Disqus - Latest Comments for rsporter

Re: This Week’s Supervillain

rsporter — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:53:18 -0000

Weigel, you've really lost it since your Reason days. She did not merely "quot[e] Mao", she explained how he was one of her favorite philosophers. Whether that means she should lose her job is irrelevant. She clearly has poor taste in philosophers. Perhaps she should choose one whose beliefs, and the methods that stemmed from them, didn't result in tens of millions of deaths.

I'm afraid you just don't get it. Beck is absolutely insane, he's racist and he's completely disingenuous on virtually every issue. But just because Beck's a moron doesn't mean he's wrong about Dunn here.

Re: Queerly Canadian

rsporter — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:45:27 -0000

Am I missing some inside joke about the Sir. John A link?

Re: Waking Up Canadian

huadpe — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:21:42 -0000

Yeah. Also, watching that I really notice the dearth of non-stereotypical symbolism in Canada. The US has eagles, the flag, very pretty founding documents, and a host of prominent looking buildings.

Canada has...maple leaves and maple syrup. And the peace tower I guess. And 1/20th of a Queen. I say this as someone living in Canada for some time now.

Re: Waking Up Canadian

rsporter — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:03:50 -0000

Oh I feel alright. There are other uses of my tax dollar I am more concerned with.

Re: Waking Up Canadian

Anonymous — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:16:33 -0000

If it makes you feel any better, I can't imagine that a lot of your tax dollars paid for that.

Re: Waking Up Canadian

rsporter — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:00:32 -0000

Wow, I can't believe my tax dollars paid for that. Soon you can contribute too!

Re: More Fun With Polls

rsporter — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:27:11 -0000

Well then post them, Nathan.

The private clincs you think you chaning the landscape of Canada are minor and the more widespread they become the more the public will turn against them.

Re: More Fun With Polls

Nathan — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:30:16 -0000

There are hundreds of articles. I remember reading one more than a year ago. Attacking the source is no less than a cop out.

Re: Magic Buttons: The Breakdown

rsporter — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:17:07 -0000

If I ever win the lottery I'll pay for a Gallup poll for you so you can say it's scientific.

Re: More Fun With Polls

rsporter — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:45:50 -0000

Meh, that's CUPE and CUPE has never said an honest thing in its life.

Apparently there are few clincs in Canada, but I don't know of any meaningful ones in Saskatchewan. Indeed when a private MRI clinic (on a First Nations bands' land) was contemplated it was shouted down as heresy.

Re: More Fun With Polls

Nathan — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:23:27 -0000

http://cupe.ca/health-care/private-clinic-study

Just typing in "Canada private clinic" give you many links.

Re: Canadian Freedom

Pithlord — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:21:19 -0000

I like Toronto too.

Calgary and Edmonton don't have "dominant libertarian factions" if that requires someone who Murray Rothbard would accept as an ideological soulmate. But in a broader sense, there is something of a libertarian vibe about Alberta and, in a different way, B.C.

Toronto's a great city, no question about it.

Re: Canadian Freedom

P.M. Jaworski — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:09:28 -0000

I think there is reason to be optimistic, Robert, I really do. The trouble is that these things will take time. The legal process is tedious but, for example, Quebec and British Columbia have thriving private clinics, and those private clinics are beginning to pop up with more frequency. There is, currently, on top of the Charter challenges in Ontario, Alberta and B.C., a NAFTA case by U.S.-based private clinics arguing that they should be permitted to open clinics in Canada.

I think all of the Charter challenges will be victorious. All of them. I'm not sure about the NAFTA challenge, but it won't matter once the Charter cases are settled.

Here's one more reason to be optimistic: The guy spearheading the challenge in British Columbia is Brian Day. Brian Day is the man who opened and operates the private Cambie Surgery Centre in B.C. He was elected the president of the Canadian Medical Association for 2008! He was an intervenor in Chaoulli. He is pure awesome (http://brianday.ca/ -- check out his final speech as pres of the CMA).

And I agree with you about everything else you wrote. Just you wait re: health care.

(And don't forget about David Schmidtz, libertarian philosopher at U. of Arizona and Canadian).

Re: More Fun With Polls

rsporter — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:51:33 -0000

Such as? If you're going to say they are proliferating around the country then do list them, or at least post some news articles explaining this phenomena I seem to have missed.

Re: More Fun With Polls

Nathan — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:40:00 -0000

By a few minor you means hundreds?

Re: More Fun With Polls

rsporter — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:20:00 -0000

In what way? There are a few minor clinics that have managed to spring up but I don't think it represents any major change towards a private system.

Re: More Fun With Polls

webgrrl — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:52:11 -0000

Exactly. Any ban on handguns would lose to a Supreme Court challenge, and we'd still end up with health care. So it was a no-brainer, actually.

Re: More Fun With Polls

rsporter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:29:55 -0000

I'm probably screwing the results because I already am Canadian, but I did it anyway.

