Читать книгу Here's Proof Only We Conservatives Have Our Heads Screwed On Straight!!! - Lowell M.D. Green - Страница 4

I only know him as Tom. Irish Tom, a delightfully opinionated regular caller to my Ottawa radio talk show who will launch himself into prolonged and furious broad brogue bombast at the mere drop of the words “British royalty” or “Liberal politician.” Slipping those magic words into our conversation is a ploy I often use to liven things up on slow days. Tom never lets me down. He is an accomplished performer. Academy Award material indeed.

“Why are those bums coming to Canada?” He shouts into the phone. “Why are we even letting those parasites into the country?” (Referring, at the time, to the impending visit of Prince William and his wife, Kate, to Canada.) He winds himself into a full-blown Irish rage. His voice shoots up several octaves: “The Royal family—they’re all bums—the most dysfunctional family in the western world—they should all be thrown out onto the street!”

At about this point I go for the coup de grâce. He pauses briefly for a breath and I manage to cut in. “And not only that, Tom, they’re all liberals.”

As always, he takes the bait, hook, line and sinker. “Liberals!” he screams. “Liberals! We should run the whole damn lot of those no-good bums out of the country on a rail.” At this point my entire audience knows what’s coming next. A punch line he’s used dozens of times. He spits it out with glorious disdain: “Liberalism is a mental disease!”

I’ve done my job. “Thanks Tom,” I say, “and next time…”

“Ya, ya.” he says. “I know, I know, next time I call have an opinion; ya, ya.” He chuckles and is gone.

Since most of my audience is Conservative or at least conservative-minded and thus has an advanced sense of humour I know all are by now bent over double with laughter.

Liberals not so much. The NDP and Liz May crowd not at all.

My experience is, the further left you are the less sense of humour you enjoy.

Socialists for the most part are a pretty grim lot and of course, these days you would be hard-pressed to find a Liberal doing a whole lot of smiling. Mind you, there aren’t a whole lot of Liberals left to do anything! (I wonder if “Buffalo Bob” still thinks converting from NDP to Liberal was such a hot idea?)

Now I grant you, some of the “Dippers” seem like happy-go-lucky folks. Smiling all the time. I don’t know about you, but the more they smile, the more they scare the bejabbers out of me.

With socialists, the broader the smile, the more dangerous the idea. Believe me, the lefties aren’t smiling because they’ve got a great sense of humour. They’re smiling because they’ve figured out how to save the world from big corporations/rich guys/global warming/little corporations/God/entrepreneurs/non-union businesses/oil companies/ banks/George W. Bush/Stephen Harper/war/profits/famine/poverty/ homelessness/disease/bad breath/warts/zits/ingrown toenails/pesticides/crime/guns/conservative broadcasters/private medical clinics/Alberta oil sands/massage parlours and—best of all—they’ve figured out how to GET YOU TO PAY FOR IT!

The NDP, very clearly, is Quebec’s kind of party. Quebec, after all, originated the concept of having everyone else pay for what they want.

It’s too bad most lefties have never given themselves the chance of hearing one of Irish Tom’s famous rants because no one foolish enough to support the Liberals, the NDP or the Green Party would ever be caught dead listening to “The Lowell Green Show.” At least they would never admit it. After all, most of what you hear on “The Lowell Green Show” is just common sense and what lefty has any interest in that for heaven’s sake?

Here’s another Lowell Green rule for you—the further left you are the more you claim you listen to and watch the CBC, when in fact you take great secret pleasure in either watching Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan destroy themselves or catching Jersey Shore for pointers on how to improve the morals and language skills of your children!

Please note I’ve inserted a qualifier here in admitting that only most, not all, of what you hear on “The Lowell Green Show” is common sense. I confess that occasionally someone of a leftist persuasion bucks up their courage (or is heavily into the suds) and in hopes of embarrassing me, phones to challenge something I or a caller is saying. Common sense inevitably flees the airwaves at that point. Let’s face it; common sense and liberalism/socialism are polar opposites.

Now I want to make this very clear, I am not suggesting that Irish Tom has it right and liberalism is a mental disease, but when you examine some of the things they advocate, some of the things the left has done, you really begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe, it’s only conservative-minded people who have their heads screwed on straight!

