Thursday, September 29, 2005

Education Ideas

Last week an educational academic lobby group met with Klein to give him surplus recommendations. The suggestions were all zany and leftwing. Nuff said there. But two of the suggestions were especially botherersome, one from where it came from the other for its chance to be implemented; I will discuss the dangerous idea first.

1) Give students the option of linking their tuition repayment to their post education salary.

This idea is dangerous, because it would fall under the guise of pragmatic--which means not only are lefties are in favor of the idea, but so are naïve individualists. On the surface it makes sense. Determine what a person pays back based on the income level he achieves with his post secondary degree. The thinking is that between the people who achieve high earnings after school and the people that don’t, tuition repayment will average out so enough money will be recouped to repay tuition in its entirety. Sounds fair, but stop and think about this. Would industrious docs, lawyers, engineers, nurses and entrepreneurs sign up for this payment option. No. Being ambitious they would do the calculations, figure out their expected earnings, and opt for the best financial deal for them-- which would be a boring old loan.

Now who would opt into this payment option. Yes, you’re right, the un-ambitious, students that know they’ll go back to bartending, backpacking, living in ma and pa’s basement, the pot smoking activists, multiple degree getters (for the sake of avoiding real life--we all know these people… degree four and a walnut sized brain). These are the people that will sign up for the program--students that know they will never capitalize on their degrees. And the program will end up needing massive subsidization as it will be running huge deficits as it depends on loafers for its financial support.

Like all social engineering projects it has a major flaw; essentially the government is betting on its ability to predict future earnings better than the people that will do the future earning. think about it; Who can predict future earnings better than the government? Yes, students themselves.

2) Coming Saturday-- the idea of mandatory post secondary education

-Angry Roughneck

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

The Liberals Love the Poor or that is People being Poor

One of the biggest misconceptions in this Canadian age of Liberal propaganda and socialist spin is that liberals and dippers are the party that supports the working family, the little guy. Well if that’s true why is the tax exemption set at $8000 dollars? This means for every dollar an individual earns over $8000, the Liberals begin reaching into his pockets and start by taking nearly a 1/3--not to mention the GST he pay on top of his or her purchases.

Is this fair by Tuedapian standards? Should massive companies, like Bombardier and Air Canada require assistance from somebody only pulling in $12,000 a year? Should someone making minimum wage be required to contribute to an appointed senator’s $80,000 annual pension fund? Should a Wal-Mart greeter be forced to contributing to Liberal friendly company’s profit margin?

It is an all out lie to claim liberal policies are friendly to the little guy. You want to help young families and people living near the poverty line, well then raise the exemption. The Taxpayer Federation demonstrates that nearly doubling the exemption to $15,000 (meaning that nobody making under this pays federal or provincial taxes) would exempt 1.8 million people from paying taxes that they cannot afford. The Liberal elite in Ottawa collect 2.8 billion in taxes from people that earn under $15,000 per year. Let me state that again: Ottawa collects 2.8 billion from Canadians making under $15,000 a year to spend on social engineering, Governor General wardrobes, slush funds for party faithful, and corrupt business owners. This would be roughly a $160 per month increase in take home pay for people living below the poverty line.

And in comparison if dippers or corrupt Liberals came out with a policy awarding each person earning under $15,000 a year, a $100 grant they would be lauded for their compassion and understanding. So why are conservatives vilified as a robber barons, for a policy that would neatly double the imaginary grant? And now I know $160 a month isn’t much for a ivory tower Liberal, but it’s an extra load of groceries for the single mother or a trip to the dentist for the uninsured. Personally I’d like to the see the exemption set a $20,000, but that would cost too many Liberals and their supporters too many Armani suits and I’m a realist!

-Angry Roughneck

Saturday, September 24, 2005

A dog fight and a book to read

I planned on a longer post today, but am in a war with a pragmatist over the merits of proportional representation. The pragmatist is a perfect consequence of my last post; unable to use the mind in a rational way. I get screwed on both sides of the debate for this one--far right and far left both go for this irreformable garbage.

Anyway on a positive note, and as a solution for my previous post--the minds of our young being destroyed by philosophical anti-thinking, I will from now on reccomend books that anyone who cares about truth, knowledge... the world ... etc. should read.

The first is The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein. Sorry, it's not sold in Canada, but this book is extermely important to understanding the philosophic relationship between Capitalism, freedom and prosperity and is an easy read as well.

Friday, September 23, 2005

How Leftism is destroying the minds of our young

Young people attend universities to gain the theoretical knowledge needed to guide their practical actions throughout the rest of their lives. But today universities have no interest in such methodology. They in turn teach the countries most impressionable minds that it’s impossible to say anything positive about reality (metaphysics) as “true reality” is distorted by our senses and tainted by our biased mind. And because all knowledge is relative to environments and minds, this serves the purpose of making it all equally relevant and thus ultimately, irrelevant (epistemology). This logically leads earnest students to their predictable conclusions: knowledge is subjective and biased towards social-economic background, which makes ethical (ethics) statements naïve, as they’re the extension of this flawed knowledge. Finally political (politics) statements, are nothing more than the culmination of these individual subjective whims and simply put “whose to say what’s right”! A mind trained with this type of philosophical foundation characterizes the university’s most inquisitive and conscientious minds.

