Revolutionary Moderation

Oh, my



The catch-up I've promised is still forthcoming, though I've been delayed by a request for IT services from the NDP. I may not know how I'm voting, but when this is all over, the NDP will still be my party... how could I say no? And yes, the cold is already significantly better - thanks for the good wishes.



But in the meantime, via the thoughtful and sensible Calgary Grit, I've discovered Conservative Canadian. S/He writes a blog that I'm tempted to just ignore, but I can't, because I fear the thinking in it is representative of too much of the rank-and-file of the new Conservative party.

As for health care, it has to be said once and for all that no one, stress NO ONE, is advocating a two-tier system. Two-tier, as the name implies, would mean that the public sector would no longer offer certain services that were shifted to private clinics. We are merely talking about private management and delivery of facilities and services UNDER the umbrella of the public health care system. And if someone has enough money and needs treatment badly enough, he or she should be free to select from a number of different options: wait in the public sector for 18 months or longer to have that life-saving surgery or turn to a private provider.



This is a fundamental right of choice relative to the integrity of one's body and person, but the Liberals want to deny us this fundamental right. This is worse than China or the Soviet Union.

I think I might have a different understanding of two-tier. A two-teir system in my world is one that gives opportunities for queue-jumping to those who "ha[ve]enough money and need[] treatment badly enough".



I'll let the next one speak for itself:

Canada already has too many illiterate and anti-social immigrants that should have never been brought in. They are a burden on our health-care system: even now, immigrants and refugees can bring in next-of-kin, such as parents, who are too old to learn English. They will never pay a single penny in taxes, yet they are the majority of patients lining up at emergency rooms.



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I know a coffee shop in Toronto that is overrun by Sri Lankans around the clock. They play cards all day long (consuming next to nothing). Frequently, you will find 20, sometimes 40, of them inside the coffee shop. Paying customers have no way of sitting down and enjoying a quiet cup of coffee.



These people have clearly no jobs to go to; otherwise, they could not sit in a coffee shop 24/7. Sometimes, I would see them shuffle and trade goods from the trunks of their cars right in front of the coffee shop.



Then, one day one of these guys told me that he had bought himself a farm north of Toronto - $160,000 in CASH! With no job and spending all his waking hours at the coffee shop, where does all that money come from?



These are the kinds of criminal and parasitic elements that we, as taxpayers, have to support - thanks to the Liberals. And now the NDP wants to make things even worse for CANADIANS.

Ay-ya!



Let me get to the point of all this. I'm not trying to set up in this one blogger a straw man that poor Stephen Harper, who I think is as likely to produce an "ay-ya" at this as readily as I do, has to answer for.



My point is that the Conservative Party has yet to set down any grass-roots policy that Canadians can count on. Given the membership of the party, I don't think it's unreasonable to at least be concerned that the first policy convention of the new party will be attended by a convention hall filled with "Conservative Canadian"s ready to copy out the Reform Party policy book c. 1988, and call it Conservative Party policy. If that's the vision of the country represented by a Conservative vote this time around, I don't think they'll find many takers east of Manitoba.



I'm not saying the Conservatives WILL go down this road. I'm saying they MIGHT. I'm saying that we can't know what we might be getting out of a Conservative government. That's not the Conservatives fault, entirely - both parties headed toward a winter merger and Spring election eyes wide open about what it was going to mean - but I'd feel a lot better waiting at least another year for the new party to sort itself out before I'd be ready to see Harper handed the reins of power.



In the meantime, though, one more thing I'd like to draw from "Conservative Canadian"'s blog. It's a parade of ad hominem attacks, because they never get tired. Cue the circus music:

People don't like criminals, crooks, liars, cheaters, which are all synonymous to "Liberal".



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Anyone who still considers voting Liberal should have his head examined.



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Anyone who still votes Liberal is a moron, as has been pointed out by many writers and journalists.



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Paul Martin, as everyone can see now, is a fumbling, crooked and lying idiot. You'd have to be just as fumbling, crooked and idiotic to vote Liberal on June 28.



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Have you ever seen a Liberal that isn't a liar? I sure haven't.



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...Liberals are liars and con-artists.

Hey, that was fun! Let's take that ride again!



And just in case you think I'm picking on this writer unfairly, read this post, and then this one, and then tell me so.