Getting religion
Monday, 27 June 2005
Ted Byfield
To contend that Canada is involved in a religious war might seem a trifle excessive, but something like that is certainly going on. This, anyway, is the implication of the first poll to emerge after last month's parliamentary extravaganza.
A poll conducted by Leger Marketing put Paul Martin's Liberals back on top by a healthy 11 percentage points--38 per cent against, 27 per cent for Steve Harper's Conservatives. This, despite disclosures that the federal Liberal party in Quebec is corrupt to the core, despite Martin's surrender of his budget to the NDP, despite dithering uncertainty on almost every major issue.
To the voters, claims the poll, none of these flaws matter anything like as much as the Tory position on "social issues." They're what count. Would a new Conservative leader make any difference? No, the pollsters find, none whatever. The voters have no misgivings about the Conservative leadership. Their quarrel is with the party. They do not trust what it might do in the "social" sphere.
The term "social issues" is, let's face it, a euphemism. People shrink from calling them what they are, namely religious issues. Behind the euphemism stand things like the acceptability of abortion, the ancient legal safeguards for the "traditional family," the right of parents to decide what their children will be taught, the right of parents to physically discipline their children, what kind of views may be publicly expressed.
The list keeps growing, and the reason is not mysterious. This country was founded on the assumption that Canadians were wholly united on such things. Our moral values were derived from the Jews and spread across most of the world by the Christians. They were rooted in the premise that there is a God, that God is "good," and good is what the law and the prophets said it is. So where's the "issue"?
There wasn't one until about 250 years ago--some would say 500 years ago--when some voices began to question the whole premise. Is there really a God? Do we really have any basis for knowing what's "good"? Such questions very easily become political. The purpose of legislatures is to pass laws. All laws impose some kind of moral principle. So when we become divided on the origins and authority of moral principles, we become divided politically. And if the history of the past 250 years has taught us anything, it's that this kind of religious division can become very nasty indeed.
It gets particularly dangerous if the division becomes geographical as well as theological--that is, if one part of a country thinks one way, and another the opposite way. This is precisely what the Leger poll is telling us.
For when the pollsters say that what's in doubt is not the leader but the party, they are talking geography. The "party," as we are repeatedly reminded, is essentially "western" Canadian, and what is usually portrayed as its doleful Christian influence is western-centred.
The conflict, in other words, apart from being one of agnostic versus religious, is also one of East versus West. To obscure this reality, the primary voice of the agnostic side, The Globe and Mail, persistently describes the split as urban versus rural, a thesis that requires classifying the whole of Calgary, most of Edmonton and the entire British Columbia Lower Mainland outside the Vancouver core as "rural." There is an innuendo here. To The Globe, "rural" implies backward, unintelligent, bigoted, out of touch with modern reality. "Urban" means informed, wise, tolerant, "inclusive."
However, as one of their own columnists noted with alarm last month, each of the past four Conservative candidates named in Vancouver's immediate suburbs had highly profiled "Christian" credentials. As usual, his observation carried the implicit admonishment: the Tories will never get elected if they keep packing the party with these "social conservatives."
He does not understand, of course, the way these disgusting religious people think. If the Conservative party can only get elected by becoming in effect another Liberal party, intent upon indoctrinating their children to accept values and lifestyles their parents believe repulsive, they will not only--once again--set up a new party. They will also consider setting up a new country.
Monday, 27 June 2005
Ted Byfield
To contend that Canada is involved in a religious war might seem a trifle excessive, but something like that is certainly going on. This, anyway, is the implication of the first poll to emerge after last month's parliamentary extravaganza.
A poll conducted by Leger Marketing put Paul Martin's Liberals back on top by a healthy 11 percentage points--38 per cent against, 27 per cent for Steve Harper's Conservatives. This, despite disclosures that the federal Liberal party in Quebec is corrupt to the core, despite Martin's surrender of his budget to the NDP, despite dithering uncertainty on almost every major issue.
To the voters, claims the poll, none of these flaws matter anything like as much as the Tory position on "social issues." They're what count. Would a new Conservative leader make any difference? No, the pollsters find, none whatever. The voters have no misgivings about the Conservative leadership. Their quarrel is with the party. They do not trust what it might do in the "social" sphere.
The term "social issues" is, let's face it, a euphemism. People shrink from calling them what they are, namely religious issues. Behind the euphemism stand things like the acceptability of abortion, the ancient legal safeguards for the "traditional family," the right of parents to decide what their children will be taught, the right of parents to physically discipline their children, what kind of views may be publicly expressed.
The list keeps growing, and the reason is not mysterious. This country was founded on the assumption that Canadians were wholly united on such things. Our moral values were derived from the Jews and spread across most of the world by the Christians. They were rooted in the premise that there is a God, that God is "good," and good is what the law and the prophets said it is. So where's the "issue"?
There wasn't one until about 250 years ago--some would say 500 years ago--when some voices began to question the whole premise. Is there really a God? Do we really have any basis for knowing what's "good"? Such questions very easily become political. The purpose of legislatures is to pass laws. All laws impose some kind of moral principle. So when we become divided on the origins and authority of moral principles, we become divided politically. And if the history of the past 250 years has taught us anything, it's that this kind of religious division can become very nasty indeed.
It gets particularly dangerous if the division becomes geographical as well as theological--that is, if one part of a country thinks one way, and another the opposite way. This is precisely what the Leger poll is telling us.
For when the pollsters say that what's in doubt is not the leader but the party, they are talking geography. The "party," as we are repeatedly reminded, is essentially "western" Canadian, and what is usually portrayed as its doleful Christian influence is western-centred.
The conflict, in other words, apart from being one of agnostic versus religious, is also one of East versus West. To obscure this reality, the primary voice of the agnostic side, The Globe and Mail, persistently describes the split as urban versus rural, a thesis that requires classifying the whole of Calgary, most of Edmonton and the entire British Columbia Lower Mainland outside the Vancouver core as "rural." There is an innuendo here. To The Globe, "rural" implies backward, unintelligent, bigoted, out of touch with modern reality. "Urban" means informed, wise, tolerant, "inclusive."
However, as one of their own columnists noted with alarm last month, each of the past four Conservative candidates named in Vancouver's immediate suburbs had highly profiled "Christian" credentials. As usual, his observation carried the implicit admonishment: the Tories will never get elected if they keep packing the party with these "social conservatives."
He does not understand, of course, the way these disgusting religious people think. If the Conservative party can only get elected by becoming in effect another Liberal party, intent upon indoctrinating their children to accept values and lifestyles their parents believe repulsive, they will not only--once again--set up a new party. They will also consider setting up a new country.
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