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In case you missed it yesterday, Brooke Jeffrey was on CTV Montreal discussing Dismantling Canada, her new book about Stephen Harper’s agenda to create a new Conservative Canada.
Watch her interview with Mutsumi Takashi >
And check out the Dismantling Canada review in The Tyee this week: PM Spawns Literary Genre: The Political Horror Story
Along with coining the term ‘Harperlit’, Crawford Kilian’s article outlines how Jeffrey’s book offers key insight into the the “political horror story” of Harper’s government.
Like other horror genres, this one involves the release of some awful monster, which was long thought safely buried. In Harperlit books, the monster is his own record; Harper’s early outrages have been forgotten under layers of more recent scandals. Harperlit authors know that the print and online news media have left us with 24-hour attention spans at best, so the old stuff has the nightmare shock of a PTSD (Post Tory Scandal Dismay) flashback: F-35s! Attawapiskat! Robocalls!
The effect of these nightmare flashbacks is to make Stephen Harper look not only omnipotent but like the fulfilment of ancient prophecy: we can see where he’s going in those early years as he founded Reform, then took over its successor the Canadian Alliance, and devoured the vestiges of the once-great Progressive Conservatives. He couldn’t be stopped then, and still less can he be stopped now in the last year of a majority government.
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Harper’s critics have been quick to point out the cultish influence of the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek and the think-tanks inspired by Margaret Thatcher. Many have commented on his “visceral” hatred of the Liberal Party.
All true, no doubt, but only Jeffrey identifies the fatal implication of these influences, and that makes her book the best of the Harperlit polemics: Stephen Harper knows he’s right, and being right is all he needs to justify his authoritarian style.
This certainly is what leads Conservatives to view opposing policy positions as not simply different, but wrong, and hence easily dismissed.
“The rigidity of [Conservatives’] policy positions,” Jeffrey says, “can be traced back to a firm (and unprecedented) conviction in the rightness of their beliefs. This certainly is what leads them to see opposing policy positions as not simply different… but wrong, and hence easily dismissed. As a result, neither compromise nor conciliation are acceptable or even possible…. Thus the phrase ‘not letting the facts get in the way of their opinions’ is literally correct in describing the new Conservatives’ approach to governing.
“As a result, neither compromise nor conciliation are acceptable or even possible. Thus the phrase ‘not letting the facts get in the way of their opinions’ is literally correct in describing the new Conservatives’ approach to governing.”
Because Harper’s right, everyone against him must be wrong — not just the Liberal Party, but all opposition, as well as the institutions that have supported liberal democratic Canada over the past two centuries.
Click here for the full article >
DISMANTLING CANADA: Stephen Harper’s New Conservative Agenda
Liberal insider Brooke Jeffrey analyses Stephen Harper’s drive to create a new Conservative Canada.
Providing fascinating insight into the origins of a new conservative vision for the economy, federalism, and domestic and foreign policies, Jeffrey explores Harper’s successes and failures, and evaluates the likely outcome of his long-term agenda to change Canada into a country most Canadians would not recognize.
Recent interviews
The Ed Hand Show on Ottawa’s 1310 News
Concordia’s The Link Newspaper Download Podcast with Matt D’Amours
To order a copy of this book, click here.
For media requests, please contact Jacqui Davis.
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