Zeitgeist

The only problem with the Conservatives is that they aren’t conservative enough. I want them to be more socially conservative too, but as Canadians have been fed a steady diet of cultural Marxist BS through state-funded media and education, which have been hijacked by the radical left, Canada seems locked into left wing governments.

You fail to understand the alternatives. You don’t see that it was through the Christianization of the Roman Empire that slavery lessened, arbitrary rule and oppression were curtailed, and checks on the authority of Caesar or the King were put in place. These advances were the logical conclusions of a better moral framework. The first universities were ecclesiastical. The renaissance was a rebirth of the spirit of the elevation of opportunity. The first modern democratic jurisdictions were the Italian merchant city-states that came out of this fertile ground. The missionaries and “colonizers” of North America exchanged and advanced technology. Even the Reformation that brought us the Protestant Work Ethic that brought us the US, Canada, and much of what we value about the modern nation state, grew out of an attempt to find the true unmediated message of Christ, who was following in a long line of histories in the Old Testament and prior. Erase or remove those histories or belittle their importance and see what results. The Bible is the most important book in Western culture, both from a religious and literary perspective. Even taken as fiction, its stories reveal powerful and important truths about human nature and the world.

Well I remember your perspectives late in the pandemic. You’re basically a closet fascist, as far as I can tell. God and religion are bulwarks against the kind of extreme statism you support. You take for granted the conditions that allow you to thrive and you fail to see the causes that gave rise to them. Basically you think anything goes morally as long as the state supports it, even if that meant that your liberty was removed. You don’t see any higher authority than the state. Who or what do you think should guide young people? Or do you think that young people don’t need guides? Or are you of the secular fascist ideology, thinking that anything non-religious is by definition good, so our young should be guided by LGBTQ2S+ and radical feminists who hate “the patriarchy” or race obsessed activists who hate the “settler colonialists”? Take away people’s appeal to a higher authority than the state and all you will get is a government pretending to know how everyone should live, reducing parental rights while giving more power to the state, and pushing the population into servitude in order to meet puritanical net zero and quasi-Marxist goals for equality of outcome. Individual freedom will be sacrificed to meet state goals for the hive-society, much as happens in China. I won’t even get into the implications for fertility and civilizational suicide. What do soul-less individuals matter in this cultural Marxist world view? Only the collective matters and “saving the planet”, whatever that means. I can promise it’s dystopian.

Move to France in that case. Supposedly Canada still has freedom of religious expression.

But the Orangemen of Upper Canada also seem hell bent on extinguishing themselves. I agree that the ideas and values that established Canada are critical and worth defending, but where are the defenders? Even Pierre Trudeau and Chretien saw that Canada had values worth protecting (“Who will speak for Canada?”), but we are succumbing to mindless top down statism, or worse, internationalism in the totalitarian communist sense. People are discouraged from saying what they think is right, which is the recipe for ending democracy. Self-harm and shrinking our carbon footprints to zero (nonexistence) seem to be the unspoken rule — but to do it “inclusively”.

The reality is that these excesses of support for certain groups diminishes the basic rights of everyone, for example, for women’s rights and religious rights. Once we say that protecting these LGBTQ2S+ groups’ rights comes at all costs, those costs will include the majority of people accepting education and enforcement of values they don’t like or want for themselves or their children. It’s on the level of social engineering. People are making fun of Trump selling Bibles and talking about keeping America Judeo-Christian, but he’s absolutely right that without asserting the values upon which our civilization was founded, we will lose that civilization and way of life. The “Christian” West has a fertility problem: Our countries have pushed the sexual revolution to the limit, supporting lifestyles that will not result in natural born children. We are also giving free birth control to young women and girls. We are supporting unlimited abortion rights, going as far as enshrining it as a right (France). We’re also euthanizing greater numbers of people and making life unaffordable for families in order to “save the planet” from climate change. You have to see the overall pattern here, which is a rejection of the values that made our civilization thrive and reproduce itself (“Go forth and multiply”). The mass decline in population of Christians will fuel immigration and further erasure of the Christian West. People don’t seem to understand that our former values were the secret of our success. Not all that glitters is gold. With the rainbow revolution you’re going to see further diminishing of traditional families. Muslims will oppose it generally, but once dominantly Christian societies like Quebec are now the most vehemently opposed societies to religious expression. The secular agenda (France, Quebec, most of urban North America) is the LGBTQ2S+ agenda. It’s being framed as a defence against antisemitism, but it actually represents the end of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and other religions. It represents extension of the secular/sexual revolution and further suppression of the family and natural male and female identities. The state becomes the parents in this brave new world. This is what’s at stake in the culture wars. Many evangelicals refer to it as spiritual warfare. They are mocked as out of touch and superstitious, but in this revolution, I’m on their side.