The everyday activist is only expounding on the doctrines he’s been taught, treatise which eventually produce the expected existential temperaments of fear and depression, conditions which typify the apologists of relativism, collectivism and existentialism. It was Kant that first explained so artfully that which is known to us about the world is only known through the filters of our senses, thus leaving us unable to say anything about nature’s true reality. The inability to know or be able to say anything substantial about the real world, amounts to metaphysical nilhism, or said differently existentialism, which, for the sake of its own epistemology, states, that since all knowledge is flawed and relative, the only relevant truth is man's own subjective truth.

And we’re surprised that a worldview like this, one in which uncertainty and instability is our usual state, produces citizens filled with neurosis, panic, and insecurity, clinging to collectivist agendas for their dear lives. Reason as a means to fight back has been choked by the philosophical traditions stemming from Kant, Hume, Rousseau, Comte, Dewey, Camus and Chomsky, and today, professors, students, and the left wing in general are all slavish products of this original fatalist philosophy.Professors lecture under the hip banner of pragmatism. They stake their iconoclastic rebellion on the fact that they take no moral stands, are unwilling to express any viewpoints, and endorse teaching methods that consist of leaderless “group discussions” with the epistemological justification that “there’s no such thing as truth, man”, and “its wrong to judge”.

They ignore the idea that a university’s goal should be to equip its students with the ability to judge and evaluate, instead adopting a anti-philosophical base that renders all paradigms of thought as useless. This succeeds only in frustrating and depressing the most eager minds, condemning them to an endless maze of contradiction, hypocrisy and inconsistency, with little chance of discovering any solutions. It’s a tragic situation, worthy of Shakespearean consideration, that students were smart enough to understand the necessary outcomes of what they had been taught, but not independent enough to reject the theories themselves.These intellectual values have left students without any resources in which to counteract the unknown, for their only resource, the mind was disavowed by their vacuous mentors.

Reason is man’s mechanism for comprehending his complex reality. The faculty of reason separates man from common animals and thus is his metaphysical reality: a rational animal, and not one fooled by perceptual knowledge on a consistent basis. Using reason lets man form complex conceptual relationships about reality (perceptual data), allowing him to make objective and abstract conceptual models about reality. Understanding this rationality, man knows his true individuality lay in the fact that he makes his own choices. This inherent individualism declares he’s a sovereign individual able to make rational choices for himself, which leads to logical respect for other human beings as other rational sovereign individuals, thus affording everyone certain inalienable rights: the right to exist, to be self-sustaining and self-generating.

The logical belief in individual rights eventually takes on a political meaning when the question of organization arises. The belief in and respect for individual rights rationally leads to laisser-faire capitalism. Capitalism is the only political system that consistently rewards reason and punishes irrationality. It guarantees freedom and equal opportunity. It bars force from relationships, as all actions are contractual and voluntary. It was capitalism that abolished the aristocracy, eliminated the caste system, and ended slavery. North America is not free by chance, but by choice. This type of philosophical system produces confident minds able to discriminate between fact and fiction, valuing self-determination over other imposing, corrupt and inefficient forms of organization such as socialism and mixed economies.

Instead our intellectuals academics and teachers refute this logic supporting a philosophical base that teaches students, as Ayn Rand once said “existence is an uncharted realm, an unknowable jungle, where fear and uncertainty are man’s permanent state, where skepticism is the mark of maturity, and cynicism is the mark of realism, and above all the hallmark of an intellectual is the denial of the intellect.”
posted by angryroughneck

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Canadian Fairness

So one of the architects behind the sponsorship scandal, Paul Coffin, a man who admittedly STOLE 1.5 million from tax payers, was sentenced to a 9 PM curfew (don’t worry liberals-- only on weeknights) and two years of teaching business ethics-- hold back your laughter for stealing taxpayer money. Ahh the precedent has been set, for the rest of the liberal FELONS.

Now for years left wing intellectuals--yes the word is an oxymoron, have been warning us naïve individuals about dangerous corporations and the lack of checks they‘re faced with. “we need a government that stands up to the corporation”, building their case with picturesque examples (Hollywood is great for this) of robber barons controlling the world, defrauding average Joes, just to drive Cadillacs, and live in mansions on top of hills while we, the average bums are powerless to do anything about, except toil away in mediocrity with no chance of success.

Well let’s compare the Trudeaupian model of socialism and fairness with the cold hard capitalism of our evils southern neighbors in practical terms, and see how we treat ivory tower criminals that defraud citizens. Peter Coffin gets a 9 PM curfew. Okay. Well contrast that to Bernard Ebbers, a Canadian, of World Com fame gets 25 years in prison for fraud. Two Meryll Lynch executives (Daniel Bayly and James Brown) that defrauded Enron investors (prior to the massive kerfluffle) to the tune of 1.4 million--a very comparable crime, got 30 months and 46 months respectively of HARD time. Tyco exces Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Schwarz got 25 and 8 year sentences. Need more… Well the beloved Martha Stewart even got 8 months for very questionable insider trading!

