A rchive Date
[ 18-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[Fanatic paints a silly picture
Author proves she's desperate to paint the right as wrong
By PAUL JACKSON
Calgary Sun
May 18, 2000
"It is up to the politicians which social forces they choose to liberate and which they choose to suppress, whether they rely on the good in each citizen or the bad" - Vaclav Havel
My blood boiled when I realized author Brooke Jeffrey was using that quote by the Czechoslovakian freedom fighter - and later president of his country - to justify her attack on our country's conservative movement.
But then Jeffrey, author of Hard Turn Right: The New Face of Neo-Conservativism in Canada (HarperCollins, $21.95) is a dedicated federal Liberal and most of us know just how adherents of Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien will hijack anything to paint themselves as the saviours of our nation and anyone who disagrees with them as traitors.
That's exactly what this lady does as she launches all-out attacks on everyone from Ralph Klein and Mike Harris to Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.
These men, Jeffrey insists, are a threat to our country's values, and they are aided by such organizations as the Fraser Institute, National Citizens' Coalition and R.E.A.L. Women.
The plot is insidious - and thick.
That Canadians are terrified of the "neo-conservatives" is evidenced, according to Jeffrey, by the mass demonstrations she has witnessed against policies of the likes of Klein and Harris.
In her specious arguments, Jeffrey contends the political right is ripping apart the social fabric of Canada, and men, women and children are rightfully scared of what's in store for them if Klein and Harris continue to push their agendas.
Even more terror awaits us if Reform - which in Jeffrey's view apparently never should have been allowed to become Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in the House of Commons - ever comes to power as the federal government.
Jeffrey - who ran as a candidate for Jean Chretien in the 1993 election - paints a frightening spectre of the conservative right and how it is abusing average Canadians and wants to abuse even more.
It's a silly picture, too.
The fact that both Klein's and Harris' policies were so popular the two Progressive Conservative leaders won two back-to-back majority governments fails to convince Jeffrey that the voters actually support what they are doing.
So strong is her fanatical dedication to the Liberal party, Jeffrey seems to think something must have gone awry with the electoral system to allow this fluke. For no sensible person could ever vote for the brutality imposed by Klein and Harris on their residents.
A more rational explanation, I'd suggest (though it's hard to explain rationality to irrational zealots like Jeffrey) is that under Klein and Harris, Alberta and Ontario have become the lowest taxed, most employed and most prosperous provinces in the nation.
Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney also come under scathing attack from Jeffrey in this misguided book.
All their policies ultimately failed, according to Jeffrey - and Mulroney's free trade pact with the U.S. impoverished Canada. This latter point is not opinion, it is an out-and-out mistruth.
Since the pact was signed, Canada's foreign trade accounted for 23% of our GNP, and today it's 43%.
It has created and saved millions of jobs in our nation. Last year alone we sold a staggering 40 billion more worth of Canadian-made goods to the U.S. than we did the year before.
A final note:
Vaclav Havel, in the quote Jeffrey so cleverly tries to apprehend for her own purposes, was actually talking in favour of the freedom from entrenched government that Klein, Harris, Manning and their likes are fighting to bring to the Canadian people.
Havel spent his life, and some years in jail as a political prisoner, opposing the very kind of regimentation and state control Trudeau and Chretien have imposed on our nation.
That Jeffrey could use this anti-socialist patriot to bolster her scenario augments the fanatical blindness - some might say intellectual dishonesty - that permeates her entire work.
Let's hope the Canadian Alliance wins the next federal election and completes the job Klein, Harris and Manning have started.
Reach Jackson at paul.jackson@cal.sunpub.com Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at paul.jackson@cal.sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|