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<strong>Filibuster Cartoon</strong>
<strong>Title: </strong> <a href="http://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20070905" target="_blank">Dion\'s Philosophy</a> (click to view)
<strong>Date: </strong> September 05, 2007

Canadian politics really hasn\'t been very exciting lately. Prime Minister Harper suspended parliament yesterday and will reconvene it in October. When it does resume, a vote of confidence in his government will be the first item on the agenda. <br> <br>All three of the opposition parties will be under a lot of pressure force Harper out with a non-confidence vote, in large part because they\'ve all turned pretty strongly against the war in Afghanistan in recent months. They demand a withdraw of Canadian troops from the conflict as soon as possible, but Harper refuses to set a timetable. <br> <br>I can understand the NDP and the Bloc demanding a withdrawal, because they\'re reliably anti-war and anti-American on most issues. The Liberal Party, however, was the party that sent Canadian troops to Afghanistan in the first place, and they\'re supposed to be the party of great and noble foreign policy initiatives. Afghanistan is different than Iraq, and most liberals used to be able to admit that. <br> <br>Liberal leader Stephane Dion is a shrewd politician however. His gamble is that voters will turn against the war so long as Canadians keep dying in combat. There\'s not really much more too it than that.

[Psudo]

I agree 100%. Little-l liberalism used to be a cohesive philosophy and reasoned position. Lately, however, it seems to be a set of unconnected and often arbitrary issue positions. If you don't match the set, you're not really a liberal.

Granted, part of that is because modern conservatism and modern liberalism (and libertarianism, too, for that matter) derive their basic frameworks from that classical liberalism, so that philosophy alone is no longer enough to definitively choose a side. Today we have this weird mix of classical liberalism, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, environmentalism, and biblical philosophies mixed into our weird, new political factions. By randomly toggling between them to defend our positions, our final positions don't need any cohesive, connecting philosophy in order to sound logically defended. It's a strange new world.

[sasquatch2]

Psudo Posted:

Quote:

I agree 100%. Little-l liberalism used to be a cohesive philosophy and reasoned position. Lately, however, it seems to be a set of unconnected and often arbitrary issue positions. If you don't match the set, you're not really a liberal.

Granted, part of that is because modern conservatism and modern liberalism (and libertarianism, too, for that matter) derive their basic frameworks from that classical liberalism, so that philosophy alone is no longer enough to definitively choose a side. Today we have this weird mix of classical liberalism, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, environmentalism, and biblical philosophies mixed into our weird, new political factions. By randomly toggling between them to defend our positions, our final positions don't need any cohesive, connecting philosophy in order to sound logically defended. It's a strange new world.

YES!

GREAT POST!

[Prestwick]

Psudo wrote:

I agree 100%. Little-l liberalism used to be a cohesive philosophy and reasoned position. Lately, however, it seems to be a set of unconnected and often arbitrary issue positions. If you don't match the set, you're not really a liberal.

Granted, part of that is because modern conservatism and modern liberalism (and libertarianism, too, for that matter) derive their basic frameworks from that classical liberalism, so that philosophy alone is no longer enough to definitively choose a side. Today we have this weird mix of classical liberalism, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, environmentalism, and biblical philosophies mixed into our weird, new political factions. By randomly toggling between them to defend our positions, our final positions don't need any cohesive, connecting philosophy in order to sound logically defended. It's a strange new world.

Benjamin Disraeli would call it "pragmatism".

Tony Blair would call it "making policy on the hoof".

Either way, it is the practice of discarding the traditional heritage of your party and changing in order to suit the mood of the public.

In any case, in today's liberal society, ideology doesn't come into it...apart from what they were taught when at University in the 1960s and 70s of course!

[Tiler]

It's not just suiting the mood of the people. In many ways, it's writing the mood of the people. Nobody would really care if a soldier died a day in combat, unless some politician goes on stage and raises holy hell about it.