It’s a joke that we Canadians get on our high horses and point our long fingers south of boarder declaring our moral superiority, on such issues as social justice. We don’t even hold our own government accountable for blatant theft, while without blinking an eye we condemn business for it suspicious motives. At least business executives are punished and jailed for their corruption.
-Angry Roughneck

Monday, September 19, 2005

German Paradise?

So for years now, the left, far right and other fring thinkers have been championing Proportional representation. "It's more democratic" "It more accurately reflects the will of the people"...etc. and reasonable people every get sucked into their poetic messages without ever thinking through the implications of a system, that only alienates the popular vote. Look at Germany, albeit a close vote between the moderate right and moderate left-- if this is possible and now who holds all the cards to decide a countries political course? A bunch of hippies, zealots, and yes old block Communists! Ridiculous. You hear things like, well maybe the right will join with the communists to form a majority. That's insane. Where's the comprommise between slavery and freedom? The complete obliteration of ideology for the sake of effcient rule! What a system.

Here are the top 8 reasons Canada should never have Proportional representation.


1)Minority party votes are constantly sold for funding towards whatever special interest the selling party represents.

2)The proportional representation methodology increases voter apathy as it quickly becomes a system where votes must be bought in order to form a coalition government which has consequences.

3)It validates the public’s sense of government corruption as it’s an electoral system that favors and demands political deals.

4)The ridiculous amount of compromise eradicates ideology and makes long term vision impossible

5)Essentially you move from an electoral system where the majority party determines policy into one in which the party with the fewest votes does.

6)The proportional system is in fact less proportional as it has the uncanny ability to lock old political hacks into their position.
When a party receives 10 percent of the vote they allowed to choose which members of their party will represent their party in legislature, which is good for longtime serving senior party faithful, but is counterproductive to getting new blood and ideas into government.


7)Proportional representation is inherently against principles making it range of the moment pragmatic whim worship. Long range vision requires principle

8)Once Proportional Representation has been legislated further electoral form becomes next to impossible. Picture Canada’s attempt at negotiating a charter between three regionalized interests, and the endless amounts of stalling, compromise and redundancy, and ultimately futility involved that process. Imagine trying to agree on similar monumental reform with over 100 special interest groups being represented. Change would only happen through revolution. Reason would be invalidated as a political tool and thus parties world switch to force when trying to mandate change.

-Angry Roughneck

Friday, September 16, 2005

A post on Pragmatism

Recently I've been having a discussion with www.progressiveright.blogspot.com on pragmatism. I find it a catchy word but empty and evil on a philosophical level and neither side of the political spectrum is above championing it for their own cause. So I want to do a post on the implications of pragmatism

Jim answers my calim that pragmatism is aribtrary, subjective and ussually emotive based...

"My definition of pragmatism is involving a practical approach to solving a problem. And my argument is simply, that, we cannot immediately jump to what is classically thought of as "right-wing principle" to solve a problem. It sometimes doesn't work.And I'm also not saying I believe that because one man has a car, he should not if another is homeless, that's not pragmatism either. While it's great to ensure we have a great economy, booming job creation - we have to recognize that others have to work harder than others, and those that cannot, must be helped. It's insufficient to ask somebody who is homeless to "go get a job" or to say "we all got problems"."

I answer back...


Pragmatism is not doing the practical thing. It's doing what's best at the moment with no regard to past evidence or long term implications-- a very short sighted approach to problem solving.
Pragmatism is allowing fiscal freedoms but denying social freedoms as some social conservatives have been accused of. Principled conservatives respect both economic and religous freedom-- as freedom is the higher principle.


Pragmatism is the allowance of Sharia law into the canadian court system. It's a principle that claims "one law for all people: thus protecting equality-- with the risk of offending extremists.

Pragmatism is the philosophical foundation of Canada. Pactically manifested in the constant appeasement and multitude of side deals that are tearing this country apart. A principle declares that all regions are subject to the same federal status, not allowing the short term gains of specialty status, even though they are politically benificial. It is those short term solutions that leave this country lost and without direction or guidance.


And now I want to post a more in depth essay from last year I wrote about pragmatism...


Every now and then philosophy, in spite of itself, has the ability to permeate our modern lexicon and pop culture. Some deep thinker amidst subjective dilemma finds himself spurned on to create words that describe, and are only applicable to, their specific mental angst and pretty soon every trendy intellectual can orate a vague sense of the word. Freud gave the women at the art galleries “Oedipus” and Sartre gave the middle class rebel “existentialism”. Thomas Dewey gave us today’s favorite — pragmatism. The people that can define pragmatism usually do so with one of the following statements “thinking outside of the box” or “using creative and innovative techniques to solve old problems”. It’s a term that is thought of as progressive and intellectual compared to the stagnant “dogma”, a good word that the church probably destroyed with its own type of historical propagandize. The truth is though that pragmatism is a philosophical term coined by American intellectuals William James and Thomas Dewey, and it’s a doctrine that defines truth as “that which works”, meaning to evaluate situations and solve problems without set principles or preconceived notions of what is right.

