Zeitgeist

You need a higher authority than yourself. Your personal morality as you’ve presented it is sketchy.

Sin is a bad thing. Adam chose not to listen to God and ate the apple. The point is that with freedom comes responsibility. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, but if Adam had no choice in the matter, he wouldn’t be an autonomous individual. In a society the rights of different people must be balanced with one another, so we have laws. The law isn’t the same as morality. Also the standards for public morality aren’t the same as and are usually lower than the standards we have for family, friends, etc. If you believe in a higher authority than yourself or the state, you want to follow that moral code, though one can choose not to, like Adam did eating the apple.

It woke many people up to the fact that government can, and if they can get away with it and it’s politically expedient to do so, will remove basic rights swiftly and without much debate. Even in a supposedly free society they really hold all the cards until election time, but they can push media to addle the public with shame and fear to get a lot of support. I just don’t think government should ever have the right to make people stay home and have other rights removed almost under any circumstances. Sure, in highly exceptional and dangerous circumstances with a short-term sunset clause, but it’s weeks not years. I don’t think that the extended lockdowns were worthwhile because the cure was worse than the disease in many ways, especially in the second half of the pandemic. The focus should’ve been on protecting the vulnerable with voluntary lockdowns for them but providing free deliveries and safe visits to prevent loneliness, I think. Healthy kids and young adults shouldn’t have been forced to stay home. I’m not sure we saved more lives because of the lockdowns when you factor in suicide, bad health outcomes related to mental health, financial losses, and untreated illnesses. The state mandated dysfunction and called it virtue. Even the relatively untested vaccines shouldn’t have been required. I realize there are strong opinions for and against, but trying to maintain draconian measures through the EA near the end of the pandemic was bad governance.

Sin literally means missing the mark. The price of free will and identity is the ability to get it wrong and to realize you got it wrong. Hopefully you learn from your mistakes. That’s the story of the fall from grace that happened when Adam and Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s when they realized their nakedness, experienced shame, had to work, and would face death. It put a premium on our short lives, because with the knowledge that you will die there’s only so much time to get things right. This is the human condition. Evolution is about the natural selection that happens as stronger mutations of living things survive and weaker ones don’t. Mere brute strength isn’t enough to put someone at the top of the food chain. Also, our civilization has in many ways removed the struggle for survival, well somewhat. Successful people will generally have more power, longer lives, more successful progeny, but we are more than material beings. Man does not live on bread alone. We are reflective beings with minds that seek purpose and deeper understanding. These aren’t my mere opinions. I studied these and other ideas. At least humble yourself enough to try and learn a few things, even if it’s from people other than me.

I just don’t want to have to deal with martial law every time one of the Trudeau-Castro line comes to power. We need better checks on our federal government.

Ontario coat of arms says, “Started loyal, remains loyal.”

But we have frigates and we’ve procured more. Why don’t we have any there now?

I agree. We always had regionalism and its attendant conflict of interests in Canada, but the Canadian story as taught by the propaganda arms of the CBC and The Canadian Press was compelling to most Canadians across regions. I’m not sure that centre can hold, as the federal government increases its taxation and borrowing to throw more and more centrally planned programs at the masses that are of dubious merit. There simply isn’t a strong argument for a big federal government, with its overpaid MP’s, growing bureaucracy, and gold plated pensions. The only justifications are major infrastructure projects like the St. Lawrence Seaway, Confederation Bridge, ice breakers for a Northwest Passage, and the bread and butter stuff like postal service to the boondocks, defence, that kind of stuff. What is the federal government’s vision and why should ALL Canadians rally behind it? Add the political polarization and culture wars and this federation becomes more and more unwieldy. I think our Constitution needs beefing up, as well as our cultural values. It’s not nothing, and it should have subsidiarity at its core, the idea that decisions be as local as possible on culture, resource development, and almost everything. The federal government has grown by 40% under Trudeau. I’d say it should be downsized by at least 50%, but that means canceling a lot of programs that the Feds have no business running. It means more autonomy for provinces, lower taxes, and legislative safeguards against overreach. That might be a state most Canadians really support.

