– John Adams 

Countries in which the principles of classical liberalism were more or less applied, and in which the majority of citizens were thereby enabled to reach levels of personal freedom and prosperity unprecedented in all of mankind's history, have been under attack for more than a century and a half by Radical Socialists and their fellow-travelling LSD's. (LiberalSocialDemocrats) Military conflict, both directly and by proxies, was tried. Economic competition was tried. Attempts were made to exploit internal divisions of tribalism, religion and class. Nothing worked completely but the counter efforts have been costly and draining.

Currently, we are in the midst of three major crisis events. Terrorism poses physical and economic challenges; the fabricated carbon dioxide 'crisis', which is causing spineless 'western' governments to pander to the Global Warming/Climate Change Swindlers, is a serious threat to our overall economic health; and the banking/financial crisis, fabricated by super-zealous LSDs and 'Davos Men', is being peddled by world governments as a 'catastrophe' if trillions of dollars of new taxpayer debt is not piled on top of the existing back-breaking pile.

In the past, it has taken only one major crisis event to bring radical socialist totalitarian dictatorships into power. (See "On Socialism" at http://www.tapc.ca)

Will this daunting combination of crises be enough to bring us down? Can we resist the final fall into world wide socialist dictatorship? Will new voices emerge to trumpet the sources of personal freedom and prosperity and lead us out of danger?

These are the questions hanging over all our heads today.

__________________________________

Some pundits have claimed that Canadians are deferential to governmental authority. Horseradish! As long as governments delivered service and support close to our expectations, stayed (mostly) out of sight and took less than 25% out of our pockets to pay for their goings-on, we were basically indifferent to them.

Canadians and their governments up to the end of the St. Laurent-quarterbacked government, explicitly and/or implicitly understood that personal freedom can only be realized, nay maximized, in a peaceful and ordered environment that works. It's pretty hard to get on with things when bullets and bombs are whizzing about one's ears. The beauty of Canada was the social contract that good government provided the peaceful and ordered environment which enabled free people to get on with their daily lives and pursue their dreams to the extent of their abilities and ambitions.

Good government was supposed to serve and support people, not rule them or boss them about. Government for the people, not of the people.

But, since the 1960's, through the Pearson-Kent, Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien and Harper regimes, we've suffered the imposition of drastically more bureaucratic interference in our lives, a disastous Euro-Charter that bestows uneven and undeserved rights on some people living in Canada and the increase to nearly 50% of our incomes being torn from our pockets by government taxes and fees. We're not deferential – we're disgusted, disdainful and disengaged.

Canadians have endured fifty years of wasteful, unprincipled, irresponsible, corrupt and incompetent governance that has become isolated from the concerns of most Canadians. Our frustration comes from not having:

a)      alternative principles and policies to combat the socialist siren-song of  'free bread and services' entitlements.

b)      leadership capable of communicating these principles and policies in language that can stimulate the majority of Canadians to adopt them as their own.

c)      institutional processes that would enable the comprehending majority to take back their country.

__________________________________

At this point, can we agree on five fundamental assumptions?

1.      That the vast majority of human beings would prefer to live in a community where the people are healthy, wealthy and wise rather than sick, poor and stupid and that only a tiny minority of psychopaths/sickheads would prefer living in either totalitarian slavery or the chaos of anarchy.

2.      That human beings are both preservative and progressive – desirous of maintaining the status quo, and, desirous of change for the better. Preservation and progression are

universal, polar instincts within each person. Their influence on a person's actions

      varies with time and circumstances.

3.      Similarly, that we each harbour the duality of a need to establish our unique identity in a crowded world, and, a need to cooperate with others for survival. Since we lived

      together in caves, we've been engaged in an ongoing process of negotiating a balance

      between private need and collective obligation, personal desire and public duty, self-

      assertion and group support. In truth, these are not conflicts – they are the two faces

      of self-interest. Our survival as a species required the merging of the one into the

      many in a growing, always-revising set of shared agreements that permitted

      optimum support for personal freedom. That is why we invented government.

4.      That good governance is essential to civilization. Surely every sensible person can agree that only in a peaceful and ordered environment can we have the personal freedom that enables the pursuit of a good life. Law, regulation and the institutions of good governance are essential to creating and sustaining that peaceful and ordered

      environment. The key issues are who decides what good governance is, and, who

      controls the people who occupy the positions that provide good governance.

5.      That two conditions describe a free people: a) they have the power to control what

      their governments do, and b) they have the power to control the authorities in their

      governments.

____________________________________

The classic definition of socialism is: "(the) principle that individual freedom should be completely subordinated to (the) interests of (the) community." [Concise Oxford Dictionary – Fourth Edition, 1951] ("Ask what you can do for your country.")

The people who are opposed to the socialist principle and all its consequences have handicapped themselves by allowing socialists to define the agenda and the terms of the struggle.  Socialists have even been allowed to define the alternative to "socialism"!

Most often, "capitalism" is said to be the opposite of "socialism". But capitalism is merely one of three ways to describe how human beings do business. (Barter and mercantilism are the other two.)

The term "capitalism" was coined by Karl Marx who intended this branding to help in his crusade to destroy private property and market enterprise, and to promote socialism.

By the early 1960's, that part of the LSD establishment responsible for language had managed to get the definition of socialism changed to some variation of, "a system where the means of production, distribution and exchange (i.e., business) is owned and controlled by the community as a whole." (i.e., the state).

But human affairs embrace much more than business and socialism is not just about business. Socialism is a fundamental worldview affecting all aspects of the human condition, and can only be countered and defeated by a worldview of equal scope.

Adolf Hitler, the evil genius of National Socialism, understood. In a public speech in Munich on July 22, 1922, he said, "Whoever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of his nation: …  that man is a socialist."

The core meaning of socialism is that the community is the basic value in human affairs. The individual person is nothing – only the community's welfare matters.

Problem is, communities aren't living beings. They don't have a body, mind and soul. You can't take a community out for a beer and talk things over. Communities of any size, be they a club, an association, a church, or a nation, always 'act' according to the wishes of the people who control them.

Throughout history, whether they shot their way to the top or got there by inheritance, election, or appointment, it has been the power elites/establishments/oligarchs in the positions of authority who have decided the interests of their communities and thereby controlled the people in them.

Oligarchic establishments have consisted of an autocrat, an aristocracy, a bureaucracy and a theocracy bound together by their need to survive as a minority among the majority – the people of their communities. For millenia they survived by claiming they ruled by 'the will of the gods'. They shifted to 'the will of the people' when too many revolutions broke out. Always they believed the socialist worldview justified their existence and that they alone knew what was best for their communities.

Totalitarian dictatorships can exist only where and when the socialist worldview prevails, and, socialism automatically breeds dictatorship.

_______________________________________

"Personalism" is the opposite of "socialism". The core meaning of personalism is that the individual is the basic value in human affairs. The personalist worldview is the necessary precondition for personal and political freedom. If personalism prevailed, the individuals in a community would determine the terms and conditions of their own good governance. It's called democracy ‑ government controlled by the people. Mankind's age long hunger has been for democratic governance operating on the personalist worldview.

