While it has been
a subject for exuberant mockery among some liberal Democrats,
I was appalled, this week, to learn that Martha-Ann Alito, wife
of the U.S. Supreme Court nominee, was driven in tears from his
Senate confirmation hearing. She had been listening to senators
such as Ted Kennedy accuse her husband of concealing the most
ghastly and extraordinary views -- of being a closet racial and
misogynist bigot -- on the basis of some ridiculously fluffy guilt-by-association.
When a Republican senator was reduced to clarifying that Sam Alito
was not a bigot, Mrs Alito could take no more. She had soon composed
herself, however, and returned to sit by her husband’s side.
Now, Ted Kennedy is
a special case -- a man whose own sense of decency was established
when he left a young woman to drown, after driving his car off
a dike bridge at Chappaquiddick, and spent the rest of a long
night with his cronies, trying to figure how to spin it with the
police and the press, rather than reporting what had happened.
We discover what a man is, when we see how he acts in desperation.
It is amazing to me that a man like Mr Kennedy could continue
to be elected to public office -- as a dog-catcher, let alone
as a Senator -- but it would seem the electors of the State of
Massachusetts present another special case.
Senator Kennedy does
not make me angry, he makes me sick. I am probably made of sterner
stuff than Mrs Alito -- I am a boy, after all. But it is worth
imagining what it must be like, for the entire Alito family, to
face the sort of allegations made by such a man. As Senator Graham
later explained, after apologizing on behalf of the Senate committee
to Judge Alito and his family for what they were being put through
-- you must also wonder what calibre of nominee will expose himself
to this kind of questioning in the future.
I think of Mrs Alito
-- of the many Mrs Alitos -- as I look at the vicious and deceitful
Liberal Party attack ads now being aired on Canadian television.
They go lower than anything previously seen in Canadian politics.
Much lower. Each one (including the anti-military one, that continued
to run in French after being withdrawn in English) was personally
approved by Paul Martin -- a man who is actually our prime minister.
A man who is coming to resemble Ted Kennedy more each day.
The Liberals insinuate
that the Conservatives have a “secret agenda”, that
Mr Harper secretly harbours the desire to starve the poor, to
enslave women, to oppress racial minorities, to be a puppet in
the hands U.S. President Bush, and to put jackboot soldiers on
Canadian city streets. (Look at their ads: I’m not making
this up!) Like the charges of bigotry against Judge Alito, the
slanders against Mr Harper are so self-confuting, that they can
only appeal to an audience which is itself ignorant and possibly
indecent.
But they do more.
Who could wish to run against the Liberals, when you see what
they are capable of doing? When you realize that, no matter what
you do or say, or have ever done or said, you will be slandered
and demonized to this degree? (Yet, stand we must.)
And what if this “attack
strategy” is shown to work? What if it does succeed in arresting
the popular flight from the Liberals, or even in lifting them
back over 30 percent in the polls? What does that say about the
Canada that has been created in the Liberals’ own image?
Once again, I don’t
feel angry, I feel sick. Even though I have nothing whatever to
do with these ads, or any part of the Liberal campaign, the very
sight of them makes me feel dirty, tarnished, used, insulted.
And the thought that Canadians might fall for such a thing, makes
me feel ashamed.
How dare they allege
“hidden agendas”? The party that never campaigned
for same-sex “marriage”, just received a study it
had the Justice Department commission on the benefits of legitimizing
polygamous “unions”. They will never campaign for
that, either.
We need more than
a clean start with a new Conservative government. We need a Liberal
Party brought so low, that it must rebuild from the ground up.
A party capable of disowning its immediate past, and the indecency
of Paul Martin. Our own decency depends upon this.
Copyright
2005 Ottawa Citizen
