Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Conservatives to Canadians on e-snooping: "Stand with us or with the child pornographers"



After reading about it in The Globe & Mail 'Stand with us or with the child pornographers', I wrote the following to my MP:

The long-form census was intrusive into the privacy of Canadians, but cyber snooping is A-OK. Justification: "Stand with us or with the child pornographers".

Conservatives are often accused of not being terribly bright, binary thinkers: "take it or leave it" "my way or the highway" "like it or lump it" "Stand with us or with the child pornographers".

I don't subscribe to such stereotypes because they divert from the real conversation -- which centers on the dearth of integrity among most politicians, regardless of party affiliation or IQ.

But it doesn't get much more Neanderthal than "Stand with us or with the child pornographers".

In the United States, "neo-conservatives" sold a similar shameful line to its populace, to sell out their freedoms for security with the PATRIOT Acts I and II. It was a dismal bargain that even the revered Benjamin Franklin repudiated more than two hundred years ago: "Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither."

I am an Internet power-user and I abhor even the notion of child pornography. Child pornographers should be relegated to the 7th ring of Hell. In a more earthly sense, Canadian judges should start handing out commensurate sentences to these monsters for the damage they wreak upon the lives of the most innocent among us. I don't support capital punishment, but I could damn near do so in the case of child pornographers. At the very least, they should be jailed indefinitely, shamed, shunned and left to rot in their abundant inner filth.

I feel nearly the same disgust for sanctimonious politicians who undermine the very foundations of my country with fascist proposals that erode Canadian freedoms that will not provide us with one iota more security.

Sanctimonious, self-righteous ideologues who are essentially saying, "We [the ordained conservatives of superior moral fibre] want to save you from yourselves."

Well, I do not side with child pornographers. And I most heartily do not side with small-minded, fear-mongering, panty-sniffing, righteously indignant hypocrites, such as the Conservative Party of Canada.

No, I'm in this dwindling minority in Canada -- those who abide by facts, reason, evidence and dialogue, all of which are anathema to conservatives, who hide the price tags of their pet prison and jet fighter projects. Who disregard crime statistics when crowing for more prisons. Who disregard the world-renowned Statistics Canada data. Who will not allow Canadian scientists to speak freely about the research they conduct (particularly into global warming) because, clearly, their findings don't fit the conservative agenda.

And then you propose to save me from myself? To take away my freedoms in exchange for "security"? That Public Safety Minister Vic Toews would accuse me and all Canadians that if we don't side with your fascist desire to spy on us, that we are siding with the lowest scum in society?

This is just more evidence -- which I do not need -- that conservatism is an untenable ideology, that conservatives are unfit to govern and that the intellectual dishonesty to which your party stoops is, frankly, gag-inducing.

But the conservatives will ram this legislation through, no doubt. Our other ineffectual political parties will wring their hands, consoled by the pensions they will one day undeservedly enjoy.

I do not side with child pornographers, and I do not side with small-minded fear mongers.

I can't wait to see where Stephen Harper decides to open his own Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

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