It might be useful to think of personalism as the third phase in mankind's struggle toward personal and political freedom. The term "Personalism" wasn't used to describe a school of thought or worldview until the 20^th century, However its roots extend back 3000 years.

For most of those years, personalist thinkers have been identified as 'humanists'.

The Lokayata system formed a part of the Vedantic school of thought about 1000 BCE. It held that only those things that could be sensed by human beings were real, in contrast to the hypotheses about gods that were universally peddled at the time.

From the seventh to the fourth centuries BCE in Asia, thinkers such as Lao Tze, Confucius and Buddha were teaching the alternative that goodness consisted of human actions and values rather than supernatural mysticism

From the seventh to the fourth centuries BCE in Greece, thinkers such as Anaxagora, Pericles, Democritus and Aristotle were teaching that human beings could understand their world without recourse to supernatural mysticism. Their thinking influenced the development of democracy, freedom of thought and the exposure of superstition.

Jesus Christ taught that god was within each and every one of us and that all we had to do was love one another to achieve heaven on earth.

During the Dark and Middle Ages, the oligarchies of western Europe just about succeeded in snuffing out the light of humanism, but, from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries,, thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus and Petrarch resurrected the classical Greek thinkers, challenged the orthodoxies of the Catholic church and the Divine Right of Kings, and helped usher in the Renaissance.

Humanism was greatly strengthened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by thinkers like Newton, Locke and Hume who helped usher in the Enlightenment.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, men like Jefferson, Smith and Mill helped crystallize the principles of classical liberalism that brought so much personal freedom and prosperity to that part of the human race race that embraced them and the twentieth century witnessed the valiant rearguard action of Von Mises, Hayek and Friedman who attempted to stem the red tide of socialism

The core of classical liberalism was that the welfare of the individual person was the basic purpose of governance. Its underlying principles included limited government, low taxes, personal responsibility, rational self-interest, property rights, natural rights, civil liberties, individual freedom, equality under the law, market enterprise, free trade domestically and internationally, service and support for individual enterprise, help for those in need and freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. Its primary thrust was to equip and enable free people to get on with their daily lives and pursue their dreams and goals to the extent of their abilities and ambitions thereby enriching the entire community.

Classical liberalism competed with socialism for the hearts and minds of the same client class for more than a century until the 1960's when the Pearson-Kent and Kennedy regimes triumphed in Canada and the USA respectively, and the LSD's took control of the agenda, media and education. .

Liberalism is dead because Liberal Parties finally caved in to socialism in their lust for power. Libertarians are trying to say they are the new champions of liberal principles, but their distaste for government renders them uncredible. And the attempt by conservatives to become the champions of liberal principles is a bit like the wolf trying to pass as little red riding hood's grandmother by dressing in her nightgown.

In the few remaining countries in which more than one political party is still allowed to contend for the votes which will give it the power to control the country's governance, all parties compete, not on the basis of sovereign, alternative principles and policies, but on the basis of which one can promise to deliver the biggest basket of entitlements. 'Libs and Tories – same old stories!'

It is for consideration whether, in order for liberal principles to regain dominance and save civilization by defeating socialism, they should be re-branded as personalism.

______________________________________

There are many definitions of Personalism. Here are a few:

"Any philosophical system based on the assumption that the human person is the fundamental value." [Webster's dictionary – New Lexicon Edition, 1987]

"Any of various systems of thought which maintain the primacy of the person on the basis that reality has meaning only through the conscious minds of people."

[Canadian Oxford Dictionary – 1998 Edition]

"Personalism is the school of thought that consists of three main principles, and which can broadly be qualified as a species of Humanism:

d)     Only persons are real (in the ontological sense),

e)      Only persons have value, and

f)       Only persons have free will. [Wikipedia]

"Since reason is a faculty of the individual person, not the collective, the individual person is the basic human value." [Author]

"Any doctrine or movement which emphasizes the rights and centrality of the individual human being in his or her social, political, intellectual, etc. milieu. [Webster's New World College Dictionary – 2005]

"A personalist civilization is one whose structure and spirit are directed towards the development as persons of all the individuals constituting it. They have as their ultimate end to enable every individual to live as a person, that is, to exercise a maximum of initiative, responsibility and spiritual life." [Emmanuel Mounier]

"To Personalism, personality is the supreme value. Society should then be so organized as to present every person the best possible opportunity for self-development – physically, mentally and spiritually – since the person is the supreme essence of democracy and hostile to totalitarianism of every sort." ["Personalism', 1943, by Ralph Tyler Flewelling.]

____________________________________

It might be useful to highlight some of the main differences between Personalism and Socialism.

Personalism: Good people will produce a good group.

Socialism: A good group will produce good people.

Personalism: People are defined by their character – their own words and deeds.

Socialism: The group defines the character of the people in it.

Personalism: Concern for a person's welfare.

Socialism: Concern for a group's welfare.

Personalism: A person's rights, privileges and responsibilities are based on their membership in the human race.

Socialism: A person's rights, privileges and responsibilities are based on their membership in a group.

Personalism: Government by the people for the people.

Socialism: Government of the people for the people.

Personalism: Law serves the people.

Socialism: Law serves the group.

Personalism: Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to yourself.

Socialism: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Personalism: Group interests are determined by the members of the group.

Socialism: Group interests are determined by the group's governors.

Personalism: People-up cooperation.

Socialism: Top-down compulsion.

Personalism: People tell governors what to do.

Socialism: Governors tell people what to do.

Personalism: A position of authority bestows the obligation to serve.

Socialism: A position of authority bestows the right to rule.

Personalism: Governments exist to serve their citizens.

Socialism: Citizens exist to serve their governments.

Personalism: Favours the passion of the majority to govern themselves.

Socialism: Favours the passion of the few to rule the majority.

Personalism: People-up democracy.

Socialism: Top-down oligarchy.

Personalism: The people are the country.

Socialism: The government is the country.

Personalism: Peace and order by compliance, values, custom, responsibility, lawfulness and informed support.

Socialism: Peace and order by compulsion, edict, charter, rules, force and resigned submission.

Personalism: Reason and freedom.

Socialism: Faith and slavery.

Personalism: Congregational.

Socialism: Episcopal.

Personalism: 'City hall is mine!"

Socialism: "You can't fight city hall!"

Contemporary personalist thinkers such as Emmanuel Mournier and Borden Bowne have influenced such as Pope John Paul II and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and such disparate political party leaders as Helmut Kohl and Pierre Trudeau.

___________________________________

For a preliminary draft of Principles and Policies which could serve to stimulate the formation of a successful political movement based on a personalist worldview see http://www.tapc.ca

For a more detailed proposal for structures, roles, financing and taxation in a government guided by a personalist worldview see "Personalism v. Socialism" by C.W. Conn published by http://www.authorhouse.com 

Charles W. Conn. Hastings, ON. February, 2010.

