Prime Minister Stephen Harper is taking a lot of criticism because he recently suggested that anyone questioning our prisoner transfer policy in Afghanistan was really maligning Canada’s soldiers.
Lawrence Martin calls this tactic “intellectually infantile”; Andrew Coyne, using less elegant language, calls it “trash” and Liberal MP Bob Rae stated “To argue that some are stronger supporters of our soldiers than others I think is frankly reprehensible ... to label what we are doing as somehow unpatriotic is quite frankly beyond the pale."
And to be sure, Prime Minister Harper is using an emotion-laden charge to make his point.
But isn’t that politics?
Indeed isn’t this exactly the sort of ploy the Left routinely uses when attacking conservatives?
Consider, for instance, this typical exchange between a conservative and a liberal:
Conservative: I think we need to cut taxes and make government smaller.
Liberal: Aha, your true agenda exposed! All you care about is helping the rich. You’re a heartless monster with no compassion for the poor or downtrodden. You want to close down our public schools, throw orphans into the streets and condemn our seniors to lives of poverty and misery. Oh and you probably want to bring back slavery, since you are also clearly a racist.
Conservative: We also need to increase funding for our military and help our allies in the war against terror.
Liberal: War monger!
Conservative: In my view it's time to inject some sort of free market principles into our costly and inefficient health care system.
Liberal: Oh I get it. You want to transform our hospitals into profit making factories which will heal only the rich and which will use poor people in diabolical medical experiments designed to help the rich live longer. And furthermore: rich, rich rich.
Conservative: I am sceptical about some of the global warming hysteria going on.
Liberal: OK you are clearly a pawn of the big oil companies. Why else would you want to murder those cute polar bears?
Conservative: The long-gun registry was a bad idea.
Liberal: Shut up you stupid redneck. You’re responsible for every murder in the past 100 years. In fact, you probably have all sorts of guns hidden in your basement and are just waiting to go on a mindless shooting spree. Umm … please don’t shoot me!!!
Of course, when left wingers make these sorts of arguments nobody calls them “infantile” or “trash.”
It’s what you call a double standard.
And by the way, if you don’t like this posting, then it means you must be some sort of Marxist.
Conservative: I think we need to cut taxes and make government smaller.
Non-conservative: OK. Farm subsidies and the bureaucracies that deliver them are bloated and superfluous. Let's start there.
Conservative: But rural Canada and farmers vote Conservative. Buying votes with someone else's money is money well spent. You misunderstand me. By cutting taxes, I mean capital gains taxes. By smaller government, I mean privatizing healthcare.
Non-conservative: Well then, how about the huge resources spent on prosecuting citizens for their choice of intoxicants. Surely, in the name of liberty, we can end the futile, expensive, big government war on drugs.
Conservative: Everyone I know only indulges in socially sanctioned, legal drugs. And even if they don't, they are unlikely to be targeted by law enforcement, except when speeding drunk through small Ont. towns at midnight with a pocketful of cocaine. But that's why God invented high priced lawyers. Besides, the drug war means jobs, more police, more prisons. Not to mention legalization would mean the government would stick it's nose in what is now a private trade and try to tax it, and we all know the greatest evil known to man is TAXES.
Non-conservative: So when you say lower taxes, you mean taxes that you and your friends don't like? And by smaller government, you mean cutting programs you don't like that benefit groups that you don't like? And for programs that benefit your friends and supporters, there are no taxes high enough and no government big enough?
Conservative: Now you're getting it, son.