You’re right about the value of frigates. We do need better subs though. I guess it comes down to how much power we want to project, because the less we depend on foreign powers the more we can tailor foreign policy to meet specifically Canadian interests. I tend to think we’re either one of many smaller players or we pay more but get the opportunity to shape international affairs rather than be shaped by the “great powers” who are basically the veto powers in the Security Council. Really Canada should’ve had France’s seat after WW2, because at that time we had the fourth largest military and had liberated a swath of Europe. Rather than expanding or even maintaining our power we relinquished it. Now that our population is expanding at boom pace, we should restore what we had at least.

True, we can send a beaver on NATO missions to show our symbolic support. It can swim ahead at the very front.

You would think, with our hardier strains of wheat and other crops created by Canadian agri-tech decades ago plus the use of greenhouses. However, our amount of arable land has declined, I’m guessing partly due to development. It sometimes increases year to year too. I don’t know enough about why it shifts. ”Canada arable land for 2020 was 38,235,000, a 1.07% decline from 2019. Canada arable land for 2019 was 38,648,000, a 0.11% decline from 2018.”

Oh it’s plenty woke. Trans rights are now pushing out women’s and children’s rights. Who knew that the ultimate sexist male move against women would be to take on women’s appearances, beat them at women’s sports, and violate their privacy. But that’s how it goes. “Trans rights are human rights.! Trans women are women!” Oh and JK Rowling is apparently evil now. So, those rights are also in the mix.

Not enough on property rights. Not sure it’s robust enough in general.

The North Atlantic at the entrance to the Labrador Sea is the gateway to our Arctic, Hudson Bay, and our Northwest Passage. It’s not frozen but Canada already has ordered 7 Polar Ice Breakers to supplement its few aging icebreakers. Obviously naval icebreakers are needed. Nuclear subs can be the go to with the air defence you mentioned in the Arctic. Air defence and more modest naval capacity on the Pacific. It would be a major contribution to be able to deploy a carrier to the Middle East, Iran, and China. Halifax is a significant deep water base with a headstart to the east because of its eastern location. Newfoundland too. It would be something to see Canada have a foreign policy that other countries take seriously again, rather than continue to be the effete wet noodle we’ve become.

We need to do this yesterday because the people keep coming. The population boom for Canada is unprecedented. Our assets — natural, manufactured, and human — require protection.

The truth is that most of Canada is very hard to inhabit, and we’re developing over our southern arable land at record pace. It means that Canada’s usable land mass is around 60 million hectares. Britain is about 25 million hectares, not all of it usable (69%). Britain has about 67 million people and must have strict land use regulations to manage its densely populated north and Greater London, which make up a huge chunk of England. I don’t know what the magic highest number is for Canada’s population in terms of quality of life, but I bet southern Canada would feel quite crowded at 67 million. Of course it wouldn’t just mean an increase of population by around 68% evenly dispersed, because the biggest and most popular areas would increase to a much greater extent. For example, 70% of immigrants to Canada settle in the Greater Toronto Area. Imagine adding around 18 million people to the GTA, and that’s just if Canada reaches the 67 million mark. There’s also the matter of food security, since we need arable land for a reliable local food supply. On that basis alone I wouldn’t seek to increase Canada’s population beyond about 55 million. ”Arable land (% of land area) in Canada was reported at 4.3532 % in 2021, according to the World Bank”

Well the point is to develop and retain the capacity to maintain defensive and offensive operations simultaneously on all coasts. I realize that’s the military for a Canada of 50-60 million people, not 40, but we might as well start building the capacity, because by the 2040’s we’ll need it, maybe sooner.

But shouldn’t we really have subs in the Arctic and a carrier for the Atlantic at the very least, as the unfrozen gateway to our vast northern waterways is in the northeast? The northwest is guarded by Alaska. It’s a start anyway. Smaller frigates and destroyers would have to suffice for the Pacific, for now.

