MJP

MJP, the only people who think Warmism hasn't all the earmarks of an ideology are the Warmists themselves.

Whether or not they are currently in the maajority proves nothing.

Ideology?

Ideology IS a belief system. It is (as the word suggests) an IDEAL -- which is to say, something to strive for, but which has not yet been achieved. As such, any idology IS a religion. And it can be measured only when it is achieved........

PS

A conservative libertarian is an oxymoron.

Mikey Walker proves the stopped clock hypothesis

Since libertarians refuse to accept the fact gov't ever does anything right when a Tyee commentor says so maybe they'll believe it when their hero says it.

Propaganda Machines and their component cogs

If the Fraser Institute wasn't so brazenly dishonest, on such a predictably regular basis, then who would legitimize the chronic bias demonstrated by our friends and advisors at CWG?

For example, when the Fraser Institute provided the statistical backing for a BCTV piece claiming that the Japanese health care system regularly utilized private hospitals, it appears they forgot to include the fact that these hospitals are precluded, by law, from generating a profit.

It is not surprising these two components of the same machine would work seamlessly to use the existence of private/non-profit hospitals as reassurance of the benign nature of private/for-profit hospitals.

I'm sick and tired of organizations that function within Canada yet clearly demonstrate a loyalty to foreign countries. Unlike the folks at CWG and the FI, I feel no obligation to allow the bleeding of Canada to further the economic interests of the gang that runs Israel.

As long as we have power structures integrated into our political system which operate with contempt for Canadian interests, Canada will continue to get raped.

tks,
rjm

Spin

There is so much spin from Block & Co. that it's hard to know where to start. This is a good one:

Here we have their favourite "we're not loony, rich, right-wing cranks" frame. They would be considered right-wing everywhere on earth, yes, even in the U.S.A. Hell, even in the state of Texas.

Libertarianism is an ideology (or faith) that comes in a variety of flavours ranging from right-wing to left. If Emory failed to notice the FI's distinctly reactionary taste, perhaps it was something he was smoking.

There was a time in the mid

There was a time in the mid 80s, when Block authored a book for the FI, advocating the sale of all Crown lands, forests, lakes and rivers.

He was interviewed on CBC radio at the time, where he said, he'd also sell the seas and the oceans as "environmental protection measures".

And such warped minds are the "professors" who teach economics.

How about removing all laws, regulations and police from the highways and rewarding the "most competitive", as the ultimate form of libertarianism.

After all, if we can have it in economics, rewarding the most destructive human predators, why not on the highways, or the seas?

Ed Deak.

Viewpoints

Ed, wackos are good for us, especially when they are safely ensconced in the Ivory Tower. Without people with ideas such as Block, how can we be reminded of what is reasonable?

Fine comments, Ed

As someone who's spent a good portion of my life in the university system, here's my quirky take on the "idiots masquerading as professors" syndrome:

When the corporations broke the backs of the farmers post WW II, North Americans farmers were forced to move to the cities where they hoped their children would become "educated" professionals and thus "rich." Those agrarian folks made the GRAVE AND FATAL ERROR in believing that professors, doctors, lawyers, and educated types were "Gods."

Those farmers' children were indoctrinated to believe that anyone with a university education who used a Thesaurus and spouted crazy (masked-as -incomprehensible) theories were "intellectuals" by the virtue of the fact that no one knew half the time what the hell they were talking about ("Bulls@*% baffles brains"). The other eggheads had their their noses in books studying topics that often had no real relevance to our Western social condition and/or politics. But, as you ask, where did these idiot teachers come from? From a mass education program that now pushed glib non-thinkers through the university factory as fast as sausages in a Maple Leaf plant.

Corporate interests loved to fund and hire these profs that spewed outright nonsense and technologically-fawning dogma as it suited their commercial purposes (to have a dumbed down populace), and parents lost control over what once would have been their children's common sense, one schoolroom pragmatic education.

Then, in a misguided, and probably subconscious, reaction to this foolish trend (finally suspicious of the idiotic members of the elite class who spoke gramatically correctly and thus "might cheat them"), the masses decided that good ol' boys like Ralph Klein and Stelmach represent their best interests in negotiations with "them sophisticated big boys."

Even Stephen Harper, as glib and educated as he is "on paper," is, imo, basically a hayseed -- as is George Bush, who, despite his ivory league education and elite upbringing, can pass himself off as a Texas good old country boy who "doesn't much care for learnin' (yup) and completely understands the woes of blue collar folks (nope)."

The irony is that this new ilk of politicians are exactly what they sell themselves to voters as: TRUE philistines, or I prefer, the TRUE RUBES: People without one whit of understanding of agriculture, culture, history, geography, or compassionate humanity (the natural homes of those with truly fine, intelligent and far-seeing minds, those who should be our leaders).

Both Bush, and Harper, I understand, never travelled outside the North American border when they were elected. Their utter lack of curiosity about the wider world (considering the fact that they both, it seems, had ample financial means to travel after university) says it all.

If any professor had tried

If any professor had tried to teach the neoclassical theory in my early postwar Cambridge days, he or she would have been laughed out of the classrooms.

