which you plan on using that power for. As for the elites, we all know Harper sees himself as a very intellectual person, with good cause I would agree. We know from watching his history over the past two decades that he is very dedicated to his beliefs and principles and that he believes them to be noble and vital to the survival of this country. We know that he sees himself as other than the common man/woman although he professes great admiration for that common man/woman. He sees himself as a member of the elite, the same elite which after helping him get work as VP and then President of the National Citizen's Coalition then helped his rise to power in the CA and then to create the CPC and then to lead it to this point so far. We know he doesn't care about our opinions and views on this affair, otherwise he would not be trying to peddle something as nonsensical as having no involvement in the process to remove MP Turner.
This is dangerous behaviour from anyone holding the Office of Prime Minister, but especially someone on a crusade/mission of some kind, especially if there is a religious/moralistic element/nature. Those that will lie in the pursuit of power to achieve what is in their minds a noble end are almost always those that wreak the worst damage to a society and bring out it's worst instincts. It has never been Harper's good intentions that I have questioned but the tools he is willing to use/embrace in the pursuit of accomplishing the agenda those good intentions are in service to. We are seeing it here again today, and this needs to be remembered for what it was, a blatant example of contempt for the intelligence of Canadians and the willingness to make a totally absurd and incomprehensible claim as truth and defend it vigourously. We have seen this behaviour elsewhere in the past several years, and that is south with a President that is never wrong, sold a war under false pretenses (a way our PM wanted us involved in and was very passionate about saying so) and has been shown time and time again to tell his populace one thing when the facts clearly show the opposite. We have seen where that kind of government has taken our neighbours, I do not want to see it replicated here. Harper does not take orders from the GOP/Bush government, the problem is that his fundamental political outlook/philosophy is shaped by the same political theorist that shaped those that run the Bush Administration and much of the GOP Congress. That is why we see his foreign policy so similar to theirs, why he is so sympathetic to their needs even to the apparent neglect of our own as the Softwood Sellout demonstrated, and that the tools of deception, smear, and fear that the Bush/GOP have used to gain and hold electoral power in the USA are the same tools Harper and the CPC are using/embracing to gain and hold power in Canada. When I and others say that the Harper led CPC is not Canadian Conservative in nature we mean it. This man and his inner circle are members of the Calgary School of political thought which is heavily shaped by Leo Strauss the American political theorist who ended up being the foundation of the neoconservative intellectual basis. That is not Canadian Conservatism, nor is it rooted at all in Canadian Conservatism, which is why it is fair and right to call it American conservative thought/thinking because that is precisely what it is.
This business with Garth Turner is only the latest example of that. Turner was after all from the PCPC wing of the party with political views in keeping with that wing, which was rooted in Canadian Conservative thinking, but that is for another post.
P.S. Sorry about the long disappearance, a combination of computer troubles, internet connectivity troubles and a massive hyperfocus in it's first week on the Foley scandal in the USA kept me from blogging here. I am still more used to and comfortable in commenting at other blogs in an ongoing conversation than I tend to be in writing here, although I am trying to get over it. I expect I will also be doing a post comparing the level of blatant dishonest and abdication of responsibility in this matter by the PMO to the same behaviour in the Grewal fraud. I see a distinct and disturbing similarity in the level of blatant dishonesty involved despite the clear facts to the contrary in the public domain. Granted one was a cover-up of a fraud/scam after the fact and this appears to be an ongoing cover-up of whatever involvement Harper had in this matter for some reason but we will see how it goes over the next days to weeks.
Now, one may wonder why do I think this point is so important that I address it before any of the other issues involved in the Turner expulsion. Simple. This is something that all the people speaking for this CPC government have said. It is something that is so patently nonsensical that it is clearly untrue. Yet these folks are saying it with straight faces with great protestations that this is the truth despite its clear absurdity. What does it say about these people and the leader and leadership that has them saying such patently untrue things to Canadians in what is a clear insult to the intelligence and awareness of the average Canadian as to why something like this is simply not credible. If a leader and leadership of a party is willing to lie to the public about something as serious as this with such a totally unbelievable claim once, what else will they do so with, especially in things where the dishonesty/impossibility of the claim is not so readily apparent?
