>>REVIEW
RESCUING CANADA’S RIGHT: A BLUEPRINT FOR A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION
Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah
John Wiley & Sons Canada, 281 pp.
This odious book calls for nothing less than a Republican-style conservative takeover of Canada.
It was so disturbing that I actually laughed out loud regularly in my attempt to detach myself from the subject matter. I will admit the book is well written and it’s obvious that co-authors Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah know their subject matter. If you really want to help create a George Bush-style revolution, this may be a very uplifting, energizing book for you to read. But for any lefties, centrists or Red Tories, this book should be a serious wake-up call.
Kheiriddin and Daifallah point to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as ideal conservative leaders and are unhappy with Stephen Harper (although Mike Harris and Ralph Klein are fine). They say Canada’s conservative parties haven’t been nearly conservative enough.
In order to create their conservative revolution, the authors recommend "building a conservative infrastructure encompassing all aspects of public life, from the media, to the courts, to academia." They argue that the media and academia are too liberal (they call Canada’s post-secondary institutions "left-wing indoctrination laboratories" and say most of Canada’s media is "out to get" conservatives), and they say more conservatives have to be attracted to the professions. They also advocate private universities.
The pair hysterically (and hilariously) proclaim that "the greatest threat to conservatives in the long term" is "the advent of national state daycare," where they claim young children will quickly be indoctrinated at "unionized kiddy farms."
In a section on how to attract immigrants to the conservative side, they offer the absurd recommendation that conservative-themed literature should be added to ESL classes. They also muse about whether the federal government should continue funding arts programs at universities and ask, "Should the taxes of working people fund schooling that will not equip students for the job market?"
They also want to see the Broadcasting Act amended so that broadcasters are no longer required to provide different viewpoints. That way Canada could have virulently conservative broadcasters like the Fox network in the U.S.
The book is like a conservative propaganda manual with plenty of over-the-top quotes. Here’s one of my favourites: "Canada’s marketplace of ideas today resembles a Soviet-era department store: plenty of shoes, but only the left ones are available. There is not enough variety of voices; the weeds of statist conformity choke the roses of right-wing dissent."
And here’s another gem: "As a nation, we must abandon the loser worship that threatens to cripple us." I was left baffled by this remark. People around the world admire Canada for the society we’ve created, but, hey, let’s emulate the U.S. model, where the country is trillions of dollars in debt, still fighting a war it never should’ve waged and is unable to look after its citizens in the event of a major natural disaster.
This is a good book to read if you need some motivation to stop feeling apathetic about our political system. |
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