Harry Sterling, former diplomat and Ottawa based commentator is one of these people. Recently he issued an article proclaiming the virtues of pragmatic thinking compared to the “hard line”, meaning principled approach George Bush assumes when dealing with North Korea. Staying true to the idea that truth is arbitrary and bound to perceptual instances, he demonstrated three cases where pragmatic thinking has succeeded internationally. His first example is Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offering of humanitarian assistance in exchange for “Pyonyang admit[ing] what it had long denied, that in the 1970’s and 80’s it had kidnapped 11 Japanese citizens”.

The Prime Minister eventually pertained a commitment to let the remaining Japanese leave at some undecided point in the future. Mr. Sterling presumably uses an example like this to point out that a hard line dictum that forbid humanitarian assistance to Communist dictators that kidnap citizens abroad wouldn’t have generated what was needed most in solving the conflict: introductions and the establishment of cordial relations. Even though the admission of guilt was achieved through extortion, the problem was solved, the reader remembering “the truth is that which works”.

Next Mr. Sterling points out that just last May, based on his earlier visit, “Koizumi paid another visit to North Korea and in exchange for the release of five North Korean-born offspring of kidnapped Japanese, Koizumi promised Pyongyang $10 million dollars US, plus 250, 000 tons of food aid.” Typically Mr. Sterling doesn’t exactly say what he has achieved, so I will have to speculate, that the resolution’s aim was to free the kidnapped Japanese and if aid is what was needed to achieve this, then they should do it. Never speculating that the solution legitimizes North Korea’s kidnapping of international citizens’ in the eyes of its own people and the rest of the world. The aid, along with propaganda proclaiming Kim Jong II’s benevolence and western corruption, distributed to the loyal bureaucrats of Pyongyang while the rural population, the real victims of his policies starve to death. And worse yet, based on North Korea’s own pragmatic models of thinking: If money is needed, trade hostages, if hostages run low kidnap more!
Mr. Sterling proceeds to give another example, this time of Australia’s foreign minister promising Pyongyang “substantial benefits of aid and investment if Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear program”. North Korea predictably agreed to “freeze” and “stall” their program for partial aid. And now the author has represented his greatest goal, the stalling of North Korea’s nuclear program in contrast to Bush, who has not achieved anything close to this. Once again never suspecting what North Korea might invest its financial aid in, possibly more weapon proliferation technology, and even worse Mr. Sterling never even begins to presume what will happen when North Korea next needs aid or investment again. Further contemplating his pragmatic solutions is the moral question of whether it is right for governments to loot the earned wealth of its own citizens to support corrupt dictators that starve their populations, who use the transferred wealth for building bigger, and even more dangerous militaries.


The common theme of all Mr. Sterling’s examples is that of compromise. The compromise of the earned wealth of free productive citizens for the sake of friendly relations with an unpredictable, maniacal, kidnapping despot, a despot who’s only contribution is this dangerous compromise is his admission of crimes everyone knew he already committed. What else do we receive for millions of dollars and thousands of tons of food? For his, an admitted liar’s promise of “stalling” an openly hostile nuclear program. How does this method of compromise protect us from the next irrational demand of money? And the answer is that it doesn’t, because pragmatic thinking is only concerned inherently, with the current kidnapping. As a philosophical principle, a statement which in itself is ant-pragmatic, pragmatism isn’t concerned with conceptual long range planning, as its truths are dependant on the immediate and its individual dynamics. And since the future can’t be predicted neither can the principles which will be needed to solve the problems, essentially making principles redundant and worthless.

Some other examples of pragmatic thinking was the funding of a young tyrant named Saddam Hussein to fight the spread of Shiite fundamentalism (the original suicide bombers). Only conceptual, long range, abstract thinking could have predicted that funding one dictator to fight another to a bloody stalemate was only going to create two dictators or said differently twice the problem. But Mr. Sterling would argue that if the goal was to stall Iran, and establish instant stability, then it was achieved. He admittedly wouldn’t be concerned with the fact that they, the Americans were the ones that legitimized Saddam’s power, and gave him credibility in the eyes of Iraqi citizens, all the while undermining America’s own position as an impartial foreigner.
Spain’s agreement to pull its troops out of Iraq after the destruction of a train full of its citizens solved their immediate problem of safety, but only further entrenched the idea that the best way to get results from the west is through extortion, which has endangered countless amounts of people for an immeasurable amount of time in the future.


The opposite of a pragmatic solution is one based on principles. The Canadian Oxford dictionary defines a principle as a “fundamental truth or law decided on the basis of reasoning”. Only long range planning and reasoning would have predicted that compromising with terrorists would only encourage more terrorism and legitimize terrorism in the eyes of the terrorists; exactly what has happened since the pragmatic compromises of Spain and Philippines with Islamic terrorists.

