Conservative war on ideas and the great leap backwards

#cpc #bcpoli #pmsharper #ndp #cdnpoli

For those who think that American style ultra-stupid conservative politics would never come to Canada, brace yourself – its on its way. And I’m not just talking about Sun News network, dubbed as ‘Fox North’ by its critics – even if they do come close as far as dumbing down the message goes.

Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party are bent on re-shaping Canada into a Conservative nation. That means a far right leaning intellectual infrastructure. This already exists in America with all of the far right think tanks and ‘intellectual’ type societies and groups parrot out the same ideological rants – even if they are based on absolute lies.

Oh, we have conservative think tanks here in Canada; but they mainly stick to conservative fiscal arguments. Sometimes they take a swipe at some of our social programs, but never in the same venom they do in America.

But wait, Canada is a progressive nation and we’d never allow ourselves be convinced to think far right like that…isn’t it? I’m pretty sure that was the conventional wisdom in America too. But they took the lessons of the great propagandists of the 1930’s and learned that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. This is further perfected by a slow and steady corporate consolidation of the media industry into the hands of fewer and fewer companies – with the same conservative tilt as the politicians.

The method is painstaking and long, but complete. You have to slowly erode the education system so that little is left but the bare basics (and even those are questionable). The eventual goal is to eradicate objective thinking as it challenges traditional thinking. Faith is the cornerstone of Conservatives; to believe in what you cannot immediately prove or see is the basic tenant of faith itself. Conservatives want to be able to tell you something, and you believe it without question or challenging its wisdom.

Then you have to lower the collective IQ of the general public by loading up the airwaves with pseudo-news and reporting that blurs the line with entertainment. Genuine news is pushed away for ratings and sensationalism; for evidence, look at what the Harper Government is doing to the CBC. Then eventually, all that’s left that do any objective reporting and investigation are easily dismissed as ‘liberal media bias’ and slanted against traditional conservative ideals.

Why do conservatives hate liberal thinking so much? Because of a selfish, self appointed place in society that a conservative has given to themselves…that they are the only guardians of culture, freedom, faith, and the pillars of society itself. They do not share power willingly, and democracy has proven at times to be the enemy of conservatism. This is why today’s conservative regimes don’t have any problem making friends with other repressive regimes, because they identify with the nuisance of uppity protesters demanding redress for longstanding grievances in the freedom/democracy file or answers on corruption.

Conservatives will go to almost any end as well to remain in power…to the extent that they will seek to exclude some groups from voting if they feel those groups trend against the conservative movement. This is why currently in Florida, the administration of GOP Governor Rick Scott is attempting to purge the voters list of hundreds of thousands of names – almost exclusively democratic voters…because they meet a demographic that would normally vote Democrat.

Tricks and tools of the trade as demonstrated in America for voter suppression have been learned well and are now being employed in Canada. As recently as this last federal election, voters in a handful of very tight races were ‘robocalled’ by an outside source to tell the prospective voter that polling stations had been moved when they actually hadn’t. Shady attempts to circumvent spending limits; third party advertising; illegitimate assistance have been employed by our own home-grown right wing movements and are just the tip of the iceburg.

Canada has been an example of what a country can be when progressives dominate. Freedom and tolerance, with generosity and compassion exist within a largely free market economy. Its been despised by conservatives for generations and are now within a hair of having all the tools in place to undo a century of progress. Wake up Canada!