Monday, June 13, 2005
Vote Liberal it will Annoy The Republicans
Listening to Stephen Harper you would think that Canada has never been less relevant to the United States. “We've just become increasingly irrelevant to a country [U.S.] that has a lot of priorities…” (CBC Newsworld, July 11, 2003). In reality the opposite holds true. Our trade with the US is at an all time high. Not only are they are biggest trading partner, but we are their biggest trading partner. All of this is pretty well known. What is less well known is just how much attention some of the Liberal Party’s more progressive policy proposals (i.e., decriminalization of marijuana and gay marriage) and the Liberals choice not to join the “coalition of the willing” have gathered in the US.
Now, admittedly some of the attention has been negative. Conservative pundits have directed a great deal of bile our way, but not anything Canadians have not already heard from would be Prime Minister Harper; in a letter to the National Post, entitled “Separation, Alberta-style: It is time to seek a new relationship with Canada”, Harper went far beyond anything Lucien Bouchard every put to pen by calling Canada “resentful”, “smug”, “second tier” and “second rate”. http://www.stephenharpersaid.ca/ However, whereas Harper only went so far as to threaten to set up “firewalls” around Alberta, some American pundits have gone further. Ann Coutlier has threatened to have us “crushed”, O’ Reilly has threatened us with nuclear winter and the Western Standard’s Goldberg http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_22_54/ai_94960947 has said we should be “bombed” and his colleague Matt Labash http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/349tpijp.asp?pg=1 has seconded him. Thankfully all are only arm chair dictators.
By far the most popular form of reproach, though, is, echoing Harper, to call us irrelevant. Tucker Carlson, for example, likened Canada without the US to Honduras “but colder and much less interesting”. http://mediamatters.org/items/200412010011 The problem with such a train of thought is that it involves them in a kind of performative contradiction. In repeatedly talking about us and calling us irrelevant they have helped entrench us as part of the public debate south of the border and so have made us increasing relevant.
The reaction of Blue America to various Liberal initiatives could not be more different.
The Democrats badly needed to update their legislative agenda when Clinton came to power. Clinton brought the party up to speed on the economic front, but after the cold war ended the whole locus of politics in the West switched from the economic sphere to the cultural one and Clinton and the Democrats were caught flat footed. In 8 years of Cultural war, Clinton gave his base next to nothing. He let the social cons set the agenda at every turn. Although, the affect of such a stand pat policy may not have been evident over the short term, over the long term the affects were devastating. “liberalism” if it is to mean anything at all to the average American must represent a vision for American society that weaves together a series of legislative proposals. What is more, this vision has to be updated to meet changing realities. Clinton’s whole approach to the cultural wars was defensive and defeatist.
The party got to the point where in 2002 its identity was based solely upon what it is not, viz., the Republican Party. In 2003, Dean pulled the party back from the dead by actually addressing the party base and their anger at Bush. He gave them hope, but the party still lacked a legislative agenda. Enter Canada: The Liberal announcement that Canada would be legalizing gay marriage and decriminalizing marijuana gave many Democrats a sense of what could eventually be accomplished. Slowly at first and then more quickly later, prominent newspapers and magazines started gushing over what Canada had proposed to do. Piggybacking in on the backs of marijuana decriminalization and gay marriage has been a sudden renewed interest in public health care. NY Times Paul Krugman has echoed the words of former Liberal big wig John Manly and has said that not only is the Canadian Health care system more humane than the American system, it also affords business many economic benefits that the American system does not. For companies, such as Ford, providing their employees with health care is one their biggest expenses. As Bill O’Reilly has said “The Canadian model is what progressive Americans are shooting for.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140742,00.html
the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030707ta_talk_hertzberg
From the NY Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/magazine/06QUESTIONS.html?ex=1112072400&en=7aef39efeffd405d&ei=5070&ex=1061697600&en=5c469e9929ae55fa&ei=5070the
Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030721&s=klein
From the Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0627/p02s01-woam.html
From the San Jose Mercury News: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1051/a10.html
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20030730sam0730p1.asp
From CanWest News Service: http://cpod.ubc.ca/analysis/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=421
From Macleans: http://www.macleans.ca/switchboard/essay/article.jsp?content=20031013_67003_67003
