bleeding heart

Not comparable? You asked a question: Question answered. Is the term "moving the goalposts" becoming too stale?

Well, it would seem an awful lot of people are in agreement with you...but their word-for-word critique simply places the three parties in different positions on your stink-scale.

Then--by definition--he plays a part in all the things that aren't so good. Unless our measuring devices are painted Tory blue, of course. Then it's the opposition that's at fault, or the Americans, or the blameless vagaries of international finance.......

Why sully a post with cheap, unwarranted psychoanalysis? I am often considered to be of this thing we call "the left"...and I am a lucky and contented man. Yet for some perverse reason, I refrain from giving Father Harper all the credit. Must be my partisan instincts.

Oh, yes. When I say we can only "speculate," I should rightly add the proper provisos. At any rate, it doesn't reflect at all on the important work of wikileaks. One of my favourite bits of recent gallows humour was in discovering that most self-styled "libertarians" expressed outrage over wikileaks...fully aligning themselves with the State. Wow...i was aware that Assange had claimed there was a "secret indictment"...now I see that it's in fact true.

OK...I'm starting to think that it's a serious mistake to take certain posters' words for...anything. Thanks for the link, Waldo.

You folks are of course spot-on correct about the Liberals. however, we are all aware that Harper, at one time, opposed this type of bill...because it's anti-democratic, he asserted. When did his (and your own) 180 degree turnaround occur?

The "Fiscal Wake UP Tour" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_Wake-Up_Tour GAO official David Walker on 60 Minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Q14HOBThM "The US Economy is Unsustainable" There's two of Waldo's claims....the first and only two that I looked up, and that took me approximately one minute.

He says he's concerned that Sweden would extradite him to the US, where he could be charged with informing people of the truth...(a terrible crime, even as officials and their supporters themselves use wikileaks' information for their own talking points). Or...he could be simply trying to avoid the sexual assault charges. Both seem possible. It could even be both simultaneously. We can only speculate, of course. Who really knows?

I know. Before you came along, we sat here with mouths agape, speaking occasionally about Prime Minister Joe Clark.

No question. We all have awesome friends and acquaintances who, if they were on these forums anonymously and we didn't know it was them, we'd think are massive tools. You never know until you actually meet someone. But we can read between the lines here, and use a bit of imagination, and say "That communist motherf***** is probably a great guy." And I'm definitely not saying, "We all must love one another!" I like a good scrap. But I don't take it seriously.

Heavens, no. I have been informed, here on this board, by (at least) three different posters, that the "free market" by definition is rational, fair and based on merit. All your critiques and attacks on such genius are tantamount to attacks on religious belief, and so are against forum rules.

Oh, you do have a title, but I'm afraid it so far remains unofficial, albeit universally agreed-upon.

Have you ever seen the video where a group of concerned, dissenting stakeholders, worried about the company's ethics, were--literally--laughed out of the meeting? You would...hippy.

Hey, man...I live in the Maritimes, so...yeah.

Well said. If the argument is "why can't we do it like the Americans?"...well, the answer, presumably, is because the Americans did this right. So our Government doesn't want to.

Really? That would finally be the deal-breaker?

Some responses are more or less perfect, I think.

Yes, and in fact it summons an older trend by a specific poster. To really get what's going on here, one needs to read a fascinating and mildly infuriating discussion about Inglourious Basterds, quite some time ago.

Oh, sure, no doubt. I meant "Ontario" as a political entity, in the way the word is used. "Ottawa" is no doubt a better word for this.

