Don't you love the Tough Love crowd?

It's hard to abide the people without the sense to see lightning and hear thunder

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  Nothing gets my dander in a dither faster than reading some piece of trash in the Toronto Sun. I know, I know - what do you expect from the official organ of the hard right and the Fraser Institute. But I simply don't take my own advice about getting riled over mindless conservatism. I once told a good friend, and he always quotes me back on it, that you can't argue with an archconservative. It is better to listen and simply detour around. I should listen to my own advice. Don't get into a pissing match with a neo-con.
  What a bunch of doo-doo! Who am I kidding? You need only read in Straight Goods about corporations avoiding paying taxes to see red, or pink. You have only to look at the rampant testosterone that goes for patriotism in America where making war makes a politician popular and damns all critics to the fringe.
  So like any self-righteous (I admit it) indignant Social Democrat, I cannot abide the people without the sense to see lightning and hear thunder.
  Reading, in of all places, the Toronto Sun, the story of a rant by Peter MacKay, one of those Alliance wolves in Tory sheep's clothing infuriated me. The crusading MP is hot on the tail of those bleeding hearts that run our prison system. First there was all that rubbish about parole quotas. Now again comes the Sun's favourite epithet: "Club Fed", prisons of the so-called: "cottage" type where inmates have access to some of the normal pleasures of life. The hard right insists that we should punish more. They proclaim that we allow sex perverts and killers to while away their prison hours playing golf and polo.
  Do I want to attack? You bet I do. But I restrain myself long enough to speak for the kind of prison reform that works: making prison life livable, even making it possible for under-educated illiterates to find their place in the real world when inevitably, they will be released. Giving them some creature comforts keeps them controlled. Ask any guard which he would rather have to watch - a caged animal or a reasonably contented prisoner. Besides, the single fact that eludes the Club Fed fanatics is that the purpose of prison is to remove evildoers from society. Regardless of how well you treat them there is the inevitable and immutable truth: they are locked up! The door goes "clang" behind them every night. Deprival of freedom is the most potent punishment. It does not have to be supplanted with a bread-and-water regimen.
  So I am up to my armpits in political and social outrage. The same people who want every convict to do "hard time" (they call it Tough Love) also want tax cuts, less government, teachers who work 12 months of the year, a health system that they label as "crumbling" so they can proceed with their agenda of private insurance. Why are they so all-fired determined in Alberta and B.C., and maybe in Ontario, to raise insurance premiums? Simple. Because a little extra to be paid by the affluent is far better than having those poor devils have to pony up more taxes. Heaven forefend!
  So the right soldiers on, Jim Flaherty wants to make sleeping on the street illegal. President Bush goes to a poor neighborhood in Washington and makes a speech about single mothers getting married and money to teach sexual abstinence and promises to raise the bar on welfare by making 70% (the number is now 50) of welfare recipients work for their welfare. As he stresses the dignity of work and tough love and other apcray he says nothing about altering the social conditions that create illiteracy and dependency. The audience, according to press reports, "reacted coolly." The speech was for his religious right supporters anyway. Like Stock Day and Stephen Harper duking it out on former B.C. Social Credit Cabinet Minister Rafe Mair's show over which one is the best Christian.
  Enough? Not quite. I read a little back page piece that tells me the Scientific American took a poll and 54% of Americans believe that life on Earth was created 10,000 years ago!
  Go George! Go Stock. Go Steven!

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