Stephen Harper’s hard-right Conservatives are not suited to governing this wonderful country, an easy enough observation on an ill-considered austerity-budget day but true on any day of the year. Writing about this government evokes a fight or flight response, meaning that I type with greater energy while a deep voice warns me, “This is unwise.”

What an extraordinary thing to live a pleasant life in a western nation and yet fear your own government. But the Canada Revenue Agency’s new audits of environmental charities like Tides Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation and Environmental Defence in the midst of their continuing warnings about the effects of the climate-poisoning Alberta tarsands project are terrifying.

Harperites are sessile, “rooted to the ground and unable to pick up and move ... when conditions turn unfavourable,” as the New Yorker put it recently in a rather dismissive piece about plant IQ. They can’t adapt to the news of climate change so they lash out at those who have.

I have praised David Suzuki to the skies, most recently in a column about a performance staged at the Royal Ontario Museum about the damage done by the tarsands. Am I to be audited next?

Thornhill MP Peter Kent tweeted this on Monday about Environmental Defence: “Disappointing ROM joins partisan enviro activists defying CRA regs. Charities can’t take sides if they want status/benefits.” Given the audits, what is this but a veiled threat? Harper dropped Kent as environment minister last year but still, imagine that, an Ontario MP attacking the most beloved child-friendly educational institution in Toronto for its scientific honesty and unsuitable friends. Science is not “partisan,” it is factual.

The ROM, which gets federal grants, has reason to tremble. When the Star asked city leaders to comment on Mayor Rob Ford’s shambling performance, Janet Carding, the ROM’s brilliant and brave CEO, was one of many non-profit heads to decline. She’s caught between a glacier and bedrock.

Many other educated, powerful and high-profile people in Toronto also refused to comment. Why? Ford and his various allies are like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. They neither forget nor forgive being crossed.

But when it comes to threats, the — admittedly hilarious — outburst from Kent was extraordinary. He took the Star’s interview requests as “A CRUDELY CRAFTED, VEILED THREAT THAT I (AND OTHERS) ENDORSE AN EDITORIAL COLUMN WRITTEN BY TORSTAR CHAIR JOHN HONDERICH ... OR FACE CONSEQUENCES IN YOUR EVENTUAL STORY ... I WILL NOT BE BULLIED.”

But bullying, alien to the Canadian nature, is what Harperites do best.

I object to the Harper government for many reasons (harperwatch.wordpress.com provides a good listing service): damage to water, earth and sky via the tarsands, love of pipelines, no census, mandatory jail sentencing, service shrinkage, rubber-stamp Senate appointments, no harm reduction for drug users, the push for salesmanship over foreign aid, turning the Immigration Minister into judge and jury for deportations, silencing of scientists, rail safety deregulation, demonization of public servants, effective banning of strikes, contempt for women’s rights, proroguing of Parliament, voter suppression, plans for socially divisive income-splitting, and many more issues.

But I wouldn’t object to the above on principle if they were arrived at democratically, without abusing the absolute power given to the winner in our bizarre political system, without disrespecting the courts, without giving one the feeling that one no longer lives in an organized society based on the rule of law.

Harper gets his way by bullying individuals, generally the weakest ones. I am trying to come up with a central metaphor for his mean-spirited government.

The Conservatives are like porcupines in that they shoot out quills that hook into the flesh of an opponent, they’re like drones in that they target individuals rather than concepts. If they were a Shakespeare play, they’d be Coriolanus, in which the punitive Roman leader calls his citizens “measles” who “tetter” him.

But probably the best definition is this. The hallmark of Harper conservatives is that they take everything personally. They don’t just oppose Liberals, they hate Justin Trudeau. They don’t just oppose some Muslim fundraising, they hate that benighted teenager Omar Khadr.

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Governments should be generalists, asking, “What is good for the nation?” Harperites are vengeful, asking, “Whom shall we make suffer?”

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