Karl Marx held that economic activity governed all of humanity's interests. While this is patently false, he and his fellow socialists were able to persuade many that centrally planned control of economic activity by the proletariat of a community was the best way to serve all the interests of that community.

As a result, by the early 1960's, that part of the establishment responsible for language had managed to get the definition of socialism changed to some variation of a SYSTEM where the means of production, distribution and exchange (i.e., the economy) is owned and controlled by the community as a whole (i.e., the state).

The question is, of course, who determines the interests of the community?

With only one exception, the early Roman Republic, the interests of every community have always been determined by a very small minority of the members of that community using the authority of the socialist principle. This minority might usefully be labelled the power elite or the establishment.

The establishment has always had four segments. In the beginning, the position of a headman or chief was supported by his hunters/warriors, his gofers/relatives and his shamans/witch doctors. For thousands of years pharaohs, kings, emperors, caesars, tzars and kaisers were supported by aristocrats/lords, court ministers/scribes and priests/scribes. In the so-called age of enlightenment we have had presidents, prime ministers, fuhrers, duces, secretaries and chairmen supported by the wealthy, the bureaucrats and the educators/advisors/consultants (Lenin's 'useful idiots').

These four segments of the establishment have mostly supported each other in order to maintain the orderly environment essential to their continued existence. Together, they have held the power to control all the institutions of government, which, in turn, have controlled the populations of all communities.

Through the ages, occasional revolts of their slave/serf populations have erupted and been ruthlessly put down. Contrary opinions cannot be tolerated – conventional wisdom must prevail for the establishment to function.

Always, the establishment has used the classic, collectivist wedges of tribalism (national interest) and/or religion and/or class to divide and control or drive their populations.

For millenia, the moral justification for their positional authority was based on faith and force instead of reason; "The will of the gods", "The Divine Right of Kings", "Obey your rulers for they are appointed by God".

The massive dislocations in western Europe from the mid-1300's to the mid-1800's – the little ice age; the plagues; the wars; the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment; the growth of science and mechanical inventions; the industrial revolution; and the discovery of 'new' continents – all combined to sharply increase populations and migrations and, more importantly, to create a new, aspiring 'middle class' between the establishment and their serfs.

At the same time, thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and many others were articulating the principles of personal freedom, equality and prosperity that characterized the other basic principle of governance – that the welfare of the individual person is its basic purpose.

This was powerful stuff and, as a defensive tactic, "The will of the people" came to be cited by the establishments in a few countries as the justification for their choices of the interests of their communities.

But that wasn't enough. By the early 1800's, rapid industrialization in parts of western Europe and North America had created a growing class of people who had moved from the countryside into dismal urban conditions as bare-survival employees in factories. They were labelled 'huddled masses' or 'ignorant masses' or 'proletariat'. Although a vast amount of new total wealth was being created by the industrial revolution, initially most of it increased the wealth of the establishment members who had built and financed the industrialization in the first place. As fair as this may be in theory, there is no question but that some people suffered some savage abuses at the hands of their new masters. And they weren't happy about it, so they were open to ideas about how their dismal conditions might be changed.

Two camps offered competing remedies.

The liberals proposed measures such as education, open markets, free trade, better housing, wages, working conditions and public health conditions that would enable individuals to see more clearly and strive more effectively to realize their potential. Essentially, they wanted to help people learn how to fish so they would always be able to feed themselves.

Although the principle was ancient, the term 'socialism' was coined at this time and from Saint-Simon to Marx, from Dickens to Shaw, socialists proposed to remedy the condition of their client class by giving them fish. Little concern was expressed about the source of the fish other than that they would come from either co-operative effort or robbing the wealthy. A handout instead of a hand up.

A multitude of schemes and groups were proposed and formed – a few were even tried, all over western Europe and North America.

The liberals tended to be persons from or close to both old-line factions of the establishment (Tories and Whigs in Britain) who sought to effect change primarily through the political process and legislated modification of the practices of government.

The socialists divided along three fault lines – Fabian idealists who advocated member-controlled, co-operative communities; Democrats who advocated the peaceful assumption of control of their countries' government institutions by election; and Radicals who advocated violent revolution and seizure of control.

All four promised their control would benefit their common client class immensely, at the expense of 'The Establishment'.

Over the hundred years from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth, the liberal approach secured a substantial improvement in conditions while the socialists largely laboured in vain. The radical socialists did manage to stir up occasional riots but they were mostly occupied with writing fiery pamphlets in secret basements or garrets. Labour Unions rose to become an activist subset of the democratic socialists, and by the 1920's, the Fabians had disappeared into the ranks of organized liberal or socialist parties.

And then occurred a crisis event essential to the success of radical socialism – World War I, 1914 to 1918.

Ten million soldiers were slaughtered and fifteen to twenty million were wounded on all fronts in World War I. They were virtually all aged 18 to 45 – young men in their prime – and virtually all from the non-establishment class. What had begun as a patriotic war for king, kaiser or country, in defence of freedom, justice and rights, came to be seen by many as a war between national establishments misusing their populations to do the fighting and dying.

And many in the common client class saw red and were open to considering any remedy that would replace the establishments that had forced such an incredible slaughter and chaotic aftermath upon them. They were no longer willing to accept the steady pace of change advocated by the liberal establishments or democratic socialists. They were ready for radical socialist revolution.

In Russia, Lenin, a fervent Marxist, had been advocating the violent overthrow of the Tzarist establishment since the mid-1890's. His conviction was that socialism could only be brought about by a small, highly-centralized, highly-disciplined party committed to leading the proletarian revolution anticipated by Marx.

His Democratic Socialist Workers Party was largely ineffectual because of the deadlock between his supporters and those members who advocated convincing enough of the proletariat to elect them to a majority in the Duma (the Russian legislature).

Lenin was finally able to take control of the Central Council of the party in 1903, whereupon he promptly named his supporters the Bolsheviki ('ins', in Russian) and the others the Menshiviki ('outs' in Russian).

Over the next 14 years of riots, depression, war, anarchy, exile and internal conflict, Lenin's Bolsheviks wrote a party manifesto, seized control of the Petrograd Workers and Soldiers Soviet ('council', in Russian) and created a private army of Red Guards.

Finally, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks, with only 200,000 members, cut through all the confusion at gunpoint and seized control of the institutions of the Russian government in Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg – the national capital at the time.

In March 1918, Lenin pulled Russia out of the war, changed the party's name to the Communist Party, moved the capital to Moscow and embarked on a ruthless, five-year campaign of battle, murder, banishment, imprisonment and eradication of opposition parties which consolidated the Communist-socialists in complete control of the institutions of government in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by 1922.

At the same time, in the midst of their terrible struggle to consolidate their positional authority, the Communists were aggressively exporting their model of revolution to remedy the ills afflicting all the other "workers of the world". Aided and abetted by the Comintern (Communist International) based in Moscow, copycat socialist parties all over the world began the process of turning the majority of the world's nations into single-party dictatorships and unleashing the horrors of the twentieth century in which hundreds of millions of people were slaughtered by people in the name of the people for the good of the people.

