Re: Conservatism creep evident (Our View, July 13)
We see again how that triumvirate of the Natural Governing Party (Liberals), the media, and academe have succeeded very well in brainwashing the Canadian public – as well as the editors of this community paper — into believing that anything arbitrary, underhanded or repressive can be legitimately labelled as “conservatism.”
That’s what last week’s editorial called the police inserting spies among law-abiding citizens travelling to legal and peaceful protests during the Olympic events in Vancouver.
Why in the name of logic and rational thinking is such activity called “creeping conservatism”? It repeats the hackneyed argument that somehow identifies repressive activity on the part of government agencies as being a right-wing (read: conservative) thing.
When is this faulty paradigm of political reality ever going to be laid to rest? We’ve seen stunning examples of repressive activity from all kinds of regimes throughout the world, where the most apt adjective to describe their activities is not “left wing” or “right wing,” but authoritarian or totalitarian. Even unconstitutional is a more appropriate term.
Barry Gaetz
Victoria