This is a man, Harper that is, that is a follower of the same political philosopher that formed the basis of the American neoconservative movement, a man by the name of Leo Strauss. I covered this in another post here. There are two core beliefs of Straussians though that are shown in this matter. The willing to employ the noble lie in the pursuit of holding power and the belief that only the opinions of the elites matter where government and governing is concerned. It is ok to lie to the general public to further gain and hold power, because it is in the service of the noble ends to which you plan on using that power for. As for the elites, we all know Harper sees himself as a very intellectual person, with good cause I would agree. We know from watching his history over the past two decades that he is very dedicated to his beliefs and principles and that he believes them to be noble and vital to the survival of this country. We know that he sees himself as other than the common man/woman although he professes great admiration for that common man/woman. He sees himself as a member of the elite, the same elite which after helping him get work as VP and then President of the National Citizen's Coalition then helped his rise to power in the CA and then to create the CPC and then to lead it to this point so far. We know he doesn't care about our opinions and views on this affair, otherwise he would not be trying to peddle something as nonsensical as having no involvement in the process to remove MP Turner.
This is dangerous behaviour from anyone holding the Office of Prime Minister, but especially someone on a crusade/mission of some kind, especially if there is a religious/moralistic element/nature. Those that will lie in the pursuit of power to achieve what is in their minds a noble end are almost always those that wreak the worst damage to a society and bring out it's worst instincts. It has never been Harper's good intentions that I have questioned but the tools he is willing to use/embrace in the pursuit of accomplishing the agenda those good intentions are in service to. We are seeing it here again today, and this needs to be remembered for what it was, a blatant example of contempt for the intelligence of Canadians and the willingness to make a totally absurd and incomprehensible claim as truth and defend it vigourously. We have seen this behaviour elsewhere in the past several years, and that is south with a President that is never wrong, sold a war under false pretenses (a way our PM wanted us involved in and was very passionate about saying so) and has been shown time and time again to tell his populace one thing when the facts clearly show the opposite. We have seen where that kind of government has taken our neighbours, I do not want to see it replicated here. Harper does not take orders from the GOP/Bush government, the problem is that his fundamental political outlook/philosophy is shaped by the same political theorist that shaped those that run the Bush Administration and much of the GOP Congress. That is why we see his foreign policy so similar to theirs, why he is so sympathetic to their needs even to the apparent neglect of our own as the Softwood Sellout demonstrated, and that the tools of deception, smear, and fear that the Bush/GOP have used to gain and hold electoral power in the USA are the same tools Harper and the CPC are using/embracing to gain and hold power in Canada. When I and others say that the Harper led CPC is not Canadian Conservative in nature we mean it. This man and his inner circle are members of the Calgary School of political thought which is heavily shaped by Leo Strauss the American political theorist who ended up being the foundation of the neoconservative intellectual basis. That is not Canadian Conservatism, nor is it rooted at all in Canadian Conservatism, which is why it is fair and right to call it American conservative thought/thinking because that is precisely what it is.
This business with Garth Turner is only the latest example of that. Turner was after all from the PCPC wing of the party with political views in keeping with that wing, which was rooted in Canadian Conservative thinking, but that is for another post.
P.S. Sorry about the long disappearance, a combination of computer troubles, internet connectivity troubles and a massive hyperfocus in it's first week on the Foley scandal in the USA kept me from blogging here. I am still more used to and comfortable in commenting at other blogs in an ongoing conversation than I tend to be in writing here, although I am trying to get over it. I expect I will also be doing a post comparing the level of blatant dishonest and abdication of responsibility in this matter by the PMO to the same behaviour in the Grewal fraud. I see a distinct and disturbing similarity in the level of blatant dishonesty involved despite the clear facts to the contrary in the public domain. Granted one was a cover-up of a fraud/scam after the fact and this appears to be an ongoing cover-up of whatever involvement Harper had in this matter for some reason but we will see how it goes over the next days to weeks.
posted by Scotian | 12:05 AM
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