I'm really starting to like that Harper guy

[payce-ley]

the scandal (which still hasn't played out in court) involved a few liberals who acted on their own... Mulroney had a half dozen such scandals under his rule... the big difference now is the whole witch hunt fervor of this liberal take down... a lot of substanceless accusations are toppling a good government... not a perfect government, but good for this day and age

as marco says, watch what happens to canada under conservative rule... the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class foots the bill

[MarcO]

I certainly don't base everything I hear on passing comments, it was an anecdotal observation that tied into what we were discussing before the lunch hour.

but I don't give any credit whatsoever to people who refer to Quebecois people as "frogs", thanks.

I also don't make apologies for bigots and assholes, no matter how intelligent they may otherwise be.

Some people deserve the benefit of the doubt. Others, not so much.

It's also quite rich to think that the Liberals have enjoyed almost 13 years of power because people tend to "go with the flow".

[Birdy]

i couldn't give an ounce of sympathy for the 'witch hunt' over adscam. i'm sure they wouldn't really care about it either, if they were up in the polls. it's like the last gasp attempt to sway a vote.

the liberal party has run a pretty tight smear on harper as well. some of the stuff on tv made me absolutely sick. the references to hitler are fukin' right up there and are probably the MOST disturbing of everything all parties have issued to date. HITLER. honestly sit down and think about that one. if that isn't an ATTACK, i don't know what is.

[djmelbatoast]

"In any given situation there is always going to be more dumb people than smart people" - Ken Kesey

most of them live in Alberta

[Birdy]

I certainly don't base everything I hear on passing comments, it was an anecdotal observation that tied into what we were discussing before the lunch hour.

but I don't give any credit whatsoever to people who refer to Quebecois people as "frogs", thanks.

I also don't make apologies for bigots and assholes, no matter how intelligent they may otherwise be.

Some people deserve the benefit of the doubt. Others, not so much.

It's also quite rich to think that the Liberals have enjoyed almost 13 years of power because people tend to "go with the flow".

it may be rich, but don't you think it true?

ps. i agree with you about the 'frogs' comment, or any other comment that is made to belittle. growing up and living in rural canada that kind of shit is as common as saying hi to your neighbour, which is brutal.

[payce-ley]

the liberal party has run a pretty tight smear on harper as well. some of the stuff on tv made me absolutely sick. the references to hitler are fukin' right up there and are probably the MOST disturbing of everything all parties have issued to date. HITLER. honestly sit down and think about that one. if that isn't an ATTACK, i don't know what is.

if sending Canadian troops into Iraq wasn't one of the saddest attempts to jump on the American Imperialism train I've ever heard I don't know was... though I'm sure the 200,000 dead liberated Iraqi's understand... I'd call Harper more of a Mussolini

edit to add: yeah, I never heard liberals call harper hitler either... but the guy still sure makes my skin crawl... to be fair, hitler was a genius speech writer and orator who had a vision (kidding)

Edited January 17, 2006 by Guest

[MarcO]

i couldn't give an ounce of sympathy for the 'witch hunt' over adscam. i'm sure they wouldn't really care about it either, if they were up in the polls. it's like the last gasp attempt to sway a vote.

the liberal party has run a pretty tight smear on harper as well. some of the stuff on tv made me absolutely sick. the references to hitler are fukin' right up there and are probably the MOST disturbing of everything all parties have issued to date. HITLER. honestly sit down and think about that one. if that isn't an ATTACK, i don't know what is.

where and when did the Liberals use a Hitler reference in regards to Harper??

[Birdy]

right here on jambands.ca marco

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

ps. i agree with you about the 'frogs' comment, or any other comment that is made to belittle. growing up and living in rural canada that kind of shit is as common as saying hi to your neighbour, which is brutal.

I was in a Chinese restaurant in Pembroke recently and overheard someone (whom I know to have been a Cheryl Gallant CPC hardliner) refer to the staff as "Chinks" (I didn't realise that word was still in circulation). I wonder what might have been said, and what might have ensued, had it been a Jamaican restaurant.

Link there between cultural proclivities and voting affinities?

[d_rawk]

Ouch, djmelbatoast. I know what you're trying to say, but that's a pretty crass way of saying it ...

[payce-ley]

I just did a Google search for Harper called Hitler and only found this:

Group compared Chretien to Hitler before Harper fundraiser

Edited January 17, 2006 by Guest

[djmelbatoast]

I'm sorry. They're everywhere it is true, but have you ever visited Calgary?

