The Reluctant Left

Yet another idiot

2008-12-02T19:36:00.001-08:00

Shorter Christian Conservative: "I don't understand parliamentary democracy."

Bonnus shorter Christian Conservative: "Therefore, based on that lack of understanding, Canada's electoral system is just like Zimbabwe's."

I wish I were exaggerating.

Senate reform via stacking the senate

2008-10-15T20:01:00.000-07:00

You might remember Stephen Harper as the guy who ran on a platform of reforming the senate, then executed on that plan by appointing a senator on his first day in office. In fact, my MP, the "drama queen"* sent me a flyer this very spring indicating how important senate reform is to the CPC party.

So obviously, the way to reform the senate is to appoint a whole bunch of new senators:

Newly re-elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper served notice Wednesday that he will stack the Senate with Tories if necessary to push through democratic reforms of the chamber.

Mr. Harper told reporters in Calgary that the Conservatives are serious about promised changes to the Senate – which include elections and eight-year fixed terms – and will fill it with new Tory appointments to push through reforms if the Liberal majority there opposes them.

“We don't believe an unelected body should in anyway be blocking an elected body,” he told a news conference in Calgary.

So Steve means to reform the senate by taking a page from Mulroney's book and stacking the senate. Even though the senators he appoints won't be subject to the new laws he enacts -- the laws won't be retroactive.

The only real way to change the senate, by the way, is through a change to the constitution. But Steve doesn't have the backbone to try a constitutional change -- it's too hard, and daring to do things when he doesn't know if they'll succeed just isn't in the Steve playbook.

So he's going to enact a bunch of laws that will be no more meaningful or binding than the fixed election dates law that he enacted in his first mandate. Accountability? No, not for him. He'll take smoke and mirrors over accountability, every time.

Steve seems to love to pass laws for other people that don't apply to him. That's because he's a weak, cowardly man who has no idea how to work with other people to make things go his way.

A weak, cowardly man.

* The wonderful Kady O'Malley's term, not mine. Though I wish it were.

Update: Kady is on the case, and look out, Steve, she's got math.

Great Idea for a Sketch

2006-11-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

With that new Fox News comedy show being developed, I'm sure there are some great comedic minds working to make it the best Daily Show rip-off ever. But I've got an idea for a hilarious sketch.

The sketch opens with George Bush making an address to a large crowd. Then he starts looking for WMDs all over the stage -- under the podium, in the wings, in the first row of the audience. Hilarious! He just keeps looking and looking and can't find 'em!

And then he finds 'em under a pile of 3,000 dead US servicemen.

I think it would be awesome but I have a feeling that it's already been done. I seem to remember this being pitched to someone else, like the American people or something.

2006-08-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

Recently, noted historian Jason Kenney likened Hezbollah to the 1930s Nazi party. This is not an uncommon tactic, but it's become current with the situation in the Middle East where Hezbollah killed fifty Israeli innocents. (That Israel killed over a thousand Lebanese innocents, I'll get to in a bit.)

My question is, how can you possibly equate a rag-tag group like Hezbolah to the government of a huge, powerful, and heavily industrialized nation? How could Hezbollah ever represent the threat to Jewish people, and to all of humanity, that the Nazis did?

The Holocaust had its roots in deep-seated, systemic, and centuries-old Christian racism, undeniably. But the horror does not stem from the fact that it happened to the Jews (more accurately, they were the single biggest group that was targeted -- I don't know but I suspect that, percentage-wise, the gypsies were devastated far more as a people).

The horror of the Holocaust was that this base human fear, xenophobia, and hatred was carried out on a monolithically industrial scale. A great portion of a nation's industry was focused on slaughter. It is the cold, inhuman possibilities that human society is capable of that makes the Holocaust unique in history.

By labelling everyone who hates Jews or Israel -- and by the way, I'm neither, and in fact I agree that Israel has the right to existence and security -- a Nazi, not only do you cheapen the incomprehensible Jewish experience in the Holocaust, you also choose to ignore the huge responsibility the Holocaust demands from us as a society.

