Canadian Blue

Well, I'm just about completely disgruntled with the current political system. Despite the fact that I strongly liked the CPC for the first two years they were in power, it seems they have abandoned all principles in favor of political expedients. I sure as hell didn't vote for a massive deficit back in October, nor did I vote for the status quo on the Human Rights Commissions. This has given me pause to think, is it perhaps time for another party on the right in the mould of the old Reform Party of Canada. Now I'll be the first to recognize that their were a few morons who hurt the party, but speaking in general terms the party did alot of good. Whether it was on fighting the national deficit, supporting decentralization, or opposing nonsensical government programs. What would a new party look like, here is what I'd like for starters: 1. Decentralization, recognizing that alot of the roles the federal government is currently doing can be performed better by the provinces/municipalities. 2. Having a limited government, as per #1. 3. A foreign policy based on peace, commerce, and cordial relations. Jean Chretien was correct in not going to Iraq, if it's not in our national interest we shouldn't waste lives on such endeavours. 4. Have 5 Senators per province, however Senators will be chosen by the provincial governments instead of the PMO. 5. Taking more power out of the PMO, I'd even suggest that the spot for Prime Minister should be chosen by a secret ballot amongst Parliamentarians. That way our politics will become more local and we'll simply vote for the candidate who best represents the riding's interest as compared to voting for the Party. 6. Tighten immigration, in order for a person to become Canadian they must first learn english or french, learn Canadian laws and customs, and be employed. If they commit a crime or become unemployed [for more than three months] they should be deported. 7. Federal taxation to be gradually shifted over to consumption instead of income. Essentially making that taxation voluntary. Needless to say I know that most of these will be hard to come by, especially number 5. But this is what I'd like to see in Canada, I only wish we had a political party that would take on these issues.

I can't speak for that, I strongly believe that the state has no business regulating our relationships. As long as it's consensual the bureaucrats should not be concerned.

The C in conservative isn't capitalized for a reason. http://www.conservative-resources.com/libe...nservative.html

So what you're basically saying is that the coalition would have never happened had Harper put it to a vote and the claim was complete BS. He threatened national unity by calling a separatist party separatist. By the way if you must know alot of people out west were pissed off by the coalition idea and at the time the polls had the CPC at around 50%. Perhaps Canadian's didn't want a coalition. So you just hate Harper and that's about the extent of your political principles.

If you're from the Christian Left can you please stop calling yourself a conservative. You're embarassing those of us who actually care about liberty, tradition, the rule of law, and limited government.

