Angry in the Great White North

The Globe and Mail is reporting that the NDP has implemented a scheme to avoid embarrassments like the David Oliver and Irene Mathyssen affairs:

Having falsely accused a Liberal of bribery and a Conservative of peeking at porn in Parliament, New Democrats now have checks in place to reduce the chance of any embarrassing repeat, Leader Jack Layton says.

In an interview, Mr. Layton played down the two incidents, saying mistakes are to be expected in politics.

"If a bad day is a day when you apologize for a couple of mistakes over a period of a couple of years, then we'll accept it as part of life," he said.

The NDP caucus and the party's campaign team have been urged to take extra steps of due diligence before making any allegations in the future, he said.

Honestly, I don't know how the NDP can do this.  It's not a matter of due diligence.  It's a change in the way of thinking.

It comes down to a truism that I've quoted before:

Conservatives think liberals are wrong.
Liberals think conservatives are evil.

It is much easier for a conservative to dispassionately check for the accuracy in an allegation because at the heart of it, it is a matter of facts.  It requires the humility to accept that few people ever have all the facts, the wisdom to know that it is the responsibility of the party making the allegation to seek out those facts, and the generosity to accord to your political foes the trust that they will share the facts honestly and openly, if only you take the time to ask. 

A liberal, on the other hand, doesn't need facts to tell her that a conservative is a bad person.  Facts can often just get in the way.  When Irene Mathyssen discussed with her caucus the matter of what she thought she saw on Conservative MP James Moore's computer, clearly no senior NDP MP insisted that James Moore or government house leader Peter Van Loan or anyone else be approached first to discuss the matter and confirm the facts.  Mathyssen was certain of what she spied from 30 feet away, and I would guess that none of her colleagues were eager to hurt her feelings by challenging her to confirm the facts.

There was no sign in the NDP caucus of the humility that would have told them they might have been wrong, the wisdom to know that it was up to them to make an effort to determine if they were wrong, and the generosity to trust the Conservatives to help the NDP right that wrong in good faith.

But then that's not the way liberals think.  James Moore is a conservative and a man.  Of course he objectifies women in the most crass way possible.  That's what bad people (a group to which all conservative men belong) do. 

It really strikes at the heart of liberal socialism versus conservative individualism.  Jack Layton and the NDP insist that it is the role of government to tax the citizenry heavily in order to fund programs that will dole out services as the government sees fit to people who can't take care of themselves.  Stephen Harper and the Conservatives believe that it is the role of the individual to be responsible for his or her own life, and to tax as little as possible to make sure the individual can meet those responsibilities.

For Jack Layton and the NDP to be more diligent before making accusations like the one Irene Mathyssen made would require assuming a priori that James Moore is a responsible adult and that he can be trusted to take care of himself and make the right choices.  Any suggestion otherwise would have to meet a high standard of proof.   Why? 

Because the individual is trusted to be right in all things until proven otherwise.  Because it is not the place of self-labelled progressive people to pass judgment on individuals and to manipulate their behaviour.  

I don't know that members of the NDP are wired to think that way.  More than that, I pity the poor NDP staffer charged with practising this due diligence.  You only have to spend a few moments on rabble.ca to get a sense of the contempt that borders on hatred these people feel for conservatives. 

I've never noted anything particularly 'enigmatic' about Stephen Harper. The plastic surface is supposed to hide the malignancy within, but that plastic is rather transparent.

And 'Harper the Canadian nationalist' has never, ever been in evidence. Harper the traitorous snivelling supplicant is easily observed, though.

Malignancy?  Traitorous?

Conservatives typically treat liberals with something more like bemusement, wondering at how any rational person could hold these political, social, and economic opinions, and trying to craft counter-arguments to use in debates.  Liberals act like they've been soiled for having to share the same sunlight and the same air with an anthropomorphic disease that is a conservative.

That NDP staffer whose job it is now to stop someone like Irene Mathyssen, who is progressive and liberal and therefore good, and argue on behalf of someone like James Moore, who is traditionally-minded and conservative and therefore evil, in an attempt to make sure that any allegations are well and truly substantiated is not going to be a popular person in the party.

To any right-minded NDP member, that person is literally the devil's advocate.

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