National Affairs by Claire Hoy — Liberal attack dogs are out

June 14, 2017 · 0 Comments

My giant 2,059-page Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines “inclusive” as, among other things, “including everything concerned.”
Which brings us, of course, to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comment — echoed by a host of Liberals and New Democrats — that the problem with newly elected Tory Leader Andrew Scheer is that, unlike them, he’s not “inclusive.”
And so, they’re not prepared to include his — dare we say it? — socially conservative views, views which the champions of liberal thought and tolerance intolerantly characterize as hateful and intolerant.
Indeed, much of the media, not surprisingly, joined in the attack on the soft-spoken, pleasantly dispositioned Scheer, who they want you to believe would drag Canada kicking and screaming back at least two centuries. Maybe more.
Anybody who knows Scheer — and who doesn’t have a direct partisan interest in maligning him — must be surprised at learning what a terrible person he is supposed to be. As more Canadians get to know him, it’s going to be difficult for the Liberals and NDP and their media cheerleaders to continue to paint him as the current face of evil.
But they’re giving it their best shot.
When Scheer upset the presumed favorite Maxim Bernier by a hair’s breadth for the leadership, Liberal attack dog Adam Vaughan — caught slightly off guard, since he too had anticipated the more radical Bernier to win — quickly regained his stride and announced that not only is Scheer a social conservative — which by itself is unspeakable — he is promoting a new brand of social conservative.
How so? Well, says Vaughan, Scheer’s idea is that universities who do not allow people to speak just because they disagree with their outlook, i.e. because they have conservative views, should have their federal funding cut off.
According to Vaughan this means Scheer “wants to be in charge of the thought police . . . You can’t have free and open debate if you’re being told who should talk and who shouldn’t talk.”
Apparently Vaughan is confused. Or, he’s so caught up in his raw partisanship he doesn’t care how stupid his remarks are.
It is Scheer — not Vaughan — who opposes the thought police. He is the one who wants “free and open debate.” He is the one who objects when a mouthy mob of radicals shut down debate on anything which doesn’t fit their view of the world. Scheer — not Vaughan — is the one advocating “inclusiveness” here, the notion that all points of view are open to debate.
And they call Scheer an “extremist.” It is to laugh.
But Liberals have a history of maligning their opponents with outright lies and calculated distortions. Remember all that nonsense about Harper’s “hidden agenda?” Whatever happened to all those horrible things Harper was going to inflict upon us anyway?
No matter. Scheer is concerned about issues such as abortion, so therefore is unworthy of serious consideration for leadership.
Indeed, Star columnist Emma Teitel wrote a column on Scheer — which the Star published on the front page — essentially accusing Scheer of being a hater for calling same-sex marriage “abhorrent.” Turns out, ah, that Scheer didn’t say that at all — and the paper ran a correction on the bottom of page 2, where few people would see it.
But that’s beside the point to the champions of tolerance and inclusiveness. Even if he didn’t say it, they know he’s thinking it. After all, conservatives think bad things all the time. Liberals, on the other hand, think good thoughts. Everybody knows that, don’t they?
The Star’s lead editorial on Scheer was headlined “The smile isn’t enough.”
“Scheer may not be the right-wing extremist that Liberals are trying to paint him,” they generously concede. “But there’s no escaping the fact that his voting record is firmly on the social conservative side of contentious issues like abortion.”
Oh no. He’s one of those. Actually, while the media rarely reports it (and the establishment does everything it can to silence the truth about abortion) — polls show that most Canadians, while not wanting to ban abortion (and neither does Scheer), are uncomfortable with the status quo, i.e. of Canada being one of three countries in the world (joining those liberal wonderlands of China and North Korea) with no limits whatsoever on abortion.
Indeed, because the issue is routinely censored in political and media debate (except, of course, for the pro-abortion side), most Canadians think Canada does have an abortion law of some kind. It doesn’t. And, despite the continued reportage about the Supreme Court ruling that abortion is “unconstitutional,” the court never said that. It said the law as it existed then was “unconstitutional,” and called on Parliament to bring in a new law.
But hey, why bother with facts when throwing mud is far easier and has worked rather well in the past? Whether it will work on a decent guy like Scheer remains to be seen.