It’s important to have principle because men are fallible. Men may be fooled on a perceptual level some of the time, but most men are not fooled on a perceptual level consistently. Countless bad decisions have been made on the whims and strivings of individuals thus we develop agreed upon principles. We call these agreed on principles the constitution. Constitutions are meant to give our hardest and most conflicting problems paradigms for solution. The American constitution was devised on the principle of protecting individual rights against the intrusion of government or other men. Thus laws were formulated on the predication or guideline of protecting individual rights. Laws devised contrary to the protection of rights were deemed unconstitutional and avoided. Principles take into account what the consequences of various solutions might be, in that giving men philosophical guidelines when making emotionally charged complex decisions, so that they’re not blinded by the immediate and short term. It would be a principle that declares “we do not deal with terrorists”, making hostages useless politically, it’s pragmatic thinking that declares “we deal with terrorist some of the time so try us!”

The worst part about principally based nations using pragmatic means to arrive at solutions is that they undermine their very own philosophical foundations of being a nation that has principles in the first place. Pragmatism, by its very nature makes truth arbitrary. It says that there is no universal truth, that having values is wrong. Using pragmatic solutions to solve some problems logically extends to denouncing the use of principles in all situations. It says the key to solving problems is by dealing with each one problem as an individual entity, ignoring all similar problems, previous models, and possible consequences, as each situation is immensely complicated and dynamic, so generalizations and dogma are useless. Ignoring the fact that the very idea that contemporary problems are so complicated leaves them even more vulnerable to the irresponsible or faulty indiscretion of one person or any small group of peoples faced with conflicting perceptual messages.

Principles can be reached objectively from an emotional distance, decided upon by debate, and judged with reason, so we won’t be dependent on instincts and whims when we’re in desperate and uncertain moral predicaments.

I know it's a long p[ost but I welcome all comments

-Angry Roughneck

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Klein's way

So, we have a seven billion dollar surplus, and our conservative (I am unsure what this is even means in Canada nowadays) Premier and his top aids head out for a weekend retreat to decide what to do with OUR money, and besides more infrastructure (a need in an expanding province) spending, more social spending (conservative Alberta already has the highest per capita in spending in the country), they come up with dividends! Dividends, are you kidding me! Alberta collects 5.2 billion in personal taxes, 800 million in healthcare premiums and Klein wants to do me a favor by sending me a pithy $300.

The PR spin plays out as a one time gift from our benevolent leader. let's get this straight, there's no such thing as a tax surplus (the word creates the idea that government can create money), a surplus simply means that the ruling party has "stolen" x amount too much. Klein has robbed his people in excess of seven billion dollars extra, and now he wants to give graft to the tune of $300 in an attempt to show his benevolence. First the bureaucracy needed to administer this gift will cost as much as the payout, and I bet we will keep them employed for 20 years on pet projects eradicating their worth 10 times over--you can't just lay off a bureaucrat... much too cruel.

Secondly, liberals will wax poetically that this money will simply be "pissed away" and for once they are right. the money will be presented as a windfall, and it will be accordingly be spent as such. To impact the economy in a significant way ( investment in business, housing gains, automobile purchases), a citizen has to be able to predict his increase in income and that increase must be stable. A tax cut allows the individual to balance his personal budget according to his new and stable wealth increase. An arbitrary infrequent dividend encourages wreckless spending (and yes this good for the local saloon and Wal-mart, but few others outside the retail industry). Albertan's need to demand more from the complacent and populist Klein.

God Save us Ted Morton. I'm counting the days until the leadership debate.

-Angry Roughneck

Monday, September 12, 2005

Jeff Watson what are you doing?

I recently stumbled across a post that's been bothering me for a couple of days now. Conservative MP Jeff watson www.jeffwatson.modblog.com posts a blog declaring his supoort for unions, the CBC and protectionist ideologies. I won't get into why his support for these leftist stances is wrong instead I will only say that if the contest is spending the government's money and irrational statist policies then Canada's two socialist parties will always win hands down. But I posted this to urge all conservatives out there to write him and let him know what they think about his faux-liberal stance.

It's no wonder why all the crackhead lefties think Harper has a hidden adgenda-- only one of two logical conclusions after reading Mr. Watson; either this guy ran for the wrong party or he's as devious as the Pied Piper. God save Ontario voters.

Does anybody else have a problem with this? I will be glad to post all comments on this subject.
-Angry Roughneck

No To Sharia

A thanks goes out to Mr. Daulton McGuinty, who earlier today announced that Sharia Law, as well as all other forms of alternative tribunals will be outlawed in Ontario. He rejected the NDP propositsion to invoke religous justice tribunals as sources of arbitration in family matters. He stated best when he said "one set of laws for everyone". Amen

-Angry Roughneck

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Sharia Law

Is our country so tolerant and complacent that we are unwilling to compare our system of law with other justice systems, and then to accordingly judge? Is our system inherently flawed. Does it fail to protect women? Does it prosecute minorities? Is it biased ideologically--ha ha? Is it deliberately antagonistic to Muslims? Should we be ashamed of our legal tradition in comparison to other better systems. Well I guess it depends who you ask. Most people would say no, but amoral academics, cultural relativists, and Islamic fascist might say yes. And so Canada unwilling to offend these fine citizen’s objections as-- we tolerate everything, and are willing to compromise on anything, appease these hard line fundamental Muslims (as long as they’re not evangelists) and decide to change our legal system.

