tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7180592942896724433.post2296190302602388291..comments2023-12-13T05:02:37.426-05:00Comments on Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Stephen Harper, Leo Strauss and Stating the Case Against DemocracyEmily Deehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08354341672810615468noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7180592942896724433.post-77584163394655423242009-11-23T05:35:01.521-05:002009-11-23T05:35:01.521-05:00I don't agree. Canada has led in many ways. ...I don't agree. Canada has led in many ways. It was a Canadian who drafted the Declaration of Human Rights and creatd the Peacekeepers which is still a vital orgnization, even if Canada itself now provides fewer that 100 soldiers to the cause.<br /><br />And the lack of 'self determination' is just rhetoric, in the same way that the 'tough on crime' is rhetoric. The crime rate in Canada is the lowest in 30 years and the fact that the use of food banks is the highest it's ever been is because of the jobless rate.<br /><br />Canadians are not lazy, as Stephen Harper and his gang would like us to believe. There needs to be a fairer distribution of wealth ... not more opportunites for someone to get rich.Emily Deehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08354341672810615468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7180592942896724433.post-32013684360380619572009-11-22T14:20:16.050-05:002009-11-22T14:20:16.050-05:00The internal social politics of Canada notwithstan...The internal social politics of Canada notwithstanding, less democracy would be a beautiful thing if what replaced it was more individual self-determination. If the Canadian government pursued that kind of anti-democratic policy, no sane person would criticize it. I suspect that's not the case.<br /><br />The perception of Canadian politics outside of Canada is viewed largely as irrelevant and in reality is usually not thought about at all... as it shouldn't be. Canada is a comparatively irrelevant country that does not have the marginal power in geopolitics to affect any change that is not initiated by the US, Britain, or the EU. Canada's significance is similar to that of Saudi Arabia or Venezuela - oil and geographical proximity to a superpower.Calhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12626448044213781454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7180592942896724433.post-60687176574997541642009-11-11T05:49:39.878-05:002009-11-11T05:49:39.878-05:00Regardless of the basic fundamentals, Canada has t...Regardless of the basic fundamentals, Canada has taken a hard right turn and when we look at the three basic principles of Leo Strauss, we can't deny that our current government is following them in some form.<br /><br />Harper has cleverly sought out the hot button issues and divided the country over them. He has exploited religous fervour and fueled the idea that somehow Christians in this country are being persecuted.<br /><br />And he has definitely intentionally made Canadian politics so ugly that the entire country is turning off. This is not a promotion of democracy.<br /><br />In the past four years Canada has become almost unidentifiable. We used to be nice. Peace loving and tolerant. We used to be leaders and now we're irrelevant.<br /><br />So whether the movement has distorted Strauss, I don't know. I just know that our current government does not believe in democracy and certainly does not promote it at home.Emily Deehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08354341672810615468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7180592942896724433.post-30367459869098909852009-11-11T05:22:13.118-05:002009-11-11T05:22:13.118-05:00This is either an incredible misunderstanding or a...This is either an incredible misunderstanding or an incredible misreprentation of three different kinds of so-called "anti-democratic" positions. <br /><br />The first, that of the Straussians is an abstract platonic philosophy and is not an advocacy of political change against democracy as such. Straussians, like Churchill, are largely in favor of democracy and of spreading democracy.<br /><br />Milton Friedman's was an entirely economic and consequentialist position - it's only anti-democratic insofar as democracy is self-defeating... people attempt to live off other people (government being that great fiction whereby people attempt to steal value from themselves and redistribute it to themselves as if this process created anything) and therefore a total democracy becomes mob rule, become parsitic, this temptation to use the guns of the state to redistribute wealth grows ever larger, incentives for productivity are perverted, and ultimately individual freedom is lost. This is not that much of a controversial point and is why there are not actual "democracies" today, there are constituational republics with democratic elements.<br /><br />As for Block, he's a Rothbardian anarchist and not any kind of conservative. He is opposed to democracy because democracy, like any coercive government, is immoral and violates universal human rights. Block points out that theft is theft, whether it's done by 1 person or 100 million and that democracy doesn't make the government "the people." On the contrary, democratically elected governments have often been despotic, murderous, totalitarian. Hitler, for example, was democratically elected in a landslide. It does not follow that the Jews killed themselves. Human rights are human rights and they are not to be comprompised by a criminial with a gun, even if that gun comes from the imaginary entity referred to as "the state." Block is fundamentally opposed to the use of physical violence in attempts to solve social problems (that is, the state).Calhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12626448044213781454noreply@blogger.com