It’s true, yet greenhouse gas emissions keep going up. Of course it’s got nothing to do with the immigration of a million people in one year. That’s carbon neutral. Our government is so smart.

Try being Muslim in Quebec and get back to me.

True, and it’s fine for her to cause as much greenhouse gas emission in that trip than I do in a few months because she’s so smart and knows what’s good for me. When I create greenhouse gas emissions, I’m being selfish. When she does it, she’s saving the planet, well making other people save the planet, which is good. I’m all for paying lots of taxes to pay for theories about what might save the planet, and the people who have these theories and impose these rules shouldn’t have to play by them. Anyway they make a lot more money than most people and aren’t impacted by these rules, which is good because our masters are such good people.

That’s exactly what I’m referencing. It’s exactly why we should be alarmed.

These latest attempts by LGBTQ2S+ and other identity groups to amend the Online Harms Bill reveal the dark and sinister oppression underway of religious rights and the rise of secular fascism. Quebec has already moved down that road with Bill 20. Christianity and other religions are being forced underground. People are being compelled to say and think what they don’t believe, in violation of their faith. The Online Harms Bill is another attempt to remove free speech from Canadians. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-religion-online-harms-bill/#:~:text=Globe and Mail-,MPs%2C Jewish groups seek to end religious hate-speech,defence in online harms bill

Stop the “Online Harms Bill”, which would mark the end of religious rights and other freedoms of expression in Canada: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-religion-online-harms-bill/#:~:text=Globe and Mail-,MPs%2C Jewish groups seek to end religious hate-speech,defence in online harms bill

Yup. It’s clear that much of Canada’s current hardship is self-made: too many stupid ideological projects that cater to the NDP and left wing radicals, too much red tape for resource development, too much emphasis on international projects like climate change purity and eugenics programs, too many morally dubious incursions into family life and individual freedoms (compelled speech for pronouns and child gender identity affirmation, vaccine mandates and dubious science), too much abuse of power to silence political opposition (banning protests and denigrating protesters, funding and control of media, anti-free speech legislation), too much spending and imposition of racist DEI staffing and pseudoscience, too many government programs in general that are paid for through taxes and borrowing. Danielle Smith has it right on carbon taxes: They’re just another collectivist income redistribution scheme. The Liberals have become the out of touch Politburo who think that they know better how you should spend your money and live your life, so they’re taking your money and regulating your life, getting media on board to scare you into compliance, and cancelling or denigrating anyone who speaks up. Of course they have no idea what challenges ordinary people face, but if they can convince people that they’re saving them by overtaxing them to pay for questionable schemes, then maybe they can keep their seats long enough to get those gold plated pensions, which they already have, so the thrill is gone. That’s why Trudeau and his yes people are bored. They already pulled the wool over people’s eyes successfully.

It’s true. Maybe on the next trip to Davos she’ll fly business class instead of private jet….Nah, they serve better caviar on private. I mean, what’s an extra grand at the public’s expense?

Bloated and overpaid political class, detached from the reality of everyday Canadians. Their pay bump on April 1 is far greater than what they’ll be paying in carbon taxes, a cruel April fool’s joke on Canadians.

Canada is socialist.