We don’t have any aircraft carriers. In WW2 we had two. We have solid heavy lift, correct, in the CC-177? We’ve ordered 88 F-35’s, correct? We still have frigates and we’re ordering up to 9 new ones. We don’t have modern subs. I would think that we’re getting to a size where our military needs to be more like Britain’s. It would be nice to know that we could quickly recruit and go it alone or with an alliance of the willing if shit ever hit the fan, whether or not NATO is along for the ride. I know, pipe dreams.

Yes, except that some systems are better equipped to prevent excesses and manipulation than others. Canada still has a lot going for it: one of the best educated populations that’s one of the most cohesive socially, in a relatively safe and prosperous country, rich in resources, democratic traditions, and ideas. We struggle with productivity. We currently struggle with free speech and a highly interventionist government that has overburdened the people with debt, dubious ideology, and bureaucracy. We give too much money to government to give back to us at a financial loss for the sake of programs many people don’t really want, need, or like. We’re also fed too much woke tripe that few people actually believe or want but that will cost taxpayers a fortune in “equity”, “reparations”, and “climate policy” that doesn’t achieve even its own intended goals. Waste, dubious ideology, higher living and housing costs, less free exchange of ideas, slow moving and expensive big government… — oh, and excessive poorly managed immigration.

Yes Hardner gets an indulgence from me because I think his head is still in the just post-Cold War era of the hopeful mid-90’s. He doesn’t know the extent to which woke lunatics are dictating policy and have instilled a kind of Maoist Cultural Revolutionary fear in workplaces and public fora. This platform can’t really exist in Canada. Moderate questioning makes you “alt right”.

Interesting to hear that perspective from someone who calls everyone who disagrees with him “chuds”.

That’s why the country has declined, because after years of Liberal-NDP-woke indoctrination and pandering to radical special interest groups, most Canadians have become fearful of critical thinking and independent thought. Canada has to become both more fiscally conservative AND socially conservative. Too morally dubious, too much government overreach, too socialist. The populace has become weak and cowed under threat of cancellation, reduced to unthinking babies who are letting the state take care of them and tell them what they should think and do. Since 2015 Canada has become a radical left basket case. This is the kind of news people around the world hear about Canada today: https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/surge-in-medically-assisted-deaths-under-canada-s-maid-program-outpaces-every-other-country/article_29028f96-bc6b-11ee-8f67-03bf29ac7d34.amp.html

That’s why many on the left are responsible for trying to game the system, and I’m saying this as someone who was a member of the Liberal party. You can disagree with someone or dislike them, but you can’t seek to remove their constitutional rights on that basis. Making Peterson take re-education programs is clearly pure animus and vindictiveness. I didn’t like Trump, but I can see how a Democrat dominated court making Trump pay $83 million to someone in a he said she said trial is pure animosity. Can people on the right do this? Yes, it happened to Bill Clinton over Lewinsky. The courts are not a tool for eliminating political opponents, nor is the Emergencies Act or the police. Sorry buddy, but you often come across as caring more about any kind of approach that will advance your perspective than the importance of upholding the integrity of liberal democratic institutions and processes, including the Charter. I see that Jan. 6 was a problem and there should be reasonable consequences for some people, not a blanket throwing hundreds of people in jail for many years. Perspective is important. Referring to people who disagree with you as “you people” or “chuds” or “deplorables” is exactly why Trump will get elected, because there’s something unfairly judgemental and snobby about much of the characterization of his supporters. I remember the whole Black shredding of files controversy, but he went to jail and the media and his critics definitely went after him. He’s still one of the smartest, most knowledgeable journalists and social commentators alive. I would be grateful for the healthy critiques that these figures provide, because they are among the few who are brave enough to say what they think damn the consequences. Most people can’t afford to take that risk. This is more necessary than ever in a country where there’s an unhealthy alliance between government and media due to funding, and where one political party has dominated the national narrative for so long and appointed so many judges and senators that it’s hard to find much honest questioning of the powers that be.

I want a leader who respects the constitution and the free market of goods and ideas.