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.
Brigham Young, August 24, 1872: Journal of Discourses
“How much matter do you suppose there is between here and some of the fixed stars which we can see? Enough to frame many, very many millions of such earths as this, yet it is now so diffused, clear and pure, that we look through it and behold the stars. Yet the matter is there. Can you form any conception of this? Can you form any idea of the minuteness of matter?”
“Dark Matter“, Wikipedia
“The first to provide evidence and infer the existence of a phenomenon that has come to be called “dark matter” was Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, of the California Institute of Technology in 1933. He . . . obtained evidence of unseen mass. . . . Assuming that the visible material makes up only a small part of the (galaxy) cluster is the most straightforward way of accounting for this (his findings). Galaxies show signs of being composed largely of a roughly spherically symmetric, centrally concentrated halo of dark matter with the visible matter concentrated in a disc at the center.
“… the Milky Way is believed to have roughly 10 times as much dark matter as ordinary matter.
“. . . In 2005, astronomers from Cardiff University claimed to discover a galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter, 50 million light years away in the Virgo Cluster, which . . . does not appear to contain any visible stars.”
Pie chart showing that the bulk (96%) of the mass (matter and energy) in the universe is invisible.
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.
“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.
It is impossible to believe God to be omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving and yet to have created nothing more than pets, forever unable to understand him let alone to become like him. We can, and must know him (John 17:3), become like him (Matt 5:48), and share everything he has (Rom 8:17) . Anyone who denies that we are literally his children abases Him by denying to Him at least one of those three characteristics of godhood – omnipotence, omniscience, and an all-loving nature. To think that there are some who think we diminish God by suggesting that we can become like him when the opposite is true. A god who would choose to create pets rather than children does not deserve the appellation “Father”.
Interesting what you can end up learning by allowing yourself to get distracted by something . . . interesting. I was researching the papacy, which led me to the Council of Nicea and then Arianism, then to Aryanism where I cam across the fact that Himmler had sought relief from the guilt he felt from implementing the Holocaust by carrying (and presumably reading) a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. This book, a sacred Hindu text, contains the following instruction attributed to the divine Krishna:
“To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.”
The Wikipedia article summarizes this accurately as the idealization of selfless action.
So there we have a real life example of what the practice of selflessness leads to – mass murder, genocide, the Holocaust.
Contrary to the many misguided Christians who believe Christ taught selflessness, he did not. “Love thy neighbour as thyself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” are not exhortations to disregard both self and others but to value others as well as self. The direction to love your neighbour is premised on first loving yourself.
What Christ taught was that by expanding our ability to love to include not just ourselves but others allows us to experience the happiness of others as our own happiness. Love is the emotion we feel when we are aware of the identity between the interests of others and our own interests. The extent of the awareness and/or the degree of identity determines the strength of the emotion. “I love my wife” means that I am aware that if she experiences something good, it is as if I too experienced it.
We choose our values (although the choice can be correct or incorrect as determined by reference to our common standard of value – but that is another topic). The point here is that we choose our values. The choice to identify my interests with those of my wife is mine to make. The experience of sharing in her happiness when she experiences something good results from my choice – my choice to love her. If I expand the number of people I love, I expand my capacity for joy as I am able to experience the joy of those I love as my own. The more Christlike I become, the greater is my capacity to experience joy.
In what sense then, is this selfless? None – how can maximizing one”s joy be considered selfless?
I acknowledge that the efficacy of this strategy is premised upon the world having a net greater capacity for joyful experiences than painful ones. I also think that the truth of this premise is so obvious that questioning it is a better subject for psychiatry than philosophy.
There”s not much room inside that little white circle next to the names of all the candidates that appear on the ballot you will be handed on election day. Just barely enough room for an “X”. But I plan to squeeze in an extra letter and to put it inside every one of those little circles. I plan to give each candidate, each party, and each leader just exactly what they deserve – my personal vote of non-confidence – I plan to vote “NO”.
My ballot will be classed as a “spoiled ballot” but I don”t think it will be spoiled at all. I think a spoiled ballot would be one cast for a candidate/party/leader who doesn”t deserve it and in this election, that includes them all.