The last question is the trickiest. Ultimately I already reflected upon the legality of handguns in Canada (legal but heavily regulated) and decided I'd prefer the stronger economy. Besides there's always the black market!

Re: Canadian Freedom

rsporter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:41:38 -0000

I would submit that Corner Gas is one of Canada's worst cultural exports or creations. It is filmed in and around my city (Regina) and it represents everything that is wrong with the praries.

Thankfully there's only a few more months left of the show. Good riddance.

Re: Canadian Freedom

rsporter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:37:27 -0000

They're certainly a problem and it wouldn't suprise me to see the laws surrounding them amended.

I would just try to emphasize that Americans seem to use them as a gotcha moment too much.

Re: Canadian Freedom

rsporter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:35:10 -0000

It's not really as simple as that. If one was to make the the argument that rural areas are often "culturally libertarian" you'd be closer but you wouldn't really be accurate. I think the rural life brings with it the notion of their forefathers who homesteaded the land in 1908 and had to fend for themselves. So in that sense there is a feeling of individualism, but I don't think it stretches very far beneath the surface.

In the West the major urban centres (Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton) don't really have any dominant libertarian factions. Indeed you might argue they have a ignorant, backwater feel, but that's a different rant.

If you look at Saskatchewan the geographic and spiritual centre of "the West" then you'd really have trouble making the case. Saskatchewan is the location of the founding of the Canadian democratic socialist party the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, later the New Democratic Party. (This topic is where Seymour Martin Lipset cut his teeth writing his flawed but pioneering dissertation Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan, a Study in Political Sociology.) And until recently Saskatchewan was an NDP stronghold both federally and provincially. The recent 'conversion' to the conservative parties has more to do with dissatisfaction with the Liberals than any conversion to libertarian principles.

Manitoba, politically is similar to Saskatchewan, at least when compared with Alberta. Alberta is certainly the best argument for a libertarian encalve, but even then it doesn't amount to much. There is more money in Alberta thanks to oil and it does have a rural population for the gun crowd. But once you get into Calgary or Edmonton it falls in line with most urban areas. The libertarian west, I think, is mostly elusive.

It is important to not confuse Canada with Toronto, because Toronto (along with Montreal and Vancouver) are the heart of this great country. It's pretty much heresy for me, a Western Canadian, to say so, but Toronto is the strength of Canada, not its weakness. This is why I plan to relocate.

Re: Canadian Freedom

rsporter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:11:55 -0000

I must echo most of what P.M. Jaworski has stated. However, I'm not so sure that his optimism about healthcare is correct. I don't see any substantial changes coming out of Chaoulli.

I've spent a lot of my time arguing against the view that Canada and the United States are that different. Of course you can find specific things (healthcare, guns) that are different, but so many things are similar. Like the United States, opinions and attitudes vary significantly across our large geography. If one wants to see the (over stated) case for the differences between Canada and the United States they should consult Michael Adams' Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada, and the Myth of Converging Values.

I must also address Craig's assertion that Canada's intellectual life if sullied by its leftward tilt. It's certainly undeniable that academia in Canada is largely situated on the left of the spectrum, often quite left. But is this really all that different from the United States? Studies of political affliation of American academia show it is substantially Democratic. If one is to look at specific areas of study like, say, sociology, then you're going to find a bunch of leftists, if not outright Marxists. But this is true whether one looks at Canada or the United States. As a student in Canada I must disagree that the leftism of academia is somehow unique to Canada. (I should note that there was a significant influx of lefty American academics into Canada in the 1960s an beyond!)

The bigger issue here I think is the idea that if a university is prodominately left that it is a significant problem. My advice to anyone who thinks that intellectual life is stifled because of it should grow a pair. As much as professors have a reputation for bias, in my experience professors are quite willing to hear contrary ideas and debate them. Certainly this libertarian has never had any problem doing so. In general, however, I would say that Canadian intellectual life (academic, think thank and government) is essentially centrist or moderately liberal. Could Canada use some more libertarian voices? Sure. But we do have Jan Narveson after all!

Re: Canadian Freedom

rsporter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:26:50 -0000

Yes, and there has also been a fair amount of blowback on account of the tribunals. I know very few people who support the broad application of these types of things.

Re: Canadians Do It Better

rsporter — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:28:09 -0000

It problem comes from the fact that American's make too much of the supposed problems in Canada. Of course there are issues with people who want to censor speech, but many American's make it sound as if gangs roam the streets censoring as they go. This just isn't true.

I think the issue is that while Canada has some specific problems and an overactive government it is often balanced out by a little something I like to call Iraq.

Re: Canadians Do It Better

rsporter — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:24:30 -0000

It's not strictly true to say that Canada doesn't "have armed forces deployed around the world." While we certainly don't have as much around the world as the United States, we're intimately involved in Afghanistan.