Harper's Marching Orders Made Clearer

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Unsurprisingly, some of Stephen Harper's biggest fans are fanatical "culture warriors," who feel little need for the quaint notions of truth and justice. Witness Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. What the FCF hopes to "free" the American congress from is the fetter of the last hundred and some-odd years of political progress. And Mr. Weyrich would like to see the same liberties taken with Canadian progress.

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Harper's Marching Orders Made Clearer
C. L. Cook

January 31, 2005

Canadians may recall Paul Weyrich's name coming up in the waning days of the federal election. Using the heft of his position as the head of the Free Congress Foundation, one of America's most extreme, and lately best connected "think tanks," to issue a fatwah to his fellow Christian Conservatives forbidding interviews with members of the Canadian press. As the memo explained, liberal elements in Canada could try to use U.S. fundamentalist enthusiasm for Stephen Harper against their favourite.

Typical of the moral fibre of the man credited with coining the term 'moral majority,' Weyrich denied, in the tense days leading to the election, authoring the memo, instead fingering an over-zealous underling for the faux pas. A denial he doesn't bother to make now his philosophical protege is in power.

Late last week, with his P.M. of choice firmly ensconced, Weyrich took another stab at the Canadian body-politick, suggesting years of "cultural Marxism" has rendered Canadians too "liberal" and "hedonistic" to adopt the enlightened views of he and his friends, yet. But, Stephen's good friend still holds out hope Canadians will over time see the err of their ways and come to reject Marxist ideals like same-sex marriage and abortion on demand.

If Weyrich worried Canadians may be worried about affiliations between he, his ilk and a national leadership hopeful, he has shown more political astuteness than too many voters here. What Harper represents, if at arm's length is precisely the pseudo-religiosity infecting, perhaps fatally, the American Republic.

But, as Weyrich's own FCF explains; "Our movement will be entirely destructive, and entirely constructive. We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them." In the case of the United States of America, their program is, as George W. Bush may say, 'Mission Accomplished.'

What gives Paul Weyrich hope that Stephen Harper can overcome Canada's laxity of character is the great unilateral power of the Canadian Prime Minister's office, unlike its U.S. counterpart, to make appointments to the judiciary and in other areas of governance vital to a program of cultural adjustment.

The packing of the courts with fellow-travellers in Canada as seen in the recent history of the United States is, as the Canadian website, Benedictionblogson.com observes, something that should scare all Canadians concerned about preserving their traditions and culture, however "Marxist" it may seem to some outside our borders.



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News. He also hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.



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