Lesson one was to never mimic liberals who constantly posit themselves as elitists and rule from on high. You see, as I’ve already indicated, inviting a group of 100 “elite” “blue chip” Canadian conservatives from around the country to a seminar on how to win elections is laughably hypocritical and ignorant at best, Liberal-like at worst, and more damaging to the conservative movement in Canada than just about anything I can think of.
That lesson was directed at Preston Manning and—what I will now have every right to call—his elitist cohorts who didn’t invite me, rendering me a member of nothing more than the mighty riffraff of Canadian conservatives. See, they certainly learned me good!
While Preston Manning preaches from on high about how to win elections, he and his blue chip crowd don’t really have a clue, of course, because they apparently never learned the rudiments. Thus my Grade-School.
The pajamahideen (riffraff, me) is but one Conservative Party missed lesson, as I described in what turns out was Lesson One (I didn’t know about my Grade School then):
I think maybe the first thing Canadian conservatives should do—and I’ve said this countless times before—is to at least get a frigging Rolodex or hey I know—a scrap of paper—and write down the names and email addresses of people in Canada who have been busting a butt at their own enormous expense to try to stir up the conservatives in this country and try to help the apparently all but failing movement.
This next lesson is another as presented by columnist and, as it turns out, teacher and National Post columnist Lorne Gunter.
I don’t know if Lorne Gunter was invited to Preston Manning’s group of elite “blue chip” conservatives a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t of course, because again, far from being a part of the elite “blue-chippers” set, I’m designated as part of the “riffraff” who wear pajamas and sit in front of their computers (and actually make a difference every day just for funky fun and amusement).
This lesson should be another of the pre-requisites for admission into the Manning Conservative Election-Winning School program. I just hope Manning and other Conservative Party geniuses complete my Grade School classes in time to apply for their own advanced study scholarship.
I suggest everyone read Gunter’s column—but rather than treating (as I fear Gunter does) those unnamed and indescribable “religious right” who have no headquarters, no phone number, no leader, no membership roster, and no name which uses capital letters as a weird religious “sect” unto themselves just because they aren’t overtly “political”—treat them as “us”. Canadians. That’s an important lesson, and that one’s courtesy of me.
Check it out, Manning, Gunter, et al: About 70 percent of Canadians voluntarily identified themselves as Christians (when they could have written “atheist”, “agnostic”, “no religion”, or “environmentalist” or “liberal”) in the last Canadian Census. And a further 10 percent identified themselves as some other religion. That’s 80 percent of Canadians. I imagine the conservative-leaning among us have an even higher percentage of religiousness.
Even the stoned pot-smoker kid at the back of the class would recognize that those who want the Conservative Party to be a “big tent” party should unzip the tent and let them in, instead of chasing them away from the camp like they’re annoying squirrels; or as the liberal media and the “progressive” wing of the Conservative Party portray them: big ugly bears who will maul the country to death, with their evil weapons of… “pro-life” and “traditional marriage” and “good” and “values” and “culture of life” and other such Christian firebombs. Oh the humanity.
Facts: In the last Canadian Census, seven out of every ten Canadians identified themselves as either Roman Catholic or Protestant. Them’s Christians! Only 16% of the population in 2001 identified themselves as having no religion—that’d be the NDP and much of the media, as has been proven by studies. In 2001, just four in ten adults reported that they had not attended religious services during the year prior to the survey. Which means that up to sixty percent of Canadian people had attended religious services within the past year. Of course lots of people are Christians and hold their Christian beliefs very dearly but don’t necessarily go to church every Sunday. Clearly most fall into that category.
So your homework for today is to read Lorne Gunter’s column. It provides good, valuable lessons—unlike the columns and weeks-long features written by the likes of the Vancouver Sun, whose weeks-long features and columns often read like public school teachers and their lessons filled with dire warnings to Canadians about the evil God-awful Christian bears lurking outside the tent ready to kill …you know, with all the aforementioned “good values” and “life” weapons. Oh, again, the humanity. Save us.
It’s called Fighting Canada’s secularist tide—and it’s a good title. It is among the most important fights we—all of us—have in this country. Learn it, and remember where it was pointed out to you.
The reaction by Christians has been an almost dream-like disbelief: This can’t be happening. Sanity and reason will once again prevail before things go seriously wrong. The truth shall set us free.
It took this year’s debate on gay marriage to jar the religious right into the realization that the truth is a weakling, no match for the ingrained biases of the Canadian establishment or the spin of well-funded special interest groups. If the religious right wants change, it now knows it will have to abandon its cultural isolation, stop preaching only to the converted and engage in the muck and mire of day-to-day politics.
Despite the paranoid fantasies of the editors at The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, and producers at the CBC and CTV, Canada’s Protestant Evangelicals and conservative Catholics have almost no concerted political clout.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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