Sure, I get that. But the contemporary misunderstanding is about what hippies were. Mostly they were pretty much apolitical; they usually (I assume) subscribed to lefty ideals, but they weren't generally part of the activist movements that truly made a difference. Civil rights, women's rights, the rights of the individual, free speech rights and the right to assmbly...all these good things increased directly as a result of 60's activism. I don't mean to paint it all as rosy, much less as universally wise and sober, but the good that came out of it is pretty clear. As for "peace"...this is the era in which people decided that violent government behaviour in foreign lands was not always just and necessary. The government today could not get away with the sort of massive casualties of innocents in Vietnam....the public would not stand for it. And that's a legitimate and decent example of how not bowing to authority--in this case, the State--has been influenced by the Left. (Also by some Christian conservative and liberal groups...I don't wish to diminish their decency nor their activism, in matters of peace and of Civil Rights.) So in this case, for one, we see that conservatives (and yes, most "libertarians") are supportive of State power, while the Left has been an opponent. Hell, some of our more hawkish citizens, Canadian and American and British and so on, feel we're not violent enough, that we've become weak thanks to the massive social movements. Oh, sure, but that's how capitalism works...through co-option of social trends. That's it's genius, both for better and for worse. There's nothing--not one single thing--that cannot be (and has not been) co-opted for profit. That doesn't reflect on liberal social movements. Not at all. The liberals did not create that world; they are part of it, though with slightly different perspectives. And the liberal dream for a better world has not failed in every respect. There have been some resounding successes. At any rate, to think that the world was a pretty fine place before the left came along and ruined it is--literally!--insane. I've seen this. It's true in certain ways; for example, the so-called "neoconservatives" were basically Cold War liberals, originally. However, the movie makes much of their idealism...which gives them too much credit. They are essentially students of (conservative philosopher) Leo Strauss; their ideals (and his) are idealistic in that they're almost Romantic; but they require brutality, violence, and deception of the voting public to achieve their "noble" aims. This is by design (though no doubt some "neocons" are not quite so Machiavellian in intent). For example, the late, disgraceful Christopher Hitchens, in defense of the neocons' Iraq War strategy, wrote this: Leaving aside the stated opposition to democratic principles that Hitchens avows, and assumes of those he admires, the dankness of the "idealists" is pretty self-evident...according to some their most intense supporters. And that's because, according to scholar Shadia Drury, there are two types of neocons: the "Gentlemen" (to use Strauss's term), who really, really believe in the West flitting about, doing good, spreading democracy...the convnetional pieties that no serious person believes is the case; and then the real neocons, the Philosopher Kings...who are deceptive, who are nihilists who believe the rest of us cannot handle the truth, and so deal in outright power and propaganda games. Straussian scholars were so impressed with Drury's insights that they "brought me into the club," she said, astonished by it all. (I would only add to all this thta it's not plain to me that the "neoconservatives" are especially anything new; deception and propaganda has been part of the ruling cliques forever, and has always been a major part of everyone's foreign policy. If there's a difference, it's in the simultaneous Straussian self-awareness of what they're doing, and in their profound arrogance, which befits the Elitists that they so explicitly are.

I have no problem with Alberta whatsoever. I'm only informing disgruntled "victims" of mean old Canada saying mean old things about Alberta that this alleged mean-spiritedness (or jealousy, as the arrogant would have it)....that it scarcely exists, particularly not in ordinary people's day-to-day lives.

I know it for a fact too, based on my direct experience of working there for three years. With very few exceptions, everyone got a raise yearly. (Mostly deserved, in my opinion, but not for the precise reasons they might assess it at a corporate level...and they're class warriors, the upper echelons, make no mistake.) You could get a twenty cent, thirty cent, or fifty cent raise/hr. fifty cent raises were exceedingly rare. Almost vanishingly rare. Not deserved? Please. Twenty cents was slightly more common. But most people got a thirty cent raise...for, as I said, wildly divergent amounts and quality of work performed. Yes, i have no doubt managerial favouritism plays a part (and we're all human after all); but if anything, I suspect that my very good, very affable and decent manager recognized the utter futility of accurately measuring "merit" (a fool's game...a frigging joke, actually)...and so perhaps thought doling out the medium-sized raises almost uniformly was actually the fairest, most rational way to proceed. And given that the entire framework is one of near-lunacy, I think she was right. (I'm thinking particularly of your very good point about artifical benchmarks that are set up...it's preposterous nonsense, of course.) Well, not quite: it's "the problem" only within the lunatic parameters that hve been set up. Because to proclaim, as company policy, the 10%--85%--5% "rule" is to deterime ahead of time that "merit" is not real, but is based on profit projections. So it's artificial.

I think this is a really good answer, but (I suppose predictably ) I take issue with two crucial points you make: first of all, that Conservatives believe in "personal responsibility" and "the right of the individual" more than the Left (or some nebulous "centre") does is, I believe, bland boilerplate, concocted out of whole cloth by self-serving voices on the Right...and I think it's quite false. Or, more accurately, I don't think conservatism--even libertarianism, usually--adheres at all to its/their stated principles. As for the rest...it would appear you've taken a broad and sweeping historical trend, a massive alteration of social mores and educational philosophy and changes in social dynamics over many decades, and relegated it to "the hippies." At any rate, when it comes to Power and Authority, I would say tradition is a serious problem. I think Power and Authority has to justify its use...at every step. I should never have to question Power, because legitimate Power must always have to justify itself. And in every case it cannot--it is ilegitimate. Morally, I'd take this all the way down to parental authority. (And I have three grown children, for what that's worth to the discussion.) Any use of authority that cannot be immediately and cogently justifed is an affront to the liberty that, I'm to understand, conservatives wish to wield with such lack of restraint from "the State."