The guiding principle of Western Justice is the rule of law--That all men, and yes women too, are judged equally before the law. This is too say that it doesn’t matter if you are rich, well connected, or a certain race, you will be judged the same as anyone else before the courts. Hence the symbol of modern justice being a blindfolded lady judge??

Administering certain sets of law to certain people obliterates the relevance of that progressive principle. It’s moral relativism at its finest declaring that Western law is not an improvement over other archaic forms of justice, systems usually based on the unlimited power of an arbitrary judge deciding each case as he goes, with no concern for consistency or principle, making judgments at whim. Allowing Sharia law for some Canadians, says our system of law is good for people like us (no definition of what us is anymore) but for other people another system might be better-- whose to say what’s best.

So what’s next; homosexuals wanting their own court system, polygamist declaring religion and their own system of justice, drug dealers refusing to accept the law of a court system biased against drug cultivation, rapists wanting their own system to avoid the persecution of zealous western feminists.
Tolerant multicultural Canada is becoming an amoral bastion of identity hate politics all seeking to divide this country and the foundation it rests on.

-Angry Roughneck

Friday, September 09, 2005

Progressive Equality

The pursuit of equality was a 2000 year political effort. It was finally achieved through the creation of the United States; a capitalist republic built on individual rights and the limitation of government. Capitalism destroyed the aristocracy in Europe. The capitalist north fought against the agri-feudal south and eventually abolished slavery. It's capitalist traits that are now making the caste system in India more and more redundant with each passing generation, something Ghandi couldn't do, even with his eloquent messages of altruism. It was capitalism that created the middle class (an entirely self made class).

But now that equality has been achieved through the invention of a system that places the highest value on judging its citizens by their individual merits and fiercely punishing all forms of irrationality, such as racism and nepotism, the left wing seeks to transform the virtue of equality from a political one to metaphysical one!

Political equality gives the citizen the guarantee that no arbitrary obstacle should prevent him or her from achieving positions for which their talents deem fit. The pursuit of metaphysical equality can only be achieved by punishing the most ambitious citizens and rewarding its least productive, which is something entirely different than political equality where individuals are judged by their resources, and not punished for them.

Equality is meant to protect the most important fundamental right: The liberty to pursue chosen values. Liberty nurtures innovation, hard work and cooperation among individuals within society, because individuals understand that their responsible for the choices they make; consequences, whether rewarding or punishing.

The left wing vision of equality destroys liberty. Institutionalized predetermined social equality takes away an individuals ability to develop his own life, and thus by extent his esteem. The left wing seeks to diminish the individual’s choice and responsibility, thus destroying liberty. The less responsible a citizen is held for his actions the less he feels the need to be industrious and productive, because the consequences of his choices are felt not by him in particular, but by the society as a whole. Bad decisions are punished as much as good ones are rewarded- which is to say, not much and consequently little thought is put into decisions. The left would prefer that all hockey games ended in ties, that all racers crossed the finish line at the same time, and that all people earned the same profit for their developed resources. Liberty guarantees our freedom - the freedom to succeed or fail. Liberty makes no guarantees on the outcomes of pursuit; It just guarantees the right to them. If the end to all endeavors is already predetermined then there really is no liberty. The type of equality that treats all men as equals destroys liberty.

But reaching even further into the abyss of irrationality and amoral ethics leftists still react unkindly to the widespread belief that some children have unfair advantages over other children due to the wealth of their parents. Ethically speaking is there any difference between inherited wealth and inherited talent? So maybe we should club the feet of all our good athletes, lobotomize our brightest students, jam pencils into the eyes of our best artists because then nobody would have an unfair advantages. I suggest a more moderate approach: accept the fact that the boxer’s son will grow up with strength, the farmers son will grow up with work ethic and mechanical knowledge, the merchant’s son will grow up clever, and yes children of the wealthy will be raised with the advantage of capital. It's inevitable that parents will want to pass on everything they have to their child, whether it is cerebral or material. Attempting to eliminate either is neither sensible nor feasible. The desire for their child’s betterment is a healthy and instinctive parental drive.

If what a person gets does not depend on the negotiable price he receives for the services of his resources then what motive does he have to develop his resources? What incentive is there to seek out new information or to develop technology? Why would someone put the extra effort in to search out a buyer who most highly values what he has to sell if he does not get any benefit from doing so? The answer is that he will not do any of these things unless there is incentive to do so. Sloth and lack of enterprise flourish when hard work and risk taking are not rewarded. Liberal socialism is a fatalist philosophy and an enabler of stagnation. If everyone is equal then nobody can be exceptional
-Angry Roughneck


Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Mixed Economy Blues

Danny Williams lowers the Canadian flag threatening to leave confederation if he doesn’t get the rights to his province’s off shore oil revenue (justifiably so), and maintain his equalization status as well (pitifully wrong). So how does Canada respond? Well Saskatchewan Premier, Lorne Calvert, predictably responded with his own demand for more federal coffers, which inspired Daulton McGuinty’s plea for more taxpayer moola, which lead Ralph Klein to complain about his provinces lack of financial support from Ottawa. What happened to our “fair” Trudeaupia?

