That’s one small step for man…

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The immortal words that were broadcast over the air when mankind first laid foot on the moon.

Problem is, we just stood there.

Oh sure, there was the occasional foray by others to the moon to either follow up, or say that “they did too”, but beyond that point, we stood still. It’s almost as if landing on the moon became passe, or “Been There, Done That”.

Arguably, it was an action that clearly shouted the possibilities of mankind. What it was capable of as a species; and everyone cheered loudly (whether due to the accomplishment or because they beat the Russians to it), then promptly went back to sleep. More’s the pity.

Granted, the continuing Cold War monopolized the attention of nations and the hubris of those in charge of the Apollo missions refused to extend the olive branch to other nations (especially the Commies) and invite them into what could have become a new hope for the world in a vision of what could be instead of what was. The future of those missions became merely orbital experiments and inverted planet gazing instead of continuing to push the boundaries of our little blue marble in a massive expanse of black.

These days, we as a species are largely content to concern ourselves with terrestrial affairs and the social issues and distractions that accompany them with nary a thought to what could have been. A line from a movie (which I can’t recall the name of, or even the premise) has stuck out in my mind in which a character lamented the cold, narrow view and inability to accept the inexplicable and said “Have you discovered and learned everything there is to know? Is there no wonder left in your world?”

Which leads me to ask, is there no wonder left in OUR world? Have we become resigned to the mentality that by and large, we understand most things, and any new discovery is only mildly interesting? If this is the case, it’s no wonder (no pun intended) that we as a species have a difficult time stirring up hope for the future. We’ve become so trapped in keeping our feet on the ground, that we’ve forgotten the joys to be had when we put our heads in the clouds and dream of what may be.

Globe & Mail “Analysis”: Water Is Wet!

Wow, didn’t see that one coming, did you? Well, not they’ve got a new special today on the effectiveness of negative advertising (link here). Let’s take a look at the results, shall we?

Now, granted, that first box in the top left is as close as you’re going to get to asking a fair question about negative ads and give you a true taste of what Canadians feel about them. Generally speaking, I can’t help but wonder if those folks to write into newspapers complaining about the ads tend to be hyper-partisan, even on just a philosophical level, and thus hyper-prone to complain about the ads that the other guy throws against their team.

Next, the box in the top right about politicians working together is interesting. It has nothing to do with advertising, but it’s interesting nonetheless (and yes, I’m sure its there to colour results in the final two questions!). If you take the 15% that disagree with that statement, you have pretty much the core support of the CPC with maybe a bit of NDP, BQ and Green tinge in there as well. Put another way, this question is asking those who support any given opposition party if they want their policies to be considered seriously on Parliament Hill. There’s some non-partisans in there who expect cooperation anyway to round out the rest.

Question 3 is where it gets laughable though. I would say it does harm, but the real issue is harm to who? “Stephane Dion is not a leader” certainly did harm to the hapless Liberal MP but did it hurt anyone I know personally? Nope. In fact, I’d find it hard to see how an attack ad couldn’t do harm as an ineffective ad will always hurt the party who produces it (“Soldiers. In our cities”, anyone?).

Question 4 is along the same lines. Does attack advertising make me distrust politicians more? I hope so; glad to know I’m aware of my environment here. Let’s put it this way: if I see a Tory attack ad done well, I distrust the Liberals less; if I see a poor Tory ad, I distrust their ability to govern competently. The same factors apply to the Liberals and, if they ever made a serious attack ad, the NDP.

In conclusion, if this is the analysis the Globe is selling its readership, let’s hope they don’t validate those rumours of a return to subscription-based content any time soon. It might just kill the paper!

Leave Facebook alone; forget about your privacy

The typically lazy Canadian practice of demanding the iron fists of bureaucrats to settle our inter-personal problems is being passed on from one generation to the next. These absurd demands of the federal privacy commission to protect personal information from being mined by third-party applications are nonsense. We may as well blame Microsoft for every single phishing attack that occurs on the internet.

Oh, well. Poor Facebook. I guess they have to learn old adages the hard way. If you play with fire, you get burned and what goes around, comes around.

AFTERTHOUGHTS:

Commonly, we hear the refrain that with freedom comes more responsibility. In a pragmatic sense, that has to be true. Being free today is nothing like what it meant a generation ago. The information age is exploding rapidly and we are in an extra-ordinary transition where young people are learning a new concept of freedom. Occasionally, they learn this the hard way. It is impossible to police all of this nonsense.

