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The Delusions of David Frum’s Mind

August 20, 2015

The Delusions of David Frum’s Mind

Stephen Harper make you worried and angry? Chill, says Canada’s prodigal Republican son.

David Frum is not here anymore. That’s apparent from the defence of Stephen Harper he published in The Atlantic yesterday. It’s full of spin and falsehoods evident to those who actually live in Canada and are paying attention.

Born to a famous Canadian family, Frum leftlong ago to toil in the fertile vineyards of right-wing America, landing a White House job selling George W. Bush’s war, and then permanent pundit status.

Now, like an ex-pat come home on vacation but oblivious to all the torn-down landmarks, he argues Canadians have no right to be angry at what Harper has done to their democracy.

Our PM, he writes, is just a misunderstood “cerebral” who runs “a tight ship.”

This in supposed rebuttal to Stephen Marche’s barnburner of a Harper indictment, “The Closing of the Canadian Mind,” last week by the New York Times. Nothing to see here, Frum tells his largely American readers, move along. But his tries at puncturing Marche’s arguments fail either through willful or lazy ignorance.

First he banks on his readers not having read Marche’s piece, nor lived through nine years of Harper rule.

 

“So what did Stephen Harper actuallydo?” asks the supposedly flummoxed Frum. “How precisely did the Canadian prime minister silence debate, suppress information, and squelch democracy?”

He implies Marche lacks facts, when in fact Marche musters many facts, including the muzzling of scientists, killing of the long-form census, defunding of Arctic research, the robocalls scandal, and more. Frum makes believe none of this is in the piece, nor, one presumes, retrievable via Google. “You’re just supposed to know,” whines the policy wonk. (Okay, let’s help him then, with this piece Tyee list of 70 Harper abuses.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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