Are you serious, Machjo? My fan club is going to persuade me to vote Conservative? Not a chance. I may consider voting for a red Tory, a centre right conservative, such as Joe Clark, John Charest etc. (or John Tory, the former Conservative leader here in Ontario).
But as I have said before, Harper is a blue Tory, a right wing politician, who is governing like a red Tory, because he wants to win elections. If ever he gets a majority, his claws will come out and he will start governing like a true right winger(remember his loudly proclaimed resolve to build a firewall around Alberta to keep gay marriage out)? So no way anybody can persuade me to vote for the Messiah.
Besides, while I don’t read the posts of my fan club, no doubt they are full of personal abuse, personal insults towards me (small, pathetic minds can feel good about themselves only when they are insulting, putting down others). If you think personal abuse, personal insults is going to convince anybody to change their opinion, you have a totally wrong impression of human nature (or were you thinking something along the lines of the Stockholm Syndrome?).
My fans persuading me about anything has about as much chance as a poodle who is yapping at an elephant has of persuading the elephant to do anything. The elephant doesn’t even notice the barking, yapping poodle.
Anyway, I like you sense of humour, you gave me my laugh for the day. Thanks for that.
OK, my humour was inappropriate and at your expense. Sorry for that, couldn't help it. I'll try to restrain myself from now on.
As you have likely guessed already, there is no current party that truly fits my views. But I don't vote Conservaive myself. I find it too nationalistic and militaristic, and even a tad imperialistic. I'd considered voting for the local Green candidate last election (more internationalist outlook, and with a more reasonable military policy). In the end, I'd put in a blank ballot 'cause I still disagreed with many of his policies. Now that I think about it, I should have voted for him. The others were all a bunch of idiots except for the NDP candidate who hadn't provided any internet contact information to find out more, so I guess it didn't make her too bright either. The local Conservative and Liberal candidates were really party hacks, so you could pretty much know what they stood for just by reading the party platform. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives were too nationalistic, militaristic, and dare I say imperialistic for my taste. There was no Libertarian candidate (though even if there were, that would not have been a guaranteed vote, but woth considering). The NDP candidate had left no e-mail online, so I could learn nothing from her. I won't vote for a candidate I don't know. Now assuming she was a party hack herself, then she'd likely have been excesively socialistic and nationalistic for my taste, the main saving grace being that she'd be less nationalistic than the Liberals or Conservatives, and less militaristic too (though I might find the NDP excessively pacifist, the Greens seeming to have found a more decent balance of remaining committed to using military force beyond Canadas' borders if UN-led, which I think is more reasonable). Those are things that could get me to plug my nose and vote NDP anyway.
Besides that, I liked the Green Party's commitment to the UN, international law, openness to free trade (though I preferred the Conservative candidate on that front, as the Greens were less open than the Conservatives there), open to achieving objectives through the free market (the Green shift was such an idea, whereby strategic taxation would naturally curb gas consumption. The NDP platform of a cap would certainly have been more effective, and so we could say that the NDP was greener than the Greens, but it was too extreme and would have involved much government reulation, etc. The Green shift would have regulated itself through the free market).
If I were to vote for a right wing party, I'd be looking at Libertarian. Very free-market oriented, but opposes corporate welfare, is not so militaristic, and many libertarians believe in open immigration, free trade, open to free movement oflabour, etc. Very little about them is nationalistic or militaristic or imperialistic, if at all, with perhaps some exceptional members among more conservaive libertarians.
The Conservatives are too militristic, nationalistic and imperialistic, and the Christian Heritage Party is not very tolerant of religious freedom, and the Progressive Canadian Party is really just a tad better than the Conservative Party.
So in the end, I'm not such as simplistic Conservative Party hack and you might think. I do give parties a run for their vote.
My main objection was at your rejecting Levant's ideas based on who he was. Now I'm not likely to read his book either just cause I've got plenty of other books on my list right now, but I would't reject it for who he is, that really is silly.
