Actually, I only prefer the Harper and the Conservatives because they are a bit less socialist than the Liberals (and less authoritarian), but I don't consider them to be all that different. Harper himself may be libertarian, but the party as a whole is fairly supportive of the current socialist welfare state - where entitlements are more important than earnings.
As I said, fresc, it is a matter of perspective. If you're on the east coast, the entire country is to your west. If you're on the west coast,...
You consider Martin to be center-right because of where you consider center to be. I don't know how to choose one definition of center over another, but I can make an observation. The entire western world moved dramatically to the left in the last century. The nanny state became the norm, whereas it was once considered extreme left. The idea of any income tax at all was literally radical and extremist a hundred years ago.
Inexorable growth in government spending and economic control always lead to the same place - the collapse of society due to increasingly untenable economic contradictions. It happened in the Soviet Union before it did here only because it was more socialized than the west. Whereas the commies were, in theory, 100% socialized, the West only reached a third or so by the early 80's. A similar collapse might have happened here by now, if the West didn't step back from the brink over the last decade and a half.
After all this turmoil in political philosophy, you are sitting here and saying that stepping any further back from the brink is "extremist" or "right of right". Shit fresc, what would your political position have been 40 years ago, had you been around then? Would you have been the one to invite Trudeau to the Communist party meetings?
For discussion sake, I propose that you and I accept that the historical average level of government economic interference and control be considered to be the center and more or less than that be considered left and right, respectively. Now, should we take that average over the last 50 years or the last 500?
-g |
