THUNDER BAY – Editorial – I always find it amusing when Canadian left-wingers attack Prime Minister Stephen Harper for being a “bully.”
It’s an attack you see all the time in the left-wing blogosphere, in newspaper editorials and in just about every CBC news report.
It usually goes something like this: “Harper is a big meanie,” or “Harper is an authoritarian” or “Harper is buying $16-billion stealth jets so he can secretly bomb cute kittens.”
In other words, left-wingers seek to portray Harper as the political equivalent of Mel Gibson.
Now, I suppose they might truly believe this stuff, but from a political standpoint there is a real problem with their “let’s demonize Harper strategy.”
And that problem is Canadians just don’t care if their leaders are mean.
Did anybody care that former prime minister Jean Chretien was a mean-spirited and vindictive man whose idea of good sport was throttling protestors?
No. In fact, they gave the guy three consecutive majority governments.
So I seriously doubt the political slogan “Don’t vote for Stephen Harper because he makes Bob Rae cry” will succeed in driving the Conservatives out of power.
But it’s not just the lame politics of the “Harper is a bully” attacks I find amusing.
Even funnier is that when left-wingers attack Harper for being a bully they expose themselves as supreme hypocrites.
After all, these are the same folks who applaud and throw rose petals at the biggest, most authoritarian, meanest, bully in the history of Canada — big government.
And yes, make no mistake, the government is a bully.
The government is always pushing us citizens around.
It bosses us with rules and regulations that tell us where we can smoke, what we can eat and what kind of light bulbs we can put in our homes.
It passes ridiculous laws to intimidate gun owners and marijuana smokers.
It forces us to give up nearly half our income in the form of taxes so it can finance things like artificial lakes in downtown Toronto and chauffeur-driven limousines for federal cabinet ministers.
It even tries to control what we can think and say through the so-called Human Rights Commissions.
In short, the government uses coercion to manage just about every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave.
Plus, let’s not forget the government also has the power to put people in jail.
Now that’s what I call bullying.
And every time the government bullies its citizens, every time it seeks to restrict our behaviour or control our actions, or steal our private property, it also takes away our liberty.
That should scare all of us. Freedom is a precious commodity in this world; it should be protected and preserved.
Yet the Canadian left wing establishment — the Liberals, the NDP, the Toronto Star editorial board, the David Suzuki fanatics, the union bosses — all want the government to have even more bullying powers.
They constantly call for more rules and regulations, more taxes and bureaucrats, more laws and restrictions.
Or to put it another way, they want you to have less freedom.
Remember that the next time some shrill left winger calls Harper a bully.
Gerry Nicholls
Gerry Nicholls is editor of Freedom Forum
