Brian Anderson has a long, but frightening essay in today’s Journal about the steady deterioration of our First Amendment rights to free speech under the steady pressure of campaign finance “reformers,” spending millions of their own money to ensure that we won’t be able to express our political opinions on line.
If we don’t do something to arrest this, the political blogosphere will be shut down by the election season of 2008. I, for one, say that they’ll take away my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers.
Jim Bennett has some advice for the incoming Canadian Prime Minister:
…the Prime Minister’s office is a pretty good bully pulpit, and he would be smart to use it to start deconstructing the Trudeavean deconstruction of the old Canada. He should make sure the Canadian troops in Afghanistan are decorated in a visible and public ceremony, exactly what has been denied to them to date. He should make a show of honoring the Canadian WWII veterans conspicuously and repeatedly, and having a substantial ceremony on every one of the big Canadian military anniversaries: Vimy, Dieppe, D-Day, etc. He might bring back the Red Ensign in a historical context — ordering it flown as a “veteran’s memorial flag” on select days like D-Day, and for Canadian ships to fly the Blue Ensign on a suitable day as well, maybe November 11th. It would be very hard for people to criticize him for remembering the veterans more conspicuously. And perhaps he might even consider a surprise visit to the forces in Afghanistan.
In foreign policy, he and his external affairs minister can do a lot to change the tone without legislation. Rather than being conspicuously closer to Bush, (which the media is waiting to jump on him for) he should become buddies with John Howard of Australia and to a lesser extent Tony Blair (while inviting the new British Tory leader Cameron to Ottawa for a visit. Cameron might spend some time thinking about why his party is now the only major Anglosphere right party to be out of power.)
The Conservatives have won, though it looks like it will be a coalition government. And it looks like Belinda will keep her seat, so she may have some bargaining leverage to keep her cabinet post if she wants to ditch her new-found Liberal friends and become a Conservative again.
Also, this will give Alberta and Saskatchewan a lot more clout in Ottawa.
Arnold Kling talks about folk Marxism, and its unfortunate hold on much of the public, particularly in Europe, but also, sadly, in the US.
Under folk Marxism, the oppressed class has inherent moral superiority to the oppressor class… Class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing. It should be no surprise that this belief could lead to tyranny and wanton murder by government. It should be no surprise that this belief has failed to improve the lot of those regarded as “oppressed.” It inverts Martin Luther King’s call to judge people by the content of their character.
Even when Marxism does not lead to tyranny, it retards economic growth, as the stagnation of continental Europe indicates. If you believe that the poor are oppressed and the rich are oppressors, then your impulse is to penalize work, risk-taking, innovation, and saving — the engines of economic progress.
Well, at least the Canadians are on the verge of throwing off their true oppressors today.
…Joe Biden, usually a fixture on Sunday morning, wasn’t on any of the political talk shows. Maybe he’s figured he already said enough on television this week to last for a couple weeks. The questioning from Chris Wallace or Tim Russert would have no doubt been amusing, and not of much value to his presidential ambitions. I suspect he’ll lay low for a while, and hope that people forget.
…Joe Biden, usually a fixture on Sunday morning, wasn’t on any of the political talk shows. Maybe he’s figured he already said enough on television this week to last for a couple weeks. The questioning from Chris Wallace or Tim Russert would have no doubt been amusing, and not of much value to his presidential ambitions. I suspect he’ll lay low for a while, and hope that people forget.
…Joe Biden, usually a fixture on Sunday morning, wasn’t on any of the political talk shows. Maybe he’s figured he already said enough on television this week to last for a couple weeks. The questioning from Chris Wallace or Tim Russert would have no doubt been amusing, and not of much value to his presidential ambitions. I suspect he’ll lay low for a while, and hope that people forget.
For busting the pork. I’m not now, and never have been a Republican, but I sure hope that they can get their act together. It would be nice to have at least one serious political party.
Polls indicate that the Conservatives have a chance of getting a majority in the Canadian parliament. At the least, they may be able to get a governing coalition by peeling off just a few members, rather than having to do a grand deal with the Block Quebecois. As is the case down here with the Democrats, I’m less thrilled with seeing the Tories win than I am in seeing the Liberals lose big. Sic semper tyrannis corruptis.
I’ll bet Belinda Stronach is having a big-league case of buyers’ remorse now, for her thirty pieces of silver. What a difference a few months makes. Maybe she and fellow turncoat Jim Jeffords can start a club.
On the other hand, if it’s that close, she’ll no doubt be one of the MPs that they peel off to form their majority. She knows she doesn’t have much future with the current Liberals, and we already know what she is–it will just be a matter of haggling over the price. Simply letting her keep her current cabinet position would probably suffice, considering the alternative.
The 1983 essay “In Defense of Elitism” by Harry Crocker III included this line, read dramatically by Kennedy: “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they’re black and hispanic…”
The essay may not have been funny, D’Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.
“I think left-wing groups have been feeding Senator Kennedy snippets and he has been mindlessly reciting them,” D’Souza said. “It was a satire.”
Emphasis mine.
Well, I can understand why. I mean, the guy’s practically a walking (well, staggering) gasbag parody of himself.