An Attitude of Entitlement

Having an attitude of entitlement tends to make a person unlikeable and therefore socially isolated.  In this isolated state there is a propensity to blame others and claim victimhood, often to the detriment of true victims.  With a romanticized idea of a life that was not achieved, feelings of persecution, or a burning zeal to “share other peoples’ stuff”, these false victims band together, and their appetite for funding is relentless.  To keep the money flowing their way, the victimhood narrative must be continuously repropagated.  The social net in many cases is being exploited by these people, taking advantage of a poorly designed system.  In essence, the constant procurement of funds has become an emotional shakedown of the taxpayer.

Over the past several years, even the model to care for true victims has become a bloated layering of interceding bureaucracies, leaning more toward harm-reduction than being solutions-based, which encroaches into the periphery of enabling undesirable situations.

It appears taxpayers are being partially deceived and half informed.  What many have not yet grasped is that a segment of the population has tossed aside the pride of self-sustainability and personal responsibility, replacing it with an unabashed dependency on others – without the unsuspecting benefactors’ informed consent.

Ultimately, the attitude of being entitled to the fruits of another person’s life is a bizarre notion, considering that the unwritten civil contract humans have evolved to expect, with few exceptions for true charitable causes, dictates that psychosocial arrangements are to be reciprocal and earned.

A Path to Micro-Minority Control

“Entryism” – a new word describing the path to micro-minority control.

Do you ever wonder why an organization or group of people suddenly burst out with an opinion totally at odds with the objectives you thought they followed?  A recent example was a comment by the principal administrator of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. She reacted to reports of arson at some provincial churches with the advice to “burn them all down!”

Here is how it happens; find an existing organization that has high purpose and whose membership rules allow an external organized group to infiltrate and take over its management and its credibility, and where possible control its assets.

The broad membership is left looking on as their organization disappears off on a totally foreign trajectory.  It is not only organizations whose purpose can be corrupted. Activists have done effective work with school boards where a minimal turn out of voters in Vancouver allowed a “progressive” slate to take control. Its objective is the cancellation of programs (in the name of equity), that were designed to encourage the most gifted students to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex world.

If entryism is not enough of a new word, try these offerings from the National Education Association, the American teacher’s union. It is committing itself to the critique of “empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”

It is a sharp reminder that for as long as there has been freedom of anything, there has been someone who does not want it to happen.

Strong Leadership Required

The current Federal government still appears to be more interested in itself and UN initiatives than in doing its job.  The difference between governing and ruling seems to be perpetually lost on them.  Citizens are forgiven for seeing this administration as an increasingly intrusive and bloated bureaucracy (aristocracy?) that taxpayers are forced on fear of penalty, to pay for.

More government, and more government interference in peoples’ lives is the problem, not the solution.    “We are not so nasty that we need to be tamed by intrusive government, nor so nice that too much government does not bring out the worst in us, both at its employees and its clients.” (1)

Compounding this overburden are the ubiquitous and heavily funded NGO’s profligate infiltrations into community organizations and civic councils.  NGOs not only lobby government, they are now effectively also lobbying the masses into conformity.  Conformity to agendas that trend prominently toward Communist ideals.

Ordinary hard-working people go along, assumedly, because they do not take the time to study the bigger picture.  The Pied-Pipers of Marxism have discovered that when their collectivist initiatives are cloaked in good deeds, they are difficult for kind-hearted people to resist.  Appealing to emotion is a well-known sales tactic, and the strategy is proving to be exceedingly effective.

To make matters worse, for decades, uninformed citizens, if they voted at all, have voted for “stuff for themselves” at the ballot box.  Tragically, politics have morphed into a popularity contest where a myriad of gifts are promised in exchange for votes.   As each new “gift” is implemented, another layer of bureaucracy seems to mysteriously appear – at the expense of the taxpayer.

This is a hot mess that will likely require exceptionally strong leadership, discipline, common sense, and a properly informed population, to set right.

(1)  Matt Ridley 1996, The Origins of Virtue 

Reciprocity

It is not only charming to live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, but it is also generally safer.  When humans have close-knit reciprocal relationships; when they, at an innate level depend on each other, having something to lose or gain, whether economically, socially, or psychologically, they are likely to be mutually cooperative in their daily lives.  Natural reciprocity breeds peaceful co-habitation.  Forced reciprocity does not.

Extrapolating this premise to the current political landscape in Canada, one can see that the innate human contract has broken down.  Reciprocity has, in effect, turned to force and extortion.  Where once resided reasonable middle ground now sits Left and far-Left assemblies, making stifling demands on an already stressed middle-class population, and in the process crippling the framework that underpins economics.  A group of multi-millionaires and billionaires, not wanting to miss an opportunity, or possibly creating it in the first place, deftly wield the proverbial marionette in their own misguided delusions of grandeur.  They are like “want-to-be-kings in waiting”.  For what?  For the complete breakdown of society?