Yes, and you stated that if we didn't fund them we'd be denying their "right to freedom of speech." So you're still fully supportive of funding your own pet causes. Yeah, it's so hard not to oppose the murder of women and children. That is unless it's Israeli women and children, in which case you're more or less neutral. That's an absurd claim. Jesus didn't tell his followers to go around and take other peoples money by force, besides Jesus would probably be pro-life in all circumstances, the NDP isn't and won't even allow those who disagree with their policy on abortion to run for office. May I remind you that Father Neuhaus was at onetime a left wing Priest, however he abandoned liberalism due to their support of abortion which he saw as destructive to life. If anything Jesus was likely an anarchist in the mould of the Catholic Worker Movement. I haven't heard much war mongering from most Christians, they've stated that they pray for the safety of our troops and that's about it. As for intolerance, well of course, Jesus wasn't completely tolerant himself as their were some things which abhorred him. As for hatred of Muslims, get over yourself, the fact you think that Christians can't be critical of other religions is ridiculous. However I am intolerant of things like female circumcision, honour killings, sharia law, and forced marriages. Actually that's conservatives in general believing he's not conservative enough. You really don't know anything about Edmund Burke. First of all Edmund Burke wasn't a socialist like you seem to think, he would have likely abhorred the New Deal and many other government programs that seeked to absolve man of his responsibilities to other individuals. Second, the fact that Barry Goldwater believed that the United States government should be limited and be consitutional at all times isn't as revolutionary as it is reactionary. Do you know who Edmund Burke was Progressive Tory, you do realize that he wasn't part of the Jacobin faction right? No, we're for the liberties that every man should have at birth. The government does not own a man's tongue, nor should it. So what you're now saying is that you have full trust in a federal bureaucrat regulating what you say and what your thoughts should be. Once again Progressive Tory, you're not a conservative. If you think that people should be punished for their thoughts then you should stop calling yourself a conservative. Actually that would be considered a far more liberal notion since it would make the Senate democratic, which invariably leads to a Nazi like state apparently. This is such an absurd statement that I don't even know where to start. First of all you state the conservatives are for "radical change," yet now you argue that they are in fact reactionary in wanting Canada to go back to the 1950's. But this is especially stupid because in my hometown in rural Alberta we elected one of the first female MLA's in 1940 in a district which was largely white and protestant. So here's what apparently makes you a conservative Progressive Tory: 1. You are ashamed of our nations history. [based on your absurd view that Canada before Trudeau was a horrible place] 2. You support the federal government creating programs to solve social justice issues and propose redistributing the wealth of a nation. 3. You oppose freedom of speech in favour of bureaucrats deciding what can and can't be said. You therefore support the notion that the government has ownership over a persons tongue when they are born. 4. You seem to believe that Barry Goldwater wasn't a conservative because he wanted to rule by Constitutional principles. 5. You believe most Christians are intolerant, war mongers, and gay bashers who happen to hate Islam. 6. You believe the state can be purifying agent in the nation through social engineering. 7. You oppose the Monarchy and all traditions we recieved from the British Empire. Canadian conservatism never left you, more or less because you were never part of it. You're more like our friend Jack Weber, the kind of individual who has a hatred for rural folk and think our world is better off if it's run by government bureaucrats instead of independent individuals.

If the mother didn't want a child why didn't she use birth control? The right to life trumps that of privacy. Nobody is saying that women shouldn't have the same rights as anyone else, however this issue isn't as simplistic as you'd like to make it out. If a fetus has it's own DNA, then it is in many ways a separate entity and not a tumour as many of the feminists were once proclaiming. Adoption is still an option. I have not heard of a single case where a mother was forced to take care of her child if she wanted to give it up for adoption. Why would they, theirs a difference between a miscarriage and an act that's meant to destroy a fetus. Children are often inconveniences, it doesn't mean that we should throw them in a dumpster if we can't handle it. This kind of thinking is dangerous on many levels. First of all it posits that their is life that's unworthy of life. We see an orphan and if our first thoughts are to put it out of it's misery for good then we've lost all compassion and humanity in our society. This seems like a voluntary eugenics philosophy to me.

Actually Stephen Harper wasn't the head of the National Citizens Coalition at the time, he was still in the Reform Party. But it's fairly common knowledge that Rae's policies were disasterous. I still find it funny that you're opposed to governments that actually believe in individual initiative and free enterprise though. You're really showcasing your conservative credentials. What corruption in particular, as well which party in Ontario has never been corrupt. Which would mean that any person who works really hard and becomes successful will get punished more. I'm calling BS on this, you've stated before that Canadian taxpayers should fund special interest organizations like the Canadian Arab Federation. No it didn't, you just adopted a bastardized version of it. Conservatism is far more distrustful of government than you might like to think. The fact that you don't even support the decentralization of the federal government is far more indicative of welfare liberalism than it is conservatism. I haven't seen a single argument come from you that showcases an adherence to tradition, localism, the family, or the church. However I have seen strong support for half baked wealth redistribution schemes, a stronger role for the federal government, and a strong disgust of Christianity in general. You should just come right out and say that you're either a welfare liberal, social democrat, or leftist. Even George Grant, who is often considered the chief Red Tory in Canada was pro-life and supportive of Christian values. But you've likely never heard of him and then proceeded to think that a conservative was nothing more than a watered down Trudeau Liberal.

