Angry in the Great White North

I'm reposting a column I wrote back in November 2004 for my old blog. The Liberals were still in power, and though they were in a minority situation, no one had any idea that it would all come crashing down. It was just as likely that they would return with a majority in the next election.

Nationalized daycare was on the horizon, with the Liberals spinning the issue as a helping hand, instead of what we now know it to be thanks to Scott Reid and the "beer and popcorn" remark -- an attempt to usurp the role of parents, and in particular mothers, in raising children.

Scott Reid, John Duffy, Ken Dryden, and the rest of the nationalized daycare brigade are not newcomers on the scene. In fact, the goal of eliminating mothers has a long and proud history with liberal social engineers.

[Originally posted on November 17, 2004]

My good friend smileyme has a thread concerning taxation. In her post, she has a great line:

Why do we have so many taxes? Because liberals want to tax EVERYTHING.

Why do we have so many taxes? Because liberals want to DO everything.

You might just be surprised at what they want to do.

You would think that having children and raising them would be one of the inviolable domains that liberals would leave alone (short of interventions to stop child abusers, for example). Not bloody likely. Liberals would prefer to tax you, and use the money to do it for you, because to do it for you is doing you, your kids, and society a favour.

Don't believe me? Consider this quote from The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedman (the handbook of the feminist movement):

They [mothers] were reduced to childlike preoccupation with food, elimination, the satisfaction of primitive bodily needs; they had no privacy, and no stimulation from the outside world. But above all, they were forced to spend their days in work which produced great fatigue...required no mental concentration, gave no hope of advancement or recognition, was sometimes senseless, and was controlled by the needs of others...(306)

If you were a woman and a liberal, and you believed this nasty screed against motherhood, wouldn't you prefer to have some else deal with raising the kids? Sure you would. But to pay for a nanny is expensive -- overtime, cutting back on the luxuries, etc.

No wait a minute, self-sacrifice is how a self-empowered conservative pays for things. You're a liberal -- you'll just impose taxes on everybody, then take the money to set up a national daycare system, and throw in your kids for free (well, you'll pay more taxes too, but less than if you had to pay for your own nanny, and anyway, it's the principle of the thing).

If you look hard enough, you can even find justification for this! You're not being cheap and sponging off others -- the government run daycare is actually good for your kids and for society. The Swedish social democrats Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, architects of Sweden's family policy (including universal, government-run daycare) had this to say about parents who wanted to raise their own children:

The little modern family is almost...pathological.

The old ideals must die out with the generations which supported them.

False individualistic desire by parents for the 'freedom' to raise their own children had an unhealthy origin...much of the tiresome pathos which defends 'individual freedom' and 'responsibility for one's own family,' is based on a sadistic disposition to extend this 'freedom' to an unbound and uncontrolled right to dominate others.

Imagine the conceit of thinking that you know what is best for your kids. Leave it the professionals. Bureaucrats who learned in psychology courses what kids need. People who are willing to take on the job of making sure your children are raised to be good little citizens with the right attitudes and priorities. Not only are you getting "free" daycare, you are contributing to the betterment of society, not like those "pathological" and "sadistic" conservatives and their families, an ideal that "must die out".

And die out it will, as the increased taxes make it harder and harder to afford to have children in the first place. So beware of raised taxes. It's not just money. It's the attitude behind it -- an attitude that might be darker than you ever imagined.

By the way, national daycare was a promise made in the last general election in Canada, by the party that ultimately won the election. The name of the party: The Liberal Party of Canada.

Ah, heck!

[end of post]

Of course, we've dodged that bullet. The Conservatives won on January 23, 2006. They have made it clear that the nationalized daycare program will die at the first opportunity -- after the first year of funding the contract with the provinces can be cancelled. The Conservatives have already publicly committed to doing just that.

Instead, those pathological and sadistic control freaks we know as mom and dad will be getting money in their pockets to use as they see fit.

Oh, the horror.