“CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION IN CANADA” Michelle Malkin blares on her blog. “A nightmare of [the Liberals] own making”, “constructed out of the apocalyptic proclamations from America’s shattered left wing” blogs Angry in the Great White North.

The results aren’t in yet, but the gloating has already begun. Canada’s “shattered left wing” is being swept aside by the “conservative revolution”.

Or so we’re being told. By conservatives.

Assuming that the Tories will in fact win (it ain’t over til the, well, you know), what does it say about what Canadians want? Is this truly a conservative revolution?

The entire campaign revolved around Liberal corruption. The Libs were struggling with but overcoming Adscam. It wasn’t until the RCMP announced an investigation into possible insider trading in the finance ministry that the corruption charges really started to stick. Throw in a couple high-profile Liberal screwups (beer and popcorn) and the Libs started sinking.

So if the Conservatives win, they will clearly have a mandate to clean up government. The problem is that the Tories may win on ethics, but they will govern as if their mandate was much broader. That is when the truth of the claim that Canada is undergoing an American-style “conservative revolution” will be tested.

There’s no doubt that Canada’s conservatives are inspired by their American counterparts, so expect to hear more of the strident “liberal media – activist judges – four more years!” conservative call in the years ahead. But conservatives face an uphill battle here, a country that is fundamentally more liberal and open than the US.

The hard part for the Tories, after all, is just beginning. It’s easy to criticize, far harder to govern. Easy to bash the establishment, harder to defend the establishment, hardest of all to BE the establishment.

It’s especially difficult when faced by a chorus of opposition. Reports of the death of Canadian liberalism are greatly exaggerated, as the heralds of the “conservative revolution” will soon find out. Canadians everywhere are looking forward to having someone new to rake over the coals.

So enjoy your honeymoon with Canada while it lasts, neo-cons. The bill for all the champagne is already in the mail.

To: licia.corbella@calgarysun.com
Re: “Jack’s iPocrisy”

Dear Ms. Corbella,

Your article published in Wednesday’s Calgary Sun entitled “Jack’s iPocrisy” makes remarkable claims about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he stood for. Fortunately, the public doesn’t have to rely on columnists to learn what King really believed. We have his words to go by.

On April 4, 1964, one year to the day before his murder, King gave a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam”. In New York’s Riverside Church, King – a revolutionary leader if there ever was one – called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and decried the war as an “enemy of the poor” because it drained their social programs at home while killing them overseas.

In marked contrast to your contempt for social programs and “welfare recipients” who receive assistance “because they’d rather not work”, in his speech King warns that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death” and criticizes America for being “on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor”.

Each year on Martin Luther King Day, which was just this past Monday, we are treated to the appalling spectacle of people honoring King while betraying what he believed in. In death, King has become a safe touchstone for feel-good complacency. In life, he was a fiery challenger of the policies of the American government, a vigorous voice of the poor, and a staunch defender of the type of social programs Layton advocates that you have so little regard for.

You also claim that if a Canadian politician were to echo Kennedy’s famous “ask not what your country can do for you” phrase, they would be committing “political suicide”, earn “national pariah” status and cause a nationwide wave of “hysteria and fear mongering”.

This is silliness, on par with Bill O’Reilly’s “you can’t say Merry Christmas any more”. But how much more consternation would result, especially among conservatives, if a politician were to stand up and say that America is “on the wrong side of a world revolution” or that “war is not the answer”, as King does in this speech?

In the same paragraph in which you say that King would disqualify Svend Robinson from running from re-election – a remarkable assumption to make about a man of whom you appear to be in substantial ignorance – you say that King’s “main message was love”. Love appears in this speech too:

“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men.”

King goes on to say this is an “oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept”.

How true.

Sincerely,

Adrian Duyzer

This election, I’m voting for tax cuts. Why the heck shouldn’t I? I deserve a break. I don’t need most of what our government spends money on anyway.

Take publicly-funded health care, for example. I don’t need it. I’m perfectly healthy and I’m planning on staying that way. By the time I get old and sick I’ll be rich and I’ll just go down to a clinic in the States.

I’m young enough to be healthy but I’m old enough to be out of school. And that’s why I say screw publicly-funded education. I graduated years ago.

The list of crap I don’t need goes on and on. Same-sex marriage? I’m straight. National child-care program? I don’t have kids. Compensation for abuse in native schools? I’m white. Investments in public transit? I work at home. More money for seniors? See above.

What matters to me is tax cuts. Not the environment, because let’s face it, as long as I have clean water to take a shit in, there’s nothing wrong with the environment. Not roads, because as I already pointed out, I work at home – besides, if I ever need to commute, I’ll get an SUV with 4 wheel-drive that can handle the terrain.

Tax cuts. Tax cuts, because I am sick and tired of funding the miserable citizens of this backwater American province. You’re a single mom? Maybe you should have thought about how I was going to vote this election before you went and impregnated yourself.

This is payback for when you showed up at the supermarket with your saggy breasts and your screaming child. I saw you take a cab when you left with your bags of Kraft Dinner and that told me right then that money spent on public transit is wasted money, because you don’t even use it.

Is it possible for me to entirely base my vote on tax cuts? Of course it is. And that’s why this election, it’s time to stand up for me.

While ascending to power, Paul Martin’s cabal were affectionately known as “the Martinis.” Now, in various forums, Stephen Harper’s posse are being dubbed “the Harpies.”

If you’ve got time – I don’t right now – you can join the party over on Angry in the Great White North, where I’ve stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest in the comment section of a recent post.