I was honored to be asked to chair the joint AGMs for Nanaimo Cowichan and Nanaimo Alberni.
Continue readingcentre of the universe: That’s All They Really Want
It’s like the house party you’re at and you’re stuck in the kitchen listening to the Worst Life Story Ever, and all you want to do is leave but you don’t want to be rude to the person you’re talking to and you’re a little worried that the hosts might
Continue readingThe World Famous Dan Shields: 6121…Senators Worth Every Penny
That is what 5/6 Senators in Newfoundland told James McLeod of The Telegram. The Telegram is the official fish wrap of St. John’s and has been also used in the capital to train dogs. This is underwhelming news. In other news The Telegram reports that grass is green, the sky
Continue readingThe World Famous Dan Shields: 6120…Harper’s Suck Up
Got this graphic off of Facebook: Canadians Rallying To Unseat Harper. Love him or hate him this guy took over a relatively safe Liberal seat, knocking out the Honourable David Pratt in ’04 by about 4,000 votes. Last three elections he has won by about 20K. Little dude is going
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Time to get Militant with your Doctor and the College of Physicians and Surgeons
Ms Soapbox has been in a quandary all week. She was troubled by what she’d observed at the meeting of the College of Physicians and Surgeons governing council. Finally the penny dropped. The College is deadlocked and incapable of living up to its mission which is “Serving the public by
Continue readingDented Blue Mercedes: Right-Wing Group Claims Trans Human Rights are a Plot to Normalize Pedophilia.
It has long been a practice of American far-right spokespeople and organizations that when sensationalistic rhetoric starts to fail, rather than try to polish it up and make it look more convincing, they often switch to something more sensationalistic and absurd, as a way of getting attention and scaring folks.
Continue readingezra winton: The costs of consumption
The next time someone asks me why I’m an anti-capitalist, I’m just going to tell them to watch GREEN: DEATH OF THE FORESTS by Patrick Rouxel. A stunning visual essay showing the reasons behind and consequences of Indonesia’s massive deforestation, GREEN is without narration, talking heads or any humans really
Continue readingcmkl: Rideau Lakes: home again home again jiggedy jog
I remember the first time I did the Rideau Lakes Cycle tour in 2001. When I got home my hands were so stiff from holding the handle bars it took both of them to turn the key in my apartment building’s lock. I’m doing much better now.
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Dark Sky Preserve at Wood Mountain
I found a new way to appreciate my home town through the eyes of astronomers this weekend. Also, I used the astronomers’ telescopes, which is a great way to look from their perspective on the universe. Wood Mountain is the gateway to the East Block of the Grasslands National Park
Continue readingThe World Famous Dan Shields: 6119…Freedom Of The Press In Canada
Try as our beloved Prime Minister Stephen Harper does to muzzle the press he is not so successful. White is great; yellow number two; gold third; red sucks and; black really sucks. According to this map that I picked up off Upworthy.com Canada is as free as free can be. Personally
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Another Portrait In Integrity
While Edward Snoden will undoubtedly be portrayed in the days and weeks to come as a traitor to his country, his courageous revelation of the domestic spying that the NSA is engaged in earns my admiration. Not only has he demonstrated his personal courage and convictions by his willingness to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your weekend. – Dave Coles introduces readers to the Cons’ latest attack on labour – with a backbencher’s private member’s bill again serving as an excuse to introduce unprecedent restrictions on union organization. – Michael Harris suspects that the Cons’ attempt to delay any public
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Community Organizing
[Joan Kuyek. Community Organizing: A Holistic Approach. Halifax NS and Winnipeg MB: Fernwood Publishing, 2011.] When it comes to working to change the world, I think there is absolutely nothing inconsistent about combining the feeling that you really have no idea how to go about it, with having lots of
Continue readingImpolitical: A robust liberalism
Now here’s something worth waking me out of this lengthy blog slumber: “I despair as I watch the erosion of the liberal views I hold dear.” Yeah, you sing it, Will Hutton. Articulating liberal values in this era is a challenge and he calls it out, prompted by the recent
Continue readingImpolitical: A robust liberalism
Now here’s something worth waking me out of this lengthy blog slumber: “I despair as I watch the erosion of the liberal views I hold dear.” Yeah, you sing it, Will Hutton. Articulating liberal values in this era is a challenge and he calls it out, prompted by the recent death of leading liberal thinker Ronald Dworkin. This is a little UK-oriented but substitute the Canadian Conservative emphases and it still makes good sense:
Last Wednesday, there was a memorial service for one of the doyens of American liberalism – Professor Ronnie Dworkin – who died in London, his adopted home, earlier this year. A succession of some of Britain’s best-known liberal writers and thinkers took to the rostrum to pay tribute to a man who continued to honour Roosevelt’s New Deal, insisted law and morality were indivisible and argued that to live well and with dignity was every human being’s aim – one that law and government should support.
