Category: Politics
Glace Bay By-Election
For anyone not as yet totally fed up with our electoral system here’s the only principled alternative to more of the graft, corruption and theft perpetrated by the NDP, Liberals, and Conservatives. For for any one of them and you will get just exactly what you deserve.
Our duty NOT to vote
I’d love to see a “none of the above” option offered in these polls, as in “If you could mark your ballot for ‘None of the Above’ to indicate your dissatisfaction with all the other choices would you do so?”
I believe that the approximately 50% of Canadians who don’t vote are doing that already by the only means permitted. A wasted vote is a vote cast for someone you don’t agree with just because the other options are worse. Politicians should have to earn our vote, not get it by default.
They say we have a duty to vote. What about the politicians duty to (a) tell the truth, (b) not to cheat on their expense accounts, (c) govern democratically, etc.?
If things are going to get better we must not rely on the politicians to make it so – they’re fine with the way things are now. We need to start thinking outside the box. The politicians don’t care who we vote for so long as we vote for someone because by doing so we give legitimacy to the system and the winner it produces. But the system is corrupt and invariably produces bad government that uses and abuses us. We can only expect change when we start denying politicians the one thing they can’t survive without.
Don’t vote . . .
. . . not because you don’t care, but because you do.
Wouldn’t we be giving up our democratic rights, something valiant Canadians have fought and died to preserve for us? Rights are something we can choose to exercise or not based on whether it is in our interests to do so. When exercising a right simply allows others to oppress us then that right becomes a wrong.
Focusing on our right to vote is a misdirection, a slight of hand used by politicians at election time to assure the legitimacy of the system their power and wealth depend upon. The focus ought to be on their responsibilities, not on our rights. Their responsibilities include:
1. Honesty – always telling the truth;
2. Integrity – doing as they promise to do, or, if that is not possible, resigning and seeking re-election on a different promise;
3. Accountability – being open in their dealings including the way they handle our money, especially for their own expenses;
4. Good faith – acting in the best interests of those who elected (employed) them rather than in the electoral interests of themselves, their party, or their leader;
5. Respect – dealing with each other as professionals charged with the job of working together to make wise decisions;
6. Stewardship – exercising the power delegated to them by their electors, not lording over us by claiming more power than we grant to them;
7. Perspective – understanding that they work for us, that they are the servants of the people and not our rulers.
Does this sound like a description of the way we are governed? No matter which party is in power?
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. It is insane to keep going to the polls and casting a vote hoping for something better. If no one voted the politicians would lose their claim to legitimacy. Before they allowed that to happen they would be forced to effect real change – to start acting responsibly. But first we have to start acting responsibly.
Don’t vote.
What is the meaning of the label: “Progressive”
‘”Progressive” is a good word don”t you think? Someone who is progressive is forward-looking, on-the-move, open-minded. Who would mind being thought of and labeled a “progressive”? No one.
Somehow (well, I know how but I”ll leave that for now) American liberals managed to turn the noble term “liberal” into an epithet, so they have adopted the term progressive to describe themselves. So far the term works, for all of the reasons suggested in my opening paragraph. I think it also works because the term implies opposition to the term “conservative” which conservatives have managed to turn into an epithet just as “liberal” has been.
Interestingly that aptly named party of oxymorons, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada dropped the “Progressive” label when it merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party. The new party promptly installed a leader widely considered moderately libertarian but has, ever since, has been spending money hand over fist to show that they are really more “progressive” and less “conservative” than either of their predecessor parties ever were.
So how does one claim the term “progressive”? What does it actually mean? I suggest that the best definition is a modified version of one proposed by Janet Ajzenstat as related in this article by Link Byfield. She says that “progressivism . . . is the ideology that the state must grow ever stronger.” The corollary, Byfield points out, is that “everything and everyone else (must) get (comparatively) weaker ââ‚“ individuals, families, churches, local communities, businesses and markets.
My modification of the definition is to replace the word “ever” with “progressively”:
A progressive is one who believes that the state must grow progressively stronger at the expense of the individual, the family and all other voluntary institutions and relationships.
