The secret's out
Ted Byfield - Monday,13 February 2006
To adequately write anything about what could well prove one of the most pivotal elections in Canadian history, when the results are scarcely in, is not advisable. So I'll write about the campaign. It is now, at least, over. And a very curious campaign it was. Its central irony was the desperate Liberal effort to establish that the Tories harboured a "secret agenda." Instead, they inadvertently disclosed that it is they who have the "secret agenda." It consists of a number of assumptions, which they invariably act upon, but rarely discuss, certainly not at election time.
They have assumed, for instance, that they governed a country whose whole system of values must be changed. I don't mean has changed. I mean, must be changed--changed by them. Old ideas of the permanence of marriage, parental authority, the responsibility of the individual, rather than the state, for his own well being--all this must go.
That assumption underlies every move they've made in social legislation. No-fault divorce, gay marriage, state-directed education for pre-school children, the repeal of all statutory support for the family--all this springs from that one never-mentioned premise. The family, as we have understood it, is to be abolished. It's the central feminist agenda, unreservedly adopted by the federal Liberals.
There's another assumption. They do not trust Canadians. In the New Canada, which they're fashioning, the old idea that the citizenry by popular vote should decide how they're governed and by whom will be gradually eliminated. Notice the terminology, for instance, when it's suggested that contentious issues like restraints on sexual conduct or abortion be resolved by referendum. "Mob rule!" they cry. They mean that the people (i.e., "the mob") might "vote wrong," as they did on the Charlottetown accord. The people just don't understand their own best interest. It's the experts, the sages, the wisely endowed, who know what's good for them.
So if the people, via an elected parliament, are not the country's ultimate governors, then who is? For this purpose, the Liberals see themselves as fashioning a new type of human being--not merely a special class or caste, but a special species, trained to make the high, pivotal decisions that will bring the New Canada into being. These will not, like ordinary people, be subject to inherited biases, psychological conditioning, social prejudices, political or religious predispositions or distortions born of gender. They will be above all this, the "Guardians" in Plato's plan for the ideal authoritarian state. In Canada, they are called judges.
This may seem excessive. I wish it were. But read the speeches being delivered of late by Canada's chief justice on the qualifications and duties of a judge, and you see that it understates the case. Moreover, she says, judges must not feel themselves bound by the literal limitations of the charter. They must be guided by a higher vision, which mere politicians, tainted with the tawdry necessity of getting elected, cannot possibly understand.
It would be preposterous, in the Liberal view, to subject appointees to this august office to public examination, analyzing, for example, their past public utterances to discover what they think, and requiring legislative approval of their appointment. Even more important, the "notwithstanding clause," which gives politicians an unthinkable power to reverse the Guardians, this must certainly go.
This then is the Liberals' secret agenda, which they diligently enact and never discuss--up until this campaign, that is. But this time, driven frantic by an unexpected surge in support for the Tories, they panicked. Things began to spill out.
A senior spokesman let it be known the state must take over the care of preschool children because the government believes their parents are more interested in buying "beer and popcorn." The prime minister himself, driven in the final weeks to incomprehensible raving, disclosed the plan to scrap the notwithstanding clause.
Thus the real secret agenda. And though the Liberals are no longer in power, we should remember that much of the senior federal bureaucracy is imbued with these same assumptions. And they will still be in office. To actually block this agenda, therefore, the Tories will have to clear away virtually the whole top echelon of the civil service.
Western Standard
Ted Byfield - Monday,13 February 2006
To adequately write anything about what could well prove one of the most pivotal elections in Canadian history, when the results are scarcely in, is not advisable. So I'll write about the campaign. It is now, at least, over. And a very curious campaign it was. Its central irony was the desperate Liberal effort to establish that the Tories harboured a "secret agenda." Instead, they inadvertently disclosed that it is they who have the "secret agenda." It consists of a number of assumptions, which they invariably act upon, but rarely discuss, certainly not at election time.
They have assumed, for instance, that they governed a country whose whole system of values must be changed. I don't mean has changed. I mean, must be changed--changed by them. Old ideas of the permanence of marriage, parental authority, the responsibility of the individual, rather than the state, for his own well being--all this must go.
That assumption underlies every move they've made in social legislation. No-fault divorce, gay marriage, state-directed education for pre-school children, the repeal of all statutory support for the family--all this springs from that one never-mentioned premise. The family, as we have understood it, is to be abolished. It's the central feminist agenda, unreservedly adopted by the federal Liberals.
There's another assumption. They do not trust Canadians. In the New Canada, which they're fashioning, the old idea that the citizenry by popular vote should decide how they're governed and by whom will be gradually eliminated. Notice the terminology, for instance, when it's suggested that contentious issues like restraints on sexual conduct or abortion be resolved by referendum. "Mob rule!" they cry. They mean that the people (i.e., "the mob") might "vote wrong," as they did on the Charlottetown accord. The people just don't understand their own best interest. It's the experts, the sages, the wisely endowed, who know what's good for them.
So if the people, via an elected parliament, are not the country's ultimate governors, then who is? For this purpose, the Liberals see themselves as fashioning a new type of human being--not merely a special class or caste, but a special species, trained to make the high, pivotal decisions that will bring the New Canada into being. These will not, like ordinary people, be subject to inherited biases, psychological conditioning, social prejudices, political or religious predispositions or distortions born of gender. They will be above all this, the "Guardians" in Plato's plan for the ideal authoritarian state. In Canada, they are called judges.
This may seem excessive. I wish it were. But read the speeches being delivered of late by Canada's chief justice on the qualifications and duties of a judge, and you see that it understates the case. Moreover, she says, judges must not feel themselves bound by the literal limitations of the charter. They must be guided by a higher vision, which mere politicians, tainted with the tawdry necessity of getting elected, cannot possibly understand.
It would be preposterous, in the Liberal view, to subject appointees to this august office to public examination, analyzing, for example, their past public utterances to discover what they think, and requiring legislative approval of their appointment. Even more important, the "notwithstanding clause," which gives politicians an unthinkable power to reverse the Guardians, this must certainly go.
This then is the Liberals' secret agenda, which they diligently enact and never discuss--up until this campaign, that is. But this time, driven frantic by an unexpected surge in support for the Tories, they panicked. Things began to spill out.
A senior spokesman let it be known the state must take over the care of preschool children because the government believes their parents are more interested in buying "beer and popcorn." The prime minister himself, driven in the final weeks to incomprehensible raving, disclosed the plan to scrap the notwithstanding clause.
Thus the real secret agenda. And though the Liberals are no longer in power, we should remember that much of the senior federal bureaucracy is imbued with these same assumptions. And they will still be in office. To actually block this agenda, therefore, the Tories will have to clear away virtually the whole top echelon of the civil service.
Western Standard
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