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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26579 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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If there was an election today, the conservatives would almost certainly win

And do what, specifically?

We used to have a guy here (or back on reddit) singing praises of UK conservatives, and how Multicultural Torryism is going to show us the way to combat wokeness. The UK now routinely sics the cops on people for denying progressive orthodoxy. Establishment conservatives are playing on the same team as the progressives.

And do what, specifically?

Repeal Bill C-21. For other specifics the party convention is this weekend. Feel free to follow along: https://cpc23.ca

I think you're missing the point. Why should anyone believe that at the end of the day this will pan out any better than what the UK conservatives did (or didn't), or the Itallian "fascist" lady that ramped up immigration?

I don't understand what your issue is with this. The goal of the party is to pass a few laws, enact what their voters want, create some jobs, etc. This is what happened under Harper. If "The party will do things their voters want" isn't enough for you then perhaps electoral politics isn't for you. Do you want me to point to some zeitgeist I think will occur that lines up with someone's wonkish substack because a different party won a majority for 4 or 6 years? That is unlikely.

My problem is that progressives pass sweeping societal reforms, and conservatives, when they finally get into power, just might rollback one or two of the most egregious excesses. They never seem to think of sweeping societal reforms of their own, or of setting up defensive measures their constituents might use when they're out of power, but worst of all they seem to be absolutely happy to enforce progressive policies that would have been called "uncharitable strawmen" a mere few years ago. I don't see a way any of this could be explained by anything other than establishment conservatives playing for the progressive team, and acting as the heel in the political theater.

Which sweeping societal reforms do you believe the LPC passed? Mostly they are just corrupt with ineffective or misguided tax policy and virtue-signalling feminism.

Major societal reforms or positions the LPC has passed/taken:

  • Doubled official immigration, quadrupled if you count net additions of refugees, intl. students, and temporary foreign workers. Trudeau declared Canada a country without a national culture or identity.
  • Reversing the planned increase in retirement age from 65 to 67. Making the Canada Pension Plan more generous, and raising mandatory contributions to fund it.
  • Daycare subsidy to privilege two earner family models
  • Canada Child Benefit which is a large means-tested transfer to poor parents and ending the universal child benefit. Lowering child poverty, but introducing a major implicit marginal tax rate on parents.
  • Abolishing mandatory minimum sentencing and encouraging (or not opposing) race-based leniency on crime. Canada now routinely gives blacks and aboriginals slaps on the wrist for serious offenses, because having prisons full of those people is considered more offensive still.
  • Bill C21 to ban certain classes of firearms.
  • Bill C16 to make trans part of protected classes and open the door to criminal sanction for people who refuse to 'affirm' gender identity. See Jordan Peterson.
  • Bill C18 to attempt to extort social media company revenues and generally hinder non-legacy media.
  • Creating the Medical assistance in dying (MAID) program which now kills over 10,000 people a year.
  • When graves were not discovered at the site of a residential school, Canada lowered flags for over a year, pledged tens of billions in new money for reconciliation, and the government approved of mass burnings of catholic churches.
  • Not oppose the pulling down of statues or renaming of streets and erasing of Anglo culture.

Now I dont oppose all of those things, but they are major public policy changes or stances taken on the future direction of our culture. I would say that a conservatism worth its salt in Canada should, at minimum, do the following:

  • Acknowledge that Canada does have a culture, two of them to be precise. Unequivocal opposition to all statue removals, street renamings, etc.
  • Lower immigration dramatically. Cap foreign students. Make refugee status temporary in all cases.
  • Introduce full income splitting for income tax recognizing the family as the basic unit of society.
  • Rework the Canada Child Benefit to make it (1) universal with no means test and associated implicit marginal tax, (2) increase its size materially, (3) abolish daycare subsidy (use that money to make even larger cash benefits to families with kids under 5).
  • Make replacement fertility a goal of public policy and talk about it all the time. Tax breaks for families with lots of kids.
  • Repeal Bills 21, 16, 18.
  • Review MAID program and disallow for non-terminal illness.
  • No gender affirming care for children.
  • Reinstate mandatory minimum sentences for serious offenses, new sentencing guidelines which are harsher, forbid race conscious sentencing, and begin to turn over the judiciary with more conservative judges.

I would not characterize things like changing the retirement age to 67 instead of 65 as a sweeping reform, or changing the makeup of certain tax benefits or models, or giving a comment about church burning. Almost everything else listed were explicitly in the last platform. The listed bills, MAID, immigration, families. Expect them to be there going forward as well.

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Repeal Bill C-21.

To what end? Organize a revolution? Go down in a blaze of glory screaming 'I hate the antichrist!'?

Despite all the pessimism in this thread, I feel it's only scratching the surface of just how 'gone' things really are.

So that Canadians can continue to freely own guns.

Why like or care about that? I mean, I'm not saying that's bad or that you shouldn't. But I had imagined, given the context of the conversation, that this was being presented as some motive to vote for the conservatives in the face of the political 'problems' facing Canada.

Why do I care about voters of the party having their preferences expressed through the party they elect? That is the entire point of the system we've agreed upon. Someone asked what will happen if they win, I pointed to something, and let him know we're figuring it out at the convention this weekend.

You are reframing the question and missing the point of it. To remind us of its original context:

We used to have a guy here (or back on reddit) singing praises of UK conservatives, and how Multicultural Torryism is going to show us the way to combat wokeness. The UK now routinely sics the cops on people for denying progressive orthodoxy. Establishment conservatives are playing on the same team as the progressives.

If the distinguishing feature of the Canadian right vs the left is that it will not ban guns, there's not much point in celebrating their victory, is there? Does any element of the Canadian right represent any radical divergence from the mainstream of leftist politics?

I strongly disagree with the assertion that it's a re-framing of issues for me to say "The party will achieve these goals" in spite of your insistence that 'Some other arbitrarily-chosen goals are more important'. But fortunately for us the aforementioned convention is now over. It's also wrong to assume that the preferences of single-issue voters for example don't matter, and that a political change is only worthwhile if it's sweeping (Good the enemy of perfect etc etc). If literally the only difference between 2 major parties was the guns, that still represents the loss of lifestyle, tens of thousands of (Canadian) dollars, food procurement, etc. If only difference between the GOP and the Democrats in the USA was that the Democrats wanted to ban all cars, would you have a pithy expression for people who rejoice when they are allowed to keep them?

Anyways based on your tone I'm presuming you are preoccupied with culture war issues. In that case the CPC affirmed their intent to ban trans medical procedures for all children. Getting rid of diversity hiring practices, keeping freedom of speech. Pretty much all of the main culture war threads.

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