Mind giving a cite for this. Needless to say I find it hard to believe that both Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton would go into a coalition if Stephen Harper were to join the Star Wars project. They don't seem to be big advocates of it, so if their was a coalition government Harper would have to move hard left in order to govern. I'm not really supportive of Harper, I just don't think he's the evil child eating monster that you make him out to be. But I'm sure that once Michael Ignatieff becomes Prime Minister are streets will be paved with gold and the government can solve everyone's personal problems. Mind you I still find you a hilarious poster, more or less because you have this absurd inclination that hypocrisy is never to be found amongst the opposition benches. Be skeptical and think for yourself once in a while. Especially if you can't figure out that politicians often play political games and use doublespeak all the time.

Isn't the American Dream to live your life however you damn well please without interference from the government.

Here's what I think, the federal government should cut all of the current welfare programs and instead put in place a negative income tax. That way the poor will still get some relief and their will still be an incentive to improve themselves and earn money. It works far better than the current monolith of taxation and regulations we currently have.

I figured I might as well start a thread to see what people are reading, what people reccomend, and what people think is complete sh*t. I'm currently reading: Give War A Chance - PJ O'Rourke The Conservative Mind - Russell Kirk Why I Write - George Orwell Look Homeward America - Bill Kauffman Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [900 pages in] What I reccomend: Eat The Rich - PJ O'Rourke Libertarianism, A Primer - David Boaz The Revolution - Ron Paul What's So Great About Christianity - Dinesh D'Souza Mere Christianity - CS Lewis War of The World - Niall Ferguson God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens Thomas Jefferson, Author of America - Christopher Hitchens Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man - Christopher Hitchens The Death of The West - Pat Buchanan America Alone - Mark Steyn A Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Free to Choose - Milton Friedman Dawn to Decadence - Jacques Barzun Farhenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury The Giver - Lowry Animal Farm - George Orwell David Friedman - The Machinery of Freedom Complete sh*t: Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand: I've been slogging through this piece of sh*t for a little under a five months. The only reason I keep going is to simply state that I've finished the book. It's horridly written, the characters are always either good or evil, beautiful or ugly, etc. I got this book and most of Ayn Rand's other books because many people reccomended it as "libertarian" [ironic considering her hatred of libertarians for distancing themselves from her cult of personality] literature. Even though I consider myself a libertarian conservative I find this book to be nothing more than 1000+ pages with a few good points in a mirth of sophomoric drivel. George Orwell was able to showcase the evils of an all powerful government in less than 100 pages, on a farm, where the main characters are animals. Ayn Rand attempted to do that in over 1,000 pages, yet her book is best summed up by Officer Barbrady: "At first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of sh*t, I am never reading again." The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein: This is one of those books that makes every suburban Marxist cream their boxers in delight. It starts off with scenes of torture at McGill in Montreal, all of the experiments being done of course with the watchful eye of the government. Then Klein goes off on a period of rants about how Milton Friedman [anti-war, anti-corporatist, pro-free trade economist] is somehow implicit in the 1973 coup in Chile, Suharto's Indonesia, the Falklands War, the Tianamen Square Massacre, and the Iraq War. Her entire thesis is that the capitalists wait for disaster to strike so they can implement free market reforms in countries, because such reforms can only occur during wartime, just look at how small government was in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam. This book is fraught with errors, yet is an example of how capitalism works, in that even the rebellious suburban Marxists can find something to celebrate on the bookshelves in capitalist dens like Coles, Chapters, and Amazon.com. But it seems somewhat apparent that Klein instead wishes that her book were to be sold at the Politburo along with sawdust bread. American Fascists - Chris Hedges: This book goes into the looney pile. The basic thesis is that tamborine playing Baptists are on the verge of turning America into a Nazi/Fascist dictatorship due to their opposition to abortion and gay rights. Needless to say the forces of "fascism" that are described are more comical than threatening. Hedges seems to forget that fundamentalist Christians have existed in the United States since Jamestown, if anything religion has helped to serve as a bulwark for civic virtue against tyranny according to that religious fanatic Alexis de Toqueville. On a more ironic note, when notable atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have warned about the dangers of Islamic extremism guess who was the first one to yell "racist." If you guessed Chris Hedges, you're right. While this book might please a few of the hoity toity types in large urban centers who have rarely ventured out into rural America, it should be ignored by everyone else. Authors to stay away from at all costs: Michael Moore, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and Naomi Wolf.

