Alexis de Tocqueville is proved right once again, that the tyranny of the majority lies inherent in any democracy. Our erstwhile Premier, Kathleen Wynne, has just brazenly approved an across-the-board 7.5% pay raise for government provincial employees, with not even a concession on their part, a veritable largesse, courtesy of the over-burdened taxpayer, held in ransom by said government to those who live off his avails. Here is the text from the National Post article:
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union workers would get 1.5 per cent on July 1, then one per cent on Jan. 1, 2019, and another one per cent every six months for the life of the deal. The approximately 35,500 workers and correctional staff represented by OPSEU are employed across the public sector, from administration and enforcement to social work, IT and laboratory staff.
Count them if you can: That is thirty five thousand workers, across the board, getting a pay raise that almost no one in the private sector, which is the primary sector that actually produces real wealth, could ever dream of. Freed from the constraints of market forces, indeed from reality itself, the likes of Ms. Wynne are quite brazenly free to buy votes for the upcoming election. Which of these thirty five thousand will ever choose to vote for a more economically conservative government, insofar as such still exists in this Dominion, that would dare to trim back their exorbitant wages, benefits, job security, sick leave and pension plans?
Here is Warren “Smokey” Thomas, head of the aforementioned union:
“I’m kind of shocked the government actually made us any kind of an offer,” Thomas said. “It’s no secret that my union and myself, my executive board, we’re always in a battle with the government … We’re at odds with them on a lot of fronts.”
But, Thomas said, the offer contains a number of positive changes with no demands of concessions for members, and no matter the motivation he’s looking for the best deal for the workers.
Well, that’s one way of putting it, but it’s not quite the best deal for those who pay for their perks. Tocqueville warned of this, that once a certain percentage of the population work for the State and can manoeuvre its levers of power, they will hold the other half other populace, the half that pays their wages, in perpetual slavery, sowing the seeds for revolution. For how in this milieu will the Liberals ever get un-elected, unless some significant proportion of the thirty five thousand find the gumption and the wherewithal to somehow seek the common and future good, and not their own immediate gratification? And we must add to this number all the other State employees, teachers, professors, physicians, nurses, police officers, military, and the myriad of bureaucrats, counting quite literally in the millions, all of them currently receiving and promised ever-increasing unrealistic emoluments. We must also not forget the refugees, welfare recipients, those who live on reserves, and on it goes.
The Liberals have bought their votes for years to come, even until kingdom come, unless something rather drastic happens, like economic collapse (see Venezuela). We can hope that people wake up before then, but, given our current indoctrinating education system, into which even well-meaning Catholics, for various reasons good and bad, entrust their children, I for one don’t hold much of that diminishing virtue.
The worst aspect of socialism, as the Church has always taught, is not so much its economic unrealistm, which is bad enough, but what it does to the human spirit. Being reliant upon the nanny state, as all too many Canadians are, for everything from health care to education and many things in-between, enervates and infantilizes the human spirit, making us weak and pusillanimous. It also causes a deep and abiding envy, even hatred, between those who feed off the avails of others, and those who are forced to provide them, as the chasm and the entitlements those in the ‘in’, and those not, gets wider and wider.
I find it difficult to convince people of this truth, for even good and orthodox Catholics often do not see the inherent dangers, even evils, in our socialist system, errors that Our Lady of Fatima warned would spread throughout the world, surreptitiously. All too many are far too dependent upon the State, and many young people I meet would just love to get on the government gravy-train while the gettin’ is good. What they have difficulty seeing is that this entails the real and present danger of a loss of freedom, initiative, drive and the capacity to take risks and strive for greatness. People still desire these goods, but how to put them into practice in the stultifying atmosphere in which we live? Even the physicians currently in court to protect their conscience rights against cooperating in the murder-suicide that is ‘medical assistance in dying’ would not have to be there were not the entire medical apparatus, including, let us be honest, their multiple six-figure salaries, not under the power of the State.
It is well past time for some pushback, to gain back our freedom and resolve, which will require some risk, hardship and the exercise of virtue. So gird up thy loins, and, as the Lord said to Joshua, ‘be strong and of good courage’, for God, truth and goodness are on our side.