A progressive believes in state power, that the careful and democratic selection of good, honest, decent people to positions of civil leadership is the good citizen”s first duty, followed by obedience as his or her second. A progressive believes that well-intended initiatives undertaken by such leaders would inevitably yield favourable results if we would all just get behind such initiatives.
A progressive is thus a well-intentioned, civic-minded optimist. He or she does support worth-while voluntary organizations but reserves his or her greatest faith and hope for the initiatives of the well-led state. At heart, a progressive is a genuinely good person. But there is a poison pill, a cancer in the core of progressivism and for that reason it must be opposed.
A progressive thinks, “I am a good person. I will set things right if you will just entrust me with whatever power I need to do so.” Since not all have the capacity or desire to lead this becomes “Obama is a good person. He will set things right if we will all just entrust him with whatever power he needs to do so.”
Where is the flaw in this? Where is the poison pill, the cancer?
Is Obama not a good person? Do progressives and their leaders harbour evil intent? Not at all. But nevertheless they continue to pave the road to hell.
The flaw, the poison, the cancer, are the two truths which progressivism either ignores or rejects. First, determining the best solution to a problem is best done by the person, or persons closest to the problem. Second, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton). Thus, progressivism, as a result of the first, is impotent and, as a result of the second, is dangerous.
The first truth fatal to progressivism is rooted in human epistemology – understanding how we know what we know. The progressive”s fatal hubris (or fatal conceit as Hayek called it) is best brought to mind by thinking of the proverbial difficulty of drafting a letter by committee. The problem lies in the fact that words are only imperfect (imprecise) symbols by which we can only ever hope to convey a portion, by no means all, of what we are actually thinking.
Think of the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. The latter is an exercise in the very precise logical articulation of the law of identity. It”s not hard to articulate the steps that lead inexorably from premises to conclusion. “Some cats are black. All cats are animals. Therefore, some animals are black.” Pretty boring stuff. Easy to articulate though.
However, with inductive reasoning it is much harder to precisely articulate the mental process. For example: “all the ice I have ever touched is cold; therefore all ice is cold,” is a poorly described process of inductive reasoning. Why “poorly described?” Because I have left out so much critically important information which I actually used to arrive at my conclusion. I failed to recite the countless times I have actually touched ice throughout my life. Surely that fact is important. What about all the experience I have had in relying on my sense of touch and ow this informs my confidence in my sense of touch? This too is important. I could go on. The point is that with inductive reasoning we use much more information, in fact to some degree we use every experience we have ever had, than we can possibly convey in words. But words (written or spoken) are the only means we have to convey the basis of our conclusions to others – and the only means we have to learn from others.
Thus the well-intentioned leader in whom the progressives have placed so much confidence suffers under a terrible epistemological handicap as he attempts to live up to his promise. The knowledge that he (including his cabinet, his advisers, etc.) has about a problem and how to fix it is nowhere near as much as the knowledge disbursed in the minds of all the people who live, and deal with the problems each and every day of their lives. How can one person (or small group), with strictly limited relevant knowledge hope to come up with a better solution to a problem than a larger number, all of whom are free to think and act, individually or collectively, on a solution? This is the value of markets, free markets, over state management.
The second truth is perhaps best illustrated by even a casual glance at modern history. The past century is said, with good cause, to have been the bloodiest in human history. It is also marked as the one which witnessed the greatest concentration of state power. In their day progressives who were not yet prepared to go as far, nevertheless greeted the rise of communism as as a bold and well-intentioned experiment. Fascists and National Socialists advocated the concentration of all power in the machinery of state for the betterment of society. Coincident with the rise of totalitarianism was the outbreak of war, between nations, races, and any other identifiable social groups.
But anything can be taken to an extreme and progressives do not favour the total concentration of power in the state. True enough, but just as communist regimes illustrate Lord Acton”s point about absolute power, the progressive”s welfare state illustrates his point about power per se.
