Selective Reasoning and the Modern Liberal Mind

The Mayor of Toronto is under fire for "skipping out" on that city's Gay Pride Parade.  This article lambastes Mayor Ford for missing an opportunity to show his support of the Gay community in Toronto.  The Mayor's excuse is that although the tradition of the Mayor to attend the parade during the Canada Day Weekend has gone on for 10 years, his family has one that supersedes and out dates that.

I have no problem with the Mayor's decision.  He, and he alone, must decide how to best divide his time between being a public and a private individual.  It's interesting to note that the people complaining about his missing the Gay Pride parade make no comment on the fact that he will also miss numerous Canada Day celebrations.  Does that fact make the Mayor Anti-Canadian?

Of course it doesn't and no one is suggesting it does, but the modern liberal schism that makes certain groups in society more equal (by virtue of past injustices) than others allows them to suggest everything from wasted  political opportunity to homophobia in the Mayors case.

Why?

Why is it always a chore to get our government to do the right thing? Why is it that every Tom, Dick and Harry on the street from Toronto to Tuktoyaktuk knows what the right thing is and what should be done but our elected officials don't?

From Letting the Auditor General see MP's expenses to the Afghan Detainee "scandal" how come these people are so damn obtuse?

Are these "issues" some sort of political version of a head-fake? While we are getting the run around on a simple matter of transparency what else is happening?

We need a new way of doing politics in this country, and fast.

Fire. Them. All.

Cap and Enslave

This is Liberals threatening to do what Liberals(socialists) do best...

Take your hard earned money and give it to people who haven't earned it. This plan makes a virtual slave of the Canadian economy and Canadian business. For the sake of what... Global warming, something that is either a natural cyclic occurrence or a big fat lie.

Cap and Trade = Wealth redistribution. The liberals want us to count on buying carbon credits from third world dictators and despots, so that we Canadians can continue to produce goods and services in order to live in the manner that we work for, which in turn makes this country the envy of every single one of those third world thugs. This is the actualization of the punishment of the good for being good. Our productivity is what is being paid for here, not global warming. AGW is a theory at best, and as pointed out elsewhere in this post it may in fact be a complete fabrication.

The fact that this plan to screw the Canadian economy (and Canadian business) comes out the same week as Climategate is astounding.

News today is that PM Harper will be going to Copenhagen for the climate summit. I hope he's there to deliver this...

Canada's Pragmatic Politics: Standing For Nothing

Lawrence Martin spends this article praising the mushy middle of politics. The progressive, the pragmatic, the popular position.

Now while I'm not interested in praising the Conservatives for their pragmatism I will note that many political pundits in the last few years, since the fall of the Liberal hegemony in Canada have made much noise, type and hype out of lambasting that party for its lack of direction. They have resoundingly skewered the Liberal party for its whim-driven adherence to, well, nothing more substantial than the power they sought and the votes that would get them there... So, fast forward and suddenly this same course of progressive pragmatism is the course of action for the Conservatives?

Personally I could care less at this point. After a number of years of supporting the Conservatives I now realize that as far as the 4 main parties* in Canada are concerned the average voters choice is bad, worse, disastrous and irrelevant.

What I really want to get at is the notion that pragmatism in politics is somehow a good thing.

Pragmatism is defined as; "A way of approaching situations or solving problems that emphasizes practical applications and consequences." now on the surface that doesn't sound too bad, but the problem is that as it is applied in politics the practical applications and consequences part is lost and the definition more closely adheres to "A way of approaching political situations or solving social problems that emphasizes majority rule regardless of principal."

Gone is the idea that the solution must work or that it must be practical. Consequences are only considered, if at all, as something to be dealt with or "spun" at the next election.

But even if the actual definition was closely followed there is a major problem... Where are the beliefs, the ideals, the principles upon which decisions will be made?

When being in charge, as the leader of a nation you have to be able to enunciate that there are things in which you believe. The foundations of any society are the things that are accepted and believed by the individuals within it, for right or wrong for good or ill.

Obviously we've gotten away from anything so hide-bound as principals as far as politics are concerned in this country. It no longer seems to matter what a political party, or you as a politician believe, the important thing is how many people you can convince that you believe the same thing they do. That's pragmatism, and that is the thing which Mr. Martin extols in his article.

So the pragmatic virtue of the Conservative party is the ability of the party to say on the eve of the recession that they do not believe that bailouts are the solution only to pragmatically bail out any and all takers less than a month later!

The truth is pragmatism is little more than political newspeak for the sentence "We are going to lie to you."

What ever happened to ideas and ideals? Where did the principled politicians go? Why do so few people ask this question?

Who is John Galt?

* I do not include the Bloc because they can not and will not run candidates in any province other than Quebec

First Casualty Of The Left - Truth

This story doesn't document a retelling of the story, nor even a misunderstanding of the original event it is a bald faced, politically motivated fabrication.

What is Ignatieff's intent here?

The article's author suggests the only plausible one, to make this crime the responsibility of the nation... which is to say, make the white man responsible for every "evil" action taken, from the colonization of this land right up to the moment that Christopher Pauchay's innocent daughters drew their last fridgid breath.

This is the Left's ideal. They withdraw personal responsibility in favor of collective responsibility. When the time comes that no one man is responsible as an individual but everyone is responsible collectively for his actions, the government no longer has to concern itself with those pesky individual freedoms (and responsibility). From that point on our rights will be those printing press ones the government dreamed up for the Canadian Charter. Granted and denied at whim.

