United Conservative Party is showing its Puritan roots

By Letter to the Editor on January 30, 2020.

In a nutshell, the Puritans believed if you were suffering God meant you to suffer. If you were rich, God meant you to be rich. If you were powerful God deigned you to be powerful.

This ideology ties neatly into the Old Testament concept of original sin. So a suffering person deserves to suffer. A poor person deserves to be poor. A starving person deserves to starve.

Therefore, logically, to help suffering, starving, or powerless persons would be subverting God’s will. The downtrodden should accept their lot and cease complaining.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The cuts the UCP are making in Alberta affect the suffering (health care), the poor (social programs) and the powerless (children’s education).

If you are rich enough, you can afford private health care; you don’t need social programs, and your children can attend private schools.

This Puritan thinking is buried deep in the psyches of the unconscious minds of most UCP elected members and supporters. Ironically, most of these people claim to be Christians. They publicly say they believe in Jesus, but simultaneously and contrarily believe in every person for themselves and an eye-for-an-eye.

There is a quadrant of the Johari Window (psychology) that contains beliefs consciously unknown to the entity itself and others also don’t know about the entity. This entity is the UCP of Alberta.

For reference about the rotten underbelly of the outwardly righteous Puritans, read “Young Goodman Brown” or “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ray Marco

Dunmore, Alta.