Hidden Agendas? We Have No Hidden Agendas!

For a long time there have been suspicions that the Conservative Party, and in particular, its leader have a "hidden agenda". Of course, they have denied this in the strongest of terms.

In fact, I think they are being quite honest. Their agenda isn't hidden - it's quite out in public - if you do a bit of digging on the Web. This article was written by Stephen Harper about a year ago.

While it doesn't speak to policy per se, it speaks to the underlying philosophy that Harper seems to believe in. In the past, Harper has claimed to be "a Canadian Republican" of sorts - after reading this, I think he's a lot more than just a mirror of the American Republican party.

Perhaps the most telling paragraph in the document is this:

The real challenge is therefore not economic, but the social agenda of the modern Left. Its system of moral relativism, moral neutrality and moral equivalency is beginning to dominate its intellectual debate and public-policy objectives.

In several dimensions it clarifies the long-outstanding non-sequitur of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party's platforms. On one hand, they keep talking about less government, lower taxes, etc. while on the other hand they turn around and want to spend billions of dollars on legislated morality, beefing up the military (because they think it's cool to be tough), and the classic "get tough on crime" routine.

Basically, they are still trying to bring together the notions of Economic Conservatism and Social Conservatism. They haven't figured out that the two notions are fundamentally at odds with each other. Legislated morality is very expensive, and generally ineffective - not unlike the idea that a legislated marketplace is expensive, and doesn't work very well. So, if you want to legislate morality, as the Social Conservatives want to, you need a big government; similarly if you want "controlled markets", you need a fair bit of government infrastructure to enforce it. The Economic Conservative wants less government, and unregulated markets. The Social Conservative wants laws in place to enforce their particular brand of a "moral society" - am I blind, or are these two agendas orthogonal to each other?

In fact, the term Conservative no longer applies to these people. Conservative, according to the dictionary means something along these lines "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change. ". These people are past conserving anything, they want to tear things down. The Conservative Party should be named the 'Demolitions Party' or the 'Deconstructionist Party'.

If you haven't read Harper's article above, I urge you to do so - very carefully, and before you vote on June 28. Know what it is this party and its leadership represent, and consider carefully where you want your support to go.