Vancouver Sun columnist Harvey Enchin wins my award for the best lines of the 2008 federal budget analysis festival:
“Mercifully, Flaherty further inoculated the country against the lunacy of the climate change zealots, led by the Suzuki Foundation, who demanded the government extract $50 billion to $100 billion a year from the economy to spend on—well, nothing. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may be one of the few politicians who realizes much of the climate change agenda is a disguised effort to subvert capitalist economies.”
Now, I’m not entirely sure that Prime Minister Harper has in fact been properly immunized from the (he described it spot-on) “disguised effort to subvert capitalist economies”, if his minister John (“Captain Climate”) Baird is any indication. Baird’s incessant, breathless blathering about the evils of climate change (and he is one who seems as firmly entrenched in the hysterical “man made global warming” religious cult as any other environut) being the most important thing ever in our lives, ever ever ever, would be risible if not downright scary and so very appeasing to the far-left. Nonetheless, this budget might have been the one, if ever there was to be one, which would have proven whether or not they’d all drank the Kool Aid over there at Conservative Party HQ. And it appears they haven’t all. (I still say they’re mixing it in with their beer and sipping it slowly…)
And Mr. Enchin wins again, this time for this terse, pointed statement, which in fact seems to point me to the “exit” and directs me to go though it, as so often happens to us conservatives.
“Proponents of smaller, simpler government may as well pack up and go home.”
As on much of the social side, even on the fiscal side we can see where this “conservative” government fails to make the grade insofar as being an actual conservative government. With the rise in spending (yes, rise) still outstripping GDP and inflation (even after the previous two budgets already did so, and even more egregiously), this budget means still bigger government. That’s right, to them, government still isn’t big enough yet. They want more government. They want it to be still more strident in its reach and its meddling in our lives. It’s already in every facet of our homes and businesses. But it’s not enough yet.
And that is NOT a conservative ideal, policy, or platform. It is purely liberal-left. And yet I should pack up?
I’m told all the time by liberals who email me that me and my ilk—conservative-thinking folks—have no place here in Canada—my home— and that I should pack up and move to Texas if I want to be a conservative and speak up about the value of being conservative. (Or else just shut up, presumably, since free speech is reserved for “the right message”, apparently).
And now I find that according to Mr. Enchin (who, by the way, is right at least in his assessment), if I want a properly fiscally conservative government, I should pack up and, well, “go home” (to I’m not sure where, but apparently I’m to accept that this isn’t my home anymore, as the state needs to spread its fat ugly naked body all over it). That defeatist attitude isn’t for me, and I’ll just politely thank him and pass on it.
People should stop telling me to pack up and leave. I’m bored of it. By the way it’s outright bigotry on the part of those pompously “tolerant” liberals who seem to actually want to invoke a sort of twist on ethnic cleansing of conservatives to take place in “their” country. But I don’t really care what they think.
I know how “politeness” is supposed to be such a grand and precious “Canadian Value”, but worse, simply being obedient and complacent and walking away or otherwise taking it, and obediently falling into the Fabian socialist trance successfully imposed on us by the liberal-left media, academia, the political elite, and through the thoroughly leftist-ensconced news and entertainment industry (which in Canada is partially state-owned and state-run), is in fact, sadly, another “Canadian Value”. But here’s an idea: both of those values can pack-up and leave. I’m not going anywhere. The Fabian socialist model is not, in fact, what made Canada and the United States and other capitalist countries rich and powerful and great—it was and is in fact the exact opposite. So it can pack-up and hop aboard the slow boat to China, Cuba or North Korea, or Hell, where it already resides.
Here’s what you can take home with you: “Proponents of smaller, simpler government may as well pack up and go home.” No no no. I’m home. Who invited the damn government into my home? It can leave. I’m staying. This is my damn home. I’m the one who’s home.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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