Ultimately the result is a struggling middle-class that is being crushed and looted from all sides.  The majority of whom have been psychologically divided from each other, muzzled, and beaten down by political correctness and cancel culture, to a point where they are in danger of losing the very fortitude required to rise up against this phenomenon.   A debilitating phenomenon that can only be described as liberal fascism.

A Call to Service

Spare a thought for the next group of candidates for Local, Provincial, and Federal political office. They will face the greatest challenges ever facing this country during peacetime.  And they will be replacing incumbents who have used the cover of Covid-19 to build a new society in their personal image.   In the process, Canada’s economy has been trashed in the cause of contrived emergencies; social values upended to create imaginary persecuted groups; and fresh versions of revisionist history been embedded daily in school curricula.

Streets are filled with the victims of a drug abuse epidemic, financial reserves eradicated and replaced with a federal debt level which, per capita, is the highest in the nation’s history. Canadians have been walked back from decades of improvement in living standards, diminishing social problems, and internationally competitive technological achievements.

Despite being in the forefront of world medical science Canada’s Federal and Provincial leaders have managed to surpass each other’s incompetence by building on successive missteps in what should have been an achievable vaccination program. The list of governance disasters in every area, which, in more capable hands would have been foreseeable, grows daily.

If you know people with enough management skill to rein in public sector workers, who see nothing wrong in ever growing deficits and to whom cost control is a filthy phrase, encourage them to step forward – we need them. Their task is simple enough to describe – Reclaim! Recover! Rebuild!

Achieving this task will take not only determination on their part but much cooperation on ours – it is always true that we only get the government we deserve.

The Stink of “WE”

The “WE” scandal, like a heap of odoriferous cow dung, continues to linger as an acrid smell in Canada.  Whatever feat of deception the Trudeau government employs, the stink wafts up and circles back, engulfing them in the smog once again.

There is a reason the Prime Minister flatly refuses to testify, when ordered by the majority to do so, and it is the same reason he demands that the appropriate Ministers also do not comply with the House order.  The Prime Minister’s Office does not want to accept guilt and is not operating in good faith.  They can claim innocence until proven guilty, thus as long as the office does not engage in the inquiry process of discovery, they can magically claim to have clean hands.  It is obvious the Prime Minister does not want to incriminate himself and his family to Canadians – all those pesky hard-working taxpayers who pay his salary.

Like a child hiding behind the couch devouring contraband cookies before supper, thinking no one will see him as long as he keeps his eyes tightly shut, he continues the infantile charade.  The blatant obfuscation of the PM borders on the cartoonish, and through their disgust and incredulousness at his behavior, Canadians are also laughing at his buffoonery, strategic though his jiggery-pokery may be.

Ah, but maybe a shiny new budget full of pixie dust, sugar, and sunny ways will finally provide a much-needed distraction for the citizenry to look away from this gross egregiousness.

 

A Matter of Maturity

Recently Elizabeth May, formerly the leader of Canada’s Green Party, suggested that the country lower the voting age to sixteen. It should be obvious that this would be a disaster. Quite apart from the fact that sixteenyearolds lack a fully developed prefrontal cortex and are therefore at a disadvantage in making rational decisions, the simple fact is that they are children, not adults.

So why would May, and she is not alone in this, (the Liberals have tried to make this suggestion too) want to implement such a dangerous and unwise policy? The likely answer is:  Pure unadulterated power.  Teenagers are easily influenced, and there is more than a little wisdom in the old adage that “If you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.” Also, as many parents and teachers can attest, almost without exception, children tend lean to the far left. What an opportunity – willing and compliant tools.

May can see a chance when it comes her way. Should she be able to accomplish her goal, Canadians may all have to deal with an irrationality they have never experienced before. This is not an exaggeration.  China’s Mao Zedong unleashed the Red Guard, an army of indoctrinated teenagers, on his enemies and as history proves, the result was disastrous. Perhaps one should not leap that far ahead, but the idea that unqualified, immature teenagers could influence politics should cause all Canadians to pause.

Marxism and Sharia?

Both Marxism and Sharia lean on hate and divisionism to control populations, something the Western World abhors.   Nothing in the west is sacrosanct under these oppressive regimes, and now even some children’s books and cartoons have become taboo.  The recent casualty –  the beloved Dr. Seuss.

Dr Seuss should be commended for demonstrating diversity to children in showing there is not a universal sameness of humans in the world.  For example, one of the drawings leading to the recent controversy was of an Asian man wearing a rice hat while eating from a bowl with chopsticks.  Yes, Asian people are known to look a particular way and yes, some eat with chopsticks, and some do wear rice hats.  Those are all things to be celebrated, as Asian history is long and rich.  Add to that the fact that these drawings are caricature renditions meant to emphasize characteristics, we see that the man depicted is a delightful Asian fellow.

