Dehumanizing the Enemy

The other week a writer for lefty freebie rag NOW magazine compared the Harper Conservatives to pesky, blood-sucking insects. A NOW reader who didn't like the comparision responds:

Bedbugs, metaphorically

Jacob Scheier’s interesting story on bedbugs (NOW, September 2-8) devolved into a cartoonish comparison of conservatives and bedbugs.

Supposedly they shun community in the “pursuit of blood.” I am a conservative, and because I’m probably slightly right of Stephen Harper, in Scheier’s mind that probably makes me an extreme conservative.

Yet I belong to many communities: family, friends, spiritual and business. I love all these people and need them in my life as much as they need me.

My business concerns? I want to make as much profit as possible. Why? Because it allows me to provide the necessities for my family, which in turn feeds, clothes and houses many more people.

I’m part of a giant community, a web of interconnected human prosperity. That’s why capitalism is, unconsciously, the most altruistic economic system in the world.

William Colwell, Milton ON

That letter should have come with a warning because such outre thinking could result in the sort of cognitive dissonance that is apt to make a smug lefty's head spontaneously 'splode.