Michael Ignatieff stuck in the 1970's in Socialist Britain. Does he remotely realize how lame he sounds?!?

London is no longer an English city, says John Cleese. Is he right?

1559 comments and counting...

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/CanadaVotes/News/2011/04/19/18042456.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4dae350520d1bcfa%2C0

As the Liberal media does its best to implicate the PM in something that has nothing to do with him. Read the story and tell me how it matters to this election, seems like a public service problem to me.

One other note, check the story credit "parliamentary bureau" ... what a joke.

“Vote Mobs” are a creature of the Young and they could be an upsetting influence in this election. Who is most likely to influence the 18 to 24 crowd? Tenured, socialistic Professors? Perhaps these influential professors should educate by example and donate their over median wages and pensions to other less fortunate souls, thus lowering the cost of education to their minions.

Since we're coming up on 4:20, I thought I'd post this:

"Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics."

Andrew Bolt continues to highlight the impacts that will be felt by Australians when (if) the Gillard government launches the carbon taxes in the summer of 2012. His latest posting is titled:

Save the planet! Pay more for bread

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/save_the_planet_pay_more_for_bread/

If you think people in Canada are griping about the price of gasoline now, wait until Iggy and Jack roll out cap'n trade / carbon taxes.

Too bad the Canadian media does not have any time to report on the intense debate going on in Australia over the looming carbon taxes. The business community has now turned against the government, and the pundits are speculating how long Gillard will remain as PM. Another example where we could learn from the mistakes of other countries. Should this be another file for Sun News to run with?

On topic - yay Norway, another Norsk link! Take that Black Mamba!!!

Those crazy Vikings!

DOWNHILL ONLY
Politics and War
Tuesday, 19 April 2011

HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review

Wandering round this great republic predicting the apocalypse, I’m often asked by audience members why it is I’m being quite so overwrought if not an hysterical old queen about the whole business. After all, President Obama’s now-forgotten “Deficit Commission” produced a report melodramatically emblazoned “The Moment of Truth” and proposing such convulsive course corrections as raising the age of Social Security eligibility to 69.

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3904/26

I suppose we can expect a #tokemob on Parliament Hill tomorrow in honour of 4:20. Will #suntv cover it?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tory-ministers-intervened-after-told-of-pmo-pressure/article1991831/

More desperations, a story about events from 2007? Really? Wow, the MSM is in full panic mode.

The Great White Dope, aka Bob Rae is now on Sun Tv, Akin has him on the run, Bob is listening to uncle Mo from Beiging in his left ear and the Iggster in his other left ear, he's talking coalition and Neville Chamberlin, old Neville was a hero to our Canadian Lieberals no doubt. Canada, these liberals are funded by dirty money and they have lied to us for 60 years, so why would they change. Remember Freddy/ John Candy in Splash, when he would throw change under womens skirts and snag a peek when he picked it up, telling his brother Tom Hanks who reprimanded him, "Hey Allan, when I find something that works, I stick with it". That my friends, is the Canadian Liberal, still looking up skirts and telling lies, thinking Canadians are dumb. Sorry Bob, the Green Shaft is so over.

More from Michael Ignatieff's The Rights Revolution.

Ignatieff: "Because they represent our attempt to give legal meaning to the values we care most about – dignity, equality and respect – rights have worked our way deep inside our psyches". (page 2)

What about our real values: life, liberty and happiness? "Dignity" is almost undefinable in this context, which is why it is so highly prized by "progressives" who need to avoid precise language in order to do their dirty work. The Supreme Court of Canada has wasted valuable time trying to elucidate it and has written many dubious judgments thereafter. It should be expunged from the law.

Ignatieff: "Rights regimes exist not to define how lives should be led, but to define the condition for any kind of life at all, the basic freedoms necessary for any kind of agency. The word ‘agency’ just means the capacity of individuals to set themselves goals and accomplish them as they see fit." (23)

Isn’t this usually just called "freedom"? Why the anti-concept? Observe that the lower the taxes, the more of it we have, whatever one calls it.

