Politics

[dale116dot7]

I think we live in a unique part of the world. Ask many Albertan, "what is important for a government to take care of?" and you'll get health care, education, the environment. Ask him/her "who do you vote for?" Conservative (similar to republican). Uh huh.

 

[burdij]

One could argue that the conservatives/republicans have a much better grasp of "doublethink" than the liberals/democrats:

"[Winston's] mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved using doublethink."

1984 - George Orwell

 

[JohnRoberts]

Not sure what your point is, but I would caution against taking stereotypes so literally. Liberals and conservatives are more alike than different, and any differences are amplified, just like products are differentiated artificially in the marketplace to win sales.
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The current primary down here is getting silly as candidates try to tune their message not for what they believe or plan to do, but what they know the different state voters want to hear. Especially interesting today as two pretty different states are voting on the same day.

I find it hard to believe that voters don't see through this obvious duplicity, but so far they don't seem to notice. The internet can be a powerful leveler for messages that change from venue to venue.

Vote early and often... :thumb:

JR

 

[Greg]

Speaking for myself...

A governments #1 priority?

National Security

 

[amorris]

conservatives/republicans have a much better grasp of "doublethink" than the liberals/democrats

Liberals and conservatives are more alike than different

? I dont know what to say?

 

[burdij]

The liberals are catching up . . .

 

[dale116dot7]

In Canadian politics, things are a bit different than down there. We inherited the British way of doing things.

Up here, it's not left or right, there's various shades. The three mainstream parties are 'NDP' which is left-wing (roughly 9-o'clock on a pan pot), 'Liberal' that's mostly down the centre, maybe a bit right of centre, maybe a bit left of centre, and you have 'Progressive Conservatives' which are a 'small-c' conservative or maybe 2 or 3-o'clock on a pan pot. Those are sort of the mainstream parties... sort-of. They drift around a bit. There are some far-out parties that are hard-panned like the communist party (who never get many votes), or the religious far-right who also don't get that many votes. Then there are the joke parties, the most famous were the Rhinos, from what I recall. There are also the regional separation parties who generally never do that well, fortunately.

Right now our federal conservative party is more like 4-o'clock on the pan pot, but they are in a minority government situation, so they need to compromise. In a majority government, the party in power makes the rules, and that's pretty much it, though it has to pass the senate, which some people don't like. That's the 'sober second thought' stage. Usually bills gets rubberstamped up there. In a minority government, if a confidence bill (budget, defense, some other important bill - there are rules) fails to pass, parliment dissolves and an election is called.

I think the frustrating thing is you can ask 'are they doing a good job with health care, education, and the environment' and you'll get a general 'no, but they'll do better this term.' We've been hearing that for 30 years!

 

[NEU!]

[quote author="dale116dot7"]I think we live in a unique part of the world. Ask many Albertan, "what is important for a government to take care of?" and you'll get health care, education, the environment. Ask him/her "who do you vote for?" Conservative (similar to republican). Uh huh.[/quote]

I think it's pretty hard for a government to lose an election when they've been overseeing one of the biggest boom economies in North America.

Here is a really great article on the change of conservatism in Canada by Shadia Drury:
http://www.uregina.ca/arts/CRC/herald_demise.html

-a.

 

[lofi]

[quote author="Greg"]Speaking for myself...

A governments #1 priority?

National Security[/quote]

in the uk our governments are only good for lampooning, when it comes to national security they shout loud and do what the Americans ask.

at the moment we are still developing the middle management health scheme, it consists of pouring millions of £'s into the health service just so we can pay for more pen pushers.

i have a lot of trust in our governments, then again some day i will die and it will be somebody else's problem

Iain

 

[JohnRoberts]

[quote author="amorris"]

conservatives/republicans have a much better grasp of "doublethink" than the liberals/democrats

Liberals and conservatives are more alike than different

? I dont know what to say?[/quote]

The obvious is that one of us is wrong.

I hold most politicians of all stripes in pretty low regard but we ultimately reap what we sow, so I won't blame some nebulous system for this condition.

I wish voters would pay a little more attention and put as much effort in selecting their leaders as buying a car (which they also do with questionable judgement).

JR

 

[dale116dot7]

[quote author="JohnRoberts"]I wish voters would pay a little more attention and put as much effort in selecting their leaders as buying a car (which they also do with questionable judgement).[/quote]

That was actually my point - not that I am necessarily upset at the results of yesterday's election. We have a secret ballot for a reason and I may have voted for the winner or maybe I didn't. I may be upset at the outcome or maybe I'm happy. That's not what irks me.

