This is a lovely bit of concern trolling for the health of the Liberal party, dripping with condescension for you and me – you know, ‘progressives’ – courtesy of another humourless right-wing scold writing in a New Brunswick newspaper. (I don’t know if the writer is actually ‘right wing’ as much as he is playing one in this column.)
You see to the writer of this column, Canada has been ‘shifting rightward for a variety of reasons’ but this one takes the cake (italics mine):
“…people typically become more conservative with the wisdom of years…”
Yep, that’s right as I sail along in my sixties, I’m becoming more stupid and naive. Fancy that. And what about the over 60% who either don’t like the right-wing Conservatives or the middle-of-the-road Liberals and don’t vote because of the ‘rightward’ shift of our political centre, for that matter? It’s getting harder and harder to tell the Conservatives and the Liberals apart. One just has better PR than the other. But Progressives? Stupid and naive!
If you ever wondered why Canadians have joined the Occupy movement or that traditional newspapers are dying on the vine, look no further than this column. It can’t help itself be stodgy and arrogant at the same time while totally misreading its subject.
Newspaper columnists have lost the bead of sweat that binds working Canadians, whether centre or left. We are not all centre or right. We are a diverse nation, full of people who believe and fight for a philosophy and causes not affiliated solely with authoritarian laws or making money at whatever the cost.
If the Liberals pursue a path further into conservative territory, we are all the poorer. If the centre and right keep publishing columns looking down on the left, without attribution to the writer’s own political persuasion, on behalf of the Liberal party, we are even that much poorer.