The corruption brought about by progressivism is not simply that of political patronage, or of politicians who inflate their expense accounts, or of those who bestow largess on supportive constituencies. These are trifles compared to the spiritual corruption progressivism promotes and upon which it feeds. The more power is granted to the state to solve our problems, the more our mindset turns away from that of self reliance, and of cultivating goodwill among those of our neighbours with whom we hope to voluntarily associate to our mutual advantage. Instead it cultivates an attitude of dependency on our part, and of at best apathy, if not hostility towards our neighbour”s plight.
In my community there is a day known as “Cheque Day”. It is the day of the month when all those who depend on the money they receive from the government get their cheques. On Cheque Day a few debts get paid, rent gets paid, groceries are purchased . . . and so does liquor, and lottery tickets. Liquor as people try to forget the fact that they no longer live but just endure a stagnant existence from one Cheque Day to the next. An existence they just as often try to end through suicide as through seeking education or employment. Similarly, buying lottery tickets is a rejection of this pale imitation of life – foregoing food, shelter and clothing just for the slimmest chance that they can escape their reliance on Cheque Day.
Believing that the state will solve our problems relieves us of the need to think and fight and strain and struggle and think some more, and fight some more and to hurt and to fail but also to succeed – in short, to live. The corruption of becoming progressively dependent on the state is to die, slowly, spirit first.
Rather than cultivating goodwill among our neighbours and seeking opportunities to make common cause in tackling a mutual problem, progressivism pits each one of us against the other. It is not by voluntary association that we solve our problems. It is by electing well-intentioned leaders who will then tell us what to do, and by our obeying them. But when our leaders discover that not all of our interests coincide and that choices of which problems to solve and where the resources to solve those problems should come from arise, what happens? Well, we better make sure that our leaders understand that our needs are much more pressing and urgent than those others. Our community deserves a new sewage system more than their community. People my age deserve help with education, or home ownership, or medical care much more than those older/younger than me. My cause deserves more assistance than the rest.
Of course, this is not how the battle of all against all is presented in public – too tactless. Instead advocates for new, or expanding, state programs publicly support each other”s proposals while privately, behind the scenes, lobbying for their own to the detriment of the others. Such advocates are not stupid. They know that resources are not unlimited. And so it is a war of all against all – but not in a Hobbesian state of nature, but within the leviathan of the progressive state. Progressively increasing the power of the state is to corrupt the naturally-occurring goodwill among those whom we would hope to voluntarily attract to our joint enterprises by replacing persuasion with force – the power of the state to make the decision and enforce compliance – and thus corrupt social relations with war.
Because some of the facts stated in support of this argument are well-accepted, the proliferation of warfare in more modern times for example, state power is certainly not universally heralded as a good thing in itself. Therefore, tying the term “progressive” more closely to the term “state power” in my proposed definition of progressivism offers the opportunity to take some of the shine off the term. Even the term “progress” can have an unfavourable connotation. Things can become “progressively worse”. A disease “progresses”. Progressivism even sounds like a disease – a socio-political cancer. Someone advocating progressively increasing state power ought to be referred to, not as a progressive but as a progressivist.
Now what about the opposite – those who wish to diminish the power of the state? “Regressives?” Hardly. May as well call ourselves “reactionaries” as the progressivists would.
“Conservative?” No, it has become an epithet and conservatives, especially many social conservatives, advocate increasing state power over some elements of our lives while other conservatives are too ready to advocate militaristic efforts to increase the power of their state over other states and their citizens.
“Libertarian?” It”s the most accurate but it”s an awful mouthful and is, at best, emotionally unevocative. “Individualist” is even more of a mouthful.
I wish “freedom” had an adjective form (“freedomist”, “freedomite”) or that “liberal” had not already been sullied beyond redemption. Others such as “minarchist”, or “minimalist” are too obscure.
What about “humanism”? This from dictionary.com:
1. any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate. 4. Philosophy. a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world . . . .
Interesting. I believe it is favourably evocative. I don”t know it to be used in a political context and yet it seems to me it can be appropriately used, without twisting its meaning, to advocate improving human welfare by reducing state power. It leads naturally into a discussion of human rights. Properly understood these are rights that all humans share and would thus be limited to the rights to life, liberty and property alone.
