Title is optional, so are credentials
Anti-intellectualism has been a growing phenomenon over the past few years/elections. It has always had its place in fringe right-wing politics, with the opposite, a sense of white-pillar elitism housed far on the left. I’ve found that this was always more present in American politics than in Canada but recently we’ve been surfing the same wave. That said, there has never been a leader of Canada elected that didn’t have an advanced degree, our least educated PM is the current and he holds a MA in Economics. One of the attacks against Iggnatief is that he is out of touch with the real world, he doesn’t have that dirt-under-his-nails life experience that turns one into a man of the people. It is my humble view that if one is in charge of running the nation, he should be an expert in International Affairs, economics, history, the constitution, any or all of the above. Why then was this highly skilled professional destroyed because of it? People are beginning to believe that rhetoric is a suitable substitute for ideas. And that a life of experience, though I would agree is invaluable, is suitable to become a politician. The Conservative Party of Canada would have you believe that all the statistics on crime are, in fact (pun intended), wrong. The theory they are pitching is that there is some dark corner of the world that is to mysterious to be scaled or measured by statistics. This is why we must start a new war on crime and drugs in this country. It is just a first step and Canadians are being slowly desensitized to the taste of baseless and irrational ideas. I go back to my favorite example of what not to become, American politics. I have a question that isn’t meant to be dripping with malice, but the fact that it seems that way is part of the problem. For reasonable (read: rational) people that support the Republican party, is it disheartening that they appear to be trying to make “dumb as shit” synonymous with “true American”. Look closely at the Candidates. They just don’t know enough to actually run the most powerful country in the world. Michelle and Sarah put together probably couldn’t write a solid piece of economic policy. Cain doesn’t know what Libya is. And people just think that type of thing is okay because these candidates are real Americans. As of yet, there is no strong definition of Canadian values, however, Harper is trying to change that with his Queening of the lands and bolstering of military. I just hope that the Canada he tries to define isn’t one that values down-home cooking and arena parents more than those that have made it their lives work to study policy and build a country based on fact and evidence.