Ignatieff: "Rights are also there to help us resolve our conflicts with our fellow citizens. These rights give us entitlements, but they also simultaneously exercise a constraint: we’re not allowed to solve our disputes by force or fraud." (31-32)

And: "I am committed to the language of rights … because it mandates limits to the use of force." (53)

The proper function of government is to protect our individual rights, which preclude any use of force other than in self-defence. He is not consistent in its application; the progressive viewpoint is dependent on government force against some citizens in the guise of "entitlements" of others.

Another example: "governments and legislatures exist to protect, defend, and where we deem necessary, extend our rights. Rights define not only the limits of government power, but also its very purpose." (28-29)

And this: "Constitutions do not create our rights; they recognize and codify the ones we have, and provide means for their protection. We already possess our rights in two senses: either because our ancestors secured them or because they are inherent in the very idea of being human." (28)

These passages are more or less correct. But the use of "extend" in the first example is off the mark. If our rights stem from our human nature – which they do – then they cannot be "extended", only more accurately delineated. The last sentence in the second quote covers two sides of the same coin: our rights are indeed inherent, but sometimes our ancestors had to fight to have them recognized.

Ignatieff: "Nor is it the function of rights to promote a particular political philosophy … Rights aren’t intrinsically in the service of progressive causes or conservative ones." (30)

What about the "progressive" communists, who have slaughtered millions in cold blood; how’s their take on rights? This passage directly contradicts the notion above that rights "mandate limits to the use of force".

Ignatieff: "I don’t think this individualism is Western or time-bound. It’s just a fact about us as a species." (24)

True. But then surely rights do promote a political philosophy – and clearly not a progressive one.

He also writes: "I prefer the evils of capitalist individualism to the evils of collectivism. Historically speaking, we’ve run three serious experiments in the twentieth century to create communities that would replace narrow capitalist selfishness with communitarian fervour – experiments by Hitler, Stalin and Mao – and the results are definitive." (23)

That should have been enough to put the entire progressive agenda in the trashcan once and for all. Note the word "narrow"; does this imply that socialist looting is "broad"? Why is he incapable of denouncing even mass murder without hedging like this? What alleged fault of capitalism is even one-thousandth those of collectivism?

Of course, the only supposed "evil" of capitalism is that it contains no way to make life hand you everything you want on a silver platter. Socialism is an infantile worldview expanded to society at large. Capitalism is for mature adults.

Ignatieff: "Many of the Supreme Court’s rulings on Charter appeals have been divisive. Some people think Charter rights of free speech are being abused by Holocaust deniers; other people think that rights to due process of law are being exploited by male defendants in rape cases." (17)

Genuine rights cannot be "abused" or "exploited". The precise extent of the rights of free speech or criminal defendants is open to debate, but these two terms are anti-concepts used by those who would take away rights.

Finally, note the contrast between the following three quotes:

"Our idea of human rights descends from this tradition of natural law." (43)

"Human rights are not the trump cards that end arguments. In the real business of moral life, there are no trumps. There are only reasons, and some are more convincing than others." (52)

" … there must be some higher law, some set of rights that no government, no human authority, can take away." (48)

The appeal to a "higher" law derives from Kantian mysticism, and leads to tyranny. Human beings have the power of reason to determine the objective facts of reality, from which a rational standard of ethics – one that includes individual rights – can be derived.

Re: Bob Rae interview on Sun TV with David Akin. Mr. Rae gave the impression that the opposition Parties, frustrated with their inability to force Mr. Harper to run the country their way from their minority position in Parliament, have orchestrated a $300 million leadership convention for the Conservative Party. One can only hope that thinking Canadians will use this election to find these Minority Parties in Contempt of Democracy by voting in a Majority Conservative Government.

More from Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution.