Wasn’t equalization supposed to bring about the happiness usually identified in unified just societies? Or do the ethics of a mixed economy only divide its citizens into special interest groups that spend their time crying for their share of the federal teat? This is the natural climax of a country where 46% of all produced wealth is redistributed by the federal government at their whim (we still lag behind China in this department but we are #2). We’re a culture dominated by pressure warfare groups (lobbyists, politicians, businessmen, union leaders) paid to attack the other lobby aims in order to promote their own special interests—Albertans are ignorant redneck oil barons, while Quebecers are lazy frogs that spit on the Canadian flag… we’re not good at building airplanes, well then higher better engineers?... No, hire better lobbyists, get us some more money!... etc.

We have an economic climate where one citizen’s or province’s gains come at the expense of another citizen or province. Ontario wants more infrastructure, well then lower the immigration funding to Manitoba. The unemployed need better dentistry benefits, cut the funding to public education. Air Canada is failing and needs massive no-interest bailout, well then raise taxes on the oil companies...etc. In a free country one person’s gains do not come at the expense of someone else. Instead Increased wealth morally comes by increased production. Men who are free to produce have no incentive to loot.

And I know corrupt socialists out there are trying to refute the argument by saying we protect our citizens from hardship and that we are a compassionate society.

Is a proud country led by the principle of appeasement? Does a just country have Premiers that try to hide their province’s wealth as well Premiers whose sole goal is to convince Ottawa how poor and helpless they are? Do Moral states have politicians running under the banner of “I can get this much more in Ottawa” Does a compassionate Prime Minister, loot prosperous citizens for his own political gains? No to all these assertions, proud countries are free countries where citizens cooperate and don’t view other citizens and regions as potential enemies, and compassionate countries do not have to be coerced into helping fellow citizens.

P.S: Why doesn’t Wyoming ever complain about the wealth of California?
-The Angry Roughneck

Monday, September 05, 2005

Bush a Racist?

Refusing to hit rock bottom, clinging to moral emptiness and anti-values, the leftist community is trying to turn the New Orleans catastrophe into political gain. Kayne West (recording star), Randall Robinson (Harvard grad and Lobbyist--TransAfrica) and Ray Nagin (Mayor of the big easy)… etc have all implied or directly said racism was to blame for America’s disorganized response to one of the worst tragedies to ever effect their country. This is disgraceful but not new for liberals, as the right has become accustomed to their hate filled nonsensical verbal attacks. Leftist types consistently accuse conservatives of bigotry, misogyny and greed (those are the big 3). Calling President Bush a racist is to asinine to defend with logic, because the statement is arbitrary

I use the word arbitrary a lot in reference to leftist rhetoric and this is a perfect example to demonstrate what I mean by arbitrary. Arbitrary means that the statement is not connected to reality so it is impossible to defend.

Leftist: Bush is a racist
Common sense: No he isn’t
Leftist: prove it!

Well this is impossible, think about it. How can you prove that something doesn’t exist? It is logically impossible to prove the negative true.

For example the theist states “prove God doesn’t exist”. (I’m not making a claim one way or another about the existence of god, but rather pointing out faulty logic). It’s impossible to prove nothing exists-- "Well you just didn't look in the right spot". And hence the statement must be regarded as arbitrary and not worth intellectual attention.
-Angry Roughneck


Sunday, September 04, 2005

Speaking the Truth

The liberals tend to advocate intellectual freedom, while demanding economic controls. Social conservatives (though they endorse many economic controls) tend to advocate economic freedom, while demanding government controls in all the intellectual and moral realms.

It is a paradox that the spiritualists advocate economic freedom, while the materialists advocate intellectual freedom.

Each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to the activity it despises(in comparison to its antithesis)…. Neither camp holds freedom as a value. Social conservatives want to rule man’s consciousness; the liberals his body.
Ayn Rand
If you're immersed in intellectual crusade everyday there is less time for reading and learning. Ayn Rand is one of the most profound intellectuals that have ever lived and I reccomend her to anybody interested in intellectual journys.

-Angry Roughneck

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Letwing Anarchism

In wake of Katrina, an immeasurable tragedy, I as an individual, as a proud Albertan, and as a Canadian consider these people my brothers and sisters, so I urge everyone to display the generosity that only a free people have the capacity to show other free people. Americans, by no coincidence, are the most giving people on the planet, and Albertans and Canadians owing to these standards should own up and be accounted for through their own generosity and love.
Now to the politics…


I’ve believed in freedom for a long time, excluding the time I was old enough to discover the Communist Manifesto (17) and until the time I was smart enough to refute it (20) and since this time I’ve been lumped in with anarchists and libertarians as defenders of the right. As a philosophy guy at the university an individual has his back up against the wall enough of the time so rarley pursued this subtle battle between us, but being lumped with anarchist only hurt my credibility. The simple thought process goes “what if an individual doesn’t want to relinquish his right to defend himself?” “Isn’t that a legitimate aspect of freedom?” “Anarchy is true equality!” Anarchist believe that man should be free to pursue all values whatever they are--ahhh… moral equivalence-- and that is the pinnacle of freedom. But this type of thinking links freedom with the subjective and arbitrary when actual freedom is incompatible with the arbitrary as freedom is routed in the foundation of objective law.

