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.

Ghosts of Liberals Past

This has me wishing that the end of this repackaged, uninspiring, sophomoric, oh-so-70's exercise in Trudeausocialism, turned policy nightmare would be Ludwig von Mises kicking Ignatieff's ass all the way back to Harvard.

Aside from that daydream... this article also exposes that revisionism is alive and well in the Liberal camp.

When this economic downturn started PM Harper attempted to stick to his conservative roots and to not play Keynesian Russian Roulette with taxpayer funded bullets. However, Jack Layton almost screaming in the House of Commons that "something had to be done for the workers", accompanied by much Liberal gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts demanding that "something be done for the economy" was enough to ignite the PM's pragmatic (and wholly political) survival instinct... Hence the hole being dug by politicians today, to be filled with taxpayer money tomorrow.

Truth be known that I agree with Mr. Ignatieff, the deficit is too high and the Conservatives are spending all too wildly. But Iggy's assumption that his own spending plan will not create such a deficit, and further that the money he is planning on spending will actually (miraculously) shrink the deficit is the kind of mental gymnastics that leads one to think that he can have his cake and eat it too.

Kelly McParland at the National Post takes the time to kick Ignatieff for both Ludwig and I...

How can they be hard-hearted tightwads and loose-spending wastrels at the same time? They're pouring money into the economy, which is bad. The Liberals would spend more, which is good. Interventionist government is good. But interventionist government by Tories is bad. We have to reduce protectionism. But anyone tries to buy a Canadian company and we'll drag them in front of a review board.

I don't get this Ignatieff guy. I can't figure out what he believes. Because I don't think he knows.

Read the whole thing.

To Vote... Yet Not To Vote

The Liberal's say they are going to "pull the plug" on the Conservatives minority government (they really, really, really, really, really mean it this time).

Now in most places on the planet when an election is held there are only a couple of reasons for doing so. Either the term of the sitting government is over and by law there has to be an election, or in a multi-party democracy a sitting minority government looses the support of the parliament (or what-have-you) over some real or politically important (imagined) issue.

My question is this... What is the issue (I'll even accept a "politically important" one at this point)? What is the reason that the Liberals have decided suddenly to stop supporting the Conservatives as they have done for the last 303 days? What is the point of spending another $300,000,000 to hold an election that no one outside of the Liberal and NDP spin factories even want?

What would the Liberals do differently? The Conservatives are already governing like Liberals anyway.

The Conservatives have completely divorced themselves from any sort of fiscal responsibility, they have shunned their small government conservative ideals, and they have bent over backwards to pay their way into the hearts and minds of anyone and everyone who they think might even remotely have a chance of voting for them. Sounds just like the Liberals to me.

PM Harper and his boys and girls have behaved like nothing more than Liberal dopplegangers so why should we Canadians have our time and our money wasted on a vote to replace one conjoined twin with the other?

What if they held an election and nobody showed up to vote? What if we were able to get less than 50% of the people of this country to show up for that 5 minutes of "civic duty"? Or better yet what if the usual number of people showed up but didn't mark their ballots, or wrote a personal note to government instead of choosing one empty suit over another.

You could write something small on a ballot, something like "Get to work..." or "Stop stealing from me..."

Politicians often make comments about elections sending them a "message from the voters" well lets send them all a message to smarten the %&@# up and stop wasting our time and money.

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

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.

Robbing Harper - Steals From You to Give To Them

So now my money is going to be given out to Kids in the Caribbean so that they can go to university in Canada paid for by my taxes?

WTF?

I might sound insensitive here but perhaps these countries should be putting their own students through fricking university and my money should be left in my pocket so I can put MY two kids through university.

I find myself looking forward to the next election, and wondering if these guys have a candidate in my riding...