Inner-circle exodus spells trouble for Tories

[Alexandra]

What I found interesting from the Back to the Future website, promoting the return of the Reform Party, is that they seem to have changed their platform. They still have a strong social conservative agenda, but are attempting to promote the Party, not as a Western protest group, but a national alternative to the present Conservative Party.

All criticism is aimed at Stephen Harper, the deficit, and the move away from their original principles. They plan to run candidates in all 308 ridings and now present a stronger economic and environmental platform.

A while back there was an announcement in our local paper of a meeting at a large local hotel, for all those interested in learning about the Reform Party, and the strides made to bring it back. I found it odd that they would hold such a meeting in Kingston, Ontario. I don't think we ever even had a Reform candidate run here, but they are obviously putting out feelers across the country.

I wish now that I had gone, just for curiosity sake.

Yes, it is a shame you did not attend that Back to the Future-Reform meeting. Although you are four years too late. Tell me, Progressive -- Do you ever read any of the stuff you post here in an attempt to back up your flights of fancy?

"Yours in Reform,

Paul M. Ellis

Mount Forest

Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey

A Proud Ontario Reformer

[email protected]

Sign up here to restart Reform alive in 2005!"

[Progressive Tory]

Yes, it is a shame you did not attend that Back to the Future-Reform meeting. Although you are four years too late. Tell me, Progressive -- Do you ever read any of the stuff you post here in an attempt to back up your flights of fancy?

Sign up here to restart Reform alive in 2005!"

I'm not a Reformer and stumbled on the Website when I was looking for the Reform platform. Why is the website still active? I do know thay have a lot of discontent with the new Conservative Party but will probably stay with them as long as they are in power. If they lose the next election, it may be a different story.

It was too much to read in one sitting and the colours are distracting, so I've been cutting and pasting it a few paragraphs at a time. But if you think that all conservatives are happy with the present course the Party is on, you might want to read a little. It's just that right now there is no viable alternative.

The Common Criticism of Stephen Harper

"Canada’s Conservative movement as a whole has been damaged severely by Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself — a past longtime fiscal Conservative and champion of the free market. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s total turnaround from cautious fiscal conservatism to profligate government spender and deficit creator has surely betrayed fiscally conservative voters who elected Conservative MPs based on their public pledges at that time that “our economy is sound” and “we will never run a deficit”. One can only reasonably conclude that to hang on to power in Ottawa, Harper and also next his MPs have betrayed every fiscal Conservative principle they had once claimed that their party holds dear, sacred. Harper’s main opposition these days seems to be the c Conservatives members themselves."

The end of Canadian conservatism How Harper sold out to save himself

Conservatives 'fume' about blunder

In Canada, Harper's government in crisis

"Some observers pin the blame for the current trouble directly on Harper. "It's like the opposition parties were forced to try to knock this guy off,'' explains Nelson Wiseman, a professor of Canadian politics at the University of Toronto. ... "Harper has really betrayed the public trust by not acting like a statesman," says Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. "To have done this at a time when there are people losing their jobs, when the economy is this bad – it's shocking. He really assumed that the opposition parties were so weakened, he could get away with anything. He obviously miscalculated."

[Moonbox]

PT you quoted the Christian Science Monitor. That's funny.

[DFCaper]

The thing that convinced me NOT to vote Reform/Alliance was the idea that issues of human rights could be decided by some sort of simple majority vote. We live in a constitutional representative democracy, which means that the majority is, by the very structure of our system, limited in how far they can push their will.

There is so much room for interpretation of details with Human rights and moral issues, that one person's interpretation shouldn't be the only one. Take Abortion. Some people think a fetus is a human, and others do not. Who is right?? What better way to decide than with the majorities' belief. Currently, if most Canadians feel that a fetus is not a human, then the constitution does not apply. If most think it is a human, then it should apply. These issues are not black and white, but grey area.

So tell me, were the Athenians being true democrats when they democratically voted to force Socrates to drink poison hemlock? At what point would you constrain a majority opinion? Or would you constrain the majority opinion. Think very carefully here, your black and white view of Populism ignores thousands of years of lessons on the dangers. We live in a democracy, not a mobocracy. I want you to fully explain how Populism is not Mobocracy. What limits would you put on Populism?

The elected members are still responsible for asking proper questions. Not whether or not we should allow minorities to the same rights as non-minorities. I am betting in your example with Socrates, without a free vote, he would have been executed by the government anyway, making the democratic portion just to pacify the people. What limits do you believe we should blindly follow our government?

.

[Wild Bill]

I keep asking you, do you think Athenians should have had the democratic right to, by simple majority vote, order a man to commit suicide? I'm sure you're thinking "Reform would never demand it", but then again, in a way, constitutions are meant to enshrine protections against both the least and worst of abuses. You ought to review why precisely the Magna Charta was forced on King John (and another example of an important advance in English liberties that was most certainly not Populist, unless you consider a bunch of angry barons a Populist movement).