Ignatieff: "So when you engage in rights talk, you are committed to a certain kind of individualism. This has its limits. I’ve mentioned the difficulty rights talk has in focusing on the social and economic inequality that accompanies the competitive individualism of market society." (page 24)

Poverty might be considered a problem by those nice folks who would like to see all their fellow citizens succeed, but "economic inequality" is a fact of human life that cannot be eliminated. Personal failure is often temporary; people come and go off social assistance, for example.

He continues: "Doing something serious about inequality means infringing on property rights. We hesitate to take this step not just because large capitalists have political power, but also because most of use are property holders ourselves, and we use our power in the political marketplace to resist the taxation necessary to make a redistributive dent in equality." (24)

Also: "What about the economic insecurity of our poorest fellow citizens? Why can’t our politics address this?" (20)

Is this some kind of a joke? Does he think the welfare state of the past fifty years has been a mirage? It has been addressing this issue, mostly with futility, for decades. The bottom line is that only the productivity unleashed under capitalism can adequately address the issue of poverty, and it was doing very well until the progressives started having political success.

More: "The problem, in short, is neither individualism nor individual rights. Nor is it capitalism. The chief obstacle to making a dent in inequality is democracy." (24)

The chief obstacle is reality. People have different skills, capabilities and levels of ambition; obtaining unequal rewards under different individual circumstances is not a societal problem that begs for a solution imposed by government.

He picks up the thread a few pages later: "Gross income inequalities in our society may be wrong, but they are not illegal. Thus rights give salience to some wrongs while remaining silent about others. Some people think this makes rights useless. Others believe it turns rights regimes into an apology for capitalism. I don’t agree. It just means some grievances can’t be fixed by the courts, they have to be fixed by politics, and in our system, a grievance that doesn’t convince a majority of our fellow citizens, however just it may be, doesn’t get fixed." (29)

What if these political decisions violate rights? What restrains the politicians? Capitalism, of course, needs no apologies, since it is based on the reality of human nature.

And more: "As I said in [lecture one], democracy is one reason why inequalities of income have proven so hard to contain. Most Canadians are unwilling to lend their support to serious measures of income redistribution. Indeed, such measures are seen as infringements on the rights of individuals." (29)

He has also stated that rights are supposed to "define not only the limits of government power, but also its very purpose" (28-29). There are very few limits to government power when it already collects close to half the nation’s income in taxes – yet he doesn’t even think our vast welfare state has started to make a serious attack on economic "inequality". The mind boggles.

Ignatieff: "Not everybody is happy with the way rights constrain governments. Social democrats think that property rights have had a negative impact, since they prevent government from redistributing income and resources; conservatives feel precisely the opposite – that rights should be there to protect us from government’s good intentions." (30)

Or the more usual other intentions, such as hare-brained vote-buying schemes with other people’s money. The communists certainly aren’t happy with the way rights constrain governments, because it means they can’t impose a dictatorship and slaughter their enemies real or imagined. Property rights are required by the nature of human existence, just like the individualism that Ignatieff cites on page 24. Is it not glaringly obvious from all of this that leftists are enemies of rights?

One other point, re "social democrats think" and "conservatives feel": the entire leftist viewpoint, founded on the mysticism of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel, is so irrational that it hardly makes sense to claim that they "think". Conservatives do – provided they start from the reality of human nature rather than religion.

Ignatieff: "[Rights talk] can capture civil and political inequalities, but it can’t capture more basic economic inequalities, such as the way the economy rewards owners and investors at the expense of workers. The economic system may not infringe anybody’s individual rights, but the whole machine ends up reproducing enduring types of social inequality." (20)

And: "Another issue running through these lectures is whether rights talk has actually reduced inequality. Certainly some civil inequalities between men and women, between gays and straights, between Quebecois and English Canadians have been addressed by rights talk. But what about inequalities between rich and poor? One of the strange features of rights talk has been that it makes visible some inequalities – sexual and linguistic inequalities, for example – while obscuring others – such as those based on class and income. I’m no Marxist, but I am astonished that social and economic inequality … has simply disappeared from the political agenda in Canada and most other capitalist societies." (19)

If he’s not a Marxist, he should stop parroting their false arguments. A capitalist economy, because it is based on voluntary trade for mutual benefit, rewards the productive, whether the company owner or the worker on the shop floor. Socialism rewards only the parasitic class that seizes power (compare his hedged preference for "capitalist individualism", on page 23).

