But the bigger question is why? Why does Harper, despite such an obviously outraged opposition and a majority government elected by 39.1% of those who voted, believe he has the right to push these huge changes through in such a vulgar partisan way? He and his cronies do it because they are religio-fascists, You can't change a religio-fascist zealot's mind, except by force as like all despots, they believe god is on their side.
A number of articles have been published lately that agree with my assessment like 'Understanding Harper's Evangelical Mission' and 'The Religion Factor in Canada's Environmental Politics'. Then there's Marci McDonald's book 'The Armageddon Factor' which attempts by way of short biographies to show the interlocking histories of the Canadian theo-cons and the connections to their richer more bombastic American brethren. The Armageddon Factor is an important book for all Canadians to read as soon as possible.
As Andrew Nikiforuk says, "Signs mount that Canada's government is beholden to a religious agenda averse to science and rational debate." Nikiforuk points out that the Prime Minister is known to belong to an Alberta fundamentalist Protestant church that espouses "evangelical climate skepticism". Nikiforuk contends that this church holds tenets which "not only explain startling developments in Canada but should raise the hair on the neck of every thinking citizen regardless of their faith, including unreconstructed Dominion theology (God calls on humans to subdue and rule creation)."
Here is the most dangerous delusion of the religio-fascists. The delusion that all of creation is "God" given to humans for their use. From it descends the central debate of the last many hundred years. It's the debate between unquestioning religious dogma and rational/intellectual logic. The evangelicals are simply the most recently outspoken advocates of unquestioning belief in the static structure of creation, of the last/past power of authority. Science, on the other hand, is a tool of the rational, questioning, never absolutely sure intellect of the present era.
Science is never sure, its thesis always subject to change when a new rational antithesis adds to it. Science is dynamic and changeable, Religion is static and unchangeable. The old order of religion still holds sway in the minds of many who are deluded by the hypnotic power of authority and comforted from their fears of death and the unknown. Our, those of us who question and think for ourselves, only hope is that somehow the old order will fail and the bright light of reason will prevail. That's what 'Blackout-Speakout is all about.