Okay you’re saying some things that reveal the problem and point to solutions: 1. Deregulate 2. We already pay for health, education, higher education, and a lot of infrastructure for Indigenous who don’t pay taxes and are guaranteed free land as our “treaty partners”. The continued attempts to make Canadians alive today pay “reparations” to people alive today who weren’t around when “unfair deals” were struck by past generations have to be stopped. Many injustices happened hundreds of years ago. Groups lost territories, including to other Indigenous. It’s time to stop preferential treatment for certain groups. We appear to be stuck with the Indian Act because Indigenous don’t want to change it. Who wants to give up free stuff? Meanwhile life gets harder for taxpayers. Will the Conservatives restore prosperity and higher living standards? I don’t count on it but they can’t be worse than this profligate government. Clearly the Americans are growing their economy, productivity and wages better than we are, so it’s doable.

It illustrates that the theory that increasing debt would grow the economy and maintain the same debt to GDP ratio has been totally debunked. The budget will NOT balance itself. What’s more, this massively increased debt load under the Liberals has put us in a position where our debt payments have increased significantly and we have much less room for spending on the social programs that the NDP and Liberals love. The old adage, “Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg”, is very apt right now. Kill economic activity and individual discretionary spending and all government spending will have to be cut. This will be a very hard situation for a government that only knows how to bribe citizens with taxpayer money and borrowed money. It’s 1993 all over again, except now it’s the Liberals and NDP who have dug a deep debt hole. Hopefully the Conservatives will find a way to cut spending AND red tape AND taxes at the same time. Maybe it means we won’t be funding Liberal eugenics programs like abortions in Africa or assisted suicide for the mentally ill. The problem is that you have an overpaid political class who are so disconnected from the way ordinary people live. This group of Laurentian elites don’t understand or care about the bread and butter struggles average working Canadians face. They are too busy booking itinerary to overseas conferences where they sincerely think they can solve the world’s problems with other out of touch elites. They think that by adding to citizens’ costs with regulations and carbon taxes that they are helping them. After all, what do these rough ignorant workers know? I fly by private jet and stay in spa boutique hotels. I must be doing something right. Of course it’s all at public expense. That’s the current regime.

Exactly. Canada was on a great trajectory before Trudeau’s Liberals took office. We had surpluses, a strong dollar, rising incomes for working people… All our current government does is spend more taxpayer money or borrow more money at our expense so they can make funding announcements. Most of these spending programs are of dubious value. I’m sick of this government using our money to control how we live and think. Freedom and opportunity is about self-determination, not imposing endless state programs that are substandard and unwanted by many.

You really want living standards to drop for Canadians, huh? That’s exactly what carbon taxes are doing, making life more expensive. You reveal your secret desire to make people live a feudal existence. It’s like some posters’ secret wish to see billions die so the planet is pure for their personal enjoyment. I hope people figure out just how dumb and destructive these radical leftists running our government are. People are going to feel this carbon tax rise, millions of people, not just the poor but the middle class and rich that you and Herbie hate. At least for now they all get to vote.

You don’t think the 13 percent tax we already pay in basic consumption tax isn’t enough? Get real. Do you understand that Canada is already a high tax jurisdiction? Someone has to pay for your assisted suicide after all.

How about stop taxing people so much, so they can keep more of what they earn? Why are you hell bent on making Canada more communist than it already is? Exorbitant taxation is theft.

No, I’m not stupid. I’ll never support paying existence taxes on heating, fuel, or other necessities. For what and for whom? To save the planet? lol. As for other redistribution schemes, Canada has many already. Sure, we could have those for above certain thresholds of wealth, but remember that these wealthy people are the ones best positioned to leave the country and take their money, business, and talent elsewhere.

Your answer is to raise taxes on working people to pay for more government programs. How about letting people keep more of their earnings to spend it on what they value? That’s what happens in free market democracies.

What an extortionate scam carbon taxes are. Destroy businesses and living standards without making a significant dent in emissions. Only a brainwashed disempowered population would accept this. Well the writing is on the wall for Canada. Why would any major investors take on our regulations and taxes? Why come here when you can go elsewhere? Of course the Liberals try to mask the tepid growth and falling living standards with mass immigration that increases inflation and emissions. How can anyone with a brain take this government seriously? The desperate will continue to come to Canada because they’re desperate. Those with the means to leave and live in a jurisdiction with higher living standards will do so, and the vicious circle will continue. Poilievre, if the conservative-fearing brainwashed public have the good sense to vote for him, will need a majority government and the stamina of a marathon champion to undo the mess made over the past 8 years.