Cartoons are meant to evoke happiness and fun.  One would have to look far and wide to find someone who has not enjoyed the lilt and pictorial whimsy of Dr. Seuss.

It is a slippery slope when a cartoon is considered offensive, and we have all seen the evidence of that in Sharia law.  It’s time to hail Dr. Seuss as the humanitarian and inclusive children’s author that he was.  The western world is approaching the end of humour and joy – retroactive no less! The attack on Dr. Seuss is an attack on joy itself.

 

True Woke Justice

It seems to have happened overnight that eight hundred years of jurisprudence has been trashed. The concept of Due Process been replaced by social media spectacles featuring the destruction of lives and careers. No suggestion of substantiation to charges is demanded by media outlets and, more importantly, their subscribers. 

This is now a nation where accusation equals conviction, and outcomes are made absolute despite the absence of sustaining evidence. Unproven allegations are dropped from the news pages but live for ever in the vastness of the Twitterverse, leaving nothing but personal ruination in their wake. 

The witterings of a few sad internet trolls are converted by lazy minded politicians into a new form of Original Sin and heaped as obligations on the taxpayer. The Judiciary, hitherto a check on ill-considered legislation, now follows a meandering path dictated by politically correct inspirational muses and now requires people to identify themselves by their self-arrogated pronoun of choice. 

The saddest aspect of this deteriorating society is that its Woke instigators are the grandchildren of the survivors from the Second World War generation. It was they who went ashore in Sicily and, later, Juno Beach and returned to create a civilization providing wealth and justice for all.  Their reward is to find that those whose world was their legacy have adopted the values of the people they fought to defeat. 

Woke brigades have invented systemic injustices inherent in Western civilization. This civilization, it is held, is a skein of oppression and genocide that must be torn down in its entiretyTo impose this idea on others, the Woke use the tactics of mob harassment, hysterical denunciation, and most of all, the weaponization of cancel culture to deprive people of their platforms, livelihoods, and reputation. (1)

Democracy usually provides a ready means for the disposal of unsatisfactory functionaries, and for that reason, popular logic says we always have the government we deserve. The Woke forces have found ways to circumvent society’s safety valves. They have targeted non-government regulatory bodies including university administrations, churches, municipal bodies, and professional standards organizations which all serve as platforms to preach their cause and from which they are difficult to dislodge. 

Their presence is a world-wide issue and Canada is not alone in needing to find a way to take back its way of life. In the United Kingdom, the Reclaim Party stands for freedom of speech, thought and inquiry. (It) stand(s) in support of broad and reasoned debate for all. (It) stand(s) against censorship and the emerging trend of extreme political correctness. (It) stand(s) to Reclaim the values of freedom, fairness and common sense.(2)

In the United States, an American couple’s frustration with woke ideology at their child’s school led to the recent formation of The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), a nonpartisan organization “dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity.”  (3)

Here, with any luck at all, we can re-establish our society with voters moving back to re-assert control of their schools, churches and municipalities armed with the common sense that lay at the base of their founding. If we cannot, it will be a very hard push to find other ways of dispersing this hostile mob. 

1.  When Will the Woke Go Full Caligula? Avatar, Benjamin KersteinAlgemeiner; 24 February 2021 

2.  Mission Statement, The Reclaim Party London, Feb 17, 2021 

3.  Birth of a new resistance – Parents mobilize to tackle woke ideology. Barbara Kay, National Post, Mar 12, 2021  

 

Government Debt

Our governments have a debt problem. The federal deficit for this fiscal year is approaching $400 billion and the total debt is about $1 trillion.  BC is in better shape with a current year deficit of $13.6 billion and a total debt of $88.626 Billion.  

A conference Board of Canada report stated that governments are “spending like never before” producing “massive and permanent” debt levels.  This is not sustainable.   

Our governments believe that a combination of low interest rates and high levels of economic growth will allow them to accommodate this level of debt. It might just be possible if that was all the debt they were going to add but the Federal deficit for the next fiscal year will be about $121.6 billion dollars and continuing in the red for the foreseeable future. BC will also be running deficits for years.   

Our governments have not been transparent as to how they intend to pay for this increased debt, and currently are borrowing just to cover the interest.   The Trudeau administration has not produced a budget in 2 years and Canadians  don’t know what this governments detailed taxation and spending plans are.  

With the pandemic not yet over, maintaining support payments to those in need will have to continue. It seems certain that a combination of increased taxes and a reduction in spending will be necessary, and soon. This will reduce economic growth, which in turn will reduce the governments ability to sustain this level of debt.  

What is the plan Mr. Trudeau?