Harper spot on

Re: The Customer is always right — the future is populist. Stephen Harper book excerpt, Oct. 6

The excerpt included in Saturday’s newspaper is much needed and I hope will be widely read.

I never voted for Mr. Harper or his party, and found many things about his government highly repugnant (getting tough on crime by closing prison farms, really?)

His analysis in this case is dead on. Good that he spoke out.

He came up a bit short for me on the next part of the analysis (disclosure, I only read the article, not the book).

The millions of Americans that voted for Trump have been discarded in the trash heap of less health care, minuscule investment in anything that might make people’s lives better (infrastructure, housing, taxes). Oh yes, and taxes. The greed of the five per cent is shocking, but not surprising.

America has a much tougher row to hoe now that populism is here.

Sarah Archer, Ottawa and Washington DC.

The tensions between those who live somewhere and those who live anywhere that Mr. Harper describes cannot be resolved unless we also address the challenges posed by those who live nowhere.

They are the ones drowning by the thousands in the Mediterranean, dying in rickety cargo boats and shipping containers, and festering in detention centres after illegally crossing borders to escape hell in their home countries.

Their migrations disrupt the local cultural and economic habits of the Somewheres and confound the Anywheres, who have no solutions. The Nowheres widen the chasm between Anywheres and Somewheres, because the Somewheres fear them and stoke nationalist sentiments, while the Anywheres feel guilty about them and turn to global institutions for answers.

Philip Green, Mississauga Ont.