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Monday, December 01, 2008
Lemieux: Let's hope the PQ wins
This week, Pierre Lemieux discusses the upcoming Quebec provincial elections.
He hopes the Parti Québécois wins.
No, he's not going to vote for the PQ, or anyone at all, probably. He just hopes the PQ wins the election, instead of its rivals: Jean Charest's Liberals and Mario Dumont's Action Démocratique du Québec.
Why? Wouldn't Mario Dumont be a more logical choice for a libertarian? After all, he seems to care about autonomy.
While Lemieux recognizes that Dumont has the "instinct" of a classical liberal, he argues that, on the whole, all three parties, including the ADQ, "propose measures that would reinforce the administrative tyranny (to use a Tocquevillian expression) under which we live."
So why hope the PQ wins, since, of the three, it is the most "openly statist"? That, Lemieux suggests, is exactly the point:
It would be better, I suggest, if the PQ gained power now and had to deal with the economic crisis. Let them take care of some people with the money of others! Let them rule, let them control, let them strangle, let them crush — just as the others would have done! In the actual real world, it is better to have real enemies in power rather than false friends.
I had a friend once who said something similar about the Democrats in the United States: let 'em take control, let 'em get what (they think) they want, and let 'em suffer the consequences.
What's the alternative in Quebec?
The economic crisis, on which the Québec government — whatever its swollen nationalist fist — can have no influence, will wreak havoc and will only be made worse by cascading subsidies and regulations. After four years of this diet, the pundits will opine, “You see now the consequences of capitalism and neoliberalism!” And the voters will bring the PQ or some other would-be tyrants to power.
This is exactly right. In the United States, the Republicans have given capitalism a very, very bad name. They've done so not by being good capitalists, but by claiming to be good capitalists while acting pretty much like Democrats (or worse.)
If the economic situation is going to get worse, better to let the socialists take the blame. I agree with Lemieux.
Read Pierre's entire column here.
Posted by Terrence Watson on December 1, 2008 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink
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