"Steve Harper's A Classy Sonamab@tch... And He's No "Eastern Elitist""

- Quote from any of the "lowest common denominator" members that make up the core of the angry, Alberta-based Reform-a-tory movement... (Image from Igloolounge.net)



Can anyone believe a sitting Prime Minister would use the term "screwed" to describe anything? Only the anti-elitist (read: anti-education), anti-East, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-minority, etc., neo-Conservative army would revel in Harper's comments. Harper has certainly lowered the level of debate in Canada. His minions are just as bad - if not worse.

Con/Mr. Bungles apologists will say, "we're sick of the politically correct society of the elitists", but come on... Did they not also have mothers growing up, who taught them right from wrong? Didn't their parents teach them what was acceptable in public?

Do Reformers ever consider what the rest of the world thinks, or are they too immersed in their "anti-world" pseudo-foreign policy? Just what does a foreign leader think of when he plans to address Canada, or Canadian leaders? Do they consider Canada as having bucked the conventions of international protocol and decency?

When foreign leaders aspire to be statesmen, Canadian federal Conservatives of the Reform ilk aspire to be low-brow "hatchetmen". Some Canadians may be amused. Some may even be "enamored", but Liberals need not worry. These gun-totin', angry, usually rural Prairie Reform-backers would never vote Liberal. These are the same type of people who like to blame the recession of the 80s, and international oil prices on the NEP... Rational thought has always been too "elitist" for them. For them the "with us, or agin' us" neo-hate-politics is king. Individual - or more accurately "us" - comes before the betterment of the group or society as a whole.

Harper is the "golden child" of this movement. He is the definitive "anti-statesman". He is the anti-elitist's anti-elitist. He is the denouement of compassionate politics. His party is set upon unraveling any need for federal government that exists in Canada, and it begins with contempt for our institutions, contempt for our system, and contempt for the decency it engenders.

Today's "screwed" comments by Harper were completely un-Prime Ministerial. He has made a mockery of the office, coming to power as he did - not due to superior policy, or superior skill-set - but by the machinations of a very contrived and very peripheral "scandal". Canadians are now seeing the empty rhetoric of a government devoid of ideas, devoid of talent, and devoid of basic decency.