A Divided House Cannot Stand

I suppose regular readers will notice that I’ve strayed from Canadian political analysis of late, partly because much of it centres around the budget “stimulus” which has yet to be introduced into the economy, and is therefore unworthy of commentary. But I’ve also avoided writing specifically about the Conservative party mainly because I tire of their constant campaigning and justifications that their party is the least destructive in politics. As I’ve said before, the slogan for the previous election “We’re better off with Harper” should have alerted us to the lowered expectations of this watered down conservative government.

On Thursday, Stephen Harper gave an impromptu speech at the Manning Centre in Ottawa that convinced many fiscal small-c conservatives that the leader intends to burn down the bridge that was originally built to bring together all right-of-centre conservatives to form the support that currently props up the tenuous power of the current government. And burn that bridge he did. As noted by party dissident Mike Brock, a self avowed libertarian, Mr.Harper never made clear how his party differentiates its policies from the opposition other than asserting it as being the most pragmatic and the most truly conservative.

This seems to be the Orwellian strategy of Mr.Harper during his tenure, to say one thing but do another, and then deny it contradicts the philosophy or strategy of grassroots conservatism. Whether it be reversals in policy that are sudden and contradictory to previous ones, the Harper government seems to believe it is immune to the historical archives of their own rhetoric. The disingenuous, or some might say dishonest, campaign in October of 2008 that promised not to run a deficit if elected, gained the Prime Minister a vote of confidence from the Canadian people that led to his second minority government. The mask fell away in December, however, when after a particularly ill-considered economic motion, the government was threatened with being overthrown by the collective interests of the remaining political parties. After escaping defeat by requesting a prorogation of parliament, the Prime Minister returned in January with a liberal budget in tow, releasing five years of fiscal irresponsibility, governmental interference in the free market, and a slew of funding for special interest groups, contrary to the assertions of the leader that only the opposition are capable of such acts of pathetic pandering.

Stephen Harper told the audience that conservatism can be summed up in three words: freedom, family and faith. This prairiedogging of social conservatism so carefully withheld from public consumption does nothing for many small-c conservatives who were waiting for some sign of remorse from the leader who led the country astray from fiscal conservancy. As Janet Neilson writes: “If you don’t trust people to be moral or responsible, then there is no room for freedom in your philosophy.” Indeed, faith and freedom are often mutually exclusive terms. Citizens in the western world who happen to believe in small-c conservatism base their views on classical liberalism and the inherent freedom of placing the rights of the individual ahead of the collective. Governmental interventionism into the economy, into the social affairs of citizens, into the creative forces that drive the free market, is an affront to secular conservatism. Theological conservatives who would embrace the concept of “freedom, family and faith” could just as easily have come from an imam living in Iran.

How Mr.Harper can denigrate libertarians who believe in the individual freedoms of the taxpayer overriding the interests of a society wrought by economic flux is a rather bizarre thing coming from a man who enacts collectivist Keynesian policies. Even more contradictory coming from a man who blames interventionism as a cause for economic collapse in the United States, making the argument that what government broke can also be fixed by government. “Harper left no doubt about his belief in the necessity of government intervention in the economy“, leaving the rest of the small-c conservatives in Canada wondering how we’re expected to accept the intellectual dishonesty of a party still claiming to be right-of-centre.

Stephen Harper united the right and centrist elements of Canada into a mainstream party that appealed to those with fiscally conservative and socially libertarian values. His latest speech indicates he intends to leave us behind, thus dividing the house into those who find their principles as malleable as Harper’s, and those who do not.