Closed-Minded with a Capital "C"

As I was returning from a little trip to Stratford, Ontario, which requires a drive through more bible-thumping hamlets than you can count, I saw a sign out front of a church that said: "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out." This clever little ditty was no doubt a response to the continuing debate on same-sex marriage, yet I can't help but think that it might serve as the party slogan for the Canadian Alliance.

And perhaps their epitaph.

In another demonstration of ignorance wrapped in the cloak of defending freedom of speech, the Alliance voted en masse (didn't they used to be against parties voting as one bloc?) against Svend Robinson's private member's bill to add sexual orientation to the list of identifiable groups covered under hate crimes protection. Fearing that the RCMP will swoop down upon unsuspecting preachers and ministers from Prince George to St. John's like a biblical plague of mounted locusts, and still full of that heady feeling of power from forcing the Liberals to break open a few cases of antiperspirant with a squeaker of a vote against same-sex marriage, they demonstrated why they will never be a viable alternative to the federal Liberals.

Facing one of the most divisive issues that this country has had to deal with in some time, the Alliance has taken to fighting petty street battles against a motion concerned more with keeping people from bashing other people's heads in with baseball bats, than as some fear in a textbook example of slippery-slope hyperbole, to keep silly preachers from ranting over the eternal sanctity of marriage or the degenerate nature of the homosexual lifestyle.

It's still a free country. If you want to make a fool of yourself in public, go right ahead.

But as talk turns again to another Alliance/Conservative reconciliation, it should be clear to everyone that the Alliance is too rigid and too regional to effectively represent the opinions and beliefs of a country as geographically, ethnically and socially diverse as Canada.

This is a western party, mostly an Albertan party, a fact made all too clear some time ago by Canadian Alliance organizer John Mykytyshyn's fifteen minutes of dubious fame when he suggested that Maritimers were a bunch of lazy asses looking for handouts. And while the views of Albertans, the west, and the Christian Right have every right to be heard, the fact is there is many an opposing view, and the Alliance has shown a singular lack of talent in balancing them in a country that has historically put compromise first (well, perhaps after Quebec).

With the two largest voting blocs in the country terrified that Stephen Harper and company will have them back in Sunday School with a woman in every kitchen and homosexuals safely tucked back into the bedroom closet, the Liberals have far more to fear from a pack of uppity backbenchers than they do Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, because they're the only ones that can keep them from being re-elected.

If this rumoured "Unite the Right, version 6.0" is ever to be effective, there is going to have to be a fundamental change in the brain trust that's behind it. It will need the intelligence, experience, and insight to understand and balance the pot luck picnic that makes up the public consciousness in this country.

For the past ten years, the federal Liberals have needed only to pay lip service to that reality, handing out free flags, slashing budgets hither and yon, having their hand forced only by the odd Supreme Court ruling that compels an otherwise freewheeling government to saunter back to work.

It's time for conservative leaders to open their minds, give their heads a shake, and hope that whatever has been holding them back from forming a true alternative to the federal Liberals might come tumbling out and roll away to a place far from the mainstream of federal politics.

Because some of us would like to see the Liberals do more than sweat.