Anyway, I’ve run out of steam on this subject, at least for now.
$1.4 million for every job “saved”
$1.4-million for every job saved – The Globe and Mail.
Thank goodness the government is looking out for us in these troubled times. If it were left up to me I would never have thought of this solution. I would never have thought to take a million and a half dollars from other Canadians and give it to a business which loses money hand over fist in the hope that doing so will save 1 auto worker’s job. I am far too simple-minded to come up with something so ingenious.
I know it is the Conservative government which did this but thank goodness they had the Liberals and NDP to appeal to their conscience and make sure they went through with this bold plan. They would have preferred even more money be spent, maybe $2 million or more per job just to make sure it worked.
No, I would never have thought of such a wonderful plan. I would have treated the car makers like everyone else. I would have said, well, if you can”t make cars that people want to buy it is better to close up and let those who can do your work instead. Now I can see how utterly unimaginative that would have been.
What would we ever do without governments to solve our problems for us? (Oh how I would so very much like to find out!)
Preston Manning shows his collectivist colours
yet another champion of conservatism shows how intellectually bankrupt conservatism is. This time it is former Reform Party leader Preston Manning.
Manning”s thesis is that the lesson we should take from the recent economic downturn is that free markets don”t work. He says the smaller government of the last few decades resulted from carrying the pro-market principles he once espoused too far. In his own words, “Not until the recent financial meltdown and economic downturn did we come to realize that there are limits to the application of this ideology.” He now advocates an increased role for government saying that “both law and freedom have essential roles to play in achieving a better economic paradigm.”
Now take a careful look at that last statement. The phrase “both law and freedom” discloses the depth of Manning”s treachery. There was a time, when it was politically savvy for conservatives to acknowledge that the function of the law was to preserve individual freedom. Manning”s juxtaposition of “law” and “freedom” necessarily implies (a) that the law can and should have another objective, and (b) that this objective must involve the restriction of freedom.
Gee Mr. Manning, where do we sign up to help with your gentle crusade against the excesses of freedom? Excesses like wealth, prosperity, personal liberty, and social harmony far exceeding that of any of the civilizations you claim to take your lessons from. Just what our world needs, another person calling for more and bigger government. Thanks so, so much.
The economic and technical advances of the last decades occurred against a backdrop of governments which generally opted to keep their hands in their own pockets than in the pockets of their citizens. The philosophy of freedom which conservatives said they believed in actually worked. Even the recent downturn is evidence not of markets failing but of how markets can self-correct. Left alone the market would have disposed of failed businesses and even industries, redirecting capital into those which actually produced the goods and services people actually want.
But conservatives must be the most loathsome invertebrate species on the planet. Having won all the battles they still conceded the war. They are not potential allies of libertarians but a dangerous distraction from a philosophically consistent defence of freedom. I would prefer to contend with an avowedly socialist government. Freedom would be better served by the more open and honest display of collectivist errors then the subtle treachery of woolly wolves such as Harper and Manning.
I used to believe Preston Manning was the greatest Prime Minister Canada never had. Now I see that he would have proved Stephen Harper”s equal in disappointing those of us who truly appreciate the power of the sovereign individual to create the wealth prerequisite to the welfare of every person in our society. Platitudes such as this,
“Now is the time — when the economic slowdown is creating new opportunities as well as hardships — for those of us who are pro-government and those of us who are pro-market to recognize each in the other the necessary complements to our own one-sidedness.”
are just a coward”s way of couching the betrayal of principle in emotionally-laden mush. Saying, “can”t we all just be friends” to those philosophically opposed to freedom is simple surrender. To conservative traitors those of us who still believe individual freedom is worth fighting for say: we don”t need you, we don”t want you and frankly, we can”t stand you.
A libertarian solution to evolution education controversy: no more public schools
A Libertarian Solution to Evolution Education Controversy: No More Public Schools | Wired Science from Wired.com.
Excellent article on how the public school system creates social conflict using the way evolution is forced down student”s throats as an example.
Freedom of religion is held up as an example of relative harmony between people with very different and very strong beliefs. The suggestion is that freedom in education, a free market in institutions of learning, would also do away with much of this conflict.
