{"id":16322,"date":"2012-08-03T09:38:51","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T14:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16322"},"modified":"2012-08-03T09:38:51","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T14:38:51","slug":"chris-selley-ideology-is-anathema-to-harpers-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/03\/chris-selley-ideology-is-anathema-to-harpers-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Selley: Ideology is anathema to Harper’s Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper cast out the libertarians several years ago. He’s more recently stamped out the last of the actual conservatives. So who’s left in the Conservative Party? Harperites and devoted non-ideologues<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is time to retire the word \u201cideological\u201d from Canada\u2019s political lexicon. It doesn\u2019t seem to mean anything anymore. In recent weeks, Tony Clement, a Conservative cabinet minister, has chided NDP leader Thomas Mulcair for \u201ctaking an ideological approach\u201d to oil-sands development; Prime Minister Stephen Harper has deplored the New Democrats\u2019 \u201cideological aversion to trade\u201d; various New Democrats have accused the Conservatives of being \u201cideological\u201d for their plans to contract out post-office services, eliminate Canada Revenue Agency counter service, cut funding for scientific research and limit health-care benefits for refugee claimants, which Liberal critic Kevin Lamoureux also deplored as \u201cideological.\u201d Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae denounced the Conservatives\u2019 entire \u201cwrong-headed ideological agenda\u201d \u2014 which is apparently \u201chidden\u201d in various places around Ottawa, though he and Mr. Mulcair seem to have no difficulty discerning how awful and ideological it is.<\/p>\n

I wonder how evocative the word \u201cideological\u201d is to people who aren\u2019t political junkies. Is it so bad, so uncommon, to have \u2014 as the Oxford dictionary defines it \u2014 \u201ca system of ideas or way of thinking\u201d that one regards \u201cas justifying actions, especially one that is held implicitly or adopted as a whole and maintained regardless of the course of events\u201d?<\/p>\n

Among political junkies, the term is sometimes \u2014 though not always (see above) \u2014 meant to imply pigheaded rigidity. For a Canadian politician, that\u2019s very bad. Weirdly, it\u2019s also very bad when a Canadian politician changes his mind \u2014 the dreaded \u201cflip-flop.\u201d But is there any politician in Ottawa anywhere near power who can usefully be described as consistently ideological? Since the Reform days, Mr. Harper and his mates have been on a public policy magical mystery tour. Now they say whatever they need to say on Friday, contradict it completely on Monday, and think nothing of it. To call them ideological is to miss an opportunity to call them shameless hypocrites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper cast out the libertarians several years ago. He’s more recently stamped out the last of the actual conservatives. So who’s left in the Conservative Party? Harperites and devoted non-ideologues: It is time to retire the word \u201cideological\u201d from Canada\u2019s political lexicon. It doesn\u2019t seem to mean anything anymore. In recent weeks, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[431,480,622,550,258],"class_list":["post-16322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-conservatism","tag-hypocrisy","tag-ideology","tag-libertarianism","tag-stephenharper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4fg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16323,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16322\/revisions\/16323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}