Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Conservatives Bash Canada

By and large Canada Day was slagged from the Right in a demagogic hatred not seen since the debates during the Viet Nam war in the American press. And at that time the Right in the U.S. responded with the simplistic 'Love It or Leave It'.

It seems approriate then to adopt this slogan and apply it to the current crop of virulent Canada bashing right wingers in Canada; those who are columnists in the mainstream, read right-wing, press especially the Sun newpapers and the National Post. The irony is that they get paid for their calumny. America is soooo much better than Canada, but their paycheques are made in Canada, and their health care and social benefits they despise are still delivered to them regardless of their opinions.

Canada basher Ezra Levant's Calgary Sun column; Canada Day looked like a Liberal campaign ad made his comment appropriately on July 4th, not July 1st. Showing his Canadaphobia is merely good old Americaphilia it comes down to the simplistic arguement that goes Canada=The Liberal Party.

Levant whose an out and out Republican like his other Calgary pals Anders and Kenney, wants not only deep intergration with the United States but would like to be American. He even goes so far in his All Things American are good by calling his national publication the Western Standard after the American Conservative magazine the Weekly Standard.

Typical of the right wing in Canada who once upon a time opposed the Liberals under Trudeau they embraced being Anglophiles, all that was British was good.
Levant hearkens back to this time honoured tradition of being an apologist for the good old days of British colonialism (the specious arguement being that
Canada would not be a country if the Brits had not defeated the French and that they 'allowed' us independence under the Act of Westminister) .

In his column he says:
"Once upon a time, Canada Day -- when it was called Dominion Day, when we had our old flag, not Lester Pearson's new flag, in Liberal colours -- celebrated what really did make our country great".

It's not just the old union jack or the red ensign that Levant embraces but that other fine Anglo American tradtion; child labour, that so offended Charles Dickens.Decisions on young workers and sour gas deserve cheers

Like the vast majority of Alberta right wingers, Ezra is an Anglo-American apologist by ideology (he was an intern at the Fraser Insitute the voice of the neo-conservative agenda in Canada) while being a Canadian by the accident of birth. He and his ilk's final solution, to what he sees as a degenerate left wing Canada, is to call for Alberta to Seperate from the rest of Canada. Forgetting of course that this American identity is strictly a Calgary phenomena, being the largest American city north of the 49th parallel. Those of us in Redmonton would then demand the right to Seperate from a Seperate Alberta, which true to form would continue on its right wing path of being a one party state in the tradition of Mussolini and Stalin.

Meanwhile not to be outdone, in the city of Toronto another Sun columnist Michael Coren, a born again papist, Anglophile and proud homophobe, denounces Canada in his column: Canada Day? Bah, Humbug!
where he says:
"The notion that this is the greatest country on Earth and that our cities are "world class" is, frankly, quite ludicrous. We have little history, few passable museums, mediocre galleries and minimal national pride".

Well there's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, hard to have national pride when those in your nation, the so called patriots continue to bash it in favour of the good old days of British Colonialism or by embracing modern era American Imperialism. Our neo-cons ideology is a mix of bad old Socreds and sad sack Republicans.

And like Levant that is what Coren says; Brits and Americans good Canadians bad:
"That's not difficult, of course. We make dreadful television and movies, whether they are funny or not. There are diluted versions of American and British programs and politically tendentious films that are instantly identifiable. They're characterized by bad acting and unfailingly lugubrious plots that often include a hackneyed and out-of-context gay relationship.".

The fact that we make very good TV and have long supplied the humourless Americans with their funniest comedians, since the early days of Hollywood to Saturday Night Live, seems lost on Coren. And with his predicatable homophobia, he dismisses Kids in the Hall was a funny series in both Canada and the United States.
But hey why worry about facts when you are bashing Canada and gays in one breathe.

The columnists are not alone in their hatred of Canada, as I pointed out in a recent blog comment on Medicine Hat MP Monte Solberg who expressed much the same senitiments after the same sex bill passed.

Jim Elves at Blogs Canada exposes the rants of the right wing Canada Bashers in blog space with his blog article Calling on the Right to Quash Canada-haters .

Like their paid brethern in Canada's right wing press these supporters of all things Conservative, once again come up with the solution to their woes is to take Alberta out of Canada. They love the one party state in Alberta but hate the one party State in Ottawa, which is actually now a minority government something Albertans have never tried.

What they hate is not a country, not a government in Ottawa, hell when Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives were in power they hated them as well.
Nope they hate Canadians, they want to be Americans.

We Canadians are basically a peoples who embrace a social democratic ethic, that we support individual rights when they are not only good for the individual but for the good of the community as well. The right wing is opposed to all that makes us Canadian.

Thus they oppose gun control in principle, despite the fact that the majority of Canadians approve of gun control and despite the fact it works according to Stats Canada;
Gun deaths down in Canada.