The Communist Party hierarchy, and those of the previous establishment who went along with them, became the new establishment in Russia.

In Italy, Mussolini was writing and editing various socialist newspapers like Avanti ('Forward'), and sitting high in socialist councils, in the early twentieth century. He enlisted in the Italian army in 1915, was wounded and discharged, and in 1917 assumed the position of editor-in-chief of a new socialist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia ('The Italian People').

By 1918, he had become disillusioned with both the democratic socialists and the liberal establishment's inability to remedy the chaos in Italian society that had been horribly exaggerated by the war and was calling for a 'strong man' to sweep away the rot.

In 1919, he founded the 200-member Fascisti in Milan. ('Fasces' was the Latin name of the symbol of a magistrate's power in ancient Rome. It consisted of 12 wooden rods bound tightly around a battleaxe to symbolize the power of the original 12 tribes bound together in unbreakable unity.) The Fascists created a private army of Black Shirts, drafted a manifesto that Marx would have approved and began a campaign of bully tactics borrowed from radical socialists everywhere.

However, Italian Fascists were also intensely nationalistic and dreamed of establishing a new Roman Empire. The communist party was already active and was competing for support among the same client class as the Fascists. The Fascists were able to gain support among industrialists, the propertied class and other members of the existing establishment because they were not only promising to bring order out of chaos, but also to eliminate the Communist Party.

In 1922, Mussolini and his Black Shirts led the now-numerous Fascist Party's 'March on Rome' that took over the institutions of the Italian government. In short order, by murder, imprisonment, banishment and all the other measures of socialist dictators, Mussolini created the single-party, Fascist-socialist dictatorship in Italy.

The Fascist Party hierarchy, and those of the previous establishment who went along with them, became the new establishment in Italy.

In Germany, Hitler stayed in the army after the war and in September, 1919, was ordered to check out a tiny group of less than a hundred members called the German Workers' Party in Munich. The country was awash with socialist agitators and the army, intent on trying to preserve order as part of the establishment, was keeping a close eye on them all.

Hitler found a group of earnest amateurs who held some positions that he personally favoured. He was immediately named to the seven-man executive committee and in January, 1920, took over the party's propaganda and organizing functions. By the summer of 1920 he had assumed effective control of the party; helped draft its 25-point manifesto full of standard Marxist-style promises; renamed the party the Nazional Socialistische Deutsches Arbeiters Partei ('National Socialist German Workers' Party') – NSDAP or Nazi for short; designed all the symbols and flags the Nazis used to such advantage; and begun the formation of the party's private army of Brown Shirts.

Like many Germans, Hitler was pathologically convinced that the German army had been 'stabbed in the back' by the civilian government and forced to surrender without being defeated in WWI. Furthermore, the huge indemnities and territorial losses imposed by the Allies were felt by many Germans to be too onerous and too insulting for a major nation of the first rank to accept. Any self-respecting nation would require revenge, so they thought.

That nationalist fervor underlay all the other Nazi promises to restore order from chaos, improve the economic condition of the proletariat and wrest wealth from the Jews in Germany and lebensraum (living room) from Slavs and other untermenschen ('lesser human beings') in eastern Europe.

The existing establishment easily put down the Nazi's 'Beer Hall Putsch' in November 1923 and Hitler spent 8 months in jail writing Mein Kampf ('My Struggle') for the crime of trying to pull off his Mussolini-style coup.

The Nazis spent the next ten years in a life and death struggle with the Communist, democratic socialist and establishment parties for the soul of the nation and the votes of the same client-class. The Nazi's private army – the brown-shirted SA – grew to a fully armed gang of 400,000 thugs. Riots, parades, murder and mayhem were a regular feature of life in the decade, along with the Depression.

The industrialists, landowners, aristocracy and others of the establishment held the 'little Corporal' in contempt but liked his promises to restore German greatness, restore order and destroy communism. He promised change. They thought they could control him.

Finally, in January 1933 after the Nazis had secured 38% of the vote, Hitler was able to bully the senile President Hindenberg into naming him Chancellor because he seemed to be the only person capable of bringing order out of the chaos and depression threatening the collapse of the country. The Nazis promptly burned down the Reichstag (Germany's legislature), banned all other parties and began their programme of murder, imprisonment and control typical of life in the socialist dictatorship of the 'Thousand Year Reich'.

The National Socialist Party hierarchy, and those of the previous establishment who went along with them, became the new establishment in Germany.

Thus, in a breathtakingly brief time, three of the most important countries in the world had fallen to radical socialists and become dictatorships. In Russia, class was the major wedge, while in Italy the tribal (nationalism) wedge was added, and in Germany, all three wedges – class, tribalism and religion – were employed by the new establishments to control and drive their populations.

The Fascists and Nazis claimed to be different from, and bitter enemies of the Communists and managed to convince almost all the rest of the world that this was so. In reality, they were identical in all but the method by which they intended to take over the world. The Fascists and Nazis intended to conquer other countries by war. The Communists intended to take over other countries from within. All three parties sought and got support from the same client class and were begun by radical socialists.

And all were led by the three most powerful, smooth-tongued orators of the twentieth century who were able to move their audiences to uncritical adoration.

Orwell's 'Animal Farm' (1945) is the classic modern description of the process. In that short little story, the pigs convinced the other animals they would be better off if they banished farmer Jones and ran his farm themselves. After they had done so, the pigs moved into farmer Jones' house, ate his food, drank his liquor and forced the other animals to work much harder for them than they had had to work for farmer Jones.

Orwell's book was just one of many from the 1920's through the 1950's that attempted to fight back against the spread of the socialist menace. Argument was voluminous by both eminent scholars and some of the most prominent writers of popular fiction.

Among the first was 'Socialism' (1922) by the eminent Austrian economist, Ludwig Von Mises. It has been called the most thorough and devastating demolition of socialism ever written. In it, Von Mises critiqued every form of socialism and demonstrated how they all destroyed communities and reduced them to slavery, chaos and poverty. He continued to write and lecture well into the 1950's.

A student of Von Mises and another pillar of the Austrian school of economics, Frederik A. Hayek, wrote the classic 'The Road To Serfdom' (1944) in which he passionately warned of the dangers of state control over the means of production and clearly described the inverse relationship between individual freedom and government authority.

Both 'Socialism' and 'The Road To Serfdom' are still being published.

Aldous Huxley, in 'Brave New World' (1932), described a socialist "Utopia" wherein "Alphas" controlled a brain-deadened population of test tube clones and conditioned automatons who spent their days in meaningless work and their evenings in random sex, group play, surround-sound/feely/scented movies or virtual reality adventures/games. All were accompanied by the constant taking of the "soma" drug provided free of charge by the "Alphas". When he wrote 'Brave New World Revisited' (1958) Huxley declared he feared the socialist hell he had described was coming much faster than he had thought it would.