It was a moving occasion, but, as his wife, Irene Brendl, wrote in the service notes, this great liberal tradition is increasingly beleaguered. She is right. We live in rightwing times. Law and justice, which Ronnie Dworkin cherished so much, are depicted as burdens on the taxpayer whose costs must be minimised. If you want justice, you must pay for it yourself and have no embedded civic right to expect others to contribute. The good society and moral individuals are those who do without the state. The public sphere is derided and positive public action to promote the common or international good is acceptable only if it involves less, rather than more, government. Instead, what we are invited to hold in common is nationhood, national identity and hostility to foreigners and immigrants. The open society is in retreat.
This may seem an odd commentary in a week in which gay marriage has been agreed by the House of Lords and where companies are increasingly hounded for avoiding their tax. Both are surely liberal rather than conservative preoccupations. In an idiosyncratic leader recently, the Economist proclaimed the strange rebirth of liberal England, arguing that young people’s tolerance of ethnic and sexual differences, along with growing distrust of the state and welfare, was proof positive of the emergence of a new liberalism. Ronnie Dworkin should have been happy.
He would have turned in his grave. Such a view of liberalism does not go to the heart of what it means to live well. Tolerance of other people’s differences is a core element of a liberal order, but a good society is one where we go beyond just shrugging our shoulders at someone’s sexual preferences, religious beliefs or ethnicity. It is one in which we engage with each other, create law and justice as a moral system enshrining human dignity and accept mutual responsibilities. The aim is to live with dignity, to be able to make the best of one’s capabilities and to expect that the consequences of undeserved bad luck – what Dworkin called brute bad luck – would be compensated by society in a mutual compact. This is a million miles from the Economist’s arid conception of liberalism.
In successive areas of public policy – “reform” of criminal justice and legal aid, the health service, climate change, employment law, social security – the debate is similarly defined wholly in terms of the need to assert individual rights and choice, to minimise social and public responsibilities and, above all, to roll back taxes. If the facts or scientific evidence do not support this drive, then the facts are changed or the science ignored.
But if the right is dominant, a rounded liberalism has one advantage. The right’s world leads to economic stagnation, social atomisation and a destructive nationalism. Nor, ultimately, is there happiness and dignity to be found by living as a tax-avoiding, climate-change-denying anti-feminist while mouthing how tolerant you are. There is a quiet and mounting crisis in conservatism. Liberalism, in its best sense, could capitalise on the opportunity. It is a pity Ronnie Dworkin won’t be around to be part of the fight back. We’ll just have to do it by ourselves.
Killer last paragraph and timely perspective and advice for Canadians who presently face many crises of governance faith.
Continue readingImpolitical: A robust liberalism
Now here’s something worth waking me out of this lengthy blog slumber: “I despair as I watch the erosion of the liberal views I hold dear.” Yeah, you sing it, Will Hutton. Articulating liberal values in this era is a challenge and he calls it out, prompted by the recent
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: What if you’re wrong?
Great visualization of the now-famous response from evolutionary biologist, author, and well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, when asked in 2006 about his argument that there is no god, “What if you’re wrong?” “Anybody could be wrong, ” he replies. “We could all be … Continue reading →
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Conservative attack on workers continues with “Private Members’ Bill”: PSAC
By: Public Service Alliance of Canada | Press Release On June 5th, Conservative MP Blaine Calkins for Wetaskiwin (Alberta) introduced Bill C-525, an Act to change the certification and revocation sections of the Canada Labour Code, the Public Service Labour Relations Act and the Parliamentary Employees Staff Relations Act. The purpose
Continue readingIf Necessary Blogging But Not Necessarily Blogging: Free investment advice
Chantal Hebert has joined the list of experts squishyly predicting that Harper will not stick at his post until 2015. I agree with the pundits expecting that the Not So Great Dictator will read the writing on the wall and quit rather than face an election defeat. But whither Steve
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: the casual vacancy by j. k. rowling
The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling’s first non- Harry Potter book, received almost universally poor reviews, ranging from tepid to savage. Reviewers found the book too long for the subject matter, too slow, poorly paced. They thought the plot was a soap opera. They found the writing cliched, studied, heavy-handed.
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