February 25, 2006 Stephen Harper & "the enemy strongholds" The idea that our Prime Minister is a member of an organization which wishes to transform Canada to fulfill a religious purpose should be of concern to Canadians who view their nation as a secular democracy. By Ron Saba Canada's Prime Minister belongs to the Christian and Missionary Alliance.  There are some revealing entries on its Canadian website which should be of concern to Canadians who view their nation as a secular democracy. On their page titled "Desert Sand Venture" we find the following entries: "But what about north of that desert? What about the more than 150 million people who call the Desert Sand region their home?" "It has been said that all the easy places have been reached and only the hard ones remain. Desert Sand certainly qualifies as a hard place because each of these North African countries is more than 99% Muslim." "Yet the Spirit of God is moving in the hearts of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. There is a growing interest and commitment on the part of business people, career workers and people of prayer as they consider this last bastion in the fight for Africa's eternal soul." "1)  Going into a new region where more than 99% of the people don't believe that Jesus is Lord means that nothing significant is going to happen in the Kingdom unless God's people lay the ground work first - on their knees. Pray that God will break down the enemy strongholds in the Desert Sand area and establish his Kingdom for his glory." The idea that Harper belongs to an organization which believes it is in a "fight for Africa's eternal soul" and views its inhabitants as "enemy strongholds in the Desert Sand area" should be of concern to all Canadians who view Canada as a secular democracy. His organization's intentions for Canada are clearly stated in their "Vision Prayer": "VISION PRAYER O God, with all our hearts we long to be: a movement of churches transformed by Christ, transforming Canada and the world. By your grace and for your glory: Renew and empower us through a fresh encounter with yourself Release us to be strategic in service, kingdom-connected in practice, passionate in pursuit of your mission and mercy Use us to fulfill your purpose for Canada and the world." The idea that our Prime Minister is a member of an organization which wishes to transform Canada to fulfill a religious purpose should be of concern to Canadians who view their nation as a secular democracy. The Public Record on Harper From Macleans Magazine Colin Campbell: The Church of Stephen Harper Concerning Harper's Evangelical Background: "But Harper is the first in recent times whose religion has become an issue, largely because it is seen to cut against the grain of mainstream Canadian social values. He is the first evangelical prime minister since John Diefenbaker, and the first ever to belong to the relatively obscure Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination. His church follows in traditions normally associated with American evangelicalism, a brand of Christianity that has a relatively small following in Canada. In that vein, Harper appears to have more in common with President George W. Bush, a born-again Christian, than with his predecessors. At the East Gate Alliance Church, the hymnals even contain the song America, the Beautiful." From Macleans Election Blog January 21, 2006 - Maude Barlow's Election Blog Concerning Harper's connections to American Evangelical extremist groups: Harper and the US Extreme Right Today in the Globe and Mail, a number of organizations, including my own, published an entire speech that Stephen Harper delivered in 1997 when he was head of the right-wing lobby group, the National Citizens Coalition. We want Canadians to see for themselves exactly what Harper thinks of this country. It is worth reading in full on the eve of an election that might bring him and his party to power. More disturbing than the views he expresses in this speech, however, is the organization to whom he delivered it and the fact that he would ever have allowed himself to be affiliated with it in any way. It is called the Council for National Policy and is a powerful and secretive collection of far-right American Christian and social conservatives who formed the backbone of the Bush victory. The CNP was founded in 1981 by Tim LeHaye, author of the best-selling "Left Behind" books that describe the "Rapture" (the literal end of time when true believers will be taken up to heaven and the rest of the world will perish in horrible ways), Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, a far-right pro-family/anti-gay/anti abortion lobby that claims on its web-site America is becoming a third world country because of its "long slide into the cultural and moral decay of political correctness," and businessmen Joseph Coors and Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt, rabid anti-communists who were affiliated with the John Birch Society. The Council for National Policy initiated the Moral Majority Coalition and recruited Jerry Falwell to run it and later welcomed James Dobson, head of the far-right