[Birdy]

the liberal party has run a pretty tight smear on harper as well. some of the stuff on tv made me absolutely sick. the references to hitler are fukin' right up there and are probably the MOST disturbing of everything all parties have issued to date. HITLER. honestly sit down and think about that one. if that isn't an ATTACK' date=' i don't know what is.[/quote']

if sending Canadian troops into Iraq wasn't one of the saddest attempts to jump on the American Imperialism train I've ever heard I don't know was... though I'm sure the 200,000 dead liberated Iraqi's understand... I'd call Harper more of a Mussolini

edit to add: yeah, I never heard harper called hitler liberals either... but the guy still sure makes my skin crawl... to be fair, hitler was a genius speech writer and orator who had a vision (kidding)

it was in here.. i posted before about it too.

it just irked the crap out of me. i'm guilty of a smear or two myself, but that just took things too too too far.

just as an FYI - i'm not in favour of sending troops to war in any country for any reason unless that country directly violated the fundamental rights of canadians. i'm not with harper on this one.

[payce-ley]

well, I can see people calling Bush like Hitler but I only see Harper as somewhat empty of strong morals and direction... which as stated, I find disturbing characteristics for leadership

glad to hear you're against troops for Iraq or anywhere else that isn't a direct enemy of Canada (which is fortunately still pretty much no-one)... guaranteed method to get some terrorism into Canada? invade an impoverished Muslim country alongside the states to topple their goverment whom the states put into power 25 years ago

[Alexis]

to further the theory.....the states is only asking us to participate to spread some terror our way so that we have to react to it an prove the point to other western countries so they get on board and welcome to WWIII kids!

[MarcO]

well, a Liberal party supporter or worker making a reference to Hitler here on this board is entirely different from what I got from your post:

some of the stuff on tv made me absolutely sick. the references to hitler are fukin' right up there and are probably the MOST disturbing of everything all parties have issued to date. HITLER. honestly sit down and think about that one. if that isn't an ATTACK, i don't know what is.

I think I know who on this board you are referring to and I believe it died as soon as it began, deservedly. It's not quite the same as the Libs issuing a declaration equating Harper to Hitler.

edit: by the way, you're a lovely person to agree to disagree with Birdy. I do hope we cross paths one day so we can hug.

Edited January 17, 2006 by Guest

[d_rawk]

I'm sorry. They're everywhere it is true, but have you ever visited Calgary?

Yep. Thought I'd hate it, but loved it.

It is true that Alberta votes overwhelmingly Conservative, but the reasons why are often quite different than the reasons why someone in Ontario, say, would vote Conservative. And it certainly isn't just social conservativism that motivates it -- they feel underrepresented in and by Ottawa, and for some valid reasons. Of course, it is self-perpetuating, because the Liberal government sees their lack of support in the province and concludes that there is no political gain from taking them seriously, and so on and on it goes.

I'm really not meaning to be a dick by singling out your comment. But we are headed in the direction of all out regional war (figuratively, not literally) in this country.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Oh man, not the Hitler stuff again...

By the time I finish typing this, I'm sure the thread will have meandered somewhere completely else, but I feel I should get this in, as I just ran serendipitously across it yesterday. It's from the epilogue to Stanley Milgram's classic Obedience to Authority - that set of experiments where subjects were instructed to give (ersatz) shocks to others when they failed to properly recite given word-pairs; in brief, most people were found willing to carry through raising the voltage to lethal levels. See The Milgram Experiment.

Anyway, his observations -

Some dismiss the Nazi example because we live in a democracy and not an authoritarian state. But, in reality, this does not eliminate the problem. For the problem is not "authoritarianism" as a mode of political organization or a set of psychological attitudes but authority itself. Authoritarianism may give way to democratic practice, but authority itself cannot be eliminated as long as society is to continue in the form we know.

In democracies, men are placed in office through popular elections. Yet, once installed, they are no less in authority than those who get there by other means. And, as we have seen repeatedly, the demands of democratically installed authority may come into conflict with conscience. The importation and enslavement of millions of black people, the destruction of the American Indian populations, the internment of Japanese Americans, the use of napalm against civilians in Vietnam, all are harsh policies that originated in the authority of a democratic nation, and were responded to with the expected obedience. In each case, voices of morality were raised against the action in question, but the typical response of the ordinary man was to obey orders.