Life, liberty and property you say? Don't be such a philistine.

Tax And Gouge Liberal

In this time of economic uncertainty the McGinty government wants to impose another set of taxes on the people of Ontario. First it was the announcement in the 2009 Ontario Budget that his government would harmonize the PST adding 8% tax onto every single good and service that is currently PST exempt.

This is a cash grab of unprecedented proportions from the guy that said he wouldn't increase taxes!

Then McTaxation decides he wants to go ahead with a Cap and Trade system for Carbon emissions. The speculation that increased costs for industry "could be passed on to taxpayers" is laughable. What on earth is speculative about it!!! Do the mental midgets in Queens Park believe for one second that a businessman is not going to pass this increased costs onto the consumer?!?!?

"A cap-and-trade system places a ceiling on greenhouse gases and lets participants buy and sell emissions permits within that cap. Those who don't meet the emissions targets can buy credits from others with a surplus instead of lowering their emissions."

This is nothing more than a wealth distribution scheme. Which is to say distributing your wealth into the government's coffers. I am willing to bet that every single one of these transactions will be subject to the new HST... How much money will this net the Tax-drunk Liberal Government of Ontario.

I'm going to don my soothsayer hat for a moment...

When... WHEN (not if) Ontario business' pass this new carbon/production penalty onto consumers I expect the McTaxation Government to lambaste them for "taking advantage of the consumer" or/and for "forcing the innocent consumer to pay for their waste and polution"... Crank up the spin machine... It's going to be a doozy!

Now for an examination of the Win, WIN, WIN, WIN situation these new taxes represent.

• Company A (a logging firm) is assessed as being in violation of its Carbon cap. So that business buys Carbon credits from CompanyB (some "carbon nutral" business)... Cha-Ching! McTaxation gathers his carbon cap loot... Win
  

• Company A having been forced to pay for Carbon raises the price of his lumber which he sells to Comapny C (the building supply company)... Cha-Ching! McTaxation gathers HST loot... WIN
  

• Company C having been forced to pay more for the lumber passes that cost on to Company D (the home builder)... Cha-Ching! McTaxation continues his taxation-extraviganza gathering in more HST... WIN *note that this would happen with almost every product that goes into a house or other product.
  

• Company D having been forced to pay more for the materials used to build the house passes that increased cost onto the consumer... CHA-CHING!!! McTaxation gathers the biggest payoff yet because not only does he get more taxes because the house costs more but this is actually a brand new taxation stream for his Tax-adicted government... New construction used to be PST exempt!!! WIN

NB* Even with the market in a downturn the median price of a home in Ontario is $275,000. That represents a tax-gouge of $22,000 for every new home sold in Ontario. Last month in the GTA alone 1880 new homes were sold.* That would mean a grand total of $41,360,000 dollars from ONE city, ripped out of this provinces economy (your pocket) and stuffed into the McTaxation government's greedy cake-hole.

McGinty is about to castrate this province's economy worse than Bob Rae's NDP did.

Politics Without Philosophy

I don't give a rats ass about Michael Ignatieff being out of Canada for 34 years, what I care about is his ideas on running the country. And seriously, to call a person an intellectual and to mean that as a slur, well you might as well be praising a village idiot for his ability to drool on himself.

Why is our government spending 13 million dollars to prosecute a Prime Ministerial has been like Brian Mulroney? Over what? An admitted payment of $225,000? Only in political circles could a negative return of 57,777% be considered worthwhile.

All of the major parties in Canada are bankrupt in ideas, ideals and ideology. None of them is looking out for you, they are all just looking to screw their opponents. Leading the nation is an afterthought at best.

If we as citizens elect our public officials to govern our nation only to have them spend more of their time trying to discredit the opposition or dream up new ways of spending our money on their interests then I say democracy is dead.

And what killed it? Politics without philosophy.

ALL levels of government have too much power. Government in Canada is not constrained in any shape or form. From provincial governments banning pesticides on lawns* because it's not safe for "the environment" (yet allowing the same pesticides to be used on our food). To the Federal Government stealing our tax money to prop up companies that should have been allowed to fail in the 1970's (do they seriously believe that ANYONE with more than two brain cells to rub together is going to buy a car from a company that is only being kept afloat by stolen taxes?). We, the taxpayers, the rubes that elect these dolts are paying the price.

Our governments are completely out of control. They have lost sight of the reason they were elected (to govern, not to smear) and all of them hold to the idea that they are entitled to decide how to divide up your money.

What this country needs is a properly limited government, and to achieve that we need a political party built on philosophical principals, which is not the same thing as having a political philosophy.

Politics is only one branch of philosophy and is as useless as a screen door on a submarine without the more important branches of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

The reason our political parties are so driven by partisanship is because they have no underlying rational philosophy. The reason they flip and flop is because the only thing of importance to them is getting elected, all positions, policies and proposals are pragmatic easily discarded lies the day after the election.

Ask a liberal, socialist or a conservative where he stands on the concept of rights and they will give you an equivocal answer. Give them more information and their position will change.

The rights to life, liberty and property are constrained at whim by the liberal acting for the "just society", by the socialist seeking the "greater good" or the conservative imposing standards of "morality".

This is where politics leads without philosophy to ground it.