T he unusual aspect of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's crime platform is not that he wants to put 14-year-olds in jail for life. Those who have been paying attention know that his Conservatives are apoplectic about young offenders.

Rather, it's his willingness to campaign front and centre on a promise that – to many voters – seems positively medieval.

It wasn't that long ago that Harper replaced justice minister Vic Toews with the smoother Rob Nicholson. Toews' sin was that he was too straightforward about his hard-line views on crime and punishment, at a time when Harper felt this wasn't the image he wanted to project.

But now, Harper is confident enough to let voters sense the metaphorical leather jerkin beneath his cuddly, blue sweater vest. The dungeon-master is ready to punish, and he doesn't care who knows.

Critics go on about Harper's hidden agenda. In fact, it's quite open. He's a conservative in the Margaret Thatcher tradition who wants to not just reduce the role of the state, but redirect it – from social welfare to prisons and defence.

He has little interest in issues like abortion, although he's willing to make common cause with social conservatives who do.

Nor is he particularly democratic. Harper's main complaint about his old Reform party was that it gave grassroots members too much authority.

Rather, he is a democratic centralist in the Bolshevik sense. Like Lenin, he feels that the leader, once chosen, has the right to dictate. He has little time for his own cabinet and less for the media, most of which he has cowed into submission.

The fact that during this campaign he has appeared at no events open to the general public is indicative. Harper sees a leader's role as speaking to people rather than hearing from them. Unlike most politicians, he takes no joy in meeting strangers.

But perhaps the most striking aspect of Harper's political personality is the thread of bitterness that runs through his statements and actions – from the famous firewall letter (in which he urged Albertans to protect themselves from a predatory national government) to his ads savaging Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion. He doesn't just disagree with his Liberal opponents; he despises them.

Similarly, he despises what he sees as the moral nihilism of small-l liberalism, which has allowed the corrupt, big-L Liberals to flourish.

"The real enemy is no longer socialism," he wrote in a 2003 essay. "The real challenge is ... the social agenda of the modern Left, its system of moral relativism, moral neutrality and moral equivalency ... (as evidenced by) the response of modern liberals to the war on terror."

At the beginning of this election campaign, Harper tried to disguise his anti-liberalism beneath those now famous sweater vests. These days, he no longer bothers. The fact that the Statistics Canada sources he cites in his new crime announcement are more nuanced than his get-tough mantra suggests is irrelevant.

(The federal agency reports that youth crime overall is well down from its 1991 peak, although youth violent crime rates are up. It also says that minors are implicated in such a tiny proportion of murders that it's hard to discern a trend.).

No matter. Harper sees that he's on a roll and is planning to take full advantage. With roughly 38 per cent of the electorate behind him and four opposition parties splitting the remainder, he knows he's on his way to a majority government. If you don't like it, tough luck.





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Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday and Saturday.





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