Unlike most leftists, I happen to think that we spend too much time ranting against liberals, as opposed to, say, putting forth practical and workable versions of our own ideas and presenting strategic ideas and commentary. Liberals aren’t, after all, us. They have a different vision for society, different interests, and different strategies. They share many of society’s racist premises. They don’t even hate the way right-wing governments in power destroy the fabric of society and the potential for positive change in the future the way we hate it. So when they set themselves up to get trounced by the right, they don’t find it as upsetting as we do. So why should we get worked up about it?
And yet, here I am, disgusted with Canada’s Liberals for deciding to support the Conservative minority government. A little drop in the polls for them, a couple of by-elections that went against them, a little bit of bluster by the “US Prime Minister for Canada”, and they back off. The two issues on which they could have defeated Harper are the climate and the war. Harper gave them both on a platter, and gave them the choice of whether to use them now or not be able to use them later. How are they going to argue for Kyoto, now that they’ve supported dropping it? How are they going to argue to get out of the senseless and destructive war in Afghanistan when Canadians really turn against it, now that they’ve supported staying there?
Wouldn’t the difficulty in
Wouldn’t the difficulty in arguing against the destructive war in Afghanistan be that the Liberals were the ones who initially invaded?
you make a point…
… but presumably the “reinvention” of the party under Dion would have made it possible for them to position themselves to the left of the Martin/Harper foreign policy consensus. I think it’s only with this recent move that they definitively squandered that opportunity. If their argument is that they don’t want to run, lose, and give Harper a majority, they have de facto done exactly that, without even an election, by voting with him on the very things that he ought to be brought down over… Justin