Notes on the loss of conservative values, anticipating the reckoning with reality to come...

Irresponsible Spending and Not Reigning in the HRC Voted Most Unconservative | ThePolitic.com
Blog readers vote on the top three unconservative things done by Canada's Conservative Party government:

*Massive increases in government spending and a return to deficit spending 27% (432 votes)
*Allowing the Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Tribunal to continue unhindered 22% (341 votes)
*Giving billion dollar bailout packages to poorly run companies 21% (323 votes)

This last was a theme picked up in David Warren's latest offering:

Government bailouts are unlimited, more or less by definition. For were a government to say, "You may have $13.5 billion, but after you've blown that in, you're on your own," it might as well say, "You may have zero." Once the principle of fiscal accountability is abandoned, it is abandoned.
[...]
Yet oddly enough, the Conservative party may not even learn from the experience. This is because basically conservative people are so utterly disenfranchised, not only among the political classes but in the courts, the schools, the bureaucracies, and the media, as to be invisible. Twelve thousand of us could assemble on the lawn of Parliament to make a point about, say, unrestricted abortion, and it would be hardly even reported. It follows that a Conservative government could go down, and not even know what hit it.

Very few Canadians make as much as GM and Chrysler workers, or have pension plans as generous. Many of us don't have pension plans at all, beyond the chump change offered by our Nanny State. The autoworkers' plan is around $2 billion in the hole. It goes without saying that at least $2 billion of the bailout will go, directly or indirectly, to rescuing it.

That the government must deny this use of our money also goes without saying. But the plan will be rescued; and the person who thinks it will happen by a spontaneous miracle is naïve.

One of the proofs that Canadians are indeed rather stupid, is that we will stand for this sort of thing: that people who themselves face penury in old age, will agree to have their pockets picked to cover $70-an-hour auto-workers. And then actually vote at the next election for the politicians who robbed them. (For not all Canadians are basically conservative.)

Alas, until some conservatives take over the Conservative party, Canadians will be in no position to prove me wrong.

Meanwhile, on a related note, from China... Market Ticker comments:

Funny how Bloomberg, who ran this originally, edited the headline and removed it. Did someone in The Administration or Treasury call Bloomberg and complain?

Telegraph: In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary, Mr Geithner told politicians and academics in Beijing that he still supports a strong US dollar, and insisted that the trillions of dollars of Chinese investments would not be unduly damaged by the economic crisis. Speaking at Peking University, Mr Geithner said: "Chinese assets are very safe." The comment provoked loud laughter from the audience of students.

Jason Kenney on "Zionism is Racism"

Via Then There Was Light, another sign that, among our Parliamentarians, only the Conservative Party of Canada can see somewhat clearly one of the central political and cultural issues of our time. Here is a Conservative member's question to the Conservative government from yesterday's House of Commons question period:

Mr. Paul Calandra (Oak Ridges—Markham, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, Jewish students across the country are under siege as anti-Semites unveil their plans for Israel Apartheid Week. Liberal MPs have been quoted in the media and even today in the immigration committee saying that anti-Semitic organizations like the Canadian Arab Federation should receive taxpayer support.
Will the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism explain why the government believes that Israel Apartheid Week is anti-Semitic?

Hon. Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are free to express different views about the policies of foreign government but Israel Apartheid Week is not about that. It is about a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people, a country born out of the Holocaust.
We find very troubling this resurgence of the old slander that Zionism is racism. That is the notion that lies at the heart of Israel Apartheid Week.
Jewish students at campuses across the country are subsequently feeling increasingly vulnerable. We condemn these efforts to single out and attack the Jewish people and their homeland in this terrible way.

Background at above link and in our earlier post.

Something you're not likely to see at just any party convention

People voting overwhelmingly for the freedom inherent to real human rights; their number included the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson (whose department has until now been producing some horrendous legal arguments in defense of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act):

From:Stephen Taylor - a blog on Canadian politics » Blog Archive » Rob Nicholson on section 13a

More from Ezra here (one of his friends counted 99% of the floor in favour of the resolution) and here.

