Election day today. I'm scared. Wanna know why? This sums it up well. I came in an email from a friend. If we're not very careful, we could have a very scary government come tomorrow morning.

"Would you be happy waking up June 29 to the realization the Prime Minister's office in Ottawa was now occupied by a "theo-con" extremist farther to the right than either Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta or former Premier Mike Harris of Ontario? Probably not. If you're like most Canadians you value our reputation as one of the most level-headed, tolerant and liveable countries in the world, but if Stephen Harper and his born-again Conservative Party continue to lead the current federal election we may lose all that by mistake. The mistake would be in believing Harper is really the mild-mannered moderate he has pretended to be during the campaign and not the neo-conservative radical he has been throughout his political life.

The 2004 Conservative election strategy was recently explained by Alberta MP Myron Thompson. "For now," he said, "we've got to do what we've got to do to get elected." (Calgary Sun, June 4, 2004) The tactic has swayed millions of voters, but as Harper himself once told an Alberta magazine, "Don't listen to what politicians say, watch what they do." Based on his past actions, what can we learn about Stephen Harper?

He is, for one thing, the guy who published a letter in The Wall Street Journal denouncing Canada's decision to "stay neutral" in the Iraq war and assuring Americans that he spoke for the "silent majority" of Canadians who supported the war; Canadians that is, "outside of Quebec." Harper's affection for things American is not skin deep. In 2001 he wrote an article in favour of exchanging our system of government for a US presidential-style one with an appointed cabinet, saying "The difference between the calibre and experience of the Bush cabinet to any Canadian equivalent is embarrassing to us."

For someone who wants to become the head of the federal government, he's not a strong federalist. In 2002 he wrote a National Post article on "Separation Alberta-style," urging Premier Ralph Klein to build a "firewall" to protect Alberta's "American enterprise and individualism" from Canada, "a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status." As a Reform Party MP from Alberta, he pushed a tough 'let 'em go' line on Quebec, saying in one 1994 speech, "Whether Canada ends up as one national government or several national governments is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion (to reducing the overall role of government.)" He isn't very sympathetic to the Maritimes either, saying the region's chronic economic weakness is the result of a "defeatist" attitude bred in Maritimers' by equalization programs, which he would abolish and replace with corporate tax cuts. Abolishing all subsidies to all industry, presumably including cultural industries like the CBC, the NFB and Telefilm, is one of his central election promises, along with massive tax cuts financed by, among other things, massive program cuts. Like most neo-cons, Harper has long been an implacable foe of universal state medicare, calling for "a health care system with "as many tiers as possible." (CBC TV, August 17, 1997).

These strident positions are not spur-of-the-moment excesses, but rather expressions of Harper's deep philosophy. In his most revealing statement, a June 2003 Civitas speech in Toronto later published in Report Magazine, Harper confirms his radical neo-conservative beliefs. "The Reagan and Thatcher revolutions (were) the most successful period in democratic conservatism's history," he writes, "but I believe that it is this very success that is at the heart of conservatism's trouble in recent years..." The problem, he says, is that socialists and liberals stole the conservative's free market ideas and beat the them at their own game. To this extent, "the public arguments for deeper and broader tax cuts, further reductions in debt, further deregulation and privatization, and especially the elimination of corporate subsidies and industrial-development schemes...have already been won." To regain the initiative, he says, the conservative movement must now shift from economic issues to social values and become both "neo-con and theo-con." This means enforcing "respect for religious traditions above all...and personal self-restraint reinforced by moral and legal sanctions on behaviour" in order to challenge "the social agenda of the modern Left. Its system of moral relativism, moral neutrality and moral equivalency..." Some of the immoral leftist positions he cites are tolerance of marijuana smoking, the anti-spanking movement, and of course, homosexuality. In 1994 he told the Reform organ Western Report his true position on gay rights was "don't ask, don't tell" and expressed his firm opposition to "the legal recognition of same-sex relationships." But it's not just gay rights that get Harper ranting. He denounces human rights commissions altogether as "totalitarianism" and an "attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society." On abortion, Harper told Southam News in 2001 that he leaned toward a pro-life stance, something he has never disavowed, preferring to simply sidestep by saying the party "could not afford to focus on the issue." As he said in his Civitas speech, "the issues must be chosen carefully...we must realize that real gains are inevitably incremental ... conservatives should be satisfied if the agenda is moving in the right direction, even if slowly."

That consciously deceptive strategy has him on the verge of seizing Canada's national government. It is time for all those who value our heritage as a tolerant and moderate society to pull out all stops to make sure he does not succeed. In your riding, vote for the candidate with the best chance of beating the Conservative."

I keep thinking this couldn't really happen. We couldn't wake up tomorrow to find ourselves living in this world. But this is probably what lots of Germans told themselves the night before the election that brought Hitler to power.

Yikes.