Even as the Dean scream singled the victory of Victorian reason over passion in the Democratic body, the Democratic base never did loose their sense of wonder over the Liberals proposals regarding gay marriage and decriminalizing marijuana. As a result, literally hundreds of thousands looked into moving to Canada in the weeks following Bush’s reelection. http://slate.msn.com/id/2109300 Canada was made out a be a kind of secular promised land. Former Bush speech writer David Frum, of axis of evil fame, noted this phenomenon in April 19th 2005 NY Times editorial. (He also claimed in true conservative fashion that a Harper victory in the next federal election would be proof that Canada is at long last politically “mature”. “Unlike their supposed analogues, the Democrats in the United States or Great Britain's Labor Party, Canada's Liberals are not a party built around certain policies and principles. They are instead what political scientists call a brokerage party, similar to the old Italian Christian Democrats or India's Congress Party: a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government. As countries modernize, they tend to leave brokerage parties behind. Very belatedly, that moment of maturity may now be arriving in Canada. Americans may lose their illusions about my native country; Canadians will gain true multiparty democracy and accountability in government. It's an exchange that is long past due.”) O’Reilly, on the other hand, took the perception as fact. A “brave new progressive world is a possibility. That's what happened in Canada.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140742,00.html
Beyond the attempts of various conservative pundits to paint Canada as the second coming of France there has been genuine worry. The Liberals promise to legalize gay marriage in the wake of the June 12 2003 court decision certainty had Justice Scalia’, as the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg noted, beside himself with rage and worry. “This ghastly prospect was evidently on Scalia’s mind as he composed his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas. If sodomy laws are unsustainable, he warned, then so are ‘laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation’—masturbation? is that one still on the books?—‘adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity.’ Doom looms, it would appear. According to Scalia, ‘The Court has taken sides in the culture war,’ and the next step, logically, must be ‘judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada.’” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030707ta_talk_hertzberg (James Dobson of focus on the family was concerned about Canada as far back as 2001. According to former president of focus on the family in Canada, and current Conservative candidate for Richmond BC, Darrel Reid, “Dr. Dobson has said that he fears the United States could follow Canada’s lead in social radicalism.” http://www.family.org/fofmag/pp/a0023975.cfm ).
The Liberals promise to decriminalize marijuana together with their backing of safe injection sites also poses a major ideological threat the US’s war on drugs. Hence, all the attention Drug Czar Walters has paid us for the last couple of years. In terms of drug policy, in Walters opinion Canada is "the one place in the hemisphere where things are going the wrong [way] rapidly."
In a private meeting with then mayor Philip Owen and future mayor Larry Campbell, Drug Czar Walters had threatened action if Vancouver went ahead with a plan for safe injection sites. Namely, Canadians could face major border slow downs. Owen described the meeting thus: “It was the most unsatisfactory meeting of my life.” “The pressure was intense. John Walters had about 30 officers with him, special agents. At the door there was a guy with the bulge of a gun under his clothes.” http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2004/10/26/VanDrugExpWinConverts/
Shortly after Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell road to power in the biggest landslide in Vancouver municipal history on platform centered on setting up safe injection sites. John Walters then took the matter public, telling a Vancouver board of trade audience, in what amounted to a thinly disguised threat not to take things too far; we were only making matters worse. Conservative Randy White backed Walters. According to White, forget harm prevention the safe injection project was “harm extension”. Never one to back down, Larry Campbell quipped that the notion that safe injection sites would make things worse was akin to saying “flies cause garbage”.
Walters has taken two tracks with regard to marijuana. He has claimed that Canada risks becoming as big a source for marijuana as Mexico. He says this knowing full well that Mexico supplies an estimated 100 times as much marijuana as Canada does. http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread14988.shtml His most recent track however is claim that not all Marijuana is created equal. According to Walters the number of teens seeking treatment for “marijuana dependency” in the US is skyrocketing and now exceeds the number of teens in treatment for all other drugs combined. "The enormous growth of very-high-potency marijuana coming from Canada” is behind the explosion he claims.