So now I want to break the bond between liberalism and anarchy for good. Anarchists are just a more subtle form of leftwing politics, routed in the collective and tribal.

The streets of New Orleans are an example of anarchism. Is that freedom? Most people would say NO, but couldn’t answer the anarchist’s most poignant question-- “what if an individual doesn’t wan to relinquish his right to defend himself?”, “isn’t that a legitimate aspect of freedom?”, thus leading them to be sympathetic to government controls. But that's wrong. What was the first thing that happened when law and order broke down in New Orleans? People sought some semblance of order by organizing into groups. Groups which were eventually ruled by strongmen, which created massive amounts of violence towards the individual citizen. And so what choice does the individual have but to join a group himself for his own protection, to join the tribalist mentality for his own preservation. There is no reasoning with thugs and hence there are no individual rights in a an anarchist state.

So how do you answer the question then? Well I would say “don’t delegate your right to self defense but it’s an obvious and blatant contradiction to assert your right to use force as you subjectively see fit while demanding that others refrain from organizing into groups to protect themselves.”

Anarchism has no peaceable way to solve grievances, as if failing to recognize the possibility of genuine disagreement or intentional evil. Its failure to recognize reality leaves its manifestation as just another form of leftwing collectivism.

Governments proper function is the enforcement of legality (not controls) thus ensuring an individual's right to pursue his own set peaceful and rational values. Freedom is not subjective whim worship, but rather a rational path of value attainment routed in the individuals assurance of equality before the law and freedom from coercive government aims

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Diversify the economy?

I receive many interesting interjections to the philosophy of freedom which I preach (usually bases on socialist fallacies) and the response to my article on Alberta’s oil was no different, in particular I received an urgent plea to quit being so naïve about oil as I was sincerely reminded that Alberta’s Natural gas and oil will run out in 20 -30 years
and that if I wanted to prevent economic collapse Alberta should be focused on diversifying the economy instead of momentary monetary gain (Tax cuts)

Now I’ll address both fallacies…

1) Sometime people pick up books and read things like “the worlds oil supply will run out by 2026” and then they go around telling everyone about this scientific “truth” they’ve discovered, never once thinking it relevant that the book was written in 1967, and the people who hear it don’t know any better so the myth is passed on again and again, almost becoming a fact by default. And in a bizarre sense they are right. If technology never progressed, remained constant (as if we were completely socialist and incapable of progress—a historical fact) and we were still using 1958 drilling technologies, yes we would run out of oil by 2026. But in a free world technology advance and is constantly adapting I.E you improve your ability to recover reservoirs. For instance, instead of picking a heavy spearheaded piece of steel and dropping it from hundreds of feet to create, over a significant piece of time, a shallow hole that burps black gold, you now use hydraulically driven technology to drill 6000 meters sideways underneath a mountain base to reach your target. Still to this day it is only economically feasible to recover 20% of a reservoir. In short as science improves we are able to access greater quantities of energy that were previously believed to unrecoverable. (Hence the oil sands)

2) The second fallacy is more grievous and manipulative. People are constantly lamenting the fact that Alberta needs to diversify their economy. Truthfully, I think most of these people are motivated by a hatred of success—a pathetic envy which typifies a large number of lefties, but exactly what does it mean to diversify the economy? Oh you say diversification means to expand your economic interests, so you are less dependent on the unstable commodity oil and gas. Fine but how do you it? Well they all think by spending taxes and public imitative. Are you kidding me? A Canadian that thinks government can expand economic interest. We never learn in this country. After all the Bombardiers, Air Canadas Ontario Hydros (any Quebec business… ha ha) and we still believe in economic planning. You think that we should limit oil profits (profits which are used for R&D and expansion—the creation of more jobs) and invest in arbitrary government whims, whims like the 100% useless hydroelectric damn in Newfoundland. Public expenditure is always a colossal failure in business and anyone that doesn’t think so should read the underground royal commission (series of books about Canadian government). Government spending for business purposes only transfers wealth from productive resources to unproductive ones. Businesses that are successful are punished for that very virtue while inefficient businesses are rewarded for their lack of virtue.

You want to diversify the economy do the exact opposite. Lower taxes! You can’t just make a mandate to diversify business—it’s impossible to force the creative. But what a government can do to help diversify it economic interests is lower taxes, making it more attractive to innovators, companies and citizens. Do this and the population, and consequently business will diversify. Primary industry diversifies into secondary industry and secondary industry eventually diversifies into tertiary businesses…etc. Lower taxes and there will be more companies and interests.

And I know what the hardcore leftists are saying now. “Huh, imbecile, sure Alberta will expand, but only at our expense, you will simply be stealing our best minds and businesses”. Well you know what? The rest of the country offers gifts of cash to businesses if they relocate, they guarantee interest free loans, they offer welfare and massive subsidy to attract companies, as well as individuals. Alberta (for the most part) outlawed these practices in the 90’s, so what Alberta offers is lower taxes and freedom. And yet our tax cuts are attacked as immoral while are Quebec’s corporate welfare is lauded as commendable and necessary?

-Angry Roughneck