Meanwhile, you have Hezbollah, a well-organized and well-armed group to be sure, but a group without any military or industrial power -- especially compared to Israel. In numbers, they are far inferior not only to Israel, but even to the Israel military. The idea that they could act on statements like "we will destroy Israel" is as ludicrous as the statements themselves. What does it say about those who instruct us to actually fear the people who say such things? (I'll tell you: that they are motivated by exactly the same kind of prejudice and hatred that they decry.)

So either you have to explain how Hezbollah has the potential to achieve something on the scale of the Holocaust, or you have to accept that calling people Nazis because they are against Israel is simple intellectual dishonesty.

2006-07-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

Israel Intended to Kill Our Soldier

I've been thinking a lot about the death of Major Kruedener in Lebanon the other day. A lot of the speculation seems to revolve around the question of whether the IDF intended to actually shell the UN observation post.

I was in the Royal Canadian Artillery (as a reservist) for three years. Let me tell you what I think.

I was a signaller (that is, a radio-man) in the RCA. I was on a gun for a year, and then in the Command Post for two years. A total of maybe 12 weeks in the field on live fire exercises. And I can tell you, when you're firing live ammunition, you care passionately, all-encompassingly, that every round goes where it's supposed to. If you're even near one of the "safe boxes" around your FOOs or other friendlies, you double-check everything. I know that was the case in every box I was in. (And by double-check I mean triple-check; you normally double-check every round.)

Here's the sum total of the mistakes I saw:

We once fired at the wrong time. This was because the fire orders were being given from our regimental commander in a non-standard way. Our rounds went to the right place, but they went before they were supposed to. It was actually my own personal fault, because I misinterpreted the command coming over the radio.
We once missed the target by a huge margin. The command post officer failed to double-check the calculations from the technician, and sent the fire order without checking. Our observers immediately radioed in to say the rounds were off target and to check again.

We were high school kids, mostly. We trained a few weeks in the summer, a few weekends in the year, and one evening a week. We were not the professional, highly-trained units in the IDF. And our guns were Korean War relics. (Literally, the date the barrels were cast was stamped right on 'em. There wasn't a gun in our battery cast after 1954. My regiment has since updated to lighter, more accurate howitzers.)

My conclusion is that someone was ordering fire on the UN observer post. Maybe they saw it as a calculated risk, because there were Hezbollah units nearby. But that means they knew there was a chance of hitting it, and they took that chance. For ten hours. Despite repeated calls from the UN post, pleading them to stop.

On that chance, they lost, and four peacekeepers are dead. One was a Canadian.

Any reason to feel okay with that any more? Yeah, not for me either.

So when Stephen Harper waves his hand at the IDF's role in this, when Stephen Harper asks "what were they doing there?" instead of "why is our nation's son dead?" -- I refuse to accept it.

Bill Turner was a command post officer in our regiment. I worked with him many times. We filled sandbags together, for god's sake, in 30 degree weather on the Mattawa plains. He was killed in Afghanistan in April.

Al Prentice was another gunner in my regiment. We went through our basic training, artillery training, and signaller training together. We've had more beers together than I can count. We ate wings together on my nineteenth birthday. He'll be rotated to Afghanistan this September.

These lives could be tossed aside just as easily. Will Stephen Harper care?

I'm calling on Mr Harper to support our troops, first and last. To refuse to use our men and women as pieces in some game where political capital is the currency. The real currency is life, Mr Harper, human life, that you and I agree can be risked to help people, to help keep peace.

Mr Harper may be willing to sacrifice Major Kruedener and Lieutenant Turner and Sergeant Prentice in the name of political expediency. I am not. And I won't forget Mr Harper's shameful abdication of his duty to his nation, and to the men and women who fight at his command.

2006-07-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Mission Accomplished, Mister Prime Minister

Stephen Harper's five priorities, as he laid them out for us during the election campaign, were:

Cleaning up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act
Cutting the GST
Cracking down on crime
Increasing financial assistance for parents
Working with the provinces to establish a wait-times guarantee for patients

Then came July, when they had mysteriously morphed into:

cleaning up the federal government
cutting taxes
cracking down on crime
supporting families
strengthening our country at home and around the world

Now, we all know about the bait and switch Harper played this month with the five priorities. And he replaced a definite, measurable one (wait times guarantee) with a vague one (strengthen our country).

