[thechat] canada's new democratic party

[Tara Cleveland]

rudy wrote:

> like so many other left wingers, he believes in taking more and more and
> ever more of my money and giving it to whatever feelgood bleedingheart
> wewantourhandout "underprivileged" group du jour that he, and his pinko
> colleagues, think will give them the most exposure

Yes Rudy, that's what us "pinkos" are all about. Exposure. ;-P

I hate it when people talk about the government basically taking *their*
money. It's like they think that they live in a vacuum, or at least not in a
society of other people.  Why don't you take your money and go live by
yourself in the woods with your own one man civil society - don't pretend
that you aren't getting something for the taxes that you pay. Even if you
don't use as much of the health care system, don't take public transport as
much as others or whatever, you still benefit from living in a country where
government programs lessen the hurt of poverty, ignorance and crime. Just
try living in a country where there is no civil society, where government is
totally broken...

I'm sorry, Rudy, please don't take my rant personally, I don't mean it that
way. I don't mean to get so upset with you - my hubbie (who has been known
to vote for Mike Harris - an ultra-right-wing conservative) and I argue
about this all the time and I guess I'm just fed up with it.

> this means the ndp will cause even more voters to gravitate to the liberals,
> and that's awful

Jack isn't further left than most NDPers. In fact some might say he's more
of a pragmatist (although an idealistic pragmatist - if that's possible)
than most of the existing party leadership.

Some links:
<http://www.jacklayton.ca/>
<http://www.jacklayton.com/> (these are actually two different sites)

> in his acceptance speech, he says the liberals "should be trembling now"
>
> hardly, jacko -- i bet they're celebrating -- because the liberals have
> their sights on capturing the right-of-center vote, and getting some
> additional left-of-liberal-but-not-quite-commie votes is a godsend

Jack's not a commie. If anything he's further right - or at least more
pragmatic - than most of the ideologues in the existing NDP caucus. Those
guys (and gals) act as if they haven't talked to anyone but party hacks and
union bosses for the last 20 years. "My brother, my comrade" - no joke
that's how they talk. At least Jack has energy, enthusiasm and wants to
actually *do* something instead of just complaining about how awful the
Liberals are and how they are slowly destroying the social fabric of the
country (true - but it sounds whiny - especially when repeated for 10
years). He has interesting ideas and isn't afraid of straying slightly from
the party policies and proposing new projects and policies.

Jack managed to sign up 8,000 new members while campaigning for leadership.
This is about 10% of the party. Let me just repeat that. He signed up 10% of
the party in a few months - imagine what he could do in a year or four!

I agree with him that the Liberals should be worried. The NDP has become so
irrelevant that the Liberals don't have to worry about moving
right-of-centre because there is no one on the left to take the votes. If
Jack can succeed in making the party more relevant, then the Liberals will
lose votes on the left - partially because they've moved too far right.

Hugh Blair wrote:

> Exchange Jack for Bill and CA for US, and you know how some
> of us felt down here during the last administration.

Um. Bill Clinton is actually pretty right-of-centre when you're using the
Canadian version of centre. He's more like slightly to the right of the
Liberals. I'd say that the Democrats are somewhere between the Canadian
Liberal <http://www.liberal.ca/> and Conservative
<http://www.conservative.ca/> parties and the Bush is like the Canadian
Alliance party. The NDP <http://www.ndp.ca/> is more like the Greens. They
actually *are* a "pinko" (well at least democratic socialist) party.

I come from an old NDP family. My parents are friends of Jack Layton and
Olivia Chow. I used to hate the NDP - they were old-fogie lefties still
waiting for the revolution to come, but for the first time in my life I'm
actually considering joining the NDP. Because I think that Jack Layton might
breathe new life and new ideas into the party.

Okay, I'm done ranting about Canadian politics, you can all go back to your
lives now.

Thanks for reading this far ;-)

Tara