Know your enemy- older Harper Speech

This was posted at macleans by Paul Wells the other day. Its a Harper speech from a few years ago, pontificating on all sorts of stuff. His 'understanding' of the left is interesting:

The real enemy is no longer socialism. Socialism as a true economic program and motivating faith is dead. Yes, there are still lots of statist economic policies and people dependent on big government. But the modern left-liberal economic philosophy has become corporatism. Corporatism is the use of private ownership and markets for state-directed objectives. Its tools are subsidization, public/private partnerships and state investment funds. It is often bad policy, but it is less clearly different from conventional conservative economics than any genuine socialism.

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.

The clearest recent evidence of this phenomenon is seen in international affairs in the emerging post-Cold-War world - most obviously in the response of modern liberals to the war on terrorism. There is no doubt about the technical capacity of our society to fight this war. What is evident is the lack of desire of the modern liberals to fight, and even more, the striking hope on the Left that we actually lose.

You can see this if you pay close attention to the response to the war in Iraq from our own federal Liberals and their cheerleaders in the media and the universities. They argue one day that there are no weapons of mass destruction, yet warn that such weapons might be used. They tell us the war was immoral, then moral but impractical, then practical but unjustified. They argue simultaneously that the war can't be won, that it is too easy for the coalition to win and that victory cannot be sustained anyway. Most striking was their obvious glumness at the fall of Baghdad. But even previous to that were the dark suggestions on the anniversary of September 11 (hinted at even by our own prime minister) that "we deserved it."

This is particularly striking given the nature of the enemy here, the bin Ladens and the Husseins, individuals who embody in the extreme everything the Left purports to oppose - fundamentalism, fascistic nationalism, misogyny, bigotry.

Conservatives need to reassess our understanding of the modern Left. It has moved beyond old socialistic morality or even moral relativism to something much darker. It has become a moral nihilism - the rejection of any tradition or convention of morality, a post-Marxism with deep resentments, even hatreds of the norms of free and democratic western civilization.

This descent into nihilism should not be surprising because moral relativism simply cannot be sustained as a guiding philosophy. It leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco. It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour. On the moral standing of the person, it leads to views ranging from radical responsibility-free individualism, to tribalism in the form of group rights.

Conservatives have focused on the inconsistency in all of this. Yet it is actually disturbingly consistent. It is a rebellion against all forms of social norm and moral tradition in every aspect of life. The logical end of this thinking is the actual banning of conservative views, which some legislators and "rights" commissions openly contemplate.

In this environment, serious conservative parties simply cannot shy away from values questions. On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, criminal justice and corrections, family and child care, and healthcare and social services, social values are increasingly the really big issues.

Take taxation, for example. There are real limits to tax-cutting if conservatives cannot dispute anything about how or why a government actually does what it does. If conservatives accept all legislated social liberalism with balanced budgets and corporate grants - as do some in the business community - then there really are no differences between a conservative and a Paul Martin.

There is, of course, much more to be done in economic policy. We do need deeper and broader tax cuts, further reductions in debt, further deregulation and privatization, and especially the elimination of corporate subsidies and industrial-development schemes. In large measure, however, the public arguments for doing so have already been won. Conservatives have to more than modern liberals in a hurry.

The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values, so conservatives must do the same.

Comments

Submitted by Frmrsldr on March 21, 2010 - 11:28pm.

ss atrahasis wrote:

From Here:

In this environment, serious conservative parties simply cannot shy away from values questions. On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, ...

Harper caught in a candid moment:

Interlocutor: "It's nice to hear that the Conservatives have a moral and social approach to foreign affairs and defense that's logically consistent. What is your response to Torturegate?"

Harper: "Ah, ah, as you know, there is no substantive evidence that our troops committed any wrongdoing concerning Afghan detainees."

Interlocutor: [Off the air, to a colleague] "Well, there you see. All this talk by the Con. jobs about having a moral and social approach that is logically consistent when it comes to governing is bullshit. Where do these people take their cues from, Niccolo Machiavelli? Where they don't have to be moral, but merely need to be seen to be moral by people who believe in these Cons. because they desperately need to believe in them?"

Submitted by ss atrahasis on March 21, 2010 - 11:52pm.

Frmrsldr wrote:

... Where do these people take their cues from, Niccolo Machiavelli? Where they don't have to be moral, but merely need to be seen to be moral by people who believe in these Cons. because they desperately need to believe in them?"

The Straussian Harper maybe.

I'm not an expert in conservative thought (which I kinda understood to mean 'don't think too much'), I found this Harper spiel also interesting from the OP link.

Quote:

What is the "conservative coalition" of ideas? Actually, conservatism and conservative parties, as we've known them over the decades, have always been coalitions. Though these coalitions are complex and continually shifting, two distinctive elements have long been identifiable.

Ted Byfield labelled these factions "neo-con" and "theo-con." More commonly, they are known simply as economic conservatives and social conservatives. Properly speaking, they are called classical or enlightenment liberalism and classical or Burkean conservatism.

The one called "economic conservatism" does indeed come from classical liberalism. Its primary value is individual freedom, and to that end it stresses private enterprise, free trade, religious toleration, limited government and the rule of law.

The other philosophy is Burkean conservatism. Its primary value is social order. It stresses respect for customs and traditions (religious traditions above all), voluntary association, and personal self-restraint reinforced by moral and legal sanctions on behaviour.

The essence of this conservatism is, according to Russell Kirk, "the preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors: they are dubious of wholesale alteration. They think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine."

Sounds all hunky dory, I guess, not really, until you realize all this means is maintaining the hegemony of the same-old same-old destructive power relations, and the most nihilistic interpretation will end up being be white power kookery and evangelical xtian Tea Bagger insanity and the like.

Ancient traditions of everyone else be damned, in their same eyes I'm sure.

