Anyone who’s been left shocked, angry, or surprised by the rise of Canada’s neo-conservatives over the last decade or so will find much to cheer in Slumming It at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada’s Right-Wing Revolution, a sort of ideological love-child of Daniel Francis and Linda McQuaig written by award-winning journalist and This magazine contributor Gordon Laird.

Laird delves deep into the underpinnings of today’s “cost-cutting cowboys”– primarily Manning, Klein, and Harris – with an engaging blend of diligent research, potent metaphors, telling quotations, and bitter one-liners.

A testament to the book’s depth and breadth is the difficulty in isolating one or two central arguments of greater importance. Through chapters dealing with neo-con attitudes and policies towards aboriginals, the poor, “family values,” corporatization, franchises (voting and business), free markets, the debt, religion, and big government, Laird returns to several images and arguments. They include: the primacy of “piety, prosperity and industry” as founding Canadian values exploited by neo-cons; inherent hypocrisy in what he terms “McPopulism” – big-government bashers who expand bureaucracies and curtail public input while consolidating power; assimilationist politics crossing partisan lines; “New Country” as a symptom and metaphor for current co-option of rural populist imagery for financial or political gain; and the unprecedented framing of government as business, to name but a few.

While many of the book’s themes have been explored elsewhere, the book’s thoroughness alone is reason to read it. Add to that the thematic links to cowboy mythos and culture – real and imaginary – as a metaphorical and practical tool for understanding this ongoing neo-con phenomenon, and you have a creative and engrossing look into the souls and psyches of these “politicians for people who hate politics.” And Laird never once calls anyone a fascist – though you might be tempted to after reading his book.