I never bothered with economics until 1982, when I picked up my first textbook at a garage sale, but, literally from the first page on, all I could say was : "Does anybody really believe this crap ?"

Then, in 1985 I found two contradicting definitions of economic efficiency, the foundation of the whole racket, within 100 pages, in the same university textbook and that was the end of any respect for anybody pushing this garbage.

On the first pages of any first year textbook, economics are defined as : "The science for the management and distribution of scarce resources"

Can anybody remember any economic theory that may have come even close to this definition?

This is why I redefined it in 1985 as : "Neoclassical market economics are the science for the alchemic conversion of silk purses into sows' ears".

Ed Deak.

Ye old Fraser Institute

What would be really funny is if Michael Walker commissioned a study to determine if he and fellows had ever actually done any work that contributed to the good of society.

My gut feeling says he'd have to tinker with the numbers and definitions for months before "finding" a positive outcome.

Ah yes, Truth

You all forget that whether or not one agrees with the FI stats - or the politics behind them - they do offer the opportunity for debate about topics which need discussion, and to me that's a positive.

And that is precisely the reason universities have always hired Profs whose reasoning abilities have allowed them to think "out of the box" and defend their theories in a milieu which demands precision of thought.

I am in considerable admiration of the times in England which produced a long series of radical thinkers such as Darwin, Lyell, Huxley and so on, who defied the orthodoxies of their times.

The function of universities is not, IMO, to cram useless info into the minds of their students, but rather to teach them to think. Doing so requires giving students novel info to think about, and in the case of the "Wacko" professor, to challenge - as an adult - what he/she is taught.

In modern times, the role of higher education has changed toward turning out just better-trained, rote-performing technicians, and my experience as a mere high-school grad has been one of despairing in dealing with one after another robotised university "expert".

In the British times I noted above a "Doctor of Philosophy" was exactly that - a Doctor of Philosophy - and NOT a Doctor of Sports, Engineering or Business. These latter would be better trained in higher-level Trades Schools more suited to their ultimate objective....making money.

The modern Philosophers, with their emphasis on proof for a hypothesis, and their subsequent contribution to the Scientific Method, smashed the grip upon Western thought (for a time only?) of Religion and unquestioning belief.

Today we sneer at Philosophy while we welcome back Religion and its behind-the-scenes handmaiden, materialism.

And so we're back to holding one's opinions and beliefs as sacrosanct while wondering at the same time why we so easily fall for the platitudes of smarmers like Campbell.

To Me 2

Let me clarify.
It's not profs who offer alternatives to the orthodoxy "out of the box," as you said. Of course, that's what brilliant minds do - push against the status quo and the most foolish aspects of conventional thinking that need refutation. I have no problem with that at all, and celebrate the individual thinkers in the world.

It's quasi-literate profs who foist boring corporate-driven techno dogma disguised as brilliant "innovation" or foist completely nutty, nonsensical ideas on their students I'm referring to -- those who envision the world as their own little "techno-heaven of growth and more growth" as the panacea to the world's problems, wreaking havoc with their theories and science. (Just because something is novel and weird and colorful doesn't make it genius.)

To Alda

I agree 100% with you alda.

My point is that with the purely commercially-oriented reasoning behind the provision of today's University programs, the pursuit of "Truth" (don't laugh) has fallen prey to the "Market"-oriented mores of today's Western cultures, and this shows up in - as you put it:

"It's quasi-literate profs who foist boring corporate-driven techno dogma....."

But those "quasi-literate profs" are in turn the end-result of quasi-literate undergrads who cannot write a paragraph, for whom in recognition of this (and for economic reasons) we offer multiple-choice questions in their exams.

And they in turn are the product of a school system in which it is held to be the "right" of every child to recieve a HS diploma, regardless of effort expended.

In dictatorships, the brighter or more questioning students who are not submissive are kicked out of university or shot. Here we just dumb down the curricula and keep them stupid.

Marc Emery

has been taking in too much funny-smelling smoke, and it has scrambled his brain.

Obviously.

Even as a Libertarian he could not have subscribed to the equally scrambled ideas of the Fraser Institute without bursting into laughter. Imagine taking seriously the wacky proposals of people like Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman!

What? You mean to tell me that some people actually do that very thing? Well, I guess it takes all kinds...

ME2 fuzzification

ME2 pits Philosophy against Religion and 'it's handmaiden, Materialism' quite wrongly.

In truth, Philosophy and Religion work together in fighting the Golden Idol of Materialism which counts so many of today's population among its worshippers.

The study of right and/or wrong and the discrimination which we should exercise regularly to find the difference between them is subverted by the appeal of instant gratification of mental and physical desires promulgated by Materialism.

And the Fraser Institute is a bastion of Materialism and materialistic thinking.

Des Emery - a bit out of touch?

Show me any large modern Western religion - for starters - which hasn't allied itself with the materialistic power elites.

I can think of a few small ones, "sects" such as the JWs, the Bahais, the Unitarians, and getting close to "large", the United Church.

But do you think the biggies such as the RCs, the Anglicans, the US Fundamentalists,and so on, aren't all joined at the hip with the materialistic elites, their donor and power base?