Listening to Stephen Harper you would think that Canada has never been less relevant to the United States. “We've just become increasingly irrelevant to a country [U.S.] that has a lot of priorities…” (CBC Newsworld, July 11, 2003). In reality the opposite holds true. Our trade with the US is at an all time high. Not only are they are biggest trading partner, but we are their biggest trading partner. All of this is pretty well known. What is less well known is just how much attention some of the Liberal Party’s more progressive policy proposals (i.e., decriminalization of marijuana and gay marriage) and the Liberals choice not to join the “coalition of the willing” have gathered in the US.
Now, admittedly some of the attention has been negative. Conservative pundits have directed a great deal of bile our way, but not anything Canadians have not already heard from would be Prime Minister Harper; in a letter to the National Post, entitled “Separation, Alberta-style: It is time to seek a new relationship with Canada”, Harper went far beyond anything Lucien Bouchard every put to pen by calling Canada “resentful”, “smug”, “second tier” and “second rate”. http://www.stephenharpersaid.ca/ However, whereas Harper only went so far as to threaten to set up “firewalls” around Alberta, some American pundits have gone further. Ann Coutlier has threatened to have us “crushed”, O’ Reilly has threatened us with nuclear winter and the Western Standard’s Goldberg http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_22_54/ai_94960947 has said we should be “bombed” and his colleague Matt Labash http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/349tpijp.asp?pg=1 has seconded him. Thankfully all are only arm chair dictators.
By far the most popular form of reproach, though, is, echoing Harper, to call us irrelevant. Tucker Carlson, for example, likened Canada without the US to Honduras “but colder and much less interesting”. http://mediamatters.org/items/200412010011 The problem with such a train of thought is that it involves them in a kind of performative contradiction. In repeatedly talking about us and calling us irrelevant they have helped entrench us as part of the public debate south of the border and so have made us increasing relevant.
The reaction of Blue America to various Liberal initiatives could not be more different.
The Democrats badly needed to update their legislative agenda when Clinton came to power. Clinton brought the party up to speed on the economic front, but after the cold war ended the whole locus of politics in the West switched from the economic sphere to the cultural one and Clinton and the Democrats were caught flat footed. In 8 years of Cultural war, Clinton gave his base next to nothing. He let the social cons set the agenda at every turn. Although, the affect of such a stand pat policy may not have been evident over the short term, over the long term the affects were devastating. “liberalism” if it is to mean anything at all to the average American must represent a vision for American society that weaves together a series of legislative proposals. What is more, this vision has to be updated to meet changing realities. Clinton’s whole approach to the cultural wars was defensive and defeatist.
The party got to the point where in 2002 its identity was based solely upon what it is not, viz., the Republican Party. In 2003, Dean pulled the party back from the dead by actually addressing the party base and their anger at Bush. He gave them hope, but the party still lacked a legislative agenda. Enter Canada: The Liberal announcement that Canada would be legalizing gay marriage and decriminalizing marijuana gave many Democrats a sense of what could eventually be accomplished. Slowly at first and then more quickly later, prominent newspapers and magazines started gushing over what Canada had proposed to do. Piggybacking in on the backs of marijuana decriminalization and gay marriage has been a sudden renewed interest in public health care. NY Times Paul Krugman has echoed the words of former Liberal big wig John Manly and has said that not only is the Canadian Health care system more humane than the American system, it also affords business many economic benefits that the American system does not. For companies, such as Ford, providing their employees with health care is one their biggest expenses. As Bill O’Reilly has said “The Canadian model is what progressive Americans are shooting for.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140742,00.html
the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030707ta_talk_hertzberg
From the NY Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/magazine/06QUESTIONS.html?ex=1112072400&en=7aef39efeffd405d&ei=5070&ex=1061697600&en=5c469e9929ae55fa&ei=5070the
Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030721&s=klein
From the Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0627/p02s01-woam.html
From the San Jose Mercury News: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1051/a10.html
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20030730sam0730p1.asp
From CanWest News Service: http://cpod.ubc.ca/analysis/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=421
From Macleans: http://www.macleans.ca/switchboard/essay/article.jsp?content=20031013_67003_67003
