3 Guys go for a walk in the woods

[polaris]

This little tale describes the fundamental differences between Canada's major political parties.


Three guys go for a walk in the woods to the north of Lake Superior. It's a beautiful fall day and they all want to head in the direction of Otwa. Suddenly, the tall one, a Liberal who once thought of himself as the smartest man in the country, stumbles upon a large box.

"Hey guys! Look at this!" he calls out.

The other two come running over, and the first to get there is the Socialist, a small friendly faced little guy. The third, a beady-eyed Conservative saunters up the last few feet humming a tune under his breath.

"What do you think is in it?" Asks the little guy, excitedly.

"I Think I know what's in it." says the Liberal. "I've seen boxes like this before."

"Me too" replies the Conservative nodding wisely..."It's money."

"Money?!" squeaks the Socialist, as he dashes over to the the box and throws the lid open. Sure enough, there inside the box is almost limitless wealth.

"What do you think we should do with it?" asks the little guy.

"Well....come on guys....we're all friends here... lets just split it evenly." says the Liberal. "We don't need to tell anyone about it."

"But it's not really our money," protests the Socialist, "And there's so many things that really need to be done. We could build social housing, provide water treatment where needed and give our kids a good education. Everyone could be healthier and happier!"

"Not me" mutters the Conservative. He pulls an unregistered weapon from under his jacket and shoots the smartest guy in the country through the head and the Socialist through the heart.

"That's the way to downsize government." he laughs. "I know exactly what to do with this money."

He sends 90% of it offshore to secret numbered accounts, and with the remaining 10% funds a media campaign promoting the construction of new prisons to combat violence in the woods.

 

[eh1eh]

OK, but are they faggots?

 

[Trotz]

Bull****,
it seems like someone is trying to present American politics as Canadian.

 

[taxslave]

That would be typical of socialists, spend spend spend. A conservative would invest the money, and use the interest to provide for the whole country forever.

 

[polaris]

Each of us has a responsibility to understand the basic philosophical differences between out major political parties. It boils down to the degree of common interest a party has historically shown as opposed to the self interest it legislates

 

[Johnnny]

And then out of no where the independant (me) comes to the scene and sees the mess and proposes a quick fix. But no one is left to hear me

 

[Machjo]

Each of us has a responsibility to understand the basic philosophical differences between out major political parties. It boils down to the degree of common interest a party has historically shown as opposed to the self interest it legislates

No party ever has a clear philosophy. Let's just take the NDP as an example. Within the ranks of the NDP itself you'd have found everything from social-corporatists to the right all the way to labour-socialists to the left, and maybe even the pragmatic communist in the extreme left fringes of the party. The social-corporatist of course is the one likely to have defected to the Liberal or Progressive Conservative Parties whenever the NDP swung too far left, as long as the other options weren't too far right. The NDP likely has a fair share of red-greens too.

Since the advent of the Green Party (essentially a red-Tory party of sorts), many of the social-corporatists have likely jumped the NDP ship and gone Green.

Meanwhile the Liberal Party has everything from Red-Tories to reform-liberals. And the Conservative Party of Canada likely has everything from mainstream Tories to libertarians and neo-conservatives, paleoconservatives, ultraconservatives, ethnic nationalist, militarists, neo-corporatists, maybe even with the odd not-so-red Tory thrown in.

And the Green Party likely has everything from blue-greens to pink-greens (red-greens and more extreme environmentalists likely joining the NDP), red tories, social-corporatists, among others too.

And I'm sure I've missed all kinds of other philosophical currents within each of these political parties. Though non-party-members might not notice it, I bet there are plenty of ideological battles being waged by the various groups within each party. So I think it would be wrong to assume that any party has a clearly defined philosophy of its own, and we should look instead at what the individual candidate believes.

Depending on the candidates in your riding, your liberal candidate might be further right than the Conservative candidate in the neighbouring riding. Or alternatively, he might be further left than the NDP candidate in the neighbouring riding. Or the NDP candidate might be left overall but quite far to the right on a particular issue. Just as the Conservative candidate might be quite far right overall yet quite leftist on a particular issue. Paries have no core philosophy of their own. Rather they simply absorb people whose philosophies seem to come closest to each other than to other parties, each party simply being a very rough amalgamation.