It all makes sense now
So let”s see. The car makers are losing money because we are not buying their cars. Foolishly we think we own our money and we think that we get to decide how to spend it. That”s why we each call it “my” money. So we decide we want to save it, or spend it on something other than a car, or maybe even on a foreign car instead. Silly isn’t it?
Silly because that”s where the government steps in and says, “You won”t give the car makers your money in exchange for the cars they make so we will take your money from you and give it to them anyway. And by the way, you don”t get a car.”
We would be better off if the government just forced us to buy cars. Maybe hold a lottery and one in every several households over a certain income level has to buy one. Or maybe we all have to take turns buying a car every 4 or 5 years from these guys. At least these ways we”d get a new car (albeit one we would not have purchased if we actually lived in a free country). Instead we are just being robbed blind by the government and the loot is handed over to undeserving corporate scumbags and their parasitic employees. And this is what leftists call social “justice”?
Sell the CBC
Now’s the time, if there is ever to be one, for the Conservatives to sell the CBC. Here”s why.
- In a minority Parliament the Conservatives won”t need to shoulder all the blame for it among those who still like the idea of a state-controlled media.
- Those who would retain the CBC don”t vote Conservative anyway so no votes will be lost. By putting it in the budget, if the budget is defeated it will become an election issue which will galvanize conservative-libertarian support for the Conservatives.
- It can be sold as a necessary measure in hard economic times.
- It will eliminate an active political opponent of the Conservatives.
- It will reduce pressure on private media to exhibit a leftist bias and result in more objective reporting.
- Eliminating this state-funded atrocity will create a void in the market which can be filled by private talk-radio, cerebral PBS-type media and similar programing on existing media which will arise.
- There will be no more tax-funded disgraces such as the recent racist Radio-Canada Bye Bye show reported on by the Globe and Mail.
The public appetite for ridding our country of this infernal institution has never been higher and the political price never lower. The Conservative membership strongly supports privatization. That leaves one inescapable conclusion – that if the CBC is not sold by this government, it is because powerful members of the government want it. Who are they? I”d love to know where each one stands on the issue.
Canada is a fascist state: the auto sector bailout proves it
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s article on fascist economics:
“Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because “the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise… Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.”[26] Fascist governments encouraged the pursuit of private profit and offered many benefits to large businesses, but they demanded in return that all economic activity should serve the national interest.”
Now consider, in the recent $4 billion bailout, the government is stealing our money (called taxation), and giving it to businesses which are so inept that they are losing $6 billion per month. If these businesses were profitable do you think the government would have taken their profits and used it to pay for public services? No, that would be communist and that”s bad too. (What lunatic tries to make a profit when its just going to be taken from him. Communism punishes the able and rewards the weak, lazy, and stupid for being weak, lazy and stupid. It only lasted 70 years because there it was at least able to produce machine guns and people wiling to use them on their neighbours.)
No, profit (except for the amount stolen through taxation) remains private as it should but loss, well that”s another matter. I pay my life, car, health, and home insurance companies a pretty penny every month so that if I suffer a reversal in any of those areas, the insurance company will pay most of my loss. When did we, you and me and every other private Canadian citizen, become the insurers for the auto industry, or any other industry for that matter? When did these mega-businesses pay you and I a handsome premium every month so we would agree to bail them out if times got tough? When did we agree to work and earn money so our government could take it from us and give it to these failures?
If I am irresponsible enough to fail to buy adequate insurance and I suffer a loss, it is I who suffer. If the loss is truly too much for me to bear I can resort to private charity or welfare. But these corporate welfare bums are unwilling to suffer any such loss. Executives “need” to maintain their huge incomes and expense accounts. Workers “need” to preserve their inflated wages which people earning 10 times less than they do are taxed to preserve.
This is another feature of fascist economics – “corporatism” – referring to a system where the representatives of various interests within an industry (the largest businesses, unions, etc.) determine state policy for that industry. Sound familiar?
