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The Liberal lie: It is a wonderful pink glowing feeling to be 'rebellious': I went over to my doctor friend's house on Sunday to buy vitamins from his wife (this I am sure, in contravention of at least 685 federal, provincial and regional by-laws) and found myself in conversation with the couple. "We gather from last Friday's column," said he, "that you are going to be voting Alliance." I flushed red, and we all stood around, mightily uncomfortable, for a few seconds. After all, as Margaret Atwood said in that paper no one reads anymore, the Alliance is naked (whatever that means). "Yes," I finally declared, with some belligerence. "You bet I am. I think this election is very very important." Looking sheepish, they allowed that they were too, mostly because they had a relative running in Victoria. "But," said the slight, strong young woman, with six small children and a fitness business, her voice gathering strength with each word, "I am sick to death of being penalized because I work hard. In Canada, if you're good at anything, you're punished." "Yes," said Charles, in a seeming non sequitur. "I think personal responsibility is going to become much more important in health care." He brightened, "that means anti-ageing (his specialty) will become important too." Nevertheless, our unease continued. For three hipsters at various stages in middle age, to confess they might vote Alliance is a difficult psychological manoeuvre. Particularly ones who live in the woods, surrounded by trees and environmental activists who moon after a kind of ecoStalinist statism. Because even to say you think the Alliance isn't pure evil means you're not on the side of the downtrodden, the weak and the disadvantaged, not to mention the birds and the eel grass. You might even be racist, quite possibly homophobic, and you probably even think that letting Quebec hijack another election by threatening a sovereignty vote so they can pick our pockets for the 75,000th time is morally reprehensible. Ooops, we actually do believe that last one. This is, of course, an almost perfect example of the Liberal lie, and of the fundamental disloyalty that our federal Liberals feel toward Canada. It is why we are not a particularly patriotic or proud country. There is nothing spiritually easier than being in opposition to the "powerful," on the side of the "people." You are always on the right side. It is a wonderful pink glowing feeling to be "rebellious" and force other people to give money to your various interest groups that you have identified as being in need. It is far far harder to translate from that ease to the ordeal of responsibility. It feels like you're an oyster suddenly prised from your shell. You have to grow up and realize we're all in this together, and getting Bay Street winners to pay for everything just won't work. Liberals practise a particularly nasty form of demagoguery, inciting envy or fear in each subculture, whether members of the subgroup are natives, French- Canadians, new immigrants or welfare moms. They pit us against each other, practising identity politics, forcing everyone to believe they are victims of everyone else and that someone has to pay for their pain. This is the lie. We can't afford it. We can't afford to watch our churches bankrupted by some inane misreading of statutes, and we can't afford to carry the Atlantic provinces and we can't afford to keep shovelling cash into projects because it makes us feel good. Take the one major entitlement by which we define our culture: universal health insurance. As my colleague Mark Steyn points out, and it can't be repeated too often, it's simply not good enough. Furthermore, unless we enter a period of hellfire growth, we can't afford to fix it. Average wait for a cranial MRI? In Canada, 150 days. In the United States, three days. Waiting to find out whether you've been scheduled for cancer treatment? In Canada, 35 to 45 days. In the States, 10 days. Yes, everyone is insured, but when you get cancer, tell the truth now, where would you rather be? And what happens when the Boomers hit the period where they actually have to sign up for cancer treatment on a large scale? That's not far off. We finally have to hew to some kind of real world economics, unloosen the chains on our businesses, cut taxes even more than the Americans, grow up and join the real real world, and stop playing that we're so much more enlightened and sensible than the rest of the planet. You know how we pay for that, right? We ransack our wilderness, sell our trees, our water, our rocks, stones, oil, minerals and anything else we can tax, so we can afford our rich kid incontinence and pretend we're better than everyone else. We need a political party in power that is pro-growth, pro- capital formation, that can create new economic incentives. We need a party that will slash capital gains taxes so we can make our economy grow. Economic growth is the only thing that should expand our tax returns, not wealth taxes, not penalizing the successful. There is great underused capacity in our country. It's buried inside millions of people like my doctor's wife, who believes there is no point in trying because you'll be punished for success. And how enlightened and sensible is that?

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.