And they fail to see that the Federal government billion dollar boondoogle over the gun registry is because it embraced the neo-conservative ideology of privatization and private public partnerships, and because they did not expect the provinces like Alberta, not to buy in (ok that was stupid, but the point is that cost all of us part of the billion).

These yahoos on the right in Alberta have a history that is ridden with anti-french, anti-semitic, anti-native, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-union traditions. A right wing based in the old Social Credit party and the KKK in Alberta.

Federally they became Preston Mannings Reform Party/Alliance/Conservative Party, they are Albertans first, Canadians second. Which much to their own chagrin puts them in the same camp as the Quebecois, whom they bash out of jealousy for their asymetrical autonomy.

This then is the politics of the right in Canada as embraced by the Levants and Corens, and by the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party of Harper. Simply put they are not just pro-American, but virulently anti-Canadian and anti- Quebec because we are both Social Democratic countries.

As long as the majority of Canadians and Quebecois embrace the politics of the left by voting for the NDP, Liberals and BQ, the Conservatives will remain a regional party of Alberta. Ralphs party on the federal stage. A party that wanted to create a firewall around Calgary but disguised their aristotilian city state aspirations for an American outpost in the heartland of Canada's energy market by calling for annexation of the entire province.

Albertan's who are conservative never think of themselves as Canadians, to do so would mean we would have to share our wealth with the rest of the country, rather than horde it in a mean spirited way. The Alberta Government and its Federal arm; the Conservative pary, want deep integration with the United States, hence their support for the right wing rump that calls for seperation.

Since the right wing is so concerned with democracy and applauded the American invasion of Iraq to bring down a dictatorship and give the people a democracy perhaps they will applaud if the Federal government did the same thing in Alberta to secure the oil reserves for all Canadians, and to bring democracy to the oppressed and exploited peoples of Alberta. But somehow I don't think so.

Once upon a time the conspiratorial right wing published a manifesto of the new right in America it was entitled "None Dare Call It Treason". The new right in Alberta
has supped deeply at the cup of this kind of politics and encourage if not call for Alberta seperation outright. But I dare to call it what it is; Sedition and treason agianst all that is Canadian, and the rantings of Levant, Coren, Solberg and the bloggers continues to prove this time after time.






14 comments:

Re-awakened Shaman said...

they [ the right wingers] will celebrate with the liberals when they solidify the deep integration pact already well into the initial process.....

let's hope there is a ground swell of "Canada first" voices from our nation to fend off the right wing in the liberal party too!

EUGENE PLAWIUK said...

Here! Here! the Liberals are just as guilty of wanting corporate intergration on a continental basis, remember that other broken red book pledge...abdicating NAFTA...like ending the GST it got 'em elected and then it was forgotten. The Right of course made a big deal about the GST but was silent on the NAFTA pledge, of course

AWGB said...

Eugene:

I disagree with the analysis of these kids entering the workforce, but completely agree that the conservative commentators were bashing Canada.

On one hand, as a member of a union, GCW Local 92, I think that this expansion of the labour pool is very minor. There were 500 permits issued, and 400 came from the restaurant sector. We, as a province, have exempted four job categories such as newspaper carrier, retail clerk or stocktaker from the permits before. There are, from the data I have available to me, over 100,000 people in the restaurant sector. Considering that these 400 kids are already emplyed in that sector, the labour pool did not expand, and hence there will be zero downward pressure on wages. The government does not regulate it, but the parents still have to give consent, the kids can't work for more than 2 hours on a school night and they are not allowed near dangerous kitchen equipment. Yes, rules are meant to be broken, especially in Alberta.

On the other hand, I think that the unions should be firing up educational campaigns for young workers and educating them on laws such as the right to refuse unsafe work. The Unions should be in jr. high schools to inform them that if they do not like one employer, they are free to find another job. If they are aware of their options, they will ditch bad employers. Kids need empowerment, not exclusion, and organized labour is alienating them with comments such as those by McGowan.

As for the CanCons bashing Canada - I did not appreciate it. I am a member of the Red Ensign Brigade, a loose affiliation of libertarians, conservatives, communists - a veritable blogging mishmash. We fly the Red Ensign for our own reasons. I fly it to remember the forgotten - it is the flag under which many vets fought for our freedoms. I am still learning its history, and to me, it does not represent Colonialism (to most people it probably would). But it represents an age of politics unlike our current epoch.

I watched the CBC's recent documentary on how we got our current flag, and I must say, I was never prouder to be Canadian. Diefenbaker looked like an assnine dillsnick to the bitter end because Pearson had a different vision. Red and White are Canadian colors, not Liberal colors, and to equate the state of liberal corruption with the colors of our flag is just sheer idiotarianism.