The last two weeks have made it clear, though, that Harper is incapable of strengthening our country abroad. In the Israeli conflict, he has called the bombing of civilian populations "measured"; refused to call for a cease-fire even after eight Canadian civilians were killed and 10,000 Canadians were forced to leave the country; refused to call Israel to account for killing one of our UN workers; and actually blamed the UN worker for carrying out a UN mission in the first place.

Other than the US, Israel, and the UK, we are alone in the international community in defending Israel. While we might get a little more credibility from the USA (and we know how useful credibility is with them), we have lost face at every single turn in this crisis.

All we need is an aircraft carrier and a banner.

2006-07-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan: End it

You know, I was originally pro the Afghanistan mission. Then, since Canada re-upped its deployment there, I was on the fence. Now, I've moved over to the "get out now" side.

I don't know how we can extricate ourselves before our mission ends. But unless we get a clear mandate for what we're going to achieve there, and unless that mandate is consistent with actual improvements to the lives of Afghanis, we have to leave.

It comes down to what I've said about every UN mission Canada joins in on: it all depends on the mandate. If we have clear objectives and clear means of achieving them, then we can be okay with the mission. (Cyprus is a good example of that, if a little old.)

If we're to fight the insurgents in order to clear the way for a natural gas pipeline, we've gotta bring the soldiers home.

2006-06-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Paging George Santayana

From comments in a recent blog post:

Why should we live in the past? Why not focus on the facts of the present? As I reminded you just above?

What does it matter if America may or may not have somehow caused, deliberately or not, the takeover by Islamists of Iran?

Granted, my history is quite incomplete, but let's look at what's happening today. That's most important, after all.

And:

I just don't understand fellow Americans who are ready to blame the United States for everything, CS. I can't, and won't, try to reason with them because they seem to be totally out of reach. I do realize they would say the same thing about me, because I simply refuse to blame the U.S. for what is going on in this world today.

These people openly admit their lack of knowledge of the reason things are the way they are; they don't think it weakens their case. This form of anti-intellectualism is becoming more and more common in debate.

The problem is that it's tough to counter this point of view, because actual historical facts don't matter, the way the debate is framed. The debate can't be won without reframing it.

How can this be done? I suppose first is to gain an admission of fact. For example, in the above debate, I've asked for the writer to describe what Iran would have to do for him to reverse his judgement that they must be attacked. I'm not sure whether it'll work, but it would be hard for him to answer without researching something about Iran, since his current reasons for attacking them are (1) they want nukes, (2) they are Islamic, and (3) they are evil.

Another tack would be to ask why he does not want other similar states to be attacked. For example, Pakistan is Muslim, is not democratic, has actual nuclear weapons, and is openly aggressive on its borders. Why should they not be attacked? Again, it would take a little research to start finding real differences between them.

By getting the other side of the debate to agree that facts are indeed germane to the debate, an actual debate can begin. The important work in these debates is to make that possible.

2006-06-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

The Weakness of the Middle

I saw Jon Stewart at Casino Rama last night. Probably for the last time. He was funny and enjoyable; we laughed; and afterwards we talked about some of the parts we liked best.

And that's all. When it comes down to it, Jon Stewart -- the standup Jon Stewart -- doesn't really have the power to challenge me any more.

Maybe the most telling part of the show was when he started to talk about gay marriage. First, he was making the case for gay marriage. Maybe that's all edgy in the USA, where 45 states (can that figure possibly be right!?) have defined marriage as a man and a woman. But in the audience, there was barely a ripple.

But worse was his assessment of the Terri Schiavo case. He put it as science versus religion; on the Bill Frist side, they were saying "she'll snap out of it any second now"; on the "science" side, they were saying "dehydrate her like a turtle behind the radiator".

That's a completely unfair duality. The secular humanist view, as an example I know fairly well, would be that euthanasia is neglected in our society, and would lead to a swift and painless end for the already-dead Ms Schaivo.

So in an attempt to find a middle, the two sides are lampooned erroneously. (Surely Bill Frist doesn't speak for everyone on the right -- if he does, then my comments only apply to Stewart's views on the left.) There are big, complicated issues here, that require a sane and measured view that incorporates all of them before a reasonable solution can be found.