Sinclair Lewis wrote 'It Can't Happen Here' (1935) and Taylor Caldwell wrote 'The Devil's Advocate' (1952). Both depicted the misery of life in a United States that had become a one-party dictatorship. Interestingly they both described Canada as a nation of free people and a refuge for U.S. escapees.

George Orwell's other classic '1984' (1949) was a straightline projection into the future of conditions in the socialist dictatorships of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. While the date has come and gone, he did write about constant war demanding total control by the authorities, degradation of the language by 'newspeak' and criminal prosecution of 'unacceptable' opinion, among other grotesque violations of personal freedom.

Ayn Rand wrote two epic novels about the lives of individuals who struggled against the deadening degradation of conditions under socialism in a future U.S.A. In 'The Fountainhead' (1943), Howard Roark's testimony is perhaps the most powerful declaration of the value of the individual ever written. 'Atlas Shrugged' (1957), described what happened when the capable people finally shrugged and stopped 'doing for their country'.

Some books were made into movies starring the biggest names in Hollywood.

In case you think the process is modern, read how Joseph turned the people of ancient Egypt into slaves in Genesis, Chapter 41 and Chapter 47 – verses 13 through 26. All that's needed is a crisis event.

The crisis event of World War II enabled the capture of government institutions by radical socialists in eastern Europe, Red China and much of southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Many nations in northern Africa and South and Central America had long been held by one-party dictatorships using the authority of the socialist principle. The current situation is that three-quarters of the nations in the world are 'not free'.

In the 1920's –'30's, the 'western world' began using the grossly inaccurate terms of 'left' and 'right' to describe (supposedly) opposing party groupings. In Europe, it was Social Democrats versus Christian Democrats; in the U.K., Labour vied with Conservatives (with a tiny rumplet of Liberals hanging on by their fingernails); in the U.S.A., Democrats contended with Republicans.

In Canada, the apparent contention is between the (New) Democrats on the left, the Liberals in the middle and the Conservatives on the right. However, after World War II, the Liberal party abandoned any pretense of liberalism in their unprincipled hunger for power and joined the (New) Democrat socialists in policy and practice. There hasn't been a real alternative to the LiberalSocialists because the 'Progressive' Conservative party was different in name only. It changed its name to the Conservative Party, but in January 2009 brought in a budget planning a huge increase in debt that pandered to the threats and demands of the LiberalSocialists.

With only a little bit of tongue in cheek, it might save space to link 'Liberal' + 'Socialist' + 'Social Democrat' + 'Democrat' into 'LSD'. (For younger readers, LSD was a favoured hallucinogen of the 1960's 'druggie' culture. It made users see things that weren't there.)

The war of ideas in North America raged for forty years. But the tipping point was reached with the onset of the Kennedy regime in the U.S.A. and the Pearson-Kent regime in Canada in the early 1960's. And that was that. The LSD establishment had finally gained control of the agenda, the media and education.

There were brief breaks in the clouds with the Thatcher government in the U.K. and the Reagan administration in the U.S.A. but, when they were over, the inducements of entitlements to free bread and services were renewed with even greater vigour. All paid for with money from government; that government had taken from other people of course.

Canada never did enjoy a break.

[It's ironic that, since the 2000 federal election the U.S.A. has been demonstrating its history-challenged confusion by calling Republican states 'red' and Democratic states 'blue'!]

LSD's are relentless. It must be that the privileges, perqs and positional authority inherent in institutional employment are a powerful incentive to grow more and bigger institutions. When the piety of 'for the good of people' is added, it must be a hard-to-resist temptation.

And personal freedom and prosperity can be hard to achieve and maintain in an environment that despises them. How soothing to have someone else say they'll look after everything – if you just trust (vote for) them.

But serfdom and slavery are much much worse! The problem is they sneak up on uncareful victims who relax their vigilance while pursuing the 'good life'.

North America is the last bastion of memory of classical liberal personal freedom and prosperity. It has been under attack since the end of WWII by the Communist socialists and their fellow-travelling LSD's. Cold War military conflict, both directly and by proxies, was tried. Economic competition was tried. Attempts were made to exploit internal divisions of tribalism and class. Nothing worked completely but the counter efforts were costly and enervating.

Currently, we are in the midst of three crisis events: the real crisis of radical terrorism poses a physical challenge; the fabricated carbon dioxide crisis, which is causing hysterical governments to pander to the Global Warming/Climate Change Swindlers, is a serious threat to our overall economic health; and the banking/financial crisis, fabricated by super-zealous LSDs and 'Davos Men', is being peddled as a 'catastrophe' if trillions of dollars of new taxpayer debt is not piled on top of the existing back-breaking pile.

Will this daunting combination of crises be enough to bring us down? Can we resist the final fall into socialist dictatorship? Will new voices emerge to trumpet the advantages of personal freedom and prosperity inherent in classical liberalism and lead us out of danger?

These are the questions hanging over all our heads today.

Charles W. Conn, Mississauga. February 2009

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation — as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" — and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

This sense of liberal intellectual superiority dropped off during the economic woes of the 1970s and the Reagan boom of the 1980s. (Jimmy Carter's presidency, buffeted by economic and national security challenges, generated perhaps the clearest episode of liberal self-doubt.) But these days, liberal confidence and its companion disdain for conservative thinking are back with a vengeance, finding energetic expression in politicians' speeches, top-selling books, historical works and the blogosphere. This attitude comes in the form of four major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and function.

The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War on Science" argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.

This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will "open the floodgates for special interests" to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.

It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years' worth of Wall Street Journal editorial writers: "What do these people really believe? I mean, they're not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they're not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is that higher truth?"

In Krugman's world, there is no need to take seriously the arguments of "these people" — only to plumb the depths of their errors and imagine hidden motives.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution.

And speaking to a roomful of Democratic donors in 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama offered a similar (and infamous) analysis when he suggested that residents of Rust Belt towns "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" about job losses. When his comments became public, Obama backed away from their tenor but insisted that "I said something that everybody knows is true."

In this view, we should pay attention to conservative voters' underlying problems but disregard the policy demands they voice; these are illusory, devoid of reason or evidence. This form of liberal condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall meetings or "tea party" gatherings, it might be politically prudent for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually listen.

The third version of liberal condescension points to something more sinister. In his 2008 book, "Nixonland," progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, "Chain Reaction," Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

Race doubtless played a significant role in the shift of Deep South whites to the Republican Party during and after the 1960s. But the liberal narrative has gone essentially unchanged since then — recall former president Carter's recent assertion that opposition to Obama reflects racism — even though survey research has shown a dramatic decline in prejudiced attitudes among white Americans in the intervening decades. Moreover, the candidates and agendas of both parties demonstrate an unfortunate willingness to play on prejudices, whether based on race, region, class, income, or other factors.

