Canadian Consensus - View our election through the neighbor's window :)

[Toad]

David Warren is apparently often published ni the Ottawa Citizen. I think this is an interesting piece, a view of our election and situation contrasted with the Canadian situation.

I really don't know Warren's history, but I'm sure Torque will jump in here and claim he's a Canadian Neo-Con that went to school with Bush2 and is a member of Skull and Bones or something.

It's clear he is a bit disgruntled with parts of the Canadian utopia; his comments on the <cough>great</cough> socialistic system should give pause to those who think our government will do these things better than the Canadians have.


Canadian Consensus

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/canadian_consensus.html

For instance, all parties are committed to preserving Canada's dysfunctional socialist health care system. All are committed to the continued heavy regulation of private enterprise generally, and to choking small business in particular with red tape. All are committed to maintaining a crippling tax burden, and a tax collection system with arbitrary and unaccountable powers of search and seizure. Moreover, in the name of the "global warming" imposture, all are committed to significantly extending the leaden hand of government micro-mismanagement into every aspect of our daily lives that may touch even tangentially on "the environment."

And to take a subject of special interest to me, none is prepared to defend our country's common-law heritage, and due process in our courts (especially our family courts). None will vindicate the most elementary rights of free speech and free press. None will lift a finger when journalists and many others are hauled before "human rights" kangaroo courts, and put under star chamber inquisitions, as if Canada were exactly the sort of country our fathers fought in two World Wars.

The debates are seldom if ever about which direction we should be going, but rather, how far and how fast we should proceed along the pre-determined highway. This is the "Canadian consensus," shared by the various self-appointing and self-regulating elites in government, law, media, and academia. And it is a "consensus" they enforce, with ever-increasing restrictions on our ability to discuss, publicly, the various activist agendas they are pushing.

To be fair to many who hold all the conventional "Canadian consensus" views, there is seldom much malice in them. As products of our ideologized schools and universities, living all their lives deep within urban conurbations, in spiritually "gated" communities where they mix only with their own kind, they have never been exposed to contrary ideas. And they are sincerely aghast when anything that challenges their profoundly settled views is set before them. The notion that deviation must be suppressed comes as naturally to them, as the notion that anything unIslamic must be suppressed, to a Wahabi fundamentalist in Arabia.

Seems like Laz and Moot have a pretty good idea of where the liberals would lead us.

[lasersailor184]

All politicians lead us there.  Democrats are running full on sprints to the finish line, republicans are merely jogging.



There is only one solution to it.  Yet there are days when I wonder if its worth it.

[Baitman]

All of our political parties have pretty much the same views. There fore all will use the top house equally.

[themaj]

Anyone who uses the words "all" and "none" to describe citizens of any nation, and then gripes about freedom of speech in the same sentence, is an idiot.
This guy doesn't have a clue! Ice-cream?
Why post this jibberish?

[lazs2]

pretty hard to explain the what you are seeing to a blind person.

lazs

[Toad]

Why post this jibberish?

My guess is because you were bored, didn't read the article and felt the need to post something.

But that's just a guess.

[midnight Target]

I'm sorry, but why is this man's opinion so relevant?

[Toad]

I found it interesting because many of the Obamessiah's proposals would try to move the US towards things that are already established and functioning in Canada.

Like the fabulous national health care system that has seriously sick people coming to the US for treatment because they'll die before the move to the head of the line in Canada.

And because this description rings so true of Amreekan liberals, the big city blue voters:

More subtly, the dweller in an urban apartment complex cannot imagine a life in which everything he does is not bound by fussy rules and regulations, and in which any act of non-conformity (lighting a cigarette, for instance) must be greeted with hysterical alarm. In this sense, our vast modern cities, not only in Canada but everywhere, breed Pavlovian conformity to their own physical requirements, and systematically replace moral imperatives with bureaucratic ones.

[midnight Target]

Ahhh, so his opinion is relevant because he agrees with you. Got it.

[Toad]

Pehaps. The interesting part to me is that he lives in the paradise of Canada yet has clear concerns about liberty.

But if so, it is in much the same way that you discuss articles/ideas that agree with your own.

Much as everyone does on this board.

[midnight Target]

Of course, but too many times opinion pieces are posted as if they prove something. This article proves nothing, except what the writer thinks. I'm sure we could find tons of articles extolling the virtues of Canada's health care system or deriding the US system. All irrelevant without facts. As is your conclusion that Lazs and Moot have it right based on this article.

I wonder how many Canadians declare bankruptcy each year due to medical bills? Last I heard the number in the US was close to 2 million..... Sounds broken to me, but that is just an opinion.

[Toad]

I think you noted that I said I found it interesting.

As far as proof with regards to Laz and Moot, they have pointed out that the US drift towards socialism, things such as the Obamessiah proposes, leads to places that a great many of us do not wish to go. This writer has experienced that move towards socialism in Canada and his observations on the results are pretty much right in line with what Laz and Moot have posted. Now I suspect that neither Laz nor Moot have ever met this guy, so I don't think there's collusion between the US, French and Canadian observers of the scene. Seems there may some truth to it to me.

A while back I posted an article on Canadian health care by a Canadian doctor that has been trying to change it back towards a free market system. Did you happen to read that?

You wonder about how many Canadians go bankrupt over health care. I might wonder how many Canadians DIE because their health care is rationed.

Tell me, would you rather be bankrupt or dead?

[JimBear]

2007 Non Buisness Bankruptcies 822,590  still an awful lot and I would wonder what the % is due to medical bills?

Politics and facts MT? come on  





fwiw

2007 Canadian Consumer Insolvency 101,206

US Population 2007  301 million (july est)
CAN Population 2007 33 million  (july est)

[midnight Target]

Yeah 2 million was too high...

A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses.13 Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.

[Curval]

Ahhh, so his opinion is relevant because he agrees with you. Got it.

LOL

Indeed.