It is sad that these University of Ottawa Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic students look at the internet — a technological advance that offers more freedom, educational opportunities and excitement that no other generation has ever imagined — as a media that must be controlled, limited or regulated by the police.

Limitations upon Facebook or any other entertainment media are unnecessary and it is most certainly unfair to expect the tax-payer to fund the arbitration of these frivolous disputes. If you do not like Facebook do not use it. If you want privacy, do not publish your personal information to the entire world.

It is impossible to police all of the nonsense on the internet. If we set a precedent of doing so, the work for the Privacy Commissioner will soon become endless and overwhelming to the point where we will need more bureaucrats than tax-paying income earners. I wonder whether anybody with clout will pass judgement upon this new development. This is most definitely a step backwards in civilization.

Why Mitt Romney will win the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination

It’s no secret that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is preparing to run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. And who could blame him? After all, he came very close to winning the 2008 Republican nomination, carrying a total of 11 caucuses and primaries before folding his tent to endorse the eventual nominee, Arizona senator John McCain.

Things are looking pretty good for Romney these days. Consider, first, that he remains quite popular among conservatives and maintains an edge over other possible candidates, namely Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

Second, Romney’s Political Action Committee—Free & Strong America PAC (which he founded shortly after withdrawing from the Republican race in 2008)—continues to raise tons of money and to collect even more IOUs in crucial primary and caucus states.

Third, Romney’s 2008 campaign staff is still intact and ready to deploy at his call.

Fourth, should Romney for some reason be unable to translate his fundraising prowess from his PAC to his 2012 presidential campaign (which is unlikely given the millions he raised in the 2008 campaign), he will nonetheless have the resources to bankroll his campaign with his virtually limitless personal fortune.

All of this paints a promising portrait of Romney’s prospects for 2012. But perhaps the best indicator of Romney’s future success is the very fact that he lost the nomination in 2008.

The Republican Party has a history of nominating standard-bearers who did not win the race their first time around the bend. Since 1980, there have been five Republican presidential nominees. Of those, 4 had previously lost the nomination to another candidate. McCain, for instance, won the nomination in 2008 but had lost to George W. Bush prior in 2000. Bob Dole won the nomination in 1996 but had lost earlier in 1988 to George H.W. Bush, who himself had lost in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, who had lost in 1976 to Gerald Ford.

Coincidence? Not at all. Losing candidates win their second time around (or in Dole’s case, his third) because they keep campaigning in the interim. It’s of course not a visible campaign but more of a quiet campaign whose principal focus is party elites and opinion-leaders. (A similar dynamic occurs in the Liberal Party of Canada: Michael Ignatieff is now the leader, having lost to Stéphane Dion in 2006. Paul Martin became leader in 2003, having lost earlier in 1990 to Jean Chrétien, who had himself lost previously in 1984 to John Turner, who had lost to Pierre Trudeau in 1968.)

So, for all you aspiring party leaders out there, take comfort in the pattern of recent history: losing may be only a prelude to victory.

The Immeasurable Size of Limited Government

We hear common conservatives sing the benefits of limited government. The refrains usually sound like: “Big government is bad!” or “We need responsible but limited government!” or some such nonsense. This is one of the major fallacies and naiveties touted by common conservatives.

The concept of big government versus small government is fallacious. It has no intelligent meaning outside of rhetoric. Conservatives have to get through their thick skulls a simple fact of reality: it is impossible to measure government. I genuinely fear that conservatives innately deceive themselves into thinking otherwise. Why? I do not know.

Government is not a quantifiable phenomenon. If you can understand that fact, you have hope. Until you accept that fact, you will forever be wondering aimlessly in political cognitive dissonance.

The conservative will typically demand that governments be limited to dealing with defense, law and order. [Sometimes confused conservatives will include core services -- however nebulously defined -- into the mix.] According to the common conservative, any other responsibilities becomes big government. Such designated roles for government may seem intuitive but they are most definitely arbitrary. I wish to return to this point later.

Foolishly some people will look at government spending as a proxy for government size. That may make sense to the arbitrary practice of accounting but nothing more.