Finally, liberals condescend to the rest of us when they say conservatives are driven purely by emotion and anxiety — including fear of change — whereas liberals have the harder task of appealing to evidence and logic. Former vice president Al Gore made this case in his 2007 book, "The Assault on Reason," in which he expressed fear that American politics was under siege from a coalition of religious fundamentalists, foreign policy extremists and industry groups opposed to "any reasoning process that threatens their economic goals." This right-wing politics involves a gradual "abandonment of concern for reason or evidence" and relies on propaganda to maintain public support, he wrote.

Prominent liberal academics also propagate these beliefs. George Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley and a consultant to Democratic candidates, says flatly that liberals, unlike conservatives, "still believe in Enlightenment reason," while Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist and Democratic consultant, argues that the GOP has done a better job of mastering the emotional side of campaigns because Democrats, alas, are just too intellectual. "They like to read and think," Westen wrote. "They thrive on policy debates, arguments, statistics, and getting the facts right."

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial beliefs — including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that Republicans are "divorced from reality" and that the results show why "it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country." His condescension is superlative: Of the respondents who favored secession, he wonders, "Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?"

I doubt it would take long to design a survey questionnaire that revealed strange, ill-informed and paranoid beliefs among average Democrats. Or does Moulitsas think Jay Leno talked only to conservatives for his "Jaywalking" interviews?

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant — they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

"There may be other ideas that you guys have," Obama said. "I am happy to look at them, and I'm happy to embrace them. . . . But the question I think we're going to have to ask ourselves is, as we move forward, are we going to be examining each of these issues based on what's good for the country, what the evidence tells us, or are we going to be trying to position ourselves so that come November, we're able to say, 'The other party, it's their fault'?"

Of course, plenty of conservatives are hardly above feeling superior. But the closest they come to portraying liberals as systematically mistaken in their worldview is when they try to identify ideological dogmatism in a narrow slice of the left (say, among Ivy League faculty members), in a particular moment (during the health-care debate, for instance) or in specific individuals (such as Obama or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom some conservatives accuse of being stealth ideologues). A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck.

In contrast, an extraordinary range of liberal writers, commentators and leaders — from Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" to Obama's White House, with many stops in between — have developed or articulated narratives that apply to virtually all conservatives at all times.

To many liberals, this worldview may be appealing, but it severely limits our national conversation on critical policy issues. Perhaps most painfully, liberal condescension has distorted debates over American poverty for nearly two generations.

Starting in the 1960s, the original neoconservative critics such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed distress about the breakdown of inner-city families, only to be maligned as racist and ignored for decades — until appalling statistics forced critics to recognize their views as relevant. Long-standing conservative concerns over the perils of long-term welfare dependency were similarly villainized as insincere and mean-spirited — until public opinion insisted they be addressed by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress in the 1996 welfare reform law. But in the meantime, welfare policies that discouraged work, marriage and the development of skills remained in place, with devastating effects.

Ignoring conservative cautions and insights is no less costly today. Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bush's aw-shucks style, Sarah Palin's college-hopping and the occasional conservative campaigns against egghead intellectuals. But alongside that, the fact is that conservative-leaning scholars, economists, jurists and legal theorists have never produced as much detailed analysis and commentary on American life and policy as they do today.

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at all.

By Gerard Alexander

February 7, 2010

The trouble is that each successive year seems to bring with it an ever-expanding platform for seemingly endless throngs of social engineers, radical activists, and left wing politicians telling us that doom awaits us if we don't comply with their lofty agendas to reform western societies. Ice ages, Global Warming, ozone holes, Y2K, massive extinctions, and so on. The amazing thing is that we keep on listening, and we keep on panicking with each new blaring pronouncement of impending catastrophe.

This past year we were told that financial markets would collapse, that we would be faced with the most severe depression since the 1930's, that we would die in great numbers from a global pandemic, and that an environmental catastrophe was about to unfold unless we turned over control of all these issues to our massive government machines. Now stock markets are on the rise, economic recovery is underway, the swine flu came and went with a whimper, and much of the climate change research is being called into question. And yet we listen and believe it all every time the panic-mongers unleash more rhetoric. Why?

Because we somehow still trust those whose motives are to destroy confidence and instill fear. A great many government agencies and global authorities are now staffed with radical activists whose purpose it is to gain control of the levers of western society, at the expense of open markets and free enterprise. As severe as that may sound, I believe it to be true. Each successive recession that has occurred in the past 30 years has been met with a greater level of government intrusion into the natural operation of the business cycle. Government believes that it is its duty to remove hardship, economic peaks and valleys, and to artificially restore prosperity, at the long term cost to the taxpayer. 2009 was the pinnacle of this trend with its TARP, auto bailouts, cash for clunkers, and phony job creation schemes that have left 10% of American workers officially unemployed, but more likely over 17% without jobs.

Fear is never going to be far away from us as long as we accept the pronouncements of officials with ulterior motives. We have to think for ourselves, but perhaps that is what is lacking in today's busy world. Maybe we somehow have a perverse need to be afraid of something, and maybe we want somebody else to do our thinking and acting. The H1N1 hoax is a perfect example. Margaret Chan Director General of the World Health Organization declared "it is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic". She appealed for "global solidarity", and to be "on high alert". No wonder people freaked out. It sounds like the end of the world is being predicted by a high ranking international bureaucrat.

Panic and fear are debilitating. What may start as responsible concern is all too often raised to genuine panic by those who wish to have us believe that the problem (if it exists at all) is beyond our control. "All we have to do is be ignorant, and anxious….and we forfeit our sovereignty to political types". says Dr. Irvin Wolkoff, a Toronto psychiatrist. Public officials have learned this response and have begun to turn it into a strategy for bigger government.

All countries have given over personal freedoms to governments to varying degrees, but the United States is undergoing the most pronounced transformation of all in recent times, as President Obama along with a majority Democratic Congress has raised the level of government control to new proportions with its massive and ill conceived Health Care Reform Bill. Unfortunately for him and the Democratic Party, a heavy price will be paid in the 2010 mid-term Congressional elections, as American voters lash out against the cost and intrusion of this massive monstrosity. It will however be too late for the American taxpayer, and for the previous health care system which could have been improved without a government takeover.

Who knows what we'll find to be afraid of in 2010? One thing is for sure though, social engineers from government and global agencies will be falling over each other to concoct the next massive disaster that will surely befall our vulnerable under-governed world.

Richard Scott, December 22, 2009.

The observation of Barack Obama's six-month anniversary as President has received much less attention than did his 100th day. All the portentous comparisons with FDR have died away, and the administration is in a fierce struggle to salvage two of its most ambitious legislative projects — cap-and-trade to reduce carbon emissions, and universal medical care.

The country is sailing into uncharted waters and gigantic waves with projected trillion-dollar annual deficits for the next decade. All the celebrations of a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate (after the brazen theft of the Minnesota Senate election by leftist comedian Al Franken) will not mitigate the public’s eroding confidence in the administration; nor their misgivings about higher taxes, bone-crushing deficits, and socialized, coercive, health care.

