ScottSA

Ah yes, the income trust, notably because it's the ONLY promise broken by Harper, and broken only because of economic necessity. I won't bother stacking up the well known litany of broken Liberal promises on the other side of the scale...we all know it would not tilt it, but break it. I'm not talking about Vietnam and Iraq, I'm talking about the degradation of the Canadian military to the point were we are an international laughing stock with absolutely no hard power and as a consequence, very little soft power. Like it or not, international influence comes from the size of stick one carries. As for "Global warming", a good number of people don't buy the current line, and more are creeping out of the woodwork everyday. The jury is still out on that, regardless of attempts by the GW industry to close the debate.

You are overstating the case, although I admit I left it open for that. Total war is not a Hobbesian war of all against all, it is war against a well defined enemy, and supporters of that enemy. Yes, there needs to be a willingness to use nuclear attack. And there needs to be a focussing of the western mind and a willingness for sacrifice. But don't kid yourself; that willingness will show up in full force following a nuclear or biological attack on the US, with US casualties numbering in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Not only is such an attack possible, but it's probable. There's nothing like a good punch to the head to bring reality into focus for the recipient. I don't think total war necessarly entertains the thought of intentional genocide; rather I think genocide becomes irrelevant once the aim becomes clarified into winning at all costs. Our enemy has taken full advantage of what we consider to be humanitarianism, and what it considers to be weakness. In a sense we have spoiled the enemy, who has never really felt, except peripherally in North Africa, the touch of total war against its people. At least for several centuries. I just finished reading "Making Freinds with Hitler", a biography of Lord Londonderry, a follower of the policy of appeasement and the model for the movie "The Remains of the Day". It brought back to me the degree to which civilized man can delude himself towards the ends of peace. Peace is a natural inclination, I think, of most reasonable people. But sometimes that inclination becomes entrenched in a 'peace at all costs' mentality, and I think the US is adrift in that hope at the moment...since it can't change the enemy it looks instead, as Londonderry did to Versailles and the National government, to itself for the blame. And with that hope comes self-delusion and unrealistic expectations. It takes a lot of heartache and bloodshed to harden a national mind to total war, and we're just not there yet. But we will be, and when we are we'll all wonder why we weren't there in the first place.

I suspect if Liberal vitriol sunk the party, Conservative vitriol will eventually do the same. Well, it was a bit more than vitriol that sunk the Liberals. It was the sheer emptiness of their pragmatic cynicism, ranging from piously adopting Kyoto and then ignoring it to tantruming at the US for militarism while hunkering down under it's strategic protection. In spite of being a "neo-con" (a complete misnomer the left loves to use because it sounds so sinister), Harper has taken more concrete steps in a year toward things the Liberals promised for decades. And Harper actually DOES most of what he promises...a radical departure from Liberal Red Bookism, which introduced interesting bingo cards for Canadians to check off broken promises for the next few years until they were all broken.

Arif: I agree to some extent with your sentiments. Until you got into the game of moral equivalency. Contrasting a fringe group like the KKK to the current global export of Wahabbism simply doesn't wash. The KKK doesn't go on a killing and rioting spree across the globe whenever a cartoon of the Grand Poobah appears. The KKK no longer slaughters the creators of films pointing out the ills of KKKdom. The KKK doesn't rule over entire regions of the globe or fly airplanes into buildings or intentionally and indiscriminantly kill civilians. Nor do western countries knowingly support the growth of the KKK in foreign countries, as Suadi Arabia does here through CAIR, CAIR-CAN and a takeover of formerly moderate mosques. Islam was never much of a religion of peace, but Wahabbism doesn't even pretend to be. And moderate Islam is shrinking while Wahabbism is growing. Particularly in the west. If Wahabbism confined itself to donning bedsheets and burning crescents and committing other idiocies in the night, you could draw some parallel there I spose.

Let us not forget 15 years of alarmist vitriol from the Liberal Party culminating in the 'soldiers in the streets' attack ads that finally....finally...sunk them.