Elizabeth May and the Greens
The fundamental evil of this group is that they place a higher priority on preserving every one of earth”s creatures before one – human beings. Every organism survive, not by getting along with its environment, not by adapting to it, but by changing it, using it, shaping it in such a way as to facilitate its survival. Deny it all you want – you”ll be denying reality. In the case of every other organism this is called “natural” but in the case of humanity it is called “artificial”. Why? Clearly the premise is that a colony of slime has more right to be here than we do. The fundamental premise behind the environmental movement is anti-human – a rejection of our right to life on earth. Thus the Green”s will not get my vote, money, support, etc. under any circumstances.
Of course the Greens (other than the more extreme elements who are at least honest about their premise) use rhetoric of harmony and sustainable development to confuse the simple-minded among us. But why “Green Party” if not because they are willing to sacrifice any and all to this one cause (including first scientific objectivity).They are truely a single issue party and the issue is not what is best for individual Canadians.
So voting Green would be spoiling my ballot.
Jack Layton and the NDP (Non Democratic Party)
Why the slur (“non”)? Because they would increase the size of government and the scope of the state”s interference with our lives. As long as everyone does and says what is politically correct everybody is happy but step out of line and look out – industries get nationalized and individuals get hauled before so-called “human rights” commissions.
Their fundamental error is hubris, the idea that “they” (those elected or appointed to positions of political power) know better than “we” (individuals left alone to decide for ourselves) what is in our best interests and how to achieve it. The error is exposed in this simple exercise. Think of all the information (knowledge, wisdom, whatever) stored in the minds of 30,000,000 Canadians. Think of how little of that we effectively communicate to others via language. Think of how much more of it we are each able to use if left to our own to make decisions for ourselves. Centrally planned economies that non-Democrats like Layton drool over run on decisions based on communicated knowledge while decisions made in free economies utilize all that incommunicable knowledge we all posses.
So voting NDP would be spoiling my ballot.
Stephane Dion and the Liberals
The problem with the fundamental principle behind the Liberal Party is that there is none. That is unless do-and-say-whatever-it-takes-to-get-elected-this-time constitutes a fundamental principle. This is the party of political opportunism, of moral bankruptcy packaged as pragmatism. It is only when your principles are so misguided, so out of touch with reality that they pose an obstacle to your progress, that an appeal to pragmatism over principle becomes attractive. Then one should re-evaluate one”s principles and consider alternatives.
There”s a saying that if you don”t stand for something, you”ll fall for anything. The Liberal Party stands for nothing other than itself and it cynically uses others for its own ends. A principled politician will use politicalpower to enact good policy. A Liberal politician will advocate popular policy to achieve political power. Doubtful? As yourself what fundamental principles or policies have have been consistently associated with the Liberals over time. Name an issue – a little research will show you that the Liberal Party has taken a stand on opposing sides of that issue within the past few of decades.
This election the Liberals are running on the Green Shift – a new tax on carbon. Its supposed to be a tax on consumption which is better than taxing incomes (productivity) but then low income earners will get rebates to offset the tax. Voila, it has been instantly converted to a tax on incomes.
The only tax we should have is a tax on stupidity – 50% of the assets of anyone so utterly insane as to consider supporting this idea. Fortunately and unfortunately that would probably raise enough money to retire the national debt (another Liberal invention).
So voting Liberal would be spoiling my ballot.
Stephan Harper and the Conservative Party
Much of what has been said of the Liberal Party can now be said of the Party which was once the legitimate repository of the Reform Party”s honourable legacy. If there is a fundamental principle behind the tenure of Harper”s government it certainly escapes my notice. The media bash the Party as the most conservative in Canada”s history. Think a minute – what is that saying? We have never had a Conservative government that was fundamentally different than the Liberals they replaced – never. Mulroney? He out spent and out taxed the avowedly socialist Pierre Trudeau and in so doing piled up a massive national debt. Has the Harper government been more conservative than that? Absolutely, but so were the Liberals under both Chretein and Turner. So, so what? As the NDPers used to say, and can say again: “Liberal, Tory, same old story.”
Since they have no principles to run on the Conservatives are running a campaign based on Harper”s “strong leadership”. This is a none-too-subtle way of making his Liberal opponent”s practically non-existent leadership skills the focus of the campaign.
But there are principles of leadership to keep in mind too. Strong leadership does not equal tyranny and it doesn”t equal lying. Being a strong leader does not bean bullying. It means having the confidence to hear and even encourage dissenting opinions. It does not imply a concentration of power but the wisdom to delegate. Harper agreed with the Gomery reports criticism of the Prime Minister”s Office under Chretein as having too much power but his own PMO has concentrated power even more.
