Two professors of health were talking economics

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Dec 22

RE: Can the NDP become truly progressive again?  Op-ed by Toba Bryant and Dennis Raphael.  Bryant is an associate professor of health sciences at Ontario Tech University.  Raphael is a professor of health policy at York University.  The Hamilton Spectator 14 Dec 22.

When two university professors of health talk politics and exhibit no knowledge of history or economics, you know the product is going to reek of arrogance, certainty, and error.  By history, I mean not knowing that the pursuit of socialism caused 100 million deaths in the 20^th century.  They seem unaware that everything they have, from the clothes on their backs, to their BMWs, to the buildings they live and work in, are the all products of capitalism.  Socialism has never produced anything new.  It only seems progressive to hose in the faculty lounge to determine the working life of millions of people.  After all, they know best!

The pair like the word “critique” – of our economic system.  A critique implies an alternative, and that alternative, by the back door, is socialism.  Every injustice in the world is laid at the feet of capitalism, and if only it were eradicated and replaced with socialism, Utopia would exist on earth.  Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot were all bringing Utopia to earth.

The professors speak approvingly of confronting the capitalist system because of: income inequality, poverty, food insecurity and hunger, precarious work and unemployment, housing insecurity and homelessness all of which are caused by capitalism and all of which will be cured by socialism.  The unfair distribution of economic and social resources of capitalism is the cause; and all will be corrected by the wisdom of the all-knowing apparatchik. Dislike Bill 23?  Wait till an all-powerful bureaucrat takes on the housing problem, the solution of which his life depends.

They are mystified by the sudden disappearance of opposition within the NDP: the Waffle Wing, the New Policy Initiative, the Leap, and the disallowance of a leadership candidate for the BC NFP, all of which were blotted out like so many party men once pictured next to Stalin.  All that’s missing in their work is a reference to capitalist roaders.

Nothing is more progressive than concern for climate change and the environment.  Chernobyl, the Aral Sea, and the smog of Shanghai are monuments and augers to the fate of the environment under the aegis of socialism.  Communist China is the world’s worst emitter of carbon dioxide, and have only plans for expansion of her coal-fired electoral plants.  Dissent isn’t long tolerated in socialist countries lest it destabilize the regime.

As Nietzsche once observed, what lie would you not tell, what crime would you not commit if you thought you were bringing Utopia here on earth?  It's even easier on the conscience when you don't even know.

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