"If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger". That's particularly true in the case of war. Anything less than destroying Nazism entirely would have left a philosophy in place in the center of civilization that most people agree is not an agreeable philosophy. Anything less that the destruction of Wahabbism will leave a radical Wahabbist philosophy in place throughout Asia, excluding, one hopes, China. Our mistake is not in invading either Afghanistan of Iraq, but in not being ruthless enough in the bargain. We are not yet ready to fight the war that needs to be fought against a spreading radicalization of Islam. We are fighting an analogous winter war of 1939, not yet accepting the fact of war, and hoping that we can placate the implacable forces arrayed against us if we adopt a kinder gentler way of fighting. Half the west's population doesn't even recognize that we're fighting a war, and a good many of the remainder don't realize who the enemy is. We're still in the unreality of the dawn of war, when peace efforts are so frantic and so bewilderingly inconsequent as to be laughable after the fact. We have an enemy who simply and dispassionately claims it wants to kill us or enslave us under a 6th century law, but we don't believe they really mean it. In fact, we're so willing to disbelieve it that almost half of North America is willing to believe that 911 wasn't even done by the enemy! Japan and Germany were so thoroughly thrashed, economically, militarly and morally, that the allies merely had to occupy the country. The civilian population simply didn't have the stomach to continue resistance. But it took 5 years of total war to bring things to that state. 'Total war' is more than a phrase; it's a strategic term denoting the entire effort of a nation, as well as the use of every means of force to the fullest extent. The Germans bombed London because they wanted to win the war. The allies razed Hamburg and Dresden because they wanted to win the war, and bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they wanted to spare a million US servicemen their lives. They didn't angst over what we now euphemistically refer to as "collateral" casualties; it was almost an irrelevancy to them. The sole aim was to win, and everything was directed to that single aim. But we're not there yet, although we will be. We used what amounts to military acupunture to invade Iraq, employing the surgical standoff capabilities of US forces to hit only military targets. The invasion was brilliantly executed, but it destroyed only the Iraqi military and left the populationm largely intact. This is viewed as a good thing, and within the context of the 1939 winter war or peacetime ethos, it IS a good thing. The side effects, however are not so good. The invasion was a continuation of a policy developed in the early 1960s and beloved of academic armchair warriors: "limited war". It has rarely succeeded and has failed spectacularly a number of times, most notably in Vietnam, but it is a kinder gentler way of fighting than the uncouth barbarism of WW II, so it's popular to generations bred during opulent peacetime. Contrast limited war to the strategies of post Normandy total war, when even a tactical advance was prefaced by a flattening of every living thing in the way for miles; and only incidently because the technology for pinpoint attack was lacking. In total war it's ok to hit a fly with a daisycutter, because it works. In limited war a flyswatter works for the fly, but does nothing to dissuade the adjacent flies and maggots. I'm afraid it will take a major attack; perhaps a biological or nuclear attack on the US mainland; before enough people wake up to the fact that civilization IS in fact in a war. But watch what happens to the niceties of war then.

Good paper, although it tends not to draw any specific conclusions. Thanks. Having said that, it is still clear to me that in this case, the preamble to the constitution act frames the constitution, and that is not operational ONLY to the extent that no one, to my knowledge, has yet appealed directly to it. As with most legalese and in particular with this disgrace of a Charter, the room for interpretation is incredibly huge, so I'm not sure one COULD appeal directly to it in anything short of an attempt to legislate atheism. But it still acts as a contextual frame, and the recognition of God is, quite obviously, as relevant as the recognition of rule of law...without which the following text would be meaningless.

From the desk of Paul Belien on Fri, 2007-03-23 11:18 This is the text of a lecture I gave last October at Cornell University. It is published here on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome (25 March 1957) In the history of Europe the idea of integrating policies on a pan-European level – in other words the idea of European political integration – is a fairly recent phenomenon. In Europe the word “Europe” has now become almost a synonym of the term European Union. Originally the term Europe stood for a cultural concept. There was a defined European identity and even a feeling of European unity, but it was a cultural unity. During the Middle Ages, a sense of common allegiance had grown among the citizens or subjects of the different political entities on the European continent. This allegiance transcended the limits of their own village, city, region and state, and encompassed other people living on, and even beyond, the continent. This sense of the larger cultural European community was defined by “Christendom.” Read it all: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2005

I find it hilarious that right-wingers call Jimmy Carter a failure when he has accomplished much, much more than any of them. How many terms have you been president? Well, I guess that means Hitler is a stunning success. After all, how many times have any of us been Reich Chancellor and run the better part of Europe? How silly. Carter was a stunning failure while he was president and in everything he did afterwards, including his replay of Munich in North Korea a few years ago.

So what? Cancer is genetic too. Psychosis can be too. What does that have to do with making normative judgements as to whether or not its an aberration? If I have a third leg growing out of my ear, it's probably genetic, but that doesn't make it "normal" or "abnormal". To claim it as either would require a subjective and entirely non-scientific judgement.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SECEDE, DON'T SECEDE SOME MORE Steyn on Books Thursday, 22 March 2007 Been following the Quebec election campaign? Me neither. A decade ago, it was epic stuff: Jean Charest had been prevailed upon to don his Captain Canada underwear and sally forth from Ottawa to slay the separatist dragon of Lucien Bouchard, or “Monsieur le President”, as a few wags began calling him in the waning days of the 1995 referendum. It’s not epic anymore: whoever wins this time round, life in Quebec will lurch on much as before. The Pequistes never lose big enough for the separatist question to be laid to rest, and the other guys never win big enough to make a difference to the province’s failed statism, moribund economy, demographic decline and appetite for federal “booty” (in M Parizeau’s phrase). http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/149/

Ever heard the saying: "the burden of proof lies with the positive claimant"? Perhaps not, eh?

Progressiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Eugenics used to be considered cutting edgedly progressive in the 1930s, and not just in Germany. In fact sterilization was all the rage in Alberta. The term "progressive" in the context of politics is nothing but a cheap attempt to slather positive normative value on a discredited philosophy.

I thought you might say something like that...

But how do the Americans forces countries to do two opposing things? And why?

'Tis better to have been a Superpower and lost than never to have been one at all. Canada is part of a fallen empire that still lingers in slow death (The Commonwealth). You will never get your empire back. See how silly that sounds? God Save the Queen. Heres my plan, I'm gonna use my life long connections in Michigan to take control of it militarily by brokering a deal to give Canada the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in exchange for arms. Once I've established control of Michigan I'll erect a large border along the Souther border. Thus Isolating myself off. Canada, great full for my donation of huge chunks of land, will recognize my independence from the former USA. Thus the country of Michigan will be formed. We can sign are own NAFTA and Defense agreements. Ill even join the UN! So what yall think. We want all of Michigan. Except Detroit. You can have Detroit. We have no arms at the moment; they were abolished by the Liberals and we're just now in the process of buying them back from the states. You can't have any of them either. Don't tell anyone, but now that the US is no longer a superpower, we're gonna sneak in the back door and sack Washington again.

They were whitewashes done by people closely connected to government and who benefit from government contracts. Odd that of these hundreds of people around the world (I assume international finance was also in on it?) no one has let slip even one whisper of this plot. Not one. In six years. No one got drunk or told someone in confidence...even with the global media sniffing around the story with a micron microscope praying for a hint of scandal. No deepthroat, no Colson, no leads as to who or why (except the boilerplate "big oil" or whatever)...no nothing. Unless of course the international media is also in on the plot...

Someone on another forum just pointed me to a Mumbai - Israel connection. I think the CIA got in cahoots with Indian Intelligence and the Mossad, hired a top secret flying chappatti with Ganesh anti-radar protection and JoOoooooooOoOORays and hovered invisibly in the sky over monhattan for the 3 or 4 weeks it took to string explosives all over the buildings. Then, they used Cheney Death Rays to seduce a few otherwise innocent Muslims to do the dastardly work of Bushitlerburtonbeelzebub to make it look like a plot by Jihadists. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, bin Laden was peacefully eating goat stew when much to his surprise... This is absolutely insane!

Please do enlighten me.

Errr, no. It was because saddam used the money for palaces and weapons procurement instead. Where do all these ridiculous notions come from, anyway?

Education and evolving science was the driving force for much of the beliefs we have today concerning homosexuality. Nonsense. It was a value judgement reflective of changing moral guideposts, or more likely the advent of relativism into mainstream thought. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "science". I take it by "education" you don't mean liberal education, but rather indoctrination? Anyway, the point I was making stands...scientific "bodies" are political entities, and certainly aren't some form of High Scientific Arbiter.

Would you mind pointing me to the relevant canon? Not only do they not apply to the preamble of a document, but I can't find any that would specifically negate or alter the meaning of the preamble. In fact, I did find this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation What do you suppose that means?

I have a hard time imagining that this poll even exists. It's like half the world has been transported to neverneverland and believe the most outrageous things...a prosecutor could only dream of prosecuting as open and shut a case as this: Motive Opportunity Weapon Victims that would be a good start, but then we have video footage of the crime photographic evidence of the crime 6 billion realtime eyewitnesses to the crime confession tapes of the direct perps confession tapes of the planners subsidiary confessions from just about everyone is sight. public enquiries into the crime This makes the OJ Simpson trial look like the Dreyfus affair. It's ridiculous to question it. It's like arguing that the sun didn't rise this morning, while one is getting a sunburn. But for some reason, a whole whack of people are willing to believe a couple of kids in a basement splicing together clips and playing it to a background of sinister music, over common sense and all the evidence. Is it merely Bush derangement syndrome or has our society truly gone off the rails?

This is rich, in view of the fact that every Canadian election since 1993 saw the Liberals use the "scary other guy" meme to win elections. Was the US telling them to do that too?

Not from that clause. Really? I was always under the impression that the preamble set the parameters of the following in any document. Is there an over-riding clause in there somewhere that dismisses the preamble? If we treat the preamble as nothing more than a collection of irrelevant words, then we can discard all the definitions that follow as well, no? That's the way every other document of this type works, anyway... It doesn't mean that God is going to descend and rule from the Peace Tower but it does, without the shadow of a doubt, set the premise of the document, as does "rule of law". The following text defines precisely what that rule of law is, but the preamble makes it relevant.