Dion has accused Harper of lying and some of the media are aghast. Well we all know what lying means. Now consider that Harper promised to end the GST on gas prices over 86 cents per litre, never to tax income trusts, to hold a free vote on the definition of spouse, and to honour the letter and the spirit of the law fixing the next election date in October 2009. Well the emperor”s got no clothes and saying one thing and doing the opposite makes Harper a liar or I”ve been using a faulty dictionary.
So on both those measures Harper comes up short. He is not a strong leader but a petty tyrannt who needs and deserves to be thrown down.
So voting Tory would be spoiling my ballot.
Staying home on election day is not an option. I want my vote to count. If I stay home I am lumped in with those who simply don”t care. If I go to the poll and vote “NO” my vote will be counted. Will it influence the outcome? Not this time. But to the extent that one vote matters at all, mine will send a signal to anyone who wants my vote that they first must deserve it.
If there is a Libertarian on the ballot s/he will get my vote. Otherwise I”ll be voting “NO” across the board.
The short and simple answer given to kids who inquire as to why our military is fighting overseas, has always been that they are fighting to preserve our freedom. At least that’s what I recall being told by teachers when I was young and parents when I was younger still. Perhaps now the common answer is to keep us safe from terrorists, and perhaps it is more believable as well when one considers just how free we actually are.
I’d like to hear the reaction of an Afghan vet, or better still, a WW2 vet, who believed he was fighting freedom”s battles, and then came home and built a tree house for his kids in his own backyard, when he ends up being prosecuted for doing so.
Story
June 19, 2008
To whom it may concern:
Re: My Membership – No. C6303796
The party that I worked hard to build would not have:
- appointed a non-elected Senator,
- appointed a floor-crosser to the Cabinet,
- broken its promise not to raise taxes (1% added to lowest rate)
- broken its promise to eliminate the tax on capital gains
- broken its promise to eliminate the GST on gas once the price hit 85 cents per litre,
- broken its promise not to tax income trusts
- taken full advantage of undemocratic Liberal election financing laws rather than repeal them,
- increased the power of the PMO contrary to Justice Gomery’s strong recommendation,
- broken its promise to allow free votes on all but the main financial measures,
- broken its promise to hold a free vote on the definition of marriage,
- broken its promise to repeal the long-arm gun registry and use the savings to finance additional police services,
- failed to respect, adhere to, and implement the policies endorsed by its membership,
- generally failed to distinguish itself in any significant manner from its Liberal and Red-Tory predecessors.
The party I supported would have kept its promises and remained true to its principles. It would also have stood up to a leader who acted like a dictator and reaffirmed its commitment to grassroots democracy in its own administration. By selling out its principles for the sake of political expediency my party has ceased to exist, making my resignation moot. Nevertheless, to make it official – I resign.
Sincerely,
Howard MacKinnon
————————————-
So that”s that. Next? My application for membership in the Libertarian Party of Canada is in the envelope ready to mail tomorrow.
The latest atrocity committed by this increasingly authoritarian government is Bill C-51. It amends the Canada Health Act to bring natural “medicines” under the same regulatory regime as drugs. In other words, herbs which people have used for centuries, and are available for next to no cost compared to drugs, now will be subjprect to clinical trials and government approval before they can be promoted for therapeutic purposes.
Before you think for a minute that this may be a good thing, consider that there can be no patents on such items and therefore no incentive for any company to pay for such trials. Therefore, this measure effectively denies Canadians the freedom to choose natural therapies by denying them information about such possible uses.
I am not into natural remedies. Occasionally using echenasia to ward of a cold is probably the extent of it for me. But I am into choice, freedom and reducing government intrusion. The Conservative government is into force, regulations and increasing government intrusiveness. This is all consistent with the CRTC”s recent signal of its intention to wage war against the relatively unregulated Internet.
So, this may be the final straw for me. I have said I would support the Conservatives for so long as they were moving Canada toward greater freedom and less government. I don”t believe that is true. I am fully aware that defeating the Conservatives means electing a party which is even worse (Liberal or NDP). However, it would be worse to perpetuate the hoax that the Conservatives are the defenders of freedom, liberty and individual rights while they are nothing more than political opportunists. If they believe the quest for Liberal voters is more important than holding onto the support of those who value freedom and democracy than that”s their choice. My choice, one I am still allowed to make, is to withdraw my support.
