Stephen Harper, neither psycho nor insane

Still one must wonder what is sane about Mr Harper's world? There is little logically sound about his general reasoning. True enough, if one adopts any variety of Harper's well understood as erroneous premises, one may reach the same ridiculous conclusions.

Recall the revealing snipe Stephen Harper made early in his political career while delivering a controversial speech to a rightwing American think tank, the Counsel for National Policy:

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

So how widely dis-educated is Stephen Harper when it takes so little to get up to speed with the fundamental error of that view? From an on-line encyclopedia:

...Ideas such as the culture of poverty first promulgated by Oscar Lewis blamed poor people for perpetuating their condition through inappropriate values and “weak ego structures.” ... Blaming the victims (stigmatized and disadvantaged groups such as the poor) was shown to not only hide the effects of power and privilege but also to stifle recognition of a need to address social problems through sociopolitical change. ... Yet these explanations, which blamed specific populations for social pathology, merely replaced racial determinism with cultural determinism. (emphasis added)

Social Pathology LINK


This is just one of many available examples of dumb positions held by Harper. Positions which, when examined, help anchor him to his ideological faiths on various fronts -- theological, scientific, economic, political, etc.

Stephen Harper is neither a thinker nor an educated man. He is well-schooled in the myths, old and new, which perpetuate the false hierarchies of select men over all others.

In short, Harper's mind has been "instructed with learned ignorance, and furnished with unlearned wisdom" (as coined by Bertrand Russell). And for our own democratic safety, we must steer clear of that lot.