I am forever astonished that when lecturing on the obedience experiments in colleges across the country, I faced young men who were aghast at the behavior of experimental subjects and proclaimed they would never bahave in such a way, but who, in a matter of months, were brought into the military and performed without compunction actions that made shocking the victim seem pallid. In this respect, they are no better and no worse than human beings of any other era who lend themselves to the purposes of authority and become instruments in its destructive processes.

What this says to me is that we have the option of putting people into power who have demonstrated particularly mean streaks, or those or are to appearances less mean, because whoever it is will get people to do what they want. People always throw Hitler out there as if the possibility of people committing thoughtless violence (however seemingly banal) against one another were an impossibility. It ain't. How many psychiatric workers would have openly rejected the injunction from the Harris government to forcefully treat people who had been labelled as disordered, e.g.?

No doubt, though, the use of Hitler as a reference is a means of shunting the systemic understanding of violence, and presenting oneself and one's position as inalienably good, through contrast with an opponent who must therefore be evil. Hitler's regime, for the most part, was managed by ordinary housewives ratting out their neighbours and pencil-pushers like Eichmann making sure the trains were full and ran on time.

[Edit to add:] Where was I going with that? I think it's that my sense is that people are less inclined to act as ethical subjects when their political world is framed in terms of instrumental calculation of the sort that drives free-market (and religious) fundamentalism. Maybe's it's the Kant in me that insists that people never be seen as means but as ends in themselves. I don't see that sensitivity coming from the CPC (not that it's terribly pronounced through the Liberal camp, either - not with today's currents of Anthony Giddens/Tony Blair style neo-liberalism).

All that said - I'm with MarcO. You're great to have a disagreement with, Birdy. Hope to see you on the 28th.

Edited January 17, 2006 by Guest
Trying to stick to the point, believe it or not

[d_rawk]

This whole damn election has been Godwinned.

Example: Spectre of Hitler invoked by Tories and Liberals

The ghost of Adolf Hitler haunted the election campaign Monday as Liberals and Conservatives battled over which party's candidates have made the most incendiary remarks in the past.

[...]

Darrel Reid, the Tory hopeful in Richmond riding, once compared Canada to Nazi Germany, warning that Christians could face imprisonment for speaking out against homosexuality.

"You know, this isn't the first time in human history where tyranny has been imposed on people. You know it happened in Germany in the '30s and frankly I see some real parallels there because, you know, Adolf Hitler and his bunch really didn't care ultimately what you thought personally but they really cared about what you said because that became dangerous.

"And, therefore, when people spoke up about things like freedom or spoke up about their religious values, that was when the power of the state started coming down."

[...]

Kitchener-Waterloo MP Andrew Telegdi compared Canada to Nazi Germany in 2001 while criticizing immigration law that allows politicians to determine whether a person can become a citizen. "Canada is acting like a Nazi-style regime ... That's what Hitler used to do," Telegdi said.

Transport Minister Jean Lapierre just last month accused Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe of employing "a little bit of a Nazi tone" after Duceppe boasted about making the Liberals "disappear" in Quebec.

Toronto MP John McKay echoed some of Reid's concerns about the hate crime legislation, telling the House of Commons in 2003 that "those who wish to speak publicly about the morality of homosexuality and other sexual orientations had better check with their lawyers first." McKay called the bill "criminalization of the Bible" and warned that it would "be like the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every person brave enough and foolish enough to comment on the morality of homosexuality."

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

This whole damn election has been Godwinned.

I knew it! It's all a sinister plot to overturn democracy !

I'm reminded of Lenny Bruce's classic sketch on racism - how to take the sting out of words.

[Birdy]

thank you DEM & Marco. you really know how to deflate the argument right out of a girl

i love our disagreements too, if for nothing else than the free flow of ideas. saves me from time to time.

hope to see you both at the lanc in a couple of weeks. watch out for the knuckle sandwich.

[guigsy]

i think the thing that has been bothering me the most about this election is the 2 horse race that the media has turned this into. lib vs. con., martin vs. harper, and the idea that the only way to vote for change is to vote conservative. it's just not true. the ndp dont seem to run a very sexy media campaign, which keeps them outta the headlines, but come on, since when did canadians turn into voting based on who can make the other guy look worse? i always believed canadians, deep down, were the type to stand up. but maybe we're not so proud anymore? or maybe we dont have anyone at the top to be proud of?

i wont be voting for the red horse, or the blue horse - i'll be putting my money on the dark horse and putting my faith in canadians to take back a sense of pride in who/what they vote for.

[scottieking]

Insert Brokeback Mountain joke here

[Del]

Insert Brokeback Mountain joke here

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Those pictures need to be merged in a compromising way.