Anyone who visits my apartment will tell you I have accumulated stacks of newspaper clippings over the last few years, 90% of which contain articles I find utterly devoid of any degree of intellectual integrity. As the writers of said articles are hardly willing to admit they are motivated by Ideological Bias rather than any genuine concern for the Truth, indeed are most likely unaware of that fact, they have contributed to a Culture rife with grossly simplistic valuations which much of the unthinking public accepts without question. The following is but one of literally hundreds I might cite as an example.
On Aug. 26, Canada’s Globe and Mail published an extremely long opinion piece by one John Rapley, a university professor whose field of expertise is the world’s economy, both past and present. Focusing on the prosperity achieved by the nations of the West and, more specifically, Canada, over the last several centuries, the article is a lexicon of Neo-Marxist pejoratives: i.e. imperialist, colonialist, privileged, exploitative, etc., etc.. At no point does it grant that the seemingly inordinate Wealth of the West may be the result of the demonstrable superiority of its approach to the existential challenges of the Real World, a superiority which was Self-Evident in the Civilization of the Ancient Greeks 2500 years ago, a civilization which actively sought to define what is both True and Good in every aspect of the Human experience, assuming Intelligence and Reason to be essential to that endeavor.
Yes, Western Civilization, given the vicissitudes of history and the obvious imperfection of the species, has not always honored that heritage. But the European Enlightenment reestablished the reign of Reason which in turn led to the unleashing of Human Ingenuity and Freedom within a Democratic/ Free Enterprise system. Implicit in Capitalism is a belief in the efficacy of Mind as the fundamental vehicle to genuine human progress, both material and otherwise. “Conservatives” who endorse Capitalism are hardly so naive as to think those who accumulate massive amounts of wealth may not be prone to abusing the powers that come along with it. Hence their commitment to the Rule of Law! But the bizarre if not insane perspective of the Left sees what traditional Humanists would laud as Man’s natural Right to improve his plight on this planet, as inherently evil, inherently oppressive, given that it inevitably leads to socio-economic disparities between peoples who have achieved and those who have not. Human intelligence, merit and achievement are never mentioned in Rapley’s ideological rant. The West, including Canada, came to dominate much of the rest of the world simply because it is evil.
But all that is changing, Rapley is glad to report. As the “third world” becomes increasingly more competitive, the regime of Western Privilege is clearly in decline. This, he suggests, is appalling to our Capitalists, the “sluggishness” of Canada’s economy, for example, being a source of great distress. But what he does not mention is that the architects of the Free Enterprise system which he so despises took it for granted it would enhance the lives not only of its entrepreneurs, but of the millions who were blessed with both its material benefits and the example of its efficiency. Of course when Ronald Regan invoked the principle of “trickle down economics,” he was mercilessly mocked by the Left. But it is an inarguable fact that various countries formerly deemed Third-World are now competing with the Capitalist West precisely because of the benefits they accrued, material and otherwise, from their exposure to it. This is but to say that Ideologues such as Rapley habitually tell only half the truth about History, that half consistent with their fanatical Egalitarianism.
Nothing better illustrates their highly selective approach to the Truth than the contemporary demonization of Canada’s Residential School System as a brazen attempt by our racist forefathers to commit “cultural genocide,” a term, by the way, devoid of semantic logic. Sir John A. McDonald, we are asked to believe, was in no way interested in improving the socio-economic prospects of Canada’s Indigenous by introducing them to the realities of the modern world. He was simply trying to destroy their culture. Such is the outrageously biased approach to History endorsed by the contemporary Left, the approach evident throughout Rapley’s article.
Having attributed Canada’s floundering economy to the decline of its “privileged” position in the world, Rapley typically fails to mention the impact of the never-ending assault on the Business community conducted by “progressive” politicians throughout the West. In order to get its oil to our Maritime provinces, for example, Alberta must now transport it to the West coast where it will be shipped thousands of kilometers down the Pacific and up the Atlantic, this, absurdly, because the pipelines designed to simply carry it eastward pose a greater threat to the environment than possible disasters at sea. Even the trans-mountain pipeline designed to get that oil to the West coast was delayed by a government enquiry in which those clearly hostile to such projects were allowed to vent their venom for years. As I write, coincidentally, I have learned that the “no more pipelines” legislation recently put forth by the Trudeau government has just been judged unconstitutional by our Supreme Court. I celebrate this decision not because I favor a wanton disregard for the Environment, but because our abandonment of fossil fuels must be conducted rationally, pragmatically, in a way that does not jeopardize the well being of every person in this country.
Trudeau, whose status is clearly the result of the “privileges” granted by his father’s name rather than any accomplishments of his own, is nevertheless fully committed to the Leftist notion that the wealthy are somehow always the benefactors of privilege and greed. Hence his 2015 CBC interview in which he declared “a large percentage” of Canada’s small businesses were merely scams through which the wealthy sought to avoid paying their proper amount of taxes. In addition to the Conservatives, even the Leftist NDP expressed outrage that our P.M. would so stigmatize those hundreds of thousands of Canadians who had put all their energy and savings into trying to procure a better life for their families. Yet his opinion, ironically, was consistent with the bias of the Neo-Marxist Left, which habitually uses both the Environment and its superficial definition of Social Justice as excuses to tax and otherwise plunder the earnings of our so-called “privileged” entrepreneurial classes.
Being of their mindset, Rapley makes it clear that he feels the resentment felt by many Western Capitalists regarding their diminishing profits is in fact born of the level playing field upon which they are now forced to vie with their international competitors. The greedy bastards simply don’t believe in fair play! At no point, of course, does he mention that their anger might be with their very own “progressive” governments which by and large share the highly contentious belief that the Freedoms engendered in Capitalism are inherently Evil, indeed that the fact of Human Poverty is a moral abomination having nothing to do with the character and efforts of those so afflicted.
My point is simply that Rapley’s article is rooted in a superficial Ideological Bias and in no way qualifies as an Objective Evaluation of the world’s socio/economic history. Sadly, it is a bias that is utterly transforming our values, making aspects of Western Civilization formerly deemed amazing, now mere examples of its tendency to oppress. Among my stacks of newspaper clippings, I have several articles suggesting William Shakespeare, one of the most brilliant literary artists of all time, be removed from our educational curricula inasmuch as he failed to see the world from a Mindless Postmodern perspective, a perspective from which Merit, literary or otherwise, no longer seems to matter. Truly Insane!