I can spend $10 on a packet of cigarettes or on a house plant or on a guard dog or on a pet rock for that matter. You could do the same. The guy sitting on the park bench talking to himself can do the same. Even worse: the government could buy those things on our behalf. The amount of spending means nothing. I could not care less if you buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke it in one day. You might get a lot of relaxation from that. Some other person might enjoy those same cigarettes for a full week. Both of you would probably increase your chances of lung cancer and yet, reduce your stress because of the enjoyment. You win some and you lose some but the same amount of money has different effects on different people.

A $1,000,000 government expenditure thrown into a fire pit may be less harmful than a $100,000 government expenditure in advertizing contracts because the government bids up prices and crowds out private industry.

The point being: the amount of money spent is subjectively valued differently, on an individual basis and disproportionately throughout the whole economy. There is no way of measuring how much value is created by a certain amount of spending across an entire population. So, using government spending as a proxy for government size is without merit.

What is more important is what government does rather than how much government spends. I want to convey this concept with a simple example. Before looking at this example, a practical definition of government must be established and it will be based on observable actions. Government is an organization of people who claim moral authority to coerce citizens into following orders.

Consider a person in prison. (Forget for the moment why that person is in prison.) It matters not how much money is being spent — I would say wasted — on keeping this prisoner incarcerated. In fact, the amount of money could be quite little. Nevertheless, to the prisoner, the government is gargantuan because the coercion endured by the prisoner is physically insurmountable.

Now, extrapolate this logic to all other forms of coercion exacted by government. You are faced with a relationship whereby government places you somewhere along a continuum between complete slavery and absolute freedom. The size of government is always and everywhere subjective.

The problem with touting a small government label is that the socialists can do the same. A hypothetical socialist can demand that the government subsidize and monopolize a universal child-care service while leaving everything else to the private market. In keeping with the common conservative attitude, such a socialist would in fact qualify as an advocate of small government too.

The difference between my hypothetical socialist and the common conservative is one of choice: they prefer different roles for government. A conservative who advocates small government is lying. He is lying either to you or to himself. Such a conservative is actually expressing a preference for select duties of government (which he believes are the right duties) and a dislike for other duties (which he believes are wrong) — a distinction for which he has no objective argument. Very few conservatives look past the erroneous concept of government size to question their preferences for different roles of government.

There is no objective reason why small government should be confined to law, order, policing, security, military, national defense markets while staying out of other sectors of the economy. Such a conservative bias is more properly described as a socialist who demands government subsidy, monopolization and cronyism in the legal or security industries — in other words, a selective aversion to the free market.

from a multi-part series entitled “The Subconscious of a Conservative“

Order of Merit: Thy name is..er…Chretien?

I have to admit that I’m having a very difficult time swallowing my partisanship in regards to Mr. Chretien. That this man is being honoured by the Queen and into a group of luminaries the likes as have been listed is, quite literally, mind-boggling to me. Someone, somewhere, said that this award does not elevate the man to the status of the other recipients, but rather weighs them down to his own level.

However, in regards to credit, I will offer these items:

1) It was my anger with Mr. Chretien that got me actively involved in the political realms and helped me find my passion for it. So thank you for that Mr. Chretien.

2) In a dog-fight, Mr. Chretien is the dirtiest, no-holds barred fighter I’ve seen on the political stage as evidenced in his handling of the General Election feat. Mr. Jean Chretien vs Mr. Stockwell Day. In a street-fight, I’d rather have him behind me than in front of me pulling his dirty tricks on my opponents and otherwise slinging muck their way. We can’t always get what we want though right? Mr Chretien as a Conservative…pigs flying…

3) When faced with possible legal harm, he was not afraid to claim ignorance (incompetence?) instead of taking responsibility for the actions of those he had appointed and trusted in their positions (a strategy poorly duplicated later by a successor with lackluster effect). A man without fear of looking stupid or ignorant. He just does what needs to be done. After all, he’s just a little guy from Shawinigan right? Maybe it was just poor judgement, or a conspiracy…

4) He kept us out of Iraq. Yes, and well done Mr. Chretien. And instead of leaving it simply as being because the UN didn’t back it, you allowed your Ministers and MP’s et al. to embark on a mission to further attack the integrity and morality of our own defender and largest trading partner, thereby putting undue strain on our relationship which played no small part in several trade fights. However, this paved the way for the Conservatives to make peace and behave respectfully with the United States once again, and to even earn the respect of an American Messiah(?).