Ignatieff: "It took from 1880 to about 1945 for North American workers to prove that collective union rights are the only effective way to counter the disproportionate economic power of employers." (5)

Yet many enterprises fail. Businessmen do not have political power under laissez-faire; they can only obtain a semblance of it by being too close to government in a system where political favours can be bought and sold. "Economic power" is a red herring that plays into the leftists’ desire for absolute power.

In the context of inequality, Ignatieff makes several references to labour unions, such as this: "In the past 30 years, we’ve talked about women, aboriginals, gays and lesbians. But what about the workers? What about the way their union rights have been eroded?" (20)

What is he talking about? No examples are provided. Other than Bob Rae’s pro-union bill that Mike Harris repealed, and occasional back-to-work legislation, I’m not aware of any labour rights/privileges biting the dust. He also ignores the fact that many workers do not support their union, or favour unions in general. Or would admitting this be too "unruly" for the elites? The ones in charge of maintaining our national identity as a progressive people without a stable political consensus?

Ignatieff: "Some people are losing [their rights]. Ask organized labour. They’d say they have fewer rights – and less power – than fifty years ago. Closed shop agreements have been challenged, successfully, on the grounds that they violate the individual’s right to choose what group he wishes to join" (16).

And: "… union rights to closed shops and collective bargaining used to be regarded as a dastardly infringement on the freedom of individual workers and employers alike." (4-5)

Indeed they are. There is no "right" to a closed shop or collective bargaining, despite fatuous decisions to the contrary by the Supreme Court of Canada. The applicable right is freedom of association, which by definition includes the right not to associate (i.e., to boycott).

And more: "Even if we grant that individual and collective rights in the labour market need always to be balanced, it is clear that the pendulum has swung too far. Too many workers have no job security, no pension rights, no holiday rights, and they are working too many hours. This is the dark side of our affluence." (16)

This has nothing to do with affluence, and everything to do with the expansion of Big Government that strangles the economy, pays thousands of unproductive people within and outside of government, and causes overall economic productivity to decline. There is really no such thing as "job security", although it is much more likely to exist de facto in a free economy. Pensions are not rights, they are contracted benefits. And who exactly had their holidays taken away?

Ignatieff: "rights talk tends to focus attention not on the way the private economy runs, but on the way state power is exercised over us. Rights have both a positive and a negative relationship to state power. Positively, rights define our entitlements to state programs, such as unemployment insurance, welfare, health care and pensions. Negatively, rights are the instrument we have to rein in what Shakespeare called the insolence of office. Our rights are supposed to prevent governments from reading our mail, taking away our property without compensation, or making decisions without our consent" (30).

"Positive rights" is an anti-concept that essentially means the right to violate the ("negative") rights of others. This means they are a fraud, not rights at all. Taxation is a rights violation (i.e., use of force), but "positive rights" could not exist without it. If each of us had an unlimited right to the resources of others, where could one draw the line? Yet this is what the progressives would have us believe. Ignatieff has noted elsewhere that we’re not allowed to solve our disputes by force or fraud (page 32). When individual rights are respected, this rule applies equally to government actions. Even taking away property with compensation is a violation of an individual’s property rights.

Ignatieff unwittingly exposes the "social rights" and "positive rights" fraud: "Many of the provisions of [the Universal Declaration of Human Rights] – including those for medical insurance, unemployment compensation and paid holidays – may not be especially realistic as an agenda for social rights in the nations of the Third World, but they certainly encapsulate a very Canadian dream of social decency." (10)

If genuine rights are the issue, this means that either Third World nations violate rights (quite apart from their dictatorships) or these things are not rights at all. Rights are supposed to be universal, something that government is required to protect and cannot overlook; they’re not supposed to be optional, and definitely not dependent on "social decency".

