Politics 101: Governments should always encourage self-reliance

I have been watching and listening to the complaining from all sides of the political spectrum about all of our current governments. I mean, the federal Liberals, the Alberta NDP and even our mostly re-elected municipal council. What do they all have in common? They are all centre left to left on the political spectrum. Knowing this, we can expect certain things from these governments.

They will engage in identity politics. That means that they will single out identifiable minority groups for special treatment. It may be by race, sexual orientation, age, ability or any other unique features of these groups. They will expound a narrative of inclusion, acceptance and caring for the members of these groups claiming to be insuring the equality of all. The reality is that they are grooming these people to be dependent on government and ensuring their support in the next election. Ironically, they claim this is ensuring equality when it if fact they promote exceptionalism. Our goal should always be to encourage self-reliance and equality between and among all groups. Conservatives who try to treat everyone equally are labelled all manner of things while trying to expose the hypocrisy.

All of the governments are addicted to O-P-M (other peoples’ money). They all have highly overstaffed and overpaid bureaucracies which helps lead to massive deficits and debt. All three have overspent, trying to make the voters happy and provide government-run services that taxpayers cannot afford or do not need. The high staff levels and high pay also helps to ensure their re-election by the public service and their unions. The highly paid folks in government will do just fine while the rest slide financially backward, paying off massive government debt with their ever increasing taxes.

There is a joke that goes around that states that if a Conservative does not like guns, he will not buy one but if a Liberal does not like guns, he will see that no one can buy one. They like to control our lives as evidenced by the recent Bill 24. They will try to tell us what to eat, how to heat our homes and what kind of car to drive while requiring us to pay taxes on our exhaled air. You see, we are too uneducated and unintelligent to run our own lives or spend our own money wisely. We need the counsel of our government to ensure their followers can get high enough on legal pot to continue to vote these people into office.

We elect government that will do everything for us and rarely hold us to account. They promote weak laws and judges in the hope that a hug will turn a thug into a responsible person. It won’t. ISIS fighters return to Canada after defeat overseas and we welcome them back with open arms, putting Canadians at risk. We should be stripping them of all their rights and citizenship for their treasonous acts. We permit endless streams of migrants into our country with little or no screening or selection process. Some of these people come with the sole purpose of disrupting or exploiting our way of life, not participating in it. If three jelly beans in a bowl of 1,000 contained a deadly poison, how many would you eat? The goal of open borders and mass immigration is not to save the world but to ensure a steady supply of voters beholding to the left wing governments.

For more than 20 years, the world has been attempting to deal with rogue nations with bribery and diplomacy. The result being that there has been an increase of nations with nuclear capability that threaten the world. Appeasing the bully and denying facts is not how you win. You win by standing up to them.

The hidden and unspoken goal of the leftist parties is to keep people down and dependent on government. Government is inefficient and always does a poor job of running anything. They should simply ensure a healthy climate for business and then regulate what the private sector does and keep it honest. The goal of the right is to ensure people have the freedom to prosper through their own efforts. The left hates the word “profit” because it shows that there is independence in the market and the working people are making the money.

Personally, I much prefer the word “profit” to the word “waste” which is what occurs when the government tries to run it all.

Paul McLennan moved to Alberta more than 20 years ago as a member of the RCMP. He remained in Alberta after retirement in 2002, taught driving part time and settled in Medicine Hat in 2011.