Obama sold the country a false prospectus of easy, obvious, and almost painless change. The usual six honeymoon months have elapsed, and the country is nearly through rejoicing at the consolation that they have a president whom foreigners are unlikely to throw shoes at, and who speaks in sentences.

But his own Environmental Protection Agency director acknowledges that his cap-and-trade bill will have no effect on the climate, and it will neither raise revenue nor reduce carbon use. It must be replaced with a straight carbon tax of bearable impact coupled with sensible conservation, and alternate-energy-source and oil-exploration incentives. The bill that limped through the House of Representatives was a Rube Goldberg contraption of Al Gore myths and Congressional vote-buying boondoggles. Its adoption would be a disaster. The president’s claim of putting millions of Americans to work making wind-mills and solar panels is a fable that extends the frontiers of quixotry.

Instead of the well-proven Roosevelt-Johnson-Reagan method for legislative change, of declaring an emergency and unveiling a plan of action to deal with it, sending precise bills to the Congress and whipping them through, and using his forensic skills to rouse the nation, the president spent months frightening the public, which was by then a redundant exercise, to create conditions for adoption of a radical tax, spending, health-care and energy program. He wanted to incite panic on the scale of the 1930s, though the economic crisis was not comparable, in order to institute a more radical program than circumstances justified or the public wanted. The half of economics that is psychology was not well-served, and his own party is stumbling in the legislative gate.

Only a fantastic, unstimulating, stimulus package, a Christmas-come-early tree on which the Democratic committee chairmen in the Pelosi-fied Congress hung their baubles of permanent reelection goodies, has resulted. And now the public is wary. There are many versions of universal medical care floating in different committees in the Congress. (Canadians should note that the Canadian health care system is being held up by both parties as a model of what not to do.) After nearly 45 years of advocacy, Senator Ted Kennedy’s venerable proposal has been exposed as hideously expensive and of no benefit to half of those who are not now insured.

No universal health care plan will work if it does not tackle excessive malpractice awards and premiums, and if it does not focus on providing coverage to those who do not now have it, rather than shouldering aside the private sector providers to those who already do. So far, the administration has flunked both these tests and all hopes are now invested in the Senate Finance Committee leaders, Max Baucus (Democrat) and Charles Grassley (Republican). All the existing proposals and the hare-brained suggestions for financing them are on the fast track (i.e. the unimpeded force of gravity) to the dust-bin of history. The government has no mandate to nationalize the medical profession and the health insurance industry.

Raising taxes on incomes in a recession is an insane, innumerate concept, a sentimental journey back to the piping days of Herbert Hoover, and the community-sharing spirit of the bread-lines, soup kitchens, and Hoovervilles. New revenues should be streamed in according to milestones of economic growth, in bearable carbon taxes, taxes on financial transactions, and the hapless John McCain’s much-mocked taxes on some medical benefits (which the Obama entourage now admits was not a bad idea).

On the plus side of the ledger, the current account deficit has fallen by 50%, to under US$400-billion per year, and the savings rate has risen from a slight minus to over 5% positive, as the mad Clinton-Bush formula of borrowing staggering sums from China and Japan to buy non-essential goods from China and Japan is inching toward a more investment-driven economy closer to a pay-as-you-go model in the private sector.

Unemployment is about 9.5%, a rise of over five-million people, but this isn’t the Great Depression, when it peaked at 33%; and the current figure, though no consolation for those out of work, is inevitable as the economy refocuses on more sustainable levels of production and consumption and different patterns of employment. The tens of thousands of lawyers and merchant bankers who have been laid off are well-trained professionals who should not be at long-term risk. And the legal- and financial-transaction industries were generating US$3.5 trillion and employing many of the country’s most talented professionals and executives, though doing relatively unproductive work.

One of the many myths that has been exposed in these events is the fraud of the service-industry economy. Somebody has to make or extract or process something, to pay for service industries. A revival of manufacturing is not easy to foresee. But the United States remains the world’s largest manufacturer, at about US$2.5-trillion, almost all at the most sophisticated scientific level, such as aerospace and advanced technology instruments. This industry must be encouraged to grow.

The automobile-industry intervention, though harsh treatment for the bondholders and shareholders, has given GM, Chrysler, and the UAW a second chance. Bringing a colossal company like General Motors through bankruptcy in less than two months is a feat only the federal government could accomplish, and there are early signs of rebirth in that industry.

Foreign policy has been inconclusive. Honduras was handled well, as long as the United States doesn’t try to restore President Manuel Zelaya, who was removed constitutionally. Obama is doing the necessary thing in Afghanistan with admirable determination. No one who is not privy to inside intelligence can know what is happening in Iran. It is like dogs fighting under a blanket, and forces of comparative moderation may be gaining ground. The rest has been generally good public relations, including the speeches in Cairo and Accra. But when even a well-disposed dean of leftist comment, Leon Wieseltier, accuses the president of “mincing” in the world, it is time for more policy definition.

It has been a rocky start. All depends on whether the president is sufficiently flexible to recognize and adjust to changing political facts. There is time and need for much intelligent legislation, and Americans like their presidents to succeed. But he can’t raise his poll numbers any more by hand-catching house-flies on television. The time for ponderous daily speeches has passed, and the time to take hold and govern has come, and the best quarter of the mandate has already been spent with little to show for it.

SUBJECT:  DEQ File No.97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County

Dear Mr. DeVries:
It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity:

Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond.

A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity.. A review of the Department’s files shows that no permits have been issued.. Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.

The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel. All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 2009.

Please notify this office when the restoration has been completed so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff. Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action. We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

David L. Price

District Representative and Water Management Division. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Here is the actual response sent back by Mr. DeVries:

Re: DEQ File No. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County

Dear Mr. Price,

Your certified letter dated 12/17/07 has been handed to me to respond to. I am the legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget Lane , Trout Run, Pennsylvania .

A couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood ‘debris’ dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of natures building materials ‘debris.’

I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.

These are the beavers/contractors you are seeking. (Unable to transfer pix of beavers, and dams.)

As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity.

My first dam question to you is:

(1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers, or

(2) Do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?

If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act, I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued.

(Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.)

I have several concerns. My first concern is, aren’t the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation — so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer. The Department’s dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event, causing flooding, is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect. In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling them dam names..

If you want the stream ‘restored’ to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers — but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.

In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment (Beavers’ Dams).

So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. Why wait until 1/31/2009? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them.

In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention to a real environmental quality, health, problem in the area. It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone. If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step! The bears are not careful where they dump!

Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.

THANK YOU,

RYAN DEVRIES & THE DAM BEAVERS

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke.

‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to Canada – governments keep pushing us toward socialism and keep spreading the ‘free’ corn in the form of programmes such as supplemental incomes, tax credits, subsidies, grants, welfare, healthcare etc. – and we continually lose our freedoms, just a little bit at a time.

At the same time, governments are forcing us to do, or not to do, more and more things we used to take for granted were the real entitlements of a free people.