Support Resolution P-203: Repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act

A lot of bloggers did some quick work, co-operating in the kind of loosely organized freedom that the internet encourages, to put together a flyer for this week's Conservative Party of Canada convention in Winnipeg. At the convention, a resolution (P-203 - pdf here) proposed by the Victoria and Kelowna-Lake Country riding associations, calling for repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, will be discussed.

My great thanks to all the bloggers involved. And a vote of full support from Covenant Zone (where at least a few possible CPC votes are up for grabs!) for any and all motions to repeal Section 13 (and the provincial equivalents).

Here are some jpegs of the flyer (click to enlarge).





Anyone wanting more in this line might check out the leaflets (here and here) we handed out at the Maclean's/Mark Steyn trial before the BC Human Rights Tribunal.

Silly season: election Carnival and the inversion of Society

Perhaps it's just my innate silliness, but I can't associate "Flavelle" and "Liberal" without thinking of righteous pork barrels, not to mention Hogtown snobbery.

I have no idea, beyond the provided biographical note, who the writer Christopher Flavelle is, or from whence he comes. Still, fwiw, silly is what I think of What's the matter with Canada? - By Christopher Flavelle - Slate Magazine which portrays Stephen Harper as some kind of radical evil who is, among other things, only a step away from outlawing abortion, and socialized medicine, and outrageously lowering taxes to the point of threatening budgetary surpluses!

Well, some folks can dream...

The article is not to debate seriously, but I link it because I think it is a worthwhile illustration of the trouble left-liberal politics is having in finding a grand narrative to make sense of our times: I am surely not the only one who sees an increasing reliance on demonization and apocalyptic scare mongering that is out of touch with much of our banal reality.

Perhaps the reason for this loss of touch is because many retain a desire for grand narratives, even when the age of mythical thinking should be ever shrinking and we should no longer be seeking a singular "story of our times" but rather living well in an age of many narratives devoted to protecting and building our shared modernity (the irrational threat to which, from the left-Islamist alliance, helps constitute the only big narrative left, but even then we will eventually win this round against anti-market, anti-freedom forces by destroying their One Big Narrative with more individual freedom for all, even Muslims...).

The desire to understand politics and parties in terms of one big cause for the future (even in Liberal parties that are actually about doing a lot of pork barreling and representing a social and technocratic elite), needs to give way to a greater openness to a truly open-ended modernity that recognizes that the one big cause we all desire, the source of our unity and common humanity, is really something in our past, at the origin of humanity, perhaps only to be known fully again in a heavenly kingdom to come, or maybe not.

Sure, this unity continues to leave its mark on us and on every new instance of our growing intra-cultural diversity; as something forever being built upon, we come to see, and to encourage, its latest twists and turns in good part through engagement in politics. Yet perhaps what well defines a conservative is the belief that our human unity is not what politics should be ultimately about, as some kind of end goal. Our unity is more properly the concern of religion and anthropology. But for many people who don't have a satisfactory religion or anthropology, left-liberal "politics" becomes their religion substitute (as they bravely keep at bay the cynical, if realistic, thought that the "I have a dream of Unity" politicians usually end up with few concrete ideas, beyond pork barreling).

Politics should be about the road to a greater freedom, shared by all. And, as such, is not the desire for a political party with a central grand narrative for our times an anachronism? If so, can today's Liberal Party of Canada re-define itself? Can it become a true big tent coalition that embraces various causes of freedom in ways usefully different from the Conservatives, without recourse to apocalyptic demonization? Isn't talk of Harper's "secret agenda" getting really stale?

I doubt the Liberals are yet close to any such transformation. The mistake of many of them in thinking Stephane Dion was some new era Trudeau (as if that would be a good thing) exemplifies their "national unity" box, so desired and so containing. Our national unity is the precondition for our politics and shared freedom, not its earthly end.

In this light, the lack of piety that Stephen Harper displays for certain Liberal shibboleths is a good thing. And we become silly in our narratives if we take this to mean Harper is at war with all that is sacred and human.