The last part of the Wikipedia excerpt refers to the cover story for all of this – that it is being done in the interests of the nation. Is anyone else out there like me and wish that all these people that are doing all these things supposedly in my best interest would just leave me alone?
What we need is not fascism, corporatism, or communism. What we need is for people and businesses to be self-reliant, to make it or break it based on the value of what they produce and not on how effectively they whine. The auto industry should not get one dime from the government. Instead they should be given the name of a trustee in bankruptcy so their assets can be sold to pay their debts and place those assets in the hands of people who can do something better than lose $6 billion per month.
“But what about all the jobs, lost both within the industry and as a spin-off effect?” Smoke and mirrors; slight of hand; distraction – these are all tricks used by both magicians and politicians. And the media (and the public) fall for them every time. The $6 billion that the government gives to the auto companies has to come from somewhere – take more taxes from people, redirect spending, borrow more money, print more money. That about covers the options. If they tax it from people or redirect spending they are just preserving auto sector jobs by losing jobs in other areas of the economy. Worse, since the auto industry is failing, more jobs are lost in other areas than are preserved in the auto sector. But the good news is that the big headlines “Auto industry saved” makes auto workers, politicians, media, and voters feel good. Never mind that even more jobs were lost, one here and two there, throughout the rest of the economy – no headlines there.
Another option is borrowing. But any amount borrowed just reduces the amount available for other productive businesses to borrow to fund their relatively more productive enterprises. So again, a pile of jobs get saved over here under the camera lights but even more jobs are lost spread fairly evenly across the rest of the economy.
The last option, printing more money, is inflationary by definition and thank goodness no one is talking about it so neither will I.
So, anyone who supports the bailout is either stupid (or ignorant, or thoughtless) or dishonest – lying about it being good for the whole country when it is actually only good for a limited few and for a limited time.
I am ashamed, ashamed, ashamed that I ever belonged to and supported the party that is most responsible for turning Canada into a fascist state. Conservatives should know better. They pretend to know better. They spout off about valuing free enterprise and personal responsibility. That means they have duty to stick to those principles when the chips are down. A would-be rescuer who throws a rope to someone who has fallen through the ice has a duty not to let go of the rope until the victim is safely ashore. Conservatives who say they believe in free markets but embrace corporatism when the market takes a bad turn are worse than enemies, they are traitors and they deserve a traitors fate.
Maybe a dose of Liberal purgatory or NDP hell will smarten people up and bring to power true believers in the economic heaven that only free-market capitalism can produce.
More and more scientists oppose the global warming scam
“Warming fears are the worst scientific scandal in the history. When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.”
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.”
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?”
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.”
“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.”
These are quotes from among 650 leading scientists who spoke out against the UN-sponsored and Al Gore-promoted global warming conspiracy. The scheme is to justify the misdirection of tax dollars to fund their scare-mongering, their pseudo-scientific studies, their media hype, and their increasing control over industry and commerce. This new socialism is worse than the old one, and more insidious. Rather than elevate the needs of some over the rights of others, it raises plant life to a higher priority than human life.
The early green radicals sought to instill in us the notion that we, all humans, were a blight upon the planet and needed to be culled. There”s was a philosophical attack, not a political one, and its target was the same as socialism”s – the individual, his rights and freedoms. As socialism died, those whose philosophical mindset was unalterably opposed to individualism grasped the straw that environmentalism held out. More importantly, so did those far more numerous and less philosophically informed, content to ride as so much flotsam on trendy cultural tides.
At fault are the liberals (in name) and conservatives who accept the basic premise of socialism – that the individual is either too stupid (the liberal perspective) or too evil (the conservative perspective) and therefore must be controlled – but that socialism carries it too far. And just as Bismark saved Germany from communism by accepting the collectivist”s premise and paving the way for Nazism, liberals and conservatives are rolling out the red (or green) carpet for enviro-fascism.
One would hope that once enough scientific authority condemns this global warming fraud it can be consigned to history”s dust-bin. However, given the penchant for human-hating collectivists to accept any and every irrational alternative to individual liberty, who knows how bad it”s successor will be.
In the mean time, don”t waste an extra penny to “combat” global warming more than you are forced to.