Intoduction
Well, I finally got around to doing this. After commenting at places like Washington Monthly for almost two years now I am now a blogger myself, instead of just a commentator. I have been told by many that I should have my own blog, well now I get to see whether they were right. My primary interests for blogging are in the political realm, although I also have a interest in security and intelligence issues as well. I would also give fair warning, when I get my teeth into an issue, I tend to be rather tenacious, and one of those issues is the Plame outing in 2003. Another is the Gurmant Grewal recording fiasco of May 2005, so one can expect that I will shortly be filling up my blog with posts dealing with these issues among many others.
I hope that I am able to provide well written and presented posts for all, but we shall have to wait and see how that works out. In the meantime, welcome.
I hope that I am able to provide well written and presented posts for all, but we shall have to wait and see how that works out. In the meantime, welcome.
posted by Scotian | 8:20 PM
4 Comments:
I'm glad to see that you finally have a blog of your own, Scotian. I look forward to reading your posts.
Why thank you Buckets! That you would feel this way given the quality of your own work and writing is a real compliment. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed yours.
Glad to see you on the radar Scotian. I wish I had my blog working, but I am forced to admit that I will actually have to write the code to do it properly. Hopefully Mark and I can team up our efforts and split the task of coding and design, since we are more or less in the same boat.
I wonder how long it will be before Jelly-Jeff and Anonalogue come over here to troll you? You know, you haven't made the grade untill those fools show up to spout. Just had the old clue-by-four read for them, just apply liberally and repeatedly about the skull and and head ;-)
Why thank you both Zorpheous and Noel M, kind words from both of you. Zorpheous, I will be very surprised if it takes a week for it to get around to jeff, Knight, or their brethren that I now have this blog. I have not been speaking well of their faith, the CPC. I have real problems with this party, and have since it's inception. For me the rot goes back to the way Peter MacKay campaigned and won his leadership on the pledge of being the "no-merger" candidate, capped off with the way he secured the leadership by putting his signature to that effect.
Regardless of what one thought of the concept of the merger and whether one was a supporter of it or even the conservative parties, what MacKay did was true political treachery. It was such the likes I cannot recall in my lifetime in Canada, and for it to be spoken of as noble, principled, and any taint excused because it was for the good of the country/ for the good of the conservative movement in the country is appalling to me. That he is the deputy leader of this party has always been the symbol of expediency before principle, before pledge, before anything other than the good of the party/movement/ideology.
Then came this Spring and the bogus "confidence" votes being portrayed as a serious constitutional crisis and the government having no legitimacy whatsoever. For those of us that actually have some working knowledge of our Parliamentary history that was complete and utter hogwash. If it had been a real one, why then did not Harper go see the GG and ask her to dissolve Parliament? He didn't because he knew he did not have a case. However, to hear the way the average citizen was being told about it one would have thought a coup d'etat had occurred.
Then came the Grewal recordings, and the fraud the CPC perpetrated on me and all of us in this country with the lie about Senate seat selling. I'm sure my views on this are already clear to all here at the moment, so I won't recap them in this comment. So given all of that, I expect to get blogswarmed within my first six months by conservatives, and I wouldn't be surprised to see those two heading up the charge.
The irony is that one of the reasons I take MacKay's actions so seriously is because I was just about to take out a formal membership in the PCPC under him to restore some balance to our traditional power alignments in this country. I could not support Reform or the CA. I do not have a social conservative perspective for all that I was raised a Catholic and spent nearly a decade as an alter boy. I found this mentality was too pervasive in the Reform/CA for my comfort, but the PCPC was another matter. I haven't held a party membership since at least my teens, and I only make that qualification because I may have had one bought by one of the two women this blogsite is named in honour of, so for me to get one was a very serious matter.
Then I got the shock of betrayal by MacKay along with the membership of the PCPC. I watched the dissolution of the PCPC and the birth of the CPC, and the means employed to dissolve the PCPC were very ruthless and expedient without much regard for principles and ethics, IMHO. I watched Mr. Harper appear to use his position as head of the CA to his advantage in securing the leadership of the CPC. I had no reason to trust this party, and worse, I actually fear it and the damage it will do to this country if able to gain real power. Too many conservatives seem to think I hate conservatism, I don't I respect traditional Canadian conservatism, but this newer element has too many American inspired elements, chief of which appears to be this more absolutist and less pragmatic approach to governing this country than has been the preference in our history and society.
So I will do my best to oppose it until it either chooses to be protest/principle party like the NDP had been through most of the last half century, or it starts recognizing that our population is not like the Americans and that approach is not only unwelcome, it is harmful. I find their attitude towards the Charter very worrisome, and I must admit I was rather underwhelmed with what I watched in March on CPAC at the Conservative Convention. The borrowing of so many of the more successful American conservative tactics and strategies is not something I like. Not because I have anything against Americans or their system of governance, but because it truly is not what works in this country and to try to incorporate it does actual harm to our way of governing ourselves.
The truth is we are a country that was from it’s inception designed to be different than America, and that is what we have created. While we share many goals, principles, and beliefs we express them in rather subtle but distinctly different ways. I value and cherish those distinctions, and I would protect them as I suspect most Canadians would whether they could easily describe what it is they are protecting. It is something as much ingrained at an instinctive level as conscious thought in my observations, and will emerge when the “Canadian way of life” threatened. Given the amount of sweat, blood, tears, and unfortunately betrayals of the aboriginal peoples of this country, I refuse to see all that sacrifice, both nobles ones and the dishonourable ones, effort, and heritage simply be lost in the great cultural dynamic of our American neighbours and friends, even if they are currently acting poorly having reelected this rather hostile and dangerous government.
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