From The Golden Pen Of Lorrie Goldstein

February 15, 2007
Liberals are so predictable
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN

More than a decade ago, a brilliant American conservative thinker predicted exactly how the Liberal Party of Canada would handle the issue of global warming and the Kyoto accord.

Thomas Sowell in his book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, was not addressing those topics specifically, but rather explaining how liberal elites -- especially politicians -- push issues onto the front burner of public discourse and keep them there, essentially through intellectual fraud.

Here is the process Sowell describes by which the liberal "anointed" -- who typically believe they alone possess the wisdom to govern -- constantly seek to impose their views on society.

Judge for yourself whether Sowell's four-step process accurately reflects how the Liberals have handled this issue.

Stage 1: The anointed declare "the crisis" in which, Sowell observes, "some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a 'crisis' even though all human situations have negative aspects ..."

Stage 2: "The solution" is proposed in which "policies to end the 'crisis' are advocated by the anointed" who dismiss claims by critics that their proposals won't work or may even make things worse as "absurd and 'simplistic,' if not dishonest."

Stage 3: "The results" reveal "the solution" chosen by the anointed either didn't work, or made things worse.

Stage 4: The anointed give "the response" to their critics, in which they dismiss them for being "simplistic" and for "ignoring the 'complexities' involved as 'many factors' went into determining the outcome."

Now consider how the issue of man-made global warming played out in Canada under the Liberals.

The then-Liberal government of Jean Chretien declared global warming "the crisis" (Stage 1) out of the blue, and then proclaimed Kyoto "the solution" (Stage 2). Thus, it signed Kyoto in 1998 and ratified it in 2002, but did nothing to implement it before the Liberals were thrown out of office in early 2006.

Today, we know "the results" (Stage 3) of this Liberal record of inaction.

By the time they lost power, man-made greenhouse gas emissions in Canada had risen by almost twice the rate of the U.S. -- which refused to ratify Kyoto -- and the Liberals were almost 35% behind their Kyoto target of cutting emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012.

And what was "the response" of the Liberals to their own failure on this issue?

Remember, if Sowell's four-stage predictive process of how "the anointed" operate is correct, "the response" of the Liberals (Stage 4) will be to dismiss their critics as "simplistic," charge them with ignoring the "complexities" of the situation and stress that "'many factors' went into determining the outcome."

Fortunately, we already know how the Liberals -- in the person of new leader and former environment minister Stephane Dion -- respond to their critics on this issue, even when the criticism comes from fellow Liberals.

When Michael Ignatieff (now deputy Liberal leader) complained to Dion during a leadership debate last year that "we didn't get it done," meaning the Liberals failed to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions as they had promised under Kyoto, Dion's petulant reply was: "This is unfair ... This is unfair. You don't know what you speak about! Do you think it's easy to make priorities?"

Game, set and match to Sowell.