Reform/alliance is not fundamentally racist, and never was .... what happened was in its founding a few years ago there was tremendous opportunity for input from the grassroots, and among many thousands of others taking advantage of this there were a few dozens genuine racists spouting off ..... these were stomped on immediately by core organisers of Reform, including Preston Manning, and it wasn't just because they realised that a racist slant is political suicide for a party, it was a gut reaction, they truly were abhorred by the venom of the particular creatures involved .... [on this last judgment, i recall a conversation with a friend, we had been at the same meeting and were comparing notes, having talked to different people, and we tossed around for some time deciding whether core reformers were putting on a front or were genuine, we settled on the latter] ...... Sofa and i have talked about this upthread .... i'm a heinz57 too, as you know, and tuned right into this stuff
It is useful to recall the circumstances at the time - there was in BC a huge current influx of chinese from Hong Kong, sizable enough to effect real estate prices greatly, and changing the character of Vancouver quite rapidly .... also, the language laws of Québec were new and draconian, in a manner that repels the freedom seekers, i personally still believe that no government should have the right to dictate language, that is not its rightful business, period ..... this led to open antagonism to the whole french fact of the country, with a number of speakers being unable or unwilling to distinguish the sin from the sinner in their public statements .... as for the chinese, it wasn't long apparently [i wasn't around after the first while] before wiser heads among reform founders went out and recruited some hongkongers as members, and now you'll find multiple races in the party, anyone involved with the organisation will know this
Meantime the initial tries by the Doug Collinses to influence the party in some whacko faux-christian whites-only direction were used long and hard by political competitors .... Lino says the CBC did/does this, but i never noticed that so much, others have used it though, the provincial NDP machine was regurgitating it all for years
Voter ignorance, driven by voter apathy, is the single biggest problem of democracies .... it's not just this country, all democracies have it, to greater or lesser extent ..... life is too easy, many assume others will take care of the politics, and occupy their time with other things .... i've done this a lot, had plenty of excuses for it, like work and travelling etc, spent whole years without one twinge of guilt for neglecting what is probably a natural duty, to educate myself on the players and positions
The problem i have with Alliance now, is that in opposing the Liberals they have chosen too knee-jerk a line in sync with US admin, in regards to foreign affairs .... evidenced most vividly by their yes-men stance on the attack on Iraq .... this is not the position of the average canadian, they are out of step with us here, they need to formulate a policy that reflects our values ..... it does appear the case that the Liberals do a knee-jerk thing of their own in foreign affairs, i really didn't like one of Chrétien's comments where he essentially said he'd follow Chirac into whatever pissoir the latter chose, so they're not perfect by a long shot, i think they ended up on Iraq with close to the right policy for the wrong reasons ...... as a nation i believe we have the right and the duty to set our own course, planned with thought and careful consideration, to build canadian diplomacy back to what it was fifty years ago, build our military back some distance towards its former greatness as well, and do all we can to foment with our fellow independent democracies a working practical parliament of nations
And that's what i want Harper to say, that it's a top national priority .... maybe i'll join the party after all, and chant parliament of democracies in their ears, until they kick me out -g- |