Later: "the Canadian majority has had to pay for the rights revolution. Certainly the cost of meeting rights claims – and these include rights to welfare, employment insurance, pay equity, and aboriginal title – helped to increase the federal deficit. By 1995, the problems demanded a solution. But the solution – cutbacks to federal services – further weakened the welfare and regional adjustment programs that hold the country together. In this way, meeting rights claims has not always strengthened the sinews of national unity." (119)

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is divisive, not a way to strengthen national unity. Welfare and (especially) equalization and so-called regional adjustment programs diminish national unity, they don’t "hold the country together".

When it comes to "human rights", Ignatieff really gets confused.

Ignatieff: "… inherent rights would include the right not to be tortured, abused, beaten, or starved. These inherent rights we now call human rights, and they have force whether or not they are explicitly recognized in the laws of nation-states." (28)

This quote is consistent with the principle against the use of force. But the kangaroo court human rights commissions don’t deal with the right not to be abused, etc., but rather with the alleged rights not to be offended and not to be discriminated against – entirely different things.

Ignatieff: "… civil and political rights … derive from citizenship in particular national communities", whereas "human rights … don’t derive from citizenship or membership in a particular nation. … The basic problem with human rights is that it is not clear what community the rights refer to, or what remedies they confer." (34)

The last sentence is profoundly silly. The right not to be tortured, etc., is an individual right that does not derive from any community – it derives from the nature of human existence and the requirements for survival. Legal procedural rights vary from place to place, as do democratic political institutions, so in that sense it’s fair to say that civil and political rights do derive partly from citizenship while individual rights are inherent. As for the term "remedy" here, it may be an anti-concept, but unfortunately one that has been adopted into Canadian law.

Get this: "[people living in despotic regimes] need human rights, because those are the only rights they have. … Human rights are the rights men and women have when all else fails them." (35-36)

This too is exceedingly silly. We all need our rights in order to live our lives to the fullest, without being subjected to force by others; these are fundamental rights regardless of what civil or political rights we may have. I know he doesn’t mean to imply that people with "other" rights (political ones like the right to vote) don’t need the right to be free from torture, etc., but that’s how it reads.

More: "The purpose of human rights is … to protect, defend and restore the agency of the defenceless so that they can defend themselves." (43)

Too narrow. We all need individual rights, without which we’d be defenceless against anyone who chose to use violence.

Finally: "Rights enacted into law by democratically elected representatives express the will of the people. But there are also rights whose purpose is to protect people from that will, to set limits on what majorities can do. Human rights and constitutionally guaranteed rights are supposed to have an immunity from restriction by the majority." (2)

Genuine human rights – that is, individual rights – should not be subject to violation by the majority, but he is not consistent in upholding this. If it’s a reference to our phony human rights commissions, it may relate to the supposed quasi-constitutional status of "human rights", which is probably nothing more than another flaky whim of Antonio Lamer. These commissions, in which alleged "rights" are conjured up on the fly by professional malcontents, party hacks and other incompetents passed off as experts, without due process and proper legal safeguards against the state, entail a vast expansion of government power.

Compare this: " … the sacrifice of individual rights must secure democratic ratification." (71-72)

So what does the "immunity from restriction by the majority" mean if rights can be sacrificed by democracy? The implication is that phony "human rights" are stronger than legitimate individual rights, which is disgraceful – yet this is the major impetus behind the supposed "rights revolution".

Erik - it's cool, I underwent Sensitivity Training. I never make eye-contact anymore but I'm very enthusiastic and bubbly on the subject of how vibrant and hygienic Scandinavia is.

I posted this yesterday but everyone was all excited about Sun News and it got totally ignored. To repeat: I want one.

@piperpaul:
"Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics."

Whoa so all this time Godwin's law was, like, an involuntary behavioral experiment? That sounds like something the Nazis would have liked...man.