I fly the Red Ensign as an act of protest against the pure idiocy of politics. Period. I wish more people would heed the words of Tommy Douglas' parable of the cats.

http://tinyurl.com/7sgg9

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, I note that you are jsut limiting your attack on Calgary and area. How about including most of Western Canada as we voted mainly Conservative in the last election.

BTW, I think you have it all wrong, Conservatives don't hate Canada, they hate the Liberals and the left who are slowly crumbling the ethics and morales of the western world. The left is out to destroy Christianity (I am not Christian) and will only be satsified when we have a one party communist state with no religion and where everyone works for the state.

It is people like you who continue to remind me that real Canadians need to rid Canada of your ilk before we will ever become a true nation.

Jay Jardine said...

Ah yes, sedition trials all around, children!

Eugene, the Can-con herd has its share of hypocritical cowards to be sure, but declaring their ignorant rants "treasonous" is manifestly un-libertarian.

This brand of love-it-or-leave rhetoric would fit right in with the contemptible Powerline hawks in the USSA.

And I second aaron's reasons for flying the ensign.

Anonymous said...

Hey Eugene,

First time reading reading your blog. Nealenews.com linked it and he usally links to the CanCon Bashers you described (which I hate but read for the entertainment value).

You made some good points and I enjoyed reading something thought from the left for a change on nealenews! OK, back to more right wing rantings!

Anonymous said...

The self-hating Canadian right-wing (or white-wing as some wags refer to them...) despise their country. They don't have any ideas of their own, they just know they hate liberals, Canada and the society that we have built. And then they wonder why no one will vote for their party in Ontario...

Anonymous said...

Eugene you are absolutely right. This right wing nonsense has to be stopped. If I wanted to be an American I would move there.

ricky said...

Let the CPC bash all they want. Harper will have to take a tour bus to see 24 Sussex drive.

Salut

Rick

Anonymous said...

I see little in the works you quoted to justify smearing them, but never mind. If denouncing critics of the way this country is run -- by describing them in your fashion, oddly reminiscent of red-baiting, as being too pro-American -- makes you feel better about your lot, then fill your boots. It is amusing, however, to note what's become of people like yourself who flatter themselves by pretending to be part of a revolutionary movement. Guess the status quo is pretty terrific after all, eh?

Raging Ranter said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Raging Ranter said...

Your hatred of all things Anglo is the reason Canada-bashers such as myself exist. We have become a poor excuse for a country, and continue to deliberately erode all that was once good. We have not built a society, as you say, we have dismantled one. There is nothing that defines a nation, and its place in the world, more than the language its citizens speak (why do you think Quebec is so adamant about its French language laws), yet we continue to chip away at our historic ties to the rest of the English-speaking world. Multiculturalism, bilingualism, and the elevation of group rights over individual rights have all served to dissolve our anglo roots. In place of those roots, we have a vacuum that we attempt to fill with ever-expanding government programs.

Anonymous said...

you speak of the "one-party state" that supposedly exists in Alberta. Why don't you mention the one-party kleptocracy that rules with an iron fist in Ottawa, a kleptocracy that goes by the name of the Liberal Party? Or is that too much for your fragile left-wing sensibilities to admit?

EUGENE PLAWIUK said...

Eugene Replies to the Comments so far. My comments in brackets [ ]

Aaron said...
There were 500 permits issued, and 400 came from the restaurant sector. We, as a province, have exempted four job categories such as newspaper carrier, retail clerk or stocktaker from the permits before.
[a newspaper route is not the same as working in the service industry, one that is notorious for high turnover in staff, lousy training, lousy health and safety, working around hot oil etc. using heavy mops for the floors, sheesh their parents have these jobs do you want to take them away form them? This was the origin of industrial capitalism of the dark satanic mills the family was exploited together in the factory. Today the kids, parents and grandparents can all work in McJobs, now that’s what I call family values.]

The government does not regulate it, [exactly which is the problem] but the parents still have to give consent, the kids can't work for more than 2 hours on a school night
[ not likely minimum requirement to get paid is to work three hours under the Employment Standards act.]

On the other hand, I think that the unions should be firing up educational campaigns for young workers and educating them on laws such as the right to refuse unsafe work. [They have, the Edmonton and Calgary District Labour Councils and the AFL provide schools with union and employment information for students, it's the ATA that should put it into the CALM curriculum]

[Studies show that students who work 30 hours a week whether in High School or Post Secondary Education have lower test scores and since it is business and the right wing that love testing so much this should be a wake up call that youth employment conflicts with educational expectations.
For a union view other than the AFL see CUPE 474 Edmonton Public School Custodial Workers press release,]

wasp said...

