With six days left to voting across Canada, it appears obvious that Stephen Harper’s so-called Conservative Party will be returned to office, with either a minority or a majority. I can’t see what difference this will make. I would not expect Harper to change his style with a majority. He is a risk-averse politician, who has already publicly declared that he’ll have nothing to do with any of the “social conservative” issues that I, and the many partisans for “western civ,” care a great deal about.
He has glibly avoided the crucial issue of the suppression of free speech and press by “human rights” kangaroo courts and the like. (…)
Alas, in the United States as here, the advance of “political correctness” has made a number of key issues undiscussable, except by the brave. But after years of prelude, the battle of the brave has now begun. It is a trial by ordeal for the candidates, but the job they are seeking requires it, and there is no question that should not be asked of the candidate for such a job.
I will be prouder of my country when our own elections get much nastier.
To one side, it goes without saying that the crisis was caused by greed and conspiracy, in the absence of sufficient government regulation. To the other, it is self-evidently the accomplishment of a U.S. government that set the accounting rules and created the subprime monsters (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) to deliver mortgages to people who would never qualify under common-sense rules of banking.
The latter are right and the former are wrong on the history, but that is beside the point for the time being. The issue has instead found its way to the front line between two basically irreconcilable views of reality. Only in America are they so equally balanced. Elsewhere in the West, the true believers in the Nanny State have long since prevailed.
Democrats and Republicans have become two solitudes, and so, the result of the election will be ugly, no matter which side wins.