<snip>

I unfortunately don't see what your ultimate point is. You give the example of Common Law, but that most certainly did not come about as some sort of populism. In fact, I can think of no political system that really came about through any sort of Populism. Even in the United States, ultimately, the Constitution was written by people I suspect you'd call "elitists"; people like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who were incredibly well-read and astute political thinkers who pretty much would agree with the idea I hold, that human rights are inherent, and do not require justification by or approval from a majority, and that while the majority will must be paramount, it cannot be absolute, or liberty becomes meaningless.

I think that the ancient Athenians are hardly a direct parallel. I would assume that the laws and customs of their society were quite different than that of ours today. It's not likely that Canada would morph into a twin of your example and vote for forced suicide. Although for Danny Williams I might make an exception!

If your point is that our culture needs checks and balances we have no disagreement. I'm not at all suggesting anarchy, although I tend to think of myself at times as a Heinlein 'rational anarchist'. Rather, I'm talking about who gets to choose what is legal and what is not. You have stressed repeatedly that you don't want the 'mob' deciding to abuse your inherent rights. When Trudeau gave us a European style of Charter of Rights didn't that negate the concept of 'inherent'?

Be that as it may, I don't see where I ever suggested that populism means no laws, no constitution and no rights, where referendums would be held on everything and anything, over and over with no sense of precedent. To me, things would be mostly as they are now, with the SIGNIFICANT exception that before a law of major consequence, like a new definition of human rights, could be enacted it would have to stand some far more populist test than our present system, where whoever has a majority government can whip their members into voting as the PMO demands, with little or no connection to the views of the majority of Canadians.

I think we are both talking about balance here. I just see things as far less democratic than it seems you do. When Paul Martin's government held their vote on same-sex marriage it seemed to me to be devoid of any sense of representing the will of the people. I myself happened to agree with the vote but my sense of democracy was totally offended. I wanted the Bill to be passed in a free vote, not by a gang of 'Whipped' barking trained seals.

What do you think the chances are of an MP like Diane Finley, who represents the people of Caledonia, Ontario, getting up in the Commons to raise the plight of her constituents under the native protests that have just had their 3rd year anniversary and put forth a private members bill based on the popular feelings of the voters of her riding?

Given the political stand of her party, it would be a safe bet those chances would be zero! Finley is NOT the representative of her constituents to the Commons. She is the Tory representative to carry the views of her party back to the people.

That is one of the main things that Reform wanted to change. You seem to feel that it would allow some righteous group of social engineers to turn Canada into a 'Ned Flanders' wonderland, after that character in "The Simpsons". I submit that if the system was truly populist such a thing would be impossible unless the majority of Canadians believed in saying "Oakely-dokely, neighbour!"

No, it would never happen. I grant that from time to time things might not get changed in the manner some would want. Some of those times might be mistakes. Yet it is the ability to make mistakes and learn from the consequences that makes for the best teaching. If we always have to do what some elite tells us to do it is impossible to ever learn anything from experience and reason. Instead, we would have substituted them for 'indoctrination'.

I'm not overly fond of Rush Limbaugh but he did coin one saying that I had to admire. He said that "A liberal is someone who defines 'freedom' as the freedom to agree!" A Reformer instantly would have known what he was talking about.

You see, TB, populism in Reform never meant that only an 'elite' from Ned's church would have been allowed to set our laws. It would have meant that EVERYONE would have had more say, including YOU and everyone else who believed as you do!

Please don't take that as a slam against your assumption. It was perfectly understandable, given that historically ALL the other parties have co-opted the concept of populism for their own ends! Reform however WAS different! Not perfect or utopian, yet they operated so openly with policy power clearly set out to come from the grassroots imbedded in their very structure that it would have been very difficult if not impossible for any one lobby group to take control.

Ah well, maybe something as good will come along again before I die! Meanwhile, with things the way they stand now whenever someone says that he's protecting my rights I instinctively check if my wallet is still in my pants pocket.

Edited February 20, 2009 by Wild Bill

[Oleg Bach]

Professional rights protectors are an untrustworthy bunch. Much like the person who stands on a soap box and declares we are all the same and all equal. Then once equalty is achieved he trades in his soap box for a throne and all are equally poor but him. People who are of fair mind and truely want human rights for others are quiet these days. It is the ambitious rights protector who is now in the lime light. It is the careerist protector that seeks to take authority...then once gained...they will dictate what and who should have what rights and in what measure.

This type might percieve that all wealthy people are bad and inhumane. They may demand the forced implimention of poverty for the rich out of sheer spite., They might attempt exault the poor and down trodden ot a high positon only find out that the oppressed had become that way during a previous generation that suffered a revolting backlash for prior bad behaviour by a grandfather - and the now poor family had fallen from grace because they trampled on the rights of one to many.

From what I see - human rights can only be achieved by the individual who stand up and sternly says - I am free and take your hand from my face..it is one person at a time no matter who they are standing up and demanding that their dignity not be trounced. Once a population is conditioned to abuse it is impossible to save them from abuse - there is no will or awareness. Good example was a person within the court system was struck repeatedly across the face by their abusive spouse - He was a man...I had to explain to him that he was being abused...firstly it was stero-typical thinking that led him to believe other wise - he was conditioned and unaware that his rights to maintain human dignity were being removed by an abuser and a system floating in a sea of bias.