Is the Canadian Right Losing its Mind?
Vincent J. Curtis
25 Mar 2016
With the fall of the Conservative government of Stephen
Harper, Canada’s punditry, which is Liberal-left in orientation, is pointing
with glee at what they perceive as the repudiation of the policies of Stephen
Harper by his successors.
Some are even floating the notion that the so-called “right”
is moving leftward, i.e. towards the center.
Becoming less offensively right wing, in other words. Coming to see the light of the left, in other
words. On their own terms, there is some
superficial evidence to support their contention.
Let’s set aside for the moment the philosophical issues
associated with left and right, progressive and conservative, and the issue of
a scale of measurement itself changing. A
primary piece of evidence for the contention that “the right” is moving “left” lies
in the noises being made by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and a
few in the federal Conservative party favorable to a carbon tax.
Permit me to caution those gleeful pundits in the press
about a tax on “carbon.” There is a lot
of carbon in newsprint and in ink.
Behind any tax on “carbon” lies a belief in the superstition
of climate change, or global warming.
The idea is that taxing “carbon” consumption, i.e. in the use of coal
and petroleum fuels, is a way of addressing climate change. By taxing the use of carbon, people will use
less of it and thereby reduce the production of carbon dioxide.
The theory of the carbon tax is similar to that of taxing
tobacco. Tobacco is an evil, and taxes
on the consumption of tobacco appeals both to the puritan and to the progressive
scold, though for different reasons. The
puritan wants to suppress evil for its own sake; the progressive wants it because
it advances his political agenda and to suppress political opposition.
It does appear that Patrick Brown, the new Progressive
Conservative leader of the Ontario PCs, is warming to a carbon tax. He says that a carbon tax should be “revenue
neutral,” meaning that what new revenue is reaped by the new tax should be met
with reduction in taxes in other spheres of collection. That position is a careful straddle. He calls attention to the tax-grab aspect of
the proposal without confronting the global warming aspect behind the proposal.
The Ontario and Federal Liberal governments want taxes on carbon to raise revenue that they need to help balance their budgets. A secondary reason for taxing carbon, as opposed to, say, taxing oxygen, which also is necessary for the
production of carbon dioxide, is that it plays into the current progressive
fashion of global warming caused by those evil western economies bringing about
the doom of the world. The Liberals can bask in
the glow of admiration from other progressives.
If you propose a tax on carbon you implicitly endorse the
global warming hypothesis. No
conservative appears clever enough to sarcastically propose a tax on oxygen
instead, as a way of pointing out the absurdity of the reasoning behind a tax
on carbon. By proposing a tax on oxygen,
conservatives draw the debate into the merits of taxing carbon versus oxygen,
and by extension call into question the merits of the case for global warming. They will force into the open the weaknesses
of the case for global warming.
Anyhow, when so-called conservatives surrender to
progressives on the matter of global warming, they cease being conservative. The person has moved on the scale; it is not
the scale that has moved. Belief in
global warming is not a conservative position.
Skepticism of global warming is the conservative position. Howling laughter is the conservative response
to pious asservations of global warming and climate change.
As time rolls on, the forecasts of global disaster will go
past their “sell by” date, and eventually the world will discard global warming
as it discarded communism. Conservatives
defeated communism not by adopting the communist program, but by remaining
skeptical and pointing out its weaknesses and failures. Eventually, communism collapsed because it was
defied and because the weaknesses and failures were real.
The cause of global warming will be defeated in the same
way. The cause of global warming will be
overtaken by some other progressive red herring, and global warming will become
yesterday’s cause.
Tax oxygen 16 and leave the carbon 12 alone! It's more progressive!!
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