evangelical movement, Focus on the Family. Dobson has said that homosexuality will destroy the earth and is the prime architect of the ban on gay marriage in eleven states. The New York Times says the CNP is made up of the most powerful conservatives in the United States who "meet behind closed doors at undisclosed locations to strategize about how to turn the country to the right." Recently, the group has hosted powerful right-wing foreign policy hawks such as Vice President Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and UN ambassador John Bolton, a hard-right ideologue who displays a mock grenade on his desk with the label "To John Bolton, World's Greatest Reaganite." What was Stephen Harper doing by his association with these people? What does it say about his long-term agenda for this country? One thing is certain: the US right can hardly wait for a Harper win. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation has e-mailed all his far-right friends in the US cautioning them to hold off any public gloating over a possible Harper win until after the vote Monday, "at which point hopefully there will be reason to celebrate." You can bet American social conservatives can hardly wait to see their White House counterpart ensconced at Sussex Drive. Patrick Basham of the right-wing American think-tank, the Cato Institute, says that a Harper win will "put a smile" on George Bush's face. Basham calls Harper the most "pro-American leader in the Western world...pro-free trade, pro-Iraq war, anti-Kyoto, and socially conservative...Mr Bush's new best friend internationally and the poster boy for his ideal foreign leader." Canadians don't like George Bush and the far-right coalition that brought him to power. Why are we poised to make his Canadian counterpart our next Prime Minister? From Walrus Magazine Article by Marci McDonald on Tom Flanagan, Harper's Key Advisor Concerning the links between Harper, Flanagan, Straussian philosophy, Ezra Levant (Western Standard), David Frum, Civitas ... The Man Behind Stephen Harper "Little is known about the shadowy, sixty-year-old professor who is staying on Harper's post-election payroll as a senior advisor from Calgary. Flanagan declined to be quoted in this story. In Ottawa, where he has refused interviews for the last three years, some journalists regard him as a modern-day Rasputin manipulating a leader sixteen years his junior. But in Calgary, one of his former students, Ezra Levant, publisher of the eight-month-old Western Standard magazine, cautions against that generational cliché. These days, Levant sees Flanagan and Harper more as "symbiotic partners." But he does not disagree with a Globe and Mail report that once referred to Flanagan as the original godfather of the city's conservative intellectual mafia. "I call him Don Tomaso," Levant says. "He is the master strategist, the godfather - even of Harper." " "But Shadia Drury, a member of the U of C department until last year, accuses her former colleagues of harbouring a more sinister mission. An expert on Leo Strauss, the philosophical father of the neo-conservative movement, Drury paints the Calgary School as a homegrown variation on American Straussians like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who share their teacher's deep suspicions of liberal democracy. Strauss argued that a ruling elite often had to resort to deception - a noble lie - to protect citizens from themselves. To that end, he recommended harnessing the simplistic platitudes of populism to galvanize mass support for measures that would in fact restrict rights. Drury warned the Globe's John Ibbitson that the members of the Calgary School "want to replace the rule of law with the populism of the majority," and labelled Stephen Harper "their product." If so, there's no mystery in the appeal of Strauss's theories to Flanagan or Cooper, who edited Strauss's thirty-year correspondence with Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy. "Strauss believed that good statesmen have powers of judgment and must rely on an inner circle," the University of Chicago's Robert Pippin told Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker last year. "The person who whispers in the ear of the King is more important than the King."" "Over the next years, Flanagan and Harper might not have been on Reform's main stage, but they were far from inactive. A new intellectual infrastructure was taking shape on the Canadian right, echoing the web of conservative foundations and think tanks that paved the way for Reagan's 1980 ascension to the White House. Flanagan became an activist in Civitas, a network of 300 conservative thinkers spawned by the 1996 Winds of Change conference that Levant and fellow National Post columnist David Frum had organized in Calgary. Toronto's C.D. Howe Institute - whose researcher, Ken Boessenkool, would later become Harper's policy chief - and Vancouver's Fraser Institute, which opened a Calgary office under Cooper, were routinely proffering policies once considered too radically right wing for mainstream consumption." Ron Saba is Editor of the Montreal Planet Learn more at HarperWatch yayacanada