Quiet, you'll anger the malcontents.

Perhaps we should just do away with this welfare state altogether and just let the government deal with things it's suppose to instead of absolving individuals of their personal responsibilities. I don't require a government body to tell me to save, nor should I.

Yes you are a partisan hack Progressive Tory, that's why you seem to have an infatuation with just about every Liberal politician and think that Bob Rae was an excellent Premier. We should be so lucky that Mike Harris was elected, with people such as yourself voting Ontario would have been a have not province by 1999 with your ideology that argues high taxes and statism are better than free enterprise and commerce.

I think what should have happened immediately after World War 2 is that we should have been far more firm with the Soviets. We at that time had the atomic bomb which yielded a considerable advantage, not to mention the fact that Soviet POW's were begging not to be sent back to Stalin. World War 2 was both a success and a failure in my books. What kind of action would you have wanted then?

Great post Toadbrother.

So you're stating that the war in the Persian Gulf and American actions after that war had nothing to do with September 11th? For someone who kept on telling us that the United States is responsible for September 11th you aren't too sure of your case.

Do you think that Iraq was correct in invading Kuwait, yes or no? Do you think the US was justified in liberating Kuwait from Iraq, yes or no? Stop dodging the goddamn questions and answer them for Christ sakes. If you state that terrorists are justified to attack us because we helped arm the Afghans against the Soviet Union or because we repelled Saddam from Kuwait then just say so.

Don't forget that in Eyeballs twisted view of the world Bali was also justified because it was simply blowback. I love how he dodges the question of whether or not any action was warranted after 9/11.

I did read the article, and I pointed out that the intervention on behalf of Kuwait was considered "blowback" artard. I then asked whether you disagreed with the intervention, you seemed to state that you did not. Therefore you likely supported repelling Saddam from Kuwait and are now responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Way to go, you just proved it's all your fault!!!

Eyeball, let's look over your statements: The blowback was commonly blamed on the US intervention on behalf of Kuwait in the first Gulf War. Yet when you're asked whether or not we should have let Iraq control Kuwait, here is your answer: So it's exceedingly obvious that you have no clue what goes on in the region. Thus far you're just repeating a few tired old left wing cliches, unable to grasp the fact that their is extremism in Islam, and that the United States is the sole target of these terrorists despite attacks in Bali, Mumbai, Madrid, and London.

You do realize that many proponents of blowback argue that one of the reasons the United States is hated is because of it's participation in the first Gulf War. What you're basically saying is that you blame the United States government for 9/11, however at the same time you state that you would have supported fighting Hussein in Kuwait, which happened to piss off many Islamic radicals. Eyeball, you have stated before that the US government is responsible for 9.11, you are then absolving Osama Bin Laden of guilt and arguing that he was justified in attacked the trade towers. You've stated that the United States shouldn't have even reacted to such an attack. I am still amazed at how people like Eyeball can see people burned alive in the WTC, buses being blown up in London, train stations attacked in Madrid, tourists being killed in Bali, and Mumbai under attack, while arguing we shouldn't defend ourselves against such actions.

Let me guess, you get them from a Lyndon Larouche site. Eyeball, read a goddamn history book before you start spouting off about blowback. The fact you can't even tell us why Osama Bin Laden hates us is laughable.

Does anyone notice that eyeball can't even state what he believes. He talks about how Kuwait shouldn't have been invaded by Iraq and intervention was warranted, then he goes on to state that the US intervention in Iraq resulted in September 11th. Actually you did, you stated it was revenge, therefore it's justifiable. If you're sympathetic with Osama Bin Laden's hatred of the west and if you simply see his attacks as revenge then you should tell us why he hates us so much.