TheStar.com - The PM is copying George Bush's tactics with his allegation of `liberal media bias,' says Linda McQuaig



"Harper's unwillingness to submit to freewheeling media questions suggests an anti-democratic tendency.

His political views have been heavily influenced by Leo Strauss, a political philosopher at the University of Chicago who spawned the U.S. neo-conservative movement.

Strauss's ideas have been cultivated in Canada by the so-called Calgary school — a right-wing political clique at the University of Calgary — with which Harper and his mentor Tom Flanagan have long been associated.

Strauss was deeply suspicious of democracy. He argued that the public isn't capable of making intelligent political decisions, and so should be kept pacified rather than informed. The real decisions should be left to an elite.

With the elite making the decisions for a docile, dim-witted public, who needs the media — except to type down the Prime Minister's words?"