I have no problem if you ask someone what is most important to them and they say 'controlling taxes, ensuring the economy is great', then also saying they voted conservative. No problem, that's their opinion.

What I do have a problem with is a blue-collar worker, a real union supporter who hangs out at the brotherhood of septic cleaning workers building (or whatever union you want), that wants a decent education for his kids, a reasonable wait time at a hospital, saying 'I voted for the party what wants to cut funding for schools, cut funding for hospitals, and break up unions'.

 

[Andy Peters]

[quote author="dale116dot7"][quote author="JohnRoberts"]I wish voters would pay a little more attention and put as much effort in selecting their leaders as buying a car (which they also do with questionable judgement).[/quote]

That was actually my point - not that I am necessarily upset at the results of yesterday's election. We have a secret ballot for a reason and I may have voted for the winner or maybe I didn't. I may be upset at the outcome or maybe I'm happy. That's not what irks me.

I have no problem if you ask someone what is most important to them and they say 'controlling taxes, ensuring the economy is great', then also saying they voted conservative. No problem, that's their opinion.

What I do have a problem with is a blue-collar worker, a real union supporter who hangs out at the brotherhood of septic cleaning workers building (or whatever union you want), that wants a decent education for his kids, a reasonable wait time at a hospital, saying 'I voted for the party what wants to cut funding for schools, cut funding for hospitals, and break up unions'.[/quote]

You're describing the "Politics of Aspiration."

Basically, a middle- or lower-class person votes against his best economic interests because he truly believes that he will some day be rich, and by G-d, when he's rich, he doesn't want to pay a lot of taxes! This person completely misses the point that the people who are actually rich have no desire to let him become rich, and in fact they actually work against that goal.

-a

 

[JohnRoberts]

That's a pretty sad picture being painted.

In my experience people usually do vote their self interest while it is often based on one narrow issue causing them to vote against the other candidate rather voting for someone based on the balance of multiple issues.

This is why negative attack ads, and whisper campaigns work so well, they can play upon some candidate's weakness real or manufactured, and voters fears or prejudices. Politics at it's ugly worst.

My complaint is when voters don't even understand the big issues, as politicians spin cause and effect beyond what thoughtful people should accept, and make promises thoughtful people shouldn't expect them to keep.

The recent NAFTA comments for example are a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury: Signifying Nothing." (my respects to the bard). There is high unemployment in one region relative to others due to poor business climate. It's politically expedient and a cheap shot, to assign the blame elsewhere.

Of course I could be wrong...

JR

 

[Ptownkid]

You are very right John, it is usually the case that people vote for a narrow issue, or against a particular candidate/issue.

I'm a victim of that myself, the conservatives want to bring us privatized health care, and that scares the shit out of me, so i voted anything BUT conservative.

 

[gltech]

that scares the shit out of me

Ptown, I don't know squat about the Canadian system -- fill me in.

Socialized medicine seems inevitable in the U. S. and that scares the shit out of me.

When the government gets involved, the situation gets worse. Some of our hospitals are government entities, like the VA hospitals. Nobody wants to go to them. I remember one of them having a rat problem not long ago.

Compare USPS to UPS, etc.

I cringe when I think of how far off we are from what our founding fathers envisioned. They wanted very limited government by the states. We are now pretty much the opposite -- huge centralized government, and only getting more that way.

I feel lonely these days with my view that government should be the last resort solution to any problem.

No society has been without mistakes, the US included no doubt. But our country flourished mainly because of the freedom to persue your wildest dreams, with minimal government interference. That's why so many want in. That United States is dying my friends.

My feeling is that, given a free society, most people are decent and reasonable, and will generally guide a nation in the right direction at the ballot box, with one exception. That's when it comes to money. Here's a hundered-plus year old quote:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

--Alexander Tyler

I'd say the US is somewhere in the selfishness-complacency-apathy stage right now.

 

[JohnRoberts]

The medical system (in the US) suffers from some bad from both worlds. It doesn't enjoy the economy of a single provider, while at the same time the lack of visibility into actual costs and machinations of the insurance payer system does not lead to effective self direction by individuals or true economics of a competitive environment.

For all the flaws in our current system socialized medicine has the potential to be even worse. Yes the care is free, but you may die before you come up in the queue for that MRI or expensive test you need. They don't have unlimited budgets so something must give.

Another scary issue, if the US, joins with the rest of the world in mandating drug prices, who will be left to subsidize developing new drugs?

With new infectious strains of bacteria in a close foot race with recent antibiotics that kill them, I don't want to think about slowing new drug development.

But other than that no worries... :green:

JR