Hmmm, I note that you are jsut limiting your attack on Calgary and area. [Aw shucks you noticed. That’s where the conservative power and financial base is in Canada. Which is not true of the north of the province which is why we are known as Redmonton. ]

How about including most of Western Canada as we voted mainly Conservative in the last election. [No we didn't ]

BTW, I think you have it all wrong, Conservatives don't hate Canada, they hate the Liberals and the left who are slowly crumbling the ethics and morales of the western world. [Gee I thought I said that]

The left is out to destroy Christianity [oh please the Christians and Muslims are the majority religions in the world, and the left is the last bastion of enlightenment, while the religious organizations are mini-states with their own power, ala the Vatican City, or Mecca, and yes the historic mission of the 'left' has been fraternity, liberty, equality, which runs counter to the medievalist caste notions of most patriarchal monotheistic religions. And it certainly runs counter to Hinduism, which is a racist fascist caste based religion. So Christians can just take a number and line up.]

It is people like you who continue to remind me that real Canadians need to rid Canada of your ilk before we will ever become a true nation.
[Gee and what constitutes a real Canadian? obviously someone who thinks like you and agrees with you. I was born here, and when I last checked Canada has been a nation since 1867. So I guess that makes me a Canadian by birth, if not by inclination]

Jay said...

Ah yes, sedition trials all around, children!
[Those that would live by the state's power must abide by the state's laws. Anon.]

Eugene, the Can-con herd has its share of hypocritical cowards to be sure, but declaring their ignorant rants "treasonous" is manifestly un-libertarian.
[The Conservative right in Canada wants state power, they define themselves as the only real 'Canadians' and as such should have to abide by the state laws that they wish to enforce on others. Its analagous to the cops who break the law by speeding when they are going to the donut shop, speeding is illegal, unless you are the guys enforcing the laws]

This brand of love-it-or-leave rhetoric would fit right in with the contemptible Powerline hawks in the USSA.
[ummm yes that was my point, its called ironic commentary]

Anonymous said...

The self-hating Canadian right-wing (or white-wing as some wags refer to them...) despise their country.

{yeah I like that too. As the that great anarchist Bugs Bunny, the Wascally Wabbit would say; White Wing Wascists]

Garnet said...

I see little in the works you quoted to justify smearing them, but never mind. [Hey where did I smear them, they said it if you can't see it well......]

If denouncing critics of the way this country is run [they aren't denouncing the way this country is run they are saying it isn't run their way]

-- by describing them in your fashion, oddly reminiscent of red-baiting, [oh you noticed that propaganda technique did you, its called irony] as being too pro-American

It is amusing, however, to note what's become of people like yourself who flatter themselves by pretending to be part of a revolutionary movement. Guess the status quo is pretty terrific after all, eh? [no and you obviously didn't read my blog or you would know I am highly critical of the status quo left and right, and you obviously missed my Canada day comment, read on....]

Raging Ranter said...

Your hatred of all things Anglo. [Oh you mean like the mercantilism, and colonialism of the Hudson’s Bay Company selling natives smallpox infested blankets, etc.]

We have become a poor excuse for a country, and continue to deliberately erode all that was once good. [oh like having our first PM a Conservative and a Drunk, hmm sort of like Ralph, hanging Louis Riel for demanding autonomy ,the origin of Western Alienation, the Family Compact in Upper and Lower Canada, not allowing women or Jews to vote, importing immigrant labour and then deporting them when they formed unions, importing Chinese labour and putting a head tax on them, blowing up a boat of East Indian immigrants in Vancouver Harbour, killing striking workers and their families at a picnic in Estevan, yeah the good old days]

. There is nothing that defines a nation, and its place in the world, more than the language its citizens speak [oh and isn't Switzerland a nation? and they speak four languages] yet we continue to chip away at our historic ties to the rest of the English-speaking world. [You mean the old Empire, an Empire that conquered its neighbours like the Irish, Welsh and Scots, who by the by don't speak English, here's an irony for you Newfoundland....they still speak with an Irish lilt, and if it hadn't been for Scots Freemasons in Canada preserving Gallic it would be a lost language, last time I tried to listen to a Geordie or a Scots I needed subtitles]

Multiculturalism, bilingualism, and the elevation of group rights over individual rights have all served to dissolve our anglo roots. [Now what roots would those be, German or French since Angle Saxon is a germanic based language, hey I get it we are not being true to our Germanic/Teutonic roots]

In place of those roots, we have a vacuum that we attempt to fill with ever-expanding government programs.[except in Alberta where we have an ever deckling amount of government programs and an increasing amount of user fees to pay for privatization of those programs]

firebrand said...

you speak of the "one-party state" that supposedly exists in Alberta. [Supposedly? Supposedly? what the hell do call 69 seat majority, a majority that has dominated the province for 33 years, where in 1974 there was four opposition members, hello]

Why don't you mention the one-party kleptocracy that rules with an iron fist in Ottawa, a kleptocracy that goes by the name of the Liberal Party? [ Because they are a plutocracy! Just like their predecessors the Mulroney Conservative/Bloc government that ruled for 13 years thanks to twits like you]