2006-05-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

On McCarthy

The problem, when a cause attracts the lowest common denominator, is that the cause attracts some pretty stupid people. And a cause that defends its leader on his personality rather than his record is going to have a pretty low denominator.

Thus we have the recent spate of apologists for Joseph McCarthy. I remember when I first read about the HUAC hearings: it was a satire in a science fiction story (Wildcards I, I believe the collection was called) that substituted mutants for communists. I read that, then went to the library and read about McCarthy. (A library is kind of like a paper-based internet with very little porn.)

Then I asked my father about it. His take on the situation was that the whole McCarthy thing was a snowball that built up and built up until Edward R Murrow said his little piece; then it was like America woke up from a dream. Were we really doing that? Did we really go along with that? And then, more or less, it was over.

For some reason, there is a burning need for some people nowadays to go back to defending this lizard. Here's a typical apologia:

Joe had his flaws and made his mistakes, but on the century's great issue – the mortal struggle between America and the evil empire of Lenin and Stalin for control of mankind's destiny – Joe was right and his enemies worse than wrong.

You see, he "made his mistakes", but that's okay because he hated Communism. That's the end justifies the means argument, and it doesn't hold for a democracy. This defence is pointless.

And here's the next apologia on the list:

...the "Venona papers"... from Russian intelligence officers to their bases in Moscow provided snapshot views of Russian espionage in the United States in the early 1940s. They showed that literally hundreds of Americans may have been working for Russian intelligence, and scores of them in government.

You see, there were actual spies in the government (the end justifies the means again). And what's more, some of those spies were actually questioned in McCarthy's hearings! Slam dunk!

The proper response to this point is to ask the following questions:

How many of those spies were actually identified and caught as a direct result of the hearings?

How many people who were not spies were imprisoned or lost their livelihood as a direct result of the hearings?

What proportion of the people who were questioned by McCarthy were named in the Verona papers, or were otherwise identified as spies?

Can we see McCarthy's list of names, now, please?

The answers, in case you can't guess, are zero, dozens, an extremely small proportion, and no, because the list of names never existed outside of McCarthy's alcohol-soaked dream world.

And then there's the moaning that McCarthy didn't get his due, in bits like this:

Any objective reader of the McCarthy material will realize that in death, as in the latter years of his life, McCarthy was treated with less than American justice. The hysterical terms "witch-hunt," "star chamber" and "secret sessions," all attributed to McCarthy's investigations of Communists in our government and public life, were once again heard.

So we're to feel sorry for McCarthy, who cared not a whit for justice when he had power, because he was treated unjustly? We're supposed to cluck at the use of terms like "witch-hunt", when an affirmative answer to his question "Were you or were you not a member of the communist party?" was taken to be all but an indictment of the person who was, for all intents and purposes, being investigated? You'll excuse my derision.

The fact is that the communism that McCarthy was after was a large shadow thrown by a very small group of people. There's no denying that the USSR had to be confronted and, one way or another, defeated; there's no connection at all between that behemoth and the people who joined the communist party during the depression because capitalism had done, for them, sweet bugger-all.

If you're looking for a role model, you can do a lot better than tailgunner Joe. We would all gain by remembering him for what he was and what he did, and learning from that to do better for ourselves and our children.

Opening

2006-05-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

My name is M@, and I may be a leftist.

I've voted for the Progressive Conservatives, in both provincial and federal elections. To the extent that I actually cared, I wanted Bob Dole to beat Clinton in '96. I don't want taxes or deficits (though I admit they're sometimes unavoidable). I want the government to be as small as it reasonably can.

And yet, here I am on the left. I've been called a moonbat when I've commented on other blogs. I detest the government of George Bush Jr (as I did that of George Bush Sr, come to think of it -- the signs were coming clear in 1989) and their phony wars on whatever the American people seem to be most scared of at any time.

And here at home, I find myself opposing the Harper government more and more. When Paul Martin called his first election, I was actually going to vote for Harper. Now I write my (conservative) MP almost weekly to complain about the crap that that government is pulling.

And if I wanted to be over on the right wing, I'd have to swallow the current party lines. Authoritarianism is good. Support our troops and don't cut and run. Jesus roxxor, Darwin suxxor.

So here I am. On the left. Now I'm their problem, I guess.