What went wrong: another thought

Continuing the theme of what's wrong with the West and when it all started to go pear-shaped...

Some of you [most of you? ed.] may not know who Tony Clement is. He is an Ontario politician -- the pencil-necked, nerdy-looking guy with the big glasses you occasionally see in pictures when he's pulled his head out of Stephen Harpoon's bum long enough to be photographed.

Before taking his ambition to Ottawa, Tony boy was a member of Mike "Slasher" Harris's Progressive Conservative* government, which devastated Ontario in the 90s. In John Ibbitson's book on the Harris years, Promised Land, Clement said this about what made him a conservative:

"What I saw...was the failure of the American democractic impulses. Around us was the fall of Vietnam, the emasculation of American power, Watergate.... What I remember was the frontal assault on American power, and the encroachment by communism all over the world.

"And in Canada, there were the failed experiements of Pierre Trudeau. His economic experiments were a shambles, his anti-Americanism wasn't getting us anywhere, the increasing role of the state in all aspects of our lives was, in my view, creating more problems than it was solving." [My emphasis.]

Unfortunately, Tony was then and is still part of the problem, not part of the solution. But the sentiment of the last sentence is right on the money. Tea party, anyone?

* Note to American and other readers not familiar with Canadian politics: There really is a party with the oxymoronic name of Progressive Conservative. Federally it was subsumed by Harper's Conservative Party of Canada, who like to think of themselves as neo-cons, but it still exists in Ontario, where it wanders in the wilderness under the "leadership" not of a Tony but a Timmy...and I don't mean Tim Horton!