Submitted by ss atrahasis on March 22, 2010 - 12:05am.

I also find it cute that Harper uses PJ Orourke as philosophical inspiration in the same speech. I can picture a younger long haired 70s Harper looking like the stereotypical 'burn out' to be cool, but not really one, reading Rolling Stone getting all inspired enough to forgo the Young Liberals.

Quote:

O'Rourke also summarized the moral and civilizing importance of markets by reminding us that "the rise of private enterprise and trade provided a means of achieving wealth and autonomy other than by killing people with broadswords."

Yes, the 'brilliance' of it all is now we kill them with the metaphorical ploughshare instead.

Submitted by Frmrsldr on March 22, 2010 - 12:14am.

ss atrahasis wrote:

That's a load of CRAP. (Conservtive+Reform+Alliance+Party=CRAP). If Harpo and the Cons. were like the above description, then they would be Confucianists.

The Cons. are a bunch of amoral, opportunistic, nihilistic, cynical carpetbaggers who have a low opinion of the Canadian public generally and a low opinion of their supporters specifically. They just "butter people up" to get their vote. Because that is all they really want: Power.

These CRAP-pers' closest relatives are Benito Mussolini's fascists.

Submitted by ss atrahasis on March 22, 2010 - 12:15am.

And can anyone tell me when conservatism was a bastion of anti-corporatism as he claims in that spiel? That doesn't jibe with me, but maybe I'm just not edumucated enough.

Submitted by Webgear on March 22, 2010 - 12:26am.

Frmrsldr

Don't all politicians want to be in power?

Submitted by Frmrsldr on March 22, 2010 - 12:31am.

Webgear wrote:

Frmrsldr

Don't all politicians want to be in power?

Sure. The question is how badly and what they do when they're "in" (power)?

Submitted by Webgear on March 22, 2010 - 12:36am.

So all politicians will take whatever it does to get in power and to remain in power?

Submitted by Frmrsldr on March 22, 2010 - 12:59am.

Webgear wrote:

So all politicians will take whatever it does to get in power and to remain in power?

No. That would be the fallacy of identifying the characteristic of a group as being the same as the characteristic of an individual who is a member of that group:

Premise 1: Stephen Harper (or Benito Mussolini) will take whatever it does to get in power and to remain in power.

Premise 2: Stephen Harper (or Benito Mussolini) is a politician.

Conclusion: Therefore all politicians will take whatever it does to get in power and to remain in power.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

While Niccolo Machialvelli and Richard Nixon would agree with you, I think Tommy Douglas and Lester Pearson would rather not.

Submitted by senilodon on March 22, 2010 - 2:23am.

A few months after forming government the first time ,I recall Stephen Harper's initial trip overseas to the UK.There,immediately he had arranged a

private meeting with Lady Thatcher,the right-wing scourge of the Western world[ and beyond ]during the 1980's.She was

his beacon;he was her bile-mate. To what crazed monologue did Mr Harper sit in attendance? For more than an hour he listened; but

did he not see that she was batty,in her second childhood,not all there? Her daughter confirms this in her recent publication,stating

that her mother was daily suffering from dementia,could not relate to the present but was quite comfortable and acute in speaking

about the past,her "glory days" as she saw them.If notes were taken during that meeting,I daresay FOIA request would be slow in

being met.

And one last comment on Lady Thatcher:she could,at times, be a giving person.For example,after General Pinochet was

released from a year's detention in the UK on charges of warcrimes during his time in power,she consigned a gift of silver-plate to

find him at the airport,as an apology for his treatment by the British Courts.One wonders if Stephen Harper was gifted with some

similar memento after his first meeting with "The Iron Lady",and if he has chosen to share such a piece of history with the Canadian

people?

Submitted by Webgear on March 22, 2010 - 10:56am.

Frmrsldr

All the major federal powers have all shifted to the right over the last 25 years. All recent polls show many Canadians are shifting their political views to the right also.

Hence all political parties are trying to do whatever it takes to gain power and to stay in power. Political ideology has nothing to do with politics, being in power is the only thing to do with politics.

Harper is trying to take a softer stance on social issues, Layton is trying to appeal Canadians about being hard on crime and pro-military, and Ignatieff is trying to appear to be human.

Submitted by N.Beltov on March 22, 2010 - 4:45pm.

That's rather too mechanical, W. Those political leaders are, after all, themselves responsible for shifts in the political winds. Many people only put on their political "hats" during election time - during which time they are more open to a variety of points of view - and what the leaders of "the major federal powers" say has a large effect on their political thinking.

I know that a substantial shift has been that more and more people no longer bother to vote. That can be substantiated by reference to election data. I'm curious how you would go about substantiating your claim.

Submitted by Frmrsldr on March 23, 2010 - 2:49am.

Webgear wrote:

So all politicians will take whatever it does to get in power and to remain in power?

The Conclusion: "All politicians will take whatever it does to get in power and to remain in power.",

neither of necessity nor logically follows from the Premise: "All politicans want to get in power."

Again, the Conclusion: All politicians are like Adolf Hitler, Yosef Stalin and Richard Nixon, does not follow from the Premises:

1. Adolf Hitler, Yosef Stalin and Richard Nixon are politicians

2. These other persons are politicians,

Conclusion: therefore other persons who are politicians must be like Adolf Hitler, Yosef Stalin and Richard Nixon because they are politicians. The implication cynically being that 'all politicians are alike'.

Being in power or wanting to get in power and the means employed to get or try to get in power are not the same. They are two different things.

I'm sure you'll agree that Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Winston R. Churchill, Lester B. Pearson and Tommy Douglas, among many others, were neither like Adolf Hitler, Yosef Stalin and Richard Nixon, nor did they employ the same tactics to get in and stay in power.