halfacanuck

So the same sex marriage issue is done. And yet some people still don't seem to get what Stephen Harper is about.

The problem is that people insist on believing they can get any sort of ideological or moral focus on a politician by analyzing what he or she says. But actions always speak louder than words:

• Stephen Harper was a founding member of the Reform Party of Canada, then left the party when he decided it was drifting too far towards social conservatism from fiscal conservatism;
• He was president of the National Citizens Coalition, another libertarian-leaning conservative organization; and
• He has his entire life aligned himself more or less completely consistently with libertarian, meritocratic, pro-choice (in the broadest sense of the term), pro-democracy, anti-nanny-state policies.

My take on all this is that he's finally succeeded where many others have failed in closing the same-sex marriage issue for good, through some very canny political maneuvering (in one fell swoop he kept a campaign promise, appeased without cost the more extreme right wing of his party, and still brought about the most democratic – and thus, in his eyes, the right – outcome for the nation).

He did the same thing with the issue of Quebec separatism: by ensuring the passing of a motion that Quebec should be regarded as "a nation within Canada," he undermined the separatist cause substantially while lending dubious legislative but substantial philosophical and psychological weight to the federalist-favoring status quo. And yet his critics howl and sweat and miss the point entirely.

Harper is a very smart man, and has proved even in his short tenure as prime minister an uncanny ability to use people against themselves to further his own ideals. That could be a good or bad thing, depending on your politics. But I think if you take five minutes to read the agenda of the National Citizens Coalition (the libertarian-conservative think-tank of which he was president), if you notice how resoundingly absent are issues of same-sex marriage, of abortion, of religion, of immigration, of all the issues that have divided us more thoroughly than any other, then you may feel at least a little less fretful about life in Harper's Canada.

But you know the big reason I like the guy? It's because he's so much like me it's spooky.