Hitchens vs Galloway

11 Replies to “Hitchens vs Galloway”

1. Canadians by and large don’t understand debate. Politics has become a struggle and clash of belief systems instead of a method of resolving differences and finding a common path on which to embark. This is why debate is important. There is no debate in the house of shouting, er I mean, commons. Do you think there is any form of debate in the senate? Don’t laugh, it’s what we have. The Australians and Americans have it all over Canada in this regard. Debate is also something completely foreign to the Gallic sensibility, and yet another reason it cannot take place in Canadaian politics. To them the choices are few: win by default, knife in the back alley, appease, or, as the joke goes, plant shade trees for the invaders. The French gave up on anything serious when they took the father of collectivism, Rousseau to heart (the fundament of Galloway’s “belief system”). Look at how Napoleon’s incredible potential to transform Europe into a new-New World failed. The English have debate in their blood. What other nation can discuss volatile and divisive issues in a civil manner and then enjoy tea together aftwerwards? You think the Italians can do this? Now you know why the Enlightenment came from England and not France. There is one chance and once chance only to create a civilzed system in Canadian politics: an elected senate.
   Want to see a feeble minded frog squirm? Go debate a politician on the benefit of an elected senate and make it happen.
   Watch Hitch and learn.

2. Galloway doesn’t give up in her quest to hurt the Conservatives, particularly Stephen Harper. Today she makes another big deal about a mere four disgruntled members who, btw, supported Stronach and probably now are loyal to the opportunistic turncoat.
   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050915/TORIES15/National/Idx
   There’s a posting on my site re this nonissue, so if you haven’t already read it, here it is:
   http://thecanadiansentinel.blogspot.com/2005/09/only-three-got-problem-three-ha.html
   Much ado about nothing of consequence. Why doesn’t Gloria go after the Liberals with such vehement bias? And has she owned up to her error wrt Ms. Jamieson?

3. Ok, four, allegedly. But so what? Three, four, what diff does it make? The Liberals are split cleanly down the middle and Galloway doesn’t care.

4. [Galloway who?]
   Scottish Enlightenment in 18 and 19 centuries:
   David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Carlyle, Allan Ramsay, Sir Walter Scott, James
   Thomson, Tobias Smollett, James Boswell, James Watt, Robert Burns, …

5. Thursday, September 15, 2005
   The Grapple in the Apple
   http://www.tigerhawk.blogspot.com/

6. What the Globe and Mail forces on us: this anti-American rant, “The flagging empire”, by Paul William Roberts, September 11 (how cute and tasteless–full text not available)
   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050910/COVER10/TPComment/TopStories
   And a bit of debate with this rebuttal in the National Post, “A moment of shame for The Globe and Mail”, by Jonathan Kay, September 14
   http://server09.densan.ca/archivenews/050914/npt/050914bq.htm
   Excerpts:
   ‘The author, Paul William Roberts, careens breathlessly from U.S. Constitutional history to the Middle East to Asian geopolitics — the whole dizzying trajectory bound together by nothing more than a generalized contempt for the United States. To the extent he adds anything to the likes of Chomsky and other hard-left America-bashers, it is a sickening schadenfreude at the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
   Why should such a hateful specimen be featured on the front page of the newspaper’s Saturday Focus section? For the same reason anti-Americanism flourishes everywhere in Canada: It permits Canadians to feel superior. And in this regard, no one puts the case better than Roberts. Canada, he writes, stands “among the few that have managed to achieve anything approaching democracy’s ideals for a peaceful egalitarian society.” America, by contrast, is a nation in “the death throes of republicanism.”
   What is more amazing than the sheer hatefulness of Roberts’ tone, however, is how many obvious mistakes he got past the Globe’s editors…
   But is there really any sense in parsing Roberts’ feverish ramblings? To the extent this essay had any motive, it was not to make a logical point through facts and arguments, but to stir up atavistic hatred for America.
   What a wasted mind is Roberts’. And what a disgrace to the Globe and Mail that its editors let this hateful, error-littered screed stain the newspaper’s otherwise respectable pages.’
   Mark
   Ottawa

7. “The Australians and Americans have it all over Canada in this regard.”
   “The English have debate in their blood. What other nation can discuss volatile and divisive issues in a civil manner and then enjoy tea together aftwerwards?”
   I have no experience or knowledge about Australia, but I can say from personal experience that someone who writes that has not been to see the US House or Senate, and most certainly not the British Parliament in session. Canadians are amateur hecklers, shouters and name-callers compared to them.
   The Brits invented partisan “debate” and the Americans perfected it.
   TB
   Cerberus

8. Doug, did you really write that first comment? It’s a gem.
   Often the fruit of honest debate, the unheated weighing and analysis of the bearing points, is a reasonable solution and or agreement. ‘3s TG

9. Slightly on topic…..
   Reuters reports that companies with a web of connections to the Bush administration are winning the first contracts to rebuild New Orleans.
   The story notes that the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, which has been awarded $200 million in clean-up contracts, employs former Bush campaign manager and FEMA director Joe Allbaugh to provide “general business consulting.”
   The Shaw Group’s founder and CEO is J.M. Bernhard of Baton Rouge, Louisiana who is the chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party and was co-chairman Governor Kathleen Blanco’s transition committee, a fact left out of the Reuters story.

10. “Joe Allbaugh”?
    I’ll bet he’s a Freemason!
    “J.M. Bernhard”?
    I’ll bet he’s a Jew!
    Has anyone informed Mr Galloway about this obvious conspiracy?
    Now, where’s that tinfoil for my hat…

11. Mark, I forgot to comment on your Mop & Pail views. Discontinue the *floor wash* and switch to the National Post.
    Contra-Liberal stories can be found at pages A9 to A15. Not exactly up-front but at least they print some.
    One has to tread lightly when your enemy is your biggest account. ‘3s TG