One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, government will never provide a service you can do, cheaper than you can do it yourself.

If you see that all of this wonderful government ‘help’ is a problem confronting the future of democracy in Canada, you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then God help you when the gate slams shut!

Also, keep your eyes on the newly elected/appointed politicians who are slamming the gate in the United States .

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have”

e-mail forwarded by Paul Fisher, April 30, 2009.

The following is an edited excerpt of Tom Long’s recent presentation to the Manning Networking Conference and Exhibition in Ottawa.

The dominant Tory assumption has been that the way to victory is to force the Liberals left by moving to the centre.

My mission is to try and explain what conservatism means in the province of Ontario. What does conservatism mean in a province which is as geographically dispersed, as highly urbanized and as diverse as Ontario? In the political timeline that I have been active, our conservatism has resolved itself into two major streams. One is a progressive strain and the other is an unhyphenated conservatism strain.

The progressive strain has been the dominant strain in provincial politics for a long time. For 42 years we conservatives were the government of the province of Ontario and had largely a progressive point of view. Progressives make some fundamental assumptions. The first assumption is that there is going to be an inexorable drift in terms of public policy making to the left. And our job is to inject some prudence into that process. The best example I can give you is before we lost majority government in 1975 and the Stephen Lewis New Democrats held the balance of power.

We were very quick to implement rent controls in Ontario. Privately, the senior members of the Progressive Conservative government were quite clear that they had no faith that rent controls work. But, they said, rent controls are inevitable and it is much better if we are in power and we are the ones implementing them than if we let the other guys do it.

The second assumption progressives have made in our movement in Ontario is that all voters are in the centre and the way to political victory is to tie down the right but then move as quickly as you can to the centre to force the Liberals left. Senator Hugh Segal used to tell the story of how premier Bill Davis, when he got the sense that the right wing was getting a little cranky, used to go out and declare that the monarchy was under attack and then he’d organize a province-wide campaign to defend it.

We saw brief flashes of the other strain of conservatism in Ontario, the unhyphenated conservatism, in the 1980s. But it was really tested from 1990 through 2002 when Mike Harris was leader of the party. The assumptions that this strain of conservatism makes are fundamentally different from the ones the progressive strain of conservatism would make.

In the Harris years, the first assumption we made is that conservative ideas are not only politically viable but they are absolutely necessary to ensure that our province is put on the path to prosperity. There was considerable effort not only to identify policies but to ensure we were prepared to do the heavy lifting necessary to go out and sell them. So the policies that I would highlight would be injecting quality into public education and health care, powerful tax cuts to create economic growth and jobs, an end to unfair hiring quotas, a repeal of Bob Rae’s labour legislation and respect for the institutions of law and order in the province.

The second assumption that we made is that there is a viable conservative coalition in the province of Ontario that can deliver a majority government and is sustainable over time. That required a realignment of political thinking in Ontario and political identification in Ontario. That meant seizing the agenda. This strain of conservatism believes that specificity is your friend and being bold and clear, and being prepared to stand up and sell these ideas, is the way to political success.

The two strains have typically come together and clashed within our party over the argument of who can make our party relevant in terms of urban voters, female voters and visible minority voters. For 42 years our party has taken tremendous efforts to attract all of these voters. Under Mike Harris we were able to win 45% of the vote in two successful campaigns. In 1995 we won one half of the seats in the “416” area — the core Toronto part of the GTA. In 1999 after four years of government, and after a lot of controversy and a hard fought campaign, Mike Harris held on to one third of the seats. We have won none of those seats since Mike Harris has been premier despite the fact that we have had two leaders from the progressive wing of the party who ran on the idea that only they could make us relevant.

Tom Long is a director of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. He chaired former Ontario premier Mike Harris’s victorious 1995 and 1999 campaigns.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people have blind faith in the competence and neutrality of government. For instance, recent economic bailouts are premised on the notion that governments — which are really nothing more than conglomerates of politicians, bureaucrats and experts paid to tell leaders what they want to hear –are somehow smarter than investors and consumers at deciding what products and industries deserve help, how much and when.

I am convinced the current recession is being prolonged and deepened not by market failure, but by scattergun government intervention. Few people are prepared to invest or consume so long as governments are sending out conflicting signals (and trillions of dollars) in all directions at once. So unless and until governments can stop “helping,” things will continue to worsen.

This is why Ford’s simple idea to have governments send large cheques to new car buyers — as opposed to spending the same amount on bailouts to failing auto makers –is genius. Individual consumers cannot make big economic errors — only tiny, incremental ones — so there is far less chance car buyers could make as big a mess as a committee of a dozen government officials and stakeholder overseeing the same amount of money.

There are, of course, other widely held fallacies about the benevolence of government. The notion that government rights commissions are the best guardians of our freedoms is one. Since time immemorial, governments — chief, emperors, kings, dictators, generals, archbishops (when they have doubled as princes) and other despots — have posed greater threats to our freedom than all the merchants in all the backrooms in the world.

Then there is the belief that if an oil company provides a tiny subsidy to a climate scientist the latter instantly becomes a tainted and unbelievable denier. Meanwhile, scientists benefiting from the billions that governments spend each year on global warming research are untainted and objective, even though big governments will be the biggest beneficiaries if the public can be convinced that climate change is a global problem requiring national and international solutions.

Or how about the belief, inherent in public health care monopolies, that civil servants can better direct health care dollars than doctors or patients?

Still, the area where faith in government is perhaps most misplaced is in the threat to privacy. Without question, governments are the biggest snoops around, yet, for some reason, millions see corporations as a bigger threat. Governments have vastly more personal data on each of us than even the largest corporations –in census, tax and health treatment records governments have a treasure trove of embarrassing and potentially damaging data on every one of us.

Not only that, they are finding it easier and easier to gather more of our personal lives as technology lowers the bar for collection, storage, retrieval and combination of information. And politicians are thinking up new applications all the time. For instance, matching public surveillance cameras to face-recognition software was first justified for its ability to catch thieves and terrorists. But now in some jurisdictions, it is being considered for use in identifying men behind on their support payments.

Wherever cheap investigative technology exists there will be pressure to expand its uses — by government — into all sorts of areas and applications where it has no business. And this will all be done in the name of social justice or the public good, security or enlightenment.

No government — left or right — is immune from these temptations. Still, only governments — not corporations — have the power to enforce compliance.

The most recent issue of Scientific American is devoted to privacy in the technological age. And the common theme in its dozen or so articles is that we have as much to fear from corporations as governments. There is some truth to this theory: Corporations often get hold of private data they have no business possessing, and some corporations would collect, steal and use tons of other personal info if it helped boost sales.

But while you may cease to do business with corporations (except those to which governments have granted monopolies) you cannot choose to be ungoverned.

Corporate violations of privacy are no better than those committed by government. But in the end, because it has vastly more ways of breaching it and more power to do so, government is by far the bigger threat to our privacy.

lgunter@shaw.ca