A Great White North version of the 2011 French Debate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKjB8OEiu0k&feature=player_embedded

Bob Rae is such a slime bucket: "I don't know what the fuss is all about."

He wouldn't. He lives in Baby Point. Money's no object for him.

The fuss is about this unnecessary election that's costing the Canadian electorate $300,000,000 which, frankly, Canadians don't have.

Bob Rae's comment is disingenuous. We already know the other parties have no confidence in the Harper government and it's already a fait accompli, that if the CPC get a minority, it's toast, according to Rae et al.

His comment that the HOC chooses the PM is bull**it. The Canadian electorate chooses the PM. Rae is spinning, spinning, spinning.

I'm dizzy.

Link for above comment: "Do Liberals have a coalition [in?] mind" (David Akin's interview with Bob Rae):

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/do-the-liberals-have-a-coalition-mind/911230038001

still dont think iraq 2.0 wasn't about oil?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2269610.html

Sorry black mamba but I think that classifies as a concealed restricted weapon ;-)

The summer activities of the Norwegian aren't that strange when you consider in the winter they strap on a couple of boards to their feet and slide off a mountain cliff and call it a sport.

Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning

BRIAN LILLEY, Parliamentary Bureau
OTTAWA - As a politician in Canada, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said that he was on the sidelines of the Iraq war, but new information reveals he was on the front lines of pre-invasion planning when he worked in the U.S.

Ignatieff — long known to be a supporter of the decision to invade — was part of an academic advisory team that helped U.S. state department and American military officials conduct strategy sessions.

The academic-turned-politician was singled out in a Pentagon briefing the day before the invasion started.

One of the top officials in Air Command cited Ignatieff's work in helping the military ready comprehensive plans to mitigate collateral damage while preparing for the invasion.

"I personally have been working with The Carr Center for Human Rights," said U.S. Col. Gary Crowder on March 19, 2003. "Michael Ignatieff and Sarah Sewell (another Carr Center employee) and their program are a wonderful program."
more....

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/04/20/ignatieff-linked-to-iraq-war-planning

IMO:That makes a perfect good new Political Ad

You'd figure this would be getting more and more difficult, considering the rising ocean levels and all that.

I wonder how many of these Norse people die doing this? Or do they not keep stats on this kind of stupidity? Don't get me wrong, to each his own, but I don't tape myself doing stupid foolhardy things.

Opinion Poll gone wrong from our local Left wing rag here in Kelowna who unabashedly support the Liberals.

Note that even Jack Layton polls higher than Ignatieff, WAY higher.

Who will be the next prime minister of Canada?
Stephen Harper 56.5% 39
Michael Igantieff 15.9% 11
Jack Layton 24.6% 17
Other 2.9% 2

Batb, what we choose is a House of Commons. The GG chooses the PM, not the House (but obviously the GG only chooses a government with enough popular support to allow it to govern).

My other question is -- how the hell do you get out of the swimming hole without sticking to the ice? And if you have an old pair of Micron M1s on do you sink straight to the bottom, alla mafios'?

Liberal party has their youtube attack adds embedded right into the google news headlines again under the Health section.

http://news.google.ca/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

How is the Liberal party considered a legitimate news source?

But they're just like us, tolerant Islam once again.Of course,gay activists will ignore this tidbit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13141466

Looks like Margaret Atwood has reared her ugly head on the election:

http://uncommontruths.blogspot.com/2011/04/question-of-day.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/election-2011-a-dark-fiction/article1991748/

Will beer and popcorn be allowed in The Family Pack???

Ooooops. Bad link in prior post

nv53, nicely done, thanks.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/20/cv-election-carson-ethics-letters.html

Without knowledge of what the letters contained the CBC innuendo campaign continues.

The old saying seems to hold true, if you throw enough crap at someone, something is bound to stick.

So if you can't afford a driveway in Regina, you aren't allowed a block heater on your engine?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2011/04/19/sask-extension-cord-bylaw-klassen.html