Politicians, cannot be trusted, which is why they rank low on the esteem scale when people are polled about various professions and occupations. But sometimes such distrust can also take on morbid or pathological forms.
The left-wing media and establishment got up on their high horse recently, as is their wont, after a story leaked about a same-sex couple who wanted to get a divorce but were denied. Then, a legal opinion, by a government lawyer, was circulated that stated that the couple couldn’t file for divorce because their marriage wasn’t recognized.
That was all left-wingers needed to hear to go into full attack mode: Twitter and other social media exploded with outraged posts to tell the world, “I told you so.” That “so” referred to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “hidden agenda”, the secret plan he’s been carrying around for decades to put an end to abortions, introduce the death penalty, remove all homosexuals from Canada, and to kill everyone’s first-born. (He also secretly drinks the blood of opposition MPs, collected via an intricate network of needles and tubes attached to the bottom of each seat on the opposition benches every time an MP sits down – that explains why they always look so pale and lifeless.)
That “hidden agenda”, of course, doesn’t exist. Never did, in fact. Harper is too astute a politician (rather than a genuine conservative) to play with fire like that. That agenda would certainly have wings in the U.S., where Christian fundamentalists and social conservatives think that their pet issues are more important than creating jobs and breathing life into the American economy again. But it won’t fly in Canada – because Canadian conservatism is vastly different from what passes for conservatism in America (just ask David Frum if you don’t believe me).
Protestations and assurances from Harper and others in his government that same-sex marriage is here to stay fell on deaf ears. None of the screamers even cared to research the issue, such as that any foreign couple marrying in Canada, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is barred from obtaining a divorce in Canada if the foreign jurisdiction in which such couple resides doesn’t recognize Canadian marriage licences, for whatever reason. In other words, the denial issued to the same-sex couple was a legal technicality, having to do with conflict of laws rules, and absolutely nothing to do with Harper or a “hidden agenda”.
However, because of the histrionics that followed the lawyer’s opinion, the Harper government has now been forced to violate the norms of private international law by announcing that the rules would be changed in order to recognize such marriages. This means that other countries may consider us a “rogue” and stop playing fair with Canada if another conflict of laws arises somewhere in the future.
The most shocking aspect of this sorry episode, which, thankfully, left a lot of egg on the faces of those who falsely accused the government of having a hidden agenda (journalists, opposition politicians, etc.), was that no matter what our government said, the mainstream media wouldn’t do their ethical job of reporting the facts and instead chose to print “Liar, liar, liar, pants on fire”-type headlines. Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald also chimed in with smart-ass, holier-than-thou, politically correct tweets. (Use the search function for this column to refresh your memory of what political correctness really is.)
This is the kind of lack of trust, or benefit of the doubt, that any government can very well do without. Particularly galling is the fact that left-wingers, by contrast, can tell the fattest lies on a daily basis, but those in the mainstream media won’t question them, nor will anyone accuse them of being dishonest.
We saw that in the past, for example, when the Chrétien government kept denying scandal after scandal, and most in the media simply lapped it up and didn’t do anything until it was too late.
But woe betide any conservative government. Conservatives can be as truthful as they come, but they won’t be believed, even when the truth is staring everyone in the face.
This is not to imply that conservatives never lie – far from it. But lefties have a statistically higher probability of being dishonest, because their entire ideology is built around the concepts of lying, cheating and stealing.
Harper was right when he mused, towards the end of the federal election campaign in December 2005, that a Conservative majority government would always be constrained severely by leftist public servants, judges and journalists.
Maybe the legal same-sex snafu will teach those “accusers without a cause” a valuable lesson about shouting “Fire!” in a crowded room.
Here’s hoping.