I am a prime example!

When I fell under the spell of Trudeaumania in 1968 and tried to wrest the nomination away from a sitting Liberal MP did I have my head screwed on straight? Absolutely not. In fact as I look back on it now with a much wiser conservative mind, I have no choice but to conclude that I was a crazy man back then. Not only did I actually think I could defeat a well-established sitting member of Parliament, but this member—Tommy Lefebvre—was a perfectly bilingual francophone while I was (and am) an Anglophone with only a smattering of French. And this, for heaven’s sake, is the Quebec riding of Pontiac just northwest of Hull. To make matters worse, I surround myself with other Liberals who are as deluded as I.

Obviously none of us had our heads screwed on straight!

Is it possible this Liberal nutbarism is bred in the bone? My father once ran as a Liberal in a southwestern Ontario riding that has been Conservative since Sir John A., for crying out loud. And, not satisfied with getting his foolish rear end firmly booted, he then, in the next election, turns around and runs in the same riding for the NDP! Who would even suggest he had his head screwed on straight?

In later life my father, like his eldest son (me), began to smarten up, became much more practical and realistic, which is to say a lot wiser, and declined to run for any office for any party.

Before I smartened up, I succumbed to Liberal Party entreaties in 1983 and agreed to run as a Liberal in one of the most socialist ridings in all of Canada. Now I’ve got to ask the question again.

Did I have my head screwed on straight? And once again the answer is the same—no!

Fifteen years have passed since my great Quebec election disaster. I’m still a Liberal and still not thinking anywhere near straight. So I get the nomination this time and even though Jean Chrétien campaigns with me for a couple hours one day, I get wonderfully whomped in Ottawa Centre by the NDP candidate. Actually, come to think of it, my ignominious defeat may have been Chrétien’s fault since we were storming a seniors’ residence that day occupied almost entirely by French Canadian women who went gaga over the little guy from Shawinigan but had no interest in the big guy from Brantford.

It was at about that time that my allegiance to leftist thinking began to waver. I have David Peterson, the Ontario Liberal leader at the time, to thank. Because it was he who unwittingly revealed to me one of the main reasons for Liberal success in this country. “Lowell,” he said one day when we were alone. “Promise them anything. We’ll worry about it later!”

Sadly, I did make some promises during that campaign. Promises I knew very well I could not keep. I suspect voters, recognizing my insincerity, did the right thing—rejected me handily—a fate I most definitely deserved.

But it wasn’t until October 27, 1995, that my brain, and thus my head, became firmly affixed in the correct position. In case you’ve forgotten, that’s the date of “The Great Canadian Unity Rally” when more than 100,000 of us showed up in Montreal to tell Quebeckers we didn’t want them to separate. The day, in fact, when ordinary Canadians spurned the advice of Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and saved Canada from plunging into the great black hole of the unknown called Quebec independence.

When I say we spurned the advice of our prime minister, I mean exactly that. I recall it well. Throughout the later part of 1994 and increasingly through the summer of 1995 the signs were growing stronger and stronger that the majority of Quebeckers were prepared to take that giant leap over the wall of common sense and reason and vote to leave Canada. Huge sums of money were transferred out of Quebec; the military was put on alert.

You know the story. As a special Thanksgiving treat, Lucien Bouchard, now missing a leg, scared the bejabbers out of federalists and announced he was heading the separatist side and it appeared almost inevitable that we were about to pull the shades down on the Canada we grew up in.

You will also remember that through it all—even after Bouchard joined the battle—Prime Minister Chrétien arrogantly told us he had everything under control. “Not to worry,” he told us, “leave it to my government to deal with; you people should stay out of this.” Or words to that effect.

As the drama played out, I recall becoming increasingly agitated in my role as host of one of the most listened to radio talk shows in Canada. Much of my family lived in Quebec; many of my friends were there. Some of the happiest times of my life were spent in the province. As angry as I often was at Quebec for its incessant demands upon Confederation and the manner in which many Anglos were essentially driven out, I realized that I was not ready to say goodbye to the province.

