Here in Canada, our Prime Minister Harper is a dyed in the wool libertarian. His views and policies, past and present, clearly show his leanings. Unfortunately he doesn’t understand that he can not be the only one. If he gets to be one, then all citizens can be also, which means all citizens also can choose what they want. And so, if the majority of citizens choose to be collective in some of their desires for Canadian society he must listen and obey. Mister Harper wants equality, yet he wants to be first among equals, and there’s the rub of libertarianism.

The unemployed are not a herd of ”paid slaves” for Harper’s government to hand over to his business cronies. Employment insurance, is not welfare, rather it is, as it suggests ”insurance”, paid for by every worker in case they, or someone else, loses their job. No-one chooses to be unemployed. The priority of employment insurance is to the security of workers and their work. Workers in their appropriate line of work, work more and better, thereby making more money for the employer and themselves, spending the money in the economy and paying taxes for the public good. That’s a good idea isn’t it?

Health insurance is the same thing, insurance, again, paid for by every worker to insure themselves and their families against illness. No-one chooses to be ill. The priority of Universal Health Care Insurance is to the health and welfare of the worker thereby alleviating the worry of sickness and it’s negative impacts on the family. Healthy workers make money for their employers and themselves, spend it in the economy, that’s good for business, and pay taxes for the public good. That’s a good idea, too, isn’t it?

Welfare, as well, is a form of insurance against the degenerative societal malaise an overly competitive society may feel towards the poorest of the poor, the least able of the able, and often the unable, to participate in the society. Aside from the idea that social welfare is the right and humane thing to do by putting money in the pockets of the people least able to compete, it assuages intense feelings of inequality and the idea that people at the top don’t care about anyone other than themselves. Broad social welfare policies lead to a more stable and equitable society. That’s a good idea, too, isn’t it?

Harper assumes the working class has lost faith in these social insurance nets when actually we need them now more than ever. His hood-winking of the Canadian public in the name of his libertarian creed of “choice” through deregulation and privatization is an oft repeated disaster just waiting to happen. And this “choice” is hardly any choice at all. By “liberating” the Canadian worker from these mandatory social insurances Harper has left us to choose between not paying into any insurance at all, or becoming trapped by commercial insurance ventures.

The commercial insurance business, about which we see and hear enough particularly with our southern neighbors, is nothing short of a racket to make money rather than to truly insure the customer. The priority is heavily skewed towards profiteering, not looking after the customer when bad times come. If anything, insurance companies do everything in their power to avoid paying their customers when bad times come by employing deliberate loopholes in their contracts, (aka, the fine print) or reneging on payments based on excessive scrutiny of their customers. But, God help you if you don’t have insurance. In many cases it is a law that one must have insurance, such as in taking out a mortgage or when driving a car. This has nothing to do with the protection of the individual policy holder, but rather protection against other insurance entities and loan companies for their loss. This is the definition of protection racketeering.

Actually, if employment insurance, health insurance and welfare are targets under the picky libertarian Harper regime, why not auto insurance also? Why must I pay into that? Same for mortgage insurance, I already pay a hefty premium for the mortgage, why should I pay a good chunk more in insurance? Why can’t I choose not to? Are mandatory auto and mortgage insurance a good idea? Why? Who is being protected?

For that matter if it is all about choice, why can’t I choose to forgo paying taxes, or to choose where my taxes go? If I had a choice, like I do in the stock market for ethical funds, I’d choose that my taxes would go to health care and unemployment rather than to incentives to cartellised business and the military, two old bottomless pits of highly speculative adventure, rarely in the public interest and often fraught with disaster. If Harper wants government out of business, then government should not fund, subsidize or have incentives for it either and should not legislate that I have to participate in it.

And if these once social insurances are now becoming voluntary, why do I pay increased taxes? And where is this money going? Am I now paying for a ridiculous military expenditure for inventory that can’t possibly defend our country with such a pitifully small population from a determined enemy? Am I paying taxes so Harper can try to punch above his weight or, at least, throw his weight around in NATO as a street tough and thug for libertarian interests of capitalism and the so called freedom of choice in a global context? Often the choice left after a thug finishes roughing you up while running the protection racket is between the devil and the deep blue sea, that is, no choice at all.

The struggle is a reminder of the debate between Thomas Carlyle’s ‘great man theory’ where a leader seizes opportunity and creates a new society and Herbert Spencer’s idea that so called ‘great men’ are merely products of the social situation at the time. In either case the issue remains that an ‘übermensch’ is on the scene determining for all the present and future, in characteristically undemocratic and through often dark Machiavellian means.

Harper has forgotten that Canadian citizens chose to have employment insurance, chose to have Universal Health Care insurance and chose to give welfare to aid Canadian citizens who struggle in our society. What is detestable about the ‘libertarianism’ of the Harper regime is that it is hardly libertarian at all, as the fact is he picks and chooses what the public’s choices are. Harper, being all knowing, decides what is in the ‘public’s interest’, what we will be paying taxes for. Where have I heard this before? Ah, yes, the 1920’s and 30’s dictatorial capitalist regimes of Italy and Germany.