Harper to call election on Sunday; but do we have the freedom to call the NDP and Liberals Islamist-loving fascists?

For those looking for hope that they might find some motivation to fight for the Conservatives under Harper, the man who has had nothing public to say about the "human rights" commission scandal, at least not since he became Prime Minister (he once called the commissions "totalitarian" but now he lives with them), Deborah G. lights a candle:Deborah Gyapong: YES on QUESTION 10 !!!!!!!

Meanwhile, the NDP is running Islamists, which is exactly what their behaviour and supporters of the last few years have led us to expect.

Of course, I have still to hear Stephane Dion publicly denounce those who helped elect him Liberal Party leader with the "Bob Rae's wife is a Jew" slogan.

Don't miss Kathy Shaidle on Appeasing Canada's Islamists.

Freak out your prof?

Well, aside from being seemingly oblivious to the fact that much of the professoriate is permanently freaked out (postmodern thought is the belief that any and all signs of the normal betray violence towards the Other and, since the normal, or myths defending it, will inevitably always come to the fore, it/they must be forever opposed in an institutionalized, never-ending, freak out) you've got to get a chuckle over the latest ad from the Young Tories.

But as I say, many academics can't take a politically-incorrect (if any) joke, especially not one that cuts close to the truth: they consider it their sacred duty to be permanently freaked out, reading every myth of the normal as a demonization of some victim, a process of victimization put beyond doubt for all time by the unmistakable model of the unquestionable vicimization, the Nazi and the Jew. Nothing the Jews ever did could justify their massacre.... (But the professoriate, that has been preaching one conspiratorial/Gnostic view of history after another for several generations now?) A good prof. can't miss up a chance to feed on this theme, least of all when he doesn't simply get to play the role of the victim advocate but can be, oh it's so glorious, the victim himself:

A 2004 study by Stanley Rothman of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., found that academics are five times more likely to identify as liberals than as conservatives. The study polled over 1,600 undergraduate faculty members from 183 schools.

But academic administrators say most professors encourage a diversity of viewpoints.

Bruce Feldthusen, vice-president of university relations at the University of Ottawa, said he hasn't seen any evidence of political bias among faculty members. He called the Conservative ad campaign an attempt to "demonize" academia.

"This demonizing of institutions is all too common in American politics, and not very helpful here. We've seen the demonizing of the courts here in the last few years. Are we going to do the universities next?"

Oh the poor man, the next thing we'll be asking him to do is to think through his very dependence on the theme of "demonization" and victimization and to question whether continually invoking the mad mob that wants to turn Stephen Harper into the neocon fuhrer (or is it Bush's Goebbels?) in the name of the normal, oil, and the American lie of freedom, is actually not an intellectually or professionally respectable way to make a constructive contribution to the debate on maintaining a free society. The victimary elites fear, most of all, being pressured to seriously study the conservative truth claim: that the academic victim mongers are parasitic on a free society and are working to erode our capacity to renew our freedom, as they use emotional blackmail (see above) and demand appeasement from defenders of the sacred bases of freedom, all in the name of the victim, a figure they put beyond debate whatever minor nods they make to entertaining various points of view.

But the good news is:

Once considered redoubts for political pariahs, Conservative campus clubs are enjoying a resurgence at Canadian universities and colleges, emboldened by a cheeky ad campaign that encourages students to "freak out their profs" and join the federal party.

Campus-club presidents say membership has increased since Prime Minister Stephen Harper took office nearly two years ago. The Conservatives' ascent to power in Ottawa, they say, has had a multiplier effect on campus, enabling clubs to attract centre-leaning students.

The surge is evident at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. Despite the university's strong Tory roots, membership in the campus club sank to the low double digits at the start of the decade, when the country's two main conservative parties were still divided.

But more than 200 members now subscribe to the club's e-mail list, said Alex Bednar, president of the Queen's Campus Conservatives.

"People are now seeing us as a more viable option. The more politically ambitious kids are joining, because they see what's happening in Ottawa," said Bednar, a 21-year-old history major.