Even as the Dean scream singled the victory of Victorian reason over passion in the Democratic body, the Democratic base never did loose their sense of wonder over the Liberals proposals regarding gay marriage and decriminalizing marijuana. As a result, literally hundreds of thousands looked into moving to Canada in the weeks following Bush’s reelection. http://slate.msn.com/id/2109300 Canada was made out a be a kind of secular promised land. Former Bush speech writer David Frum, of axis of evil fame, noted this phenomenon in April 19th 2005 NY Times editorial. (He also claimed in true conservative fashion that a Harper victory in the next federal election would be proof that Canada is at long last politically “mature”. “Unlike their supposed analogues, the Democrats in the United States or Great Britain's Labor Party, Canada's Liberals are not a party built around certain policies and principles. They are instead what political scientists call a brokerage party, similar to the old Italian Christian Democrats or India's Congress Party: a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government. As countries modernize, they tend to leave brokerage parties behind. Very belatedly, that moment of maturity may now be arriving in Canada. Americans may lose their illusions about my native country; Canadians will gain true multiparty democracy and accountability in government. It's an exchange that is long past due.”) O’Reilly, on the other hand, took the perception as fact. A “brave new progressive world is a possibility. That's what happened in Canada.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140742,00.html
Beyond the attempts of various conservative pundits to paint Canada as the second coming of France there has been genuine worry. The Liberals promise to legalize gay marriage in the wake of the June 12 2003 court decision certainty had Justice Scalia’, as the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg noted, beside himself with rage and worry. “This ghastly prospect was evidently on Scalia’s mind as he composed his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas. If sodomy laws are unsustainable, he warned, then so are ‘laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation’—masturbation? is that one still on the books?—‘adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity.’ Doom looms, it would appear. According to Scalia, ‘The Court has taken sides in the culture war,’ and the next step, logically, must be ‘judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada.’” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030707ta_talk_hertzberg (James Dobson of focus on the family was concerned about Canada as far back as 2001. According to former president of focus on the family in Canada, and current Conservative candidate for Richmond BC, Darrel Reid, “Dr. Dobson has said that he fears the United States could follow Canada’s lead in social radicalism.” http://www.family.org/fofmag/pp/a0023975.cfm ).
The Liberals promise to decriminalize marijuana together with their backing of safe injection sites also poses a major ideological threat the US’s war on drugs. Hence, all the attention Drug Czar Walters has paid us for the last couple of years. In terms of drug policy, in Walters opinion Canada is "the one place in the hemisphere where things are going the wrong [way] rapidly."
In a private meeting with then mayor Philip Owen and future mayor Larry Campbell, Drug Czar Walters had threatened action if Vancouver went ahead with a plan for safe injection sites. Namely, Canadians could face major border slow downs. Owen described the meeting thus: “It was the most unsatisfactory meeting of my life.” “The pressure was intense. John Walters had about 30 officers with him, special agents. At the door there was a guy with the bulge of a gun under his clothes.” http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2004/10/26/VanDrugExpWinConverts/
Shortly after Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell road to power in the biggest landslide in Vancouver municipal history on platform centered on setting up safe injection sites. John Walters then took the matter public, telling a Vancouver board of trade audience, in what amounted to a thinly disguised threat not to take things too far; we were only making matters worse. Conservative Randy White backed Walters. According to White, forget harm prevention the safe injection project was “harm extension”. Never one to back down, Larry Campbell quipped that the notion that safe injection sites would make things worse was akin to saying “flies cause garbage”.
Walters has taken two tracks with regard to marijuana. He has claimed that Canada risks becoming as big a source for marijuana as Mexico. He says this knowing full well that Mexico supplies an estimated 100 times as much marijuana as Canada does. http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread14988.shtml His most recent track however is claim that not all Marijuana is created equal. According to Walters the number of teens seeking treatment for “marijuana dependency” in the US is skyrocketing and now exceeds the number of teens in treatment for all other drugs combined. "The enormous growth of very-high-potency marijuana coming from Canada” is behind the explosion he claims.
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