And there was something else. Two days after Bouchard’s dramatic announcement, I get an early morning phone call that sends chills down my spine. “The Crees will fight you know. We’ll never agree to leave Canada.” The voice is that of Billy Diamond, Grand Chief of the Crees of Quebec from 1974 until 1984, one of the most respected and indeed revered figures throughout the Cree nation in northern Quebec.

I had met Billy briefly a few years earlier during some business negotiations in Montreal. He told me at that time he was aware of the role my father had played—teaching Mohawk children on the Kahnawake Reservation south of Montreal—and Billy claimed he often listened to my show when visiting Ottawa.

Here he is years later, using me to fire a warning shot across separatist bows.

“I’ll deny it’s me who told you this.” He’s almost whispering. “But you’d better tell your friends up there in high places that the Crees will fight to the death to preserve our place in Canada.” I forget exactly what he said next, something about the soldiers of the new republic getting cold feet while tramping through the bush and swamps of northern Quebec, with Indians taking potshots from behind every tree. I do remember his parting words: “Mr. Green, spread the word the Crees will fight and you know the Mohawks. Do you really think they’ll be signing any treaties with Lucien Bouchard or Jacques Parizeau?”

There’s a brief pause before he says, “I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to.” I try to ask him a few questions but it’s apparent he’s finished except to say again. “Spread the word! The Crees will fight!”

Stories hinting about possible native Indian armed resistance to Quebec separation began cropping up in various newspapers at about that time, so I suspect that mine was not the only phone call Billy Diamond made that morning. I understood fully what he was doing. Adding a vein of very tough gristle to the menu of filet mignon and caviar the separatists were promising their supporters.

Bouchard was convincing many Quebeckers that separation would be an easy stroll along Ste-Catherine Street. Vote “Oui” on October 30 and presto, come the morning of October 31, Canada says a polite goodbye, there’s dancing in the streets, long stemmed roses all round, lower taxes, a Caddy in every driveway and a Stanley Cup every year for les Canadiens. Or something just as wonderful. No problems. Everybody agrees, handshakes all around, and it’s over. Or so the separatists claimed.

Billy Diamond was simply trying to add a spoonful of reality and more importantly, fear, into the equation.

I’m still unclear what effect, if any, the threats had on Quebec voters, but the thought of armed Indians, possibly joining forces with disaffected Anglos launching some sort of guerilla operation in the deep woods of northern Quebec certainly scared me.

I knew there was no way Quebec separation could be an amicable walk in the park.

Many Anglos in western Quebec, especially in the Pontiac, begin making veiled threats about a separation movement of their own. Similar rumblings erupt in the Eastern Townships. There are questions about the fate of Federal Government employees living in Quebec. And what about Federal buildings? Who would own them? What about the St. Lawrence Seaway, the military bases, the banking system? If separation doesn’t actually break out into some kind of civil war, it is clear the squabbling will last for years and likely send the entire country into a deep financial crisis.

As the October 30th referendum looms ever closer, we are staring into an abyss of indeterminate depth and danger. Heaven only knows what will happen with a “Oui” vote. Adding to my concern and the growing frustration of many, the Liberal government, and in particular Chrétien, don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what to do about it. They all seem to be in slow motion, swimming in a muddy pool of denial and confusion.

I share my concerns and fears with my audience and along with CFRA morning man Steve Madely we use all our powers of persuasion to urge everyone to flock to Montreal on October 27, for a giant rally three days prior to the referendum.

I know I speak for Steve when I say we are both proud that many thousands of our listeners were among the some 100,000 who crowded into Place du Canada in downtown Montreal.

That overwhelming show of affection and solidarity for our fellow Canadians in La Belle Province undoubtedly persuaded sufficient numbers of Quebeckers to switch their votes from “Oui” to “Non” to prevent the country from being torn apart. But just barely. Canada survived intact by a vote of only 50.6% to 49.4%. Heaven only knows what the country would be like today had we not ignored Jean Chrétien’s instructions to leave things to him and instead flocked to Montreal for that rally.

There is no question it was the Unity Rally that saved the day. Tens of thousands of ordinary people who took it upon themselves to step in and save the country that Chrétien and his party seemed bound and determined to fumble away.