Saturday, April 19, 2008

Not Satisfied with America's Decline, He Offers Advice to His Homeland

If ever you refer to the CPC as modeling themselves against the current Republican or neocon ideology, the CPC loves to tell you that the notion is simply ridiculous.

It's not of course and anyone who follows what the Con's are trying to implement in Canada can easily identify the similarities.

I think much of what has taken place in the US began after 9-11 when the population was stunned and willing to follow the Leader and that included the media. The Republicans took full advantage of the state of the nation and changed government in ways that were often not noticed. They lied to their people and when caught or at least suspected, they spun, confused, changed the channel and went on the attack.

As Canadians we had our own experience of 9/11, but not one that I think could match our neighbours. That day may have shifted some of how we saw the world, but overall we carried on with our lives. The CPC didn't though. No, I believe they were taking notes on how to keep people diverted with shiny objects on the left while making changes on the right that most people wouldn't notice until it was too late.

So what has all of that to do with the photo of the guy at the top of this post? Well he gave us yet another example of how talking points by the CPC dovetail perfectly with neocon thinking.

(If you are unfamiliar with him, his name is David Frum and while it's a pretty bland profile, wiki, will give you some idea of who he is.)

He wrote an article in the NP today that served up the Con talking point du jour...free speech. It's so specious that it's difficult to write about.

It relates to the raid on the Con offices last week and a ridiculous point that Van Loan and others, (including ankle biter Poilievre), continue to raise. That is the party is being denied it's right to freedom of expression. Bureaucrats are determining what they can and cannot advertise and that's just not fair!

The more frightening possibility raised by this week's RCMP "visit" to Conservative party headquarters is that the Canadian bureaucracy has once again revealed a deep, sustained and highly ideological hostility to ordinary rights of free speech.

Huh? You are free to say what you like, but hey, in a civilised environment there are rules.

They don't seem to like rules unless they are setting them. They are all about the survival of the fittest with a seeming lack of understanding of what the impact of that mentality has on society. New Orleans anyone? BT's blogs and how they ridicule the underdog? Ironically, they consider themselves to be the underdog at this point in time and they whine and pule when they feel hard done by. How do they not connect the dots?

More from Frum:

Opponents of the Harper government accuse the Conservatives of cheating on campaign spending limits. As we have been reminded this week, Canada caps both national and also local campaign spending. In the last election, local Conservative candidates used some of their taxpayer-reimbursable funds to rebroadcast lightly edited national campaign advertisements.
By spending their local money in this way (Harper opponents say), the local parties enabled the national Conservative party to exceed national spending limits.


It is this latter accusation that gives the dispute its ugly anti-speech character.


Ugly anti speech? What a leap and what a great example of spin. Local candidates did not use some of their funds to re-broadcast. They were given an option to allow money from the national office to pass through their local office and the party would decide how it was spent. Bonus for the candidate because they would be entitled to a bigger rebate and bonus to the national party because they would receive exposure that they were not entitled to.

Like it or not, Elections Canada follows a law that sought to make the playing field level. Cons, neocons, aren't interested in the field being level. Might makes right for these guys.

Journalists do not write about this shift in Canada, in fact, they never take the time to explore the ideology of the Conservative party. I often wonder why?

Do they agree? Do they not understand or is it just too much work that they can't sell to their boss, because she/he says it won't sell?

In the end, I think Frum's argument is beyond ridiculous, but with this article you can bet that the Con's will continue along this path. No minority is important, except the one that is them.

Unbelievably naive, ridiculously ironic, yet that is what we are being sold.

It's time for an election. These guys are using a window that we the voters opened during the last election. It's time to close that window.

Sorry...were you're fingers in there?

6 comments:

WesternGrit said...

Excellent commentary. I agree 100%, and I've often complained about the slow decline into Yankee-style politics, and the culture that fosters it. It is invisible - this slow creep. It is hidden (yes, the dreaded "hidden agenda"), because it is all part of the "Great Republican Playbook" put together by Frum and his cooky friends, and more frightening people like the "Project For A New American Century" clowns (check the link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century).

This neoCon playbook (or "hidden" agenda, if you will, since voters have no idea what it is) is being used by Conservatives worldwide to formulaically achieve and try to retain power. The scary thing is, their political bent plays into the hands of the military-industrial complex (GE/NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox/etc., etc.) who also happen to control the media and what is said there. We can become a "blanket" conservative society without knowing what hit us... Simply because there are a lot of people out there who (unfortunately) believe everything they read in the paper, or see on TV.

Unfortunately we don't have any sort of reliable "media monitor" which maintains the status of the media as an independent body. Cross ownership in media monopolies is leading to the demise of the very free democracy we cherish itself. How can you get another perspective from reporters when they're all controlled by huge corporate entities which control everything from publishing to TV, to movies, to real estate, to defense contracting, to shipbuilding, etc., etc.?

It really is time to do something, but we need a Liberal Party with a backbone - willing to stand up to "dictatorship by corporation", and champion the rights of the common citizen.... And willing to pull the plug on the Cons.

Anonymous said...

April 16 -- Election now? I say election soon...

Well, that didn't take long. ;-)

Karen said...

westerngrit.Unfortunately we don't have any sort of reliable "media monitor" which maintains the status of the media as an independent body

That would of course be deemed as censorship by these folk, but you are right.

It really is time to do something, but we need a Liberal Party with a backbone - willing to stand up to "dictatorship by corporation", and champion the rights of the common citizen.... And willing to pull the plug on the Cons.

I don't think it's about backbone. To me it is about being succinct. That is something I'm not good at obviously.

We need policy that attacks that faux Con reality and we need to do that really well.

Something tells me that the policy is there.

Can we articulate it?

Karen said...

time to put the kids to bed:

I'm sorry, I'm not following you. Are you quoting me?

cls said...

Jim Travers is one commentator who has questioned the wisdom of having an election until the business about election spending laws is finally sorted out. What's to stop the Tories from over-spending again? After all, their decision to disregard the election financing laws is ideological. If an election were held before this was sorted out I suspect the Tories would spend, spend, spend again. In a tight election it might make a difference.

Karen said...

cara, you have a point, though the NDP and the Con's trotted out Adscam again today and they went way over the top in suggesting that Liberals have been over spending for years and that is why they won elections.

There is danger, no I'd go as far to say some amount of certainty that the Con's will use the tactic again unless it is somehow exposed.

Let's hope the affidavit results coming out tomorrow tell us more.