5) Mr. Chretien and his governments also helped bring us the much-beloved Kyoto Accord, the agreement acclaimed by huggy-fuzzy socialists around the globe as the last hope for our doomed planet, and then proceeded to do absolutly nothing about it thereby allowing Canada to fall so far behind the “requirements”, even in such stellar economic times, that when the “Fall from grace” occured for the LPC, and the world (and its scientists) was waking up to the reality that Global Warming was going the way of the Dodo, Canada wouldn’t be amongst those with egg on their faces for spending and taxing themselves to death for no reason other than a splendid hoax meant to re-direct wealth.

6) Mr. Chretien also gave us a collapsing LPC who appears can’t survive without an iron-fisted despot at the helm, thus giving us the likes of Paul Martin (a much anticipated leader by the Liberal Party of Canada who became not-so-much) and Stephane Dion (the intellectual wannabe peace-maker in a fractured and warring Liberal Party of Canada). Thank-you SO much for that Mr. Chretien! I sincerely appreciate it! Probably more than you’ll ever know. I’m sure your members do too! Indeed an incredible legacy there of which Canadians can stand proud about…

So then yes. Congratulations Mr. Chretien on your award. You’ve certainly made your mark on Canada and the world.

The Catholic Court

When (not if) Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as the 111th justice of the United States Supreme Court, she will become the sixth Catholic to sit on the current nine-member court. I am surprised that we have not heard much about this immensely significant detail.

There is a long history of anti-Catholicism in the United States. It must have been hard enough to be Catholic in colonial America and during the early years of the new republic without constitutional prohibitions like these barring Catholics from holding public office. No wonder, then, that it took four decades after the American founding for the first Catholic to be appointed to the highest court. (The record is even worse for Catholics in the White House: the first and only Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, was not elected until 1960–nearly two hundred years after the American Revolution.)

So what to make of the modern American Supreme Court, whose members will number a supermajority of Catholics when Sonia Sotomayor takes her seat among them? A few things.

First, it reveals just how much the United States has evolved over the course of its troubled–and troubling–history. Second, it illustrates how far Catholics themselves have come, working hard to shape and reshape the soul of the citizenry against the entrenched backdrop of decades of religious discrimination.

But the most important point of all, it seems to me, stems from the very fact that few analysts have commented on the predominance of Catholics on the Court. That they do not regard it as noteworthy bodes well for religious tolerance in the United States because it suggests that Americans may have at long last moved beyond the anti-Catholic sentiments that were once commonplace.

That said, there remain some very serious problems– like this or this–that prevent the United States from making real, for one and all, the promise of religious freedom.

Afghan-Canadian model village bombed

Are we exporting socialist economics and command economies?

I have never been to Afghanistan and I have no interest in going there. I really can not understand why anybody would care to go there — unless, of course, there is some pretty lucre to be gained. However, methinks that Canadians are sending a poor message overseas. This:

The village was unveiled just last month, in a project Canadian military officials hope will show how reconstruction and the prospect of employment can convince Afghans to turn away from the insurgents.

is obviously a pathetic failure. I hope clear-minded Afghans think: “Well, that did not work. If we want jobs, we are going to have to rely on ourselves. Governments suck at securing jobs and the economy.”

What could be more ridiculous than to try to teach people that you need a foreign military government to create jobs? The Canadian government can not even create jobs in Canada!

Australians reject their own carbon caps

More people are rejecting man-made global warming as a basis for cap-and-trade policy:

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country’s carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

— SNIP —

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling.

The bullying tactics of Al Gore and the environmental socialists are failing.

The Ugly Truth of Socialized Medicine ~ Courtesy of the New Democratic Party of Canada

As most Americans begin debating whether or not to bring in a government health care insurance program into their country to compliment the government health care regulation program that is causing most of the American system’s problems to begin with, Jack Layton (NDP, Toronto Danforth) has stated his intention to go down to the US to champion a big government system by cherry picking his stump speech material — who knows, he might do some actual good when moderate Democrats do some digging and come to realize just what the NDP is.

For the benefit of any American visitors to this blog though, I highly recommend referring this video on to your congressman or senator. Most Canadians, who are both quick to demonize Americans and have never been inside the four walls of a US hospital, will testify to the fact that the emergency wait times of anywhere from three to twelve hours is just a fact of life up here and that finding a family doctor is just slightly more possible in most areas of Ontario than the Leafs winning another Stanley Cup, but if I may be so bold, you will likely not hear these dark stories from Mr. Layton when he pays your country a visit. Wouldn’t it be something to hear the NDP leader explain away those nuggets though?

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