Neocons in Canada take a gander. They left out American Empire talk -

[applegrove]

I wonder why? The Fraser Institute is a right-wing think tank in Canada. Obviously they have decided to roll out the band wagon and try the same stuff your nutjobs are up to in the USA.

A few points to remember about the document that starts after the italics:

1) 'Critical Surgery for Health Care:' Our health care system is not broken and already allows private markets in industries where it makes sense. Private companies want in because there are millions to be made. Costs will go up. The system will break down. Universal Health Care is the model chosen by every Western nation, except the USA, because preventive health care saves money (and chronic illness which frustrated pharmaceuticals to no end).

2) 'More Wealth in the Hands of Canadians:' Canada's distribution of wealth is great. The rich have not taken off and run away to other countries. The quality of life and equality of our society make Canada a nice place to live. The people with the big salaries, who don't want to pay taxes, have already left for jobs in the USA. Many, many have come back to Canada because they miss the equality, the cities that still work, the shared health care (running a business is cheaper if you do not have to fork out health care). Most Canadian are topping off their retirement savings with our version of 401Ks. The government has had a decade of surpluses. Nobody wants to see health care go. We are a resource rich country and the 4 emerging markets (middle classes) of China, India, Russian, and Brazil will need resources when together (in 40 years) they make up a market 10 times the size of all western nations today. There will be much to go around if only we keep our tax laws the same and our sovereignty.

3) 'strengthening democratic governance' is a euphemism for creating tribal society. If you get your government local, you can bet your local priest or mayor has very little power. No multinational corporate leader is going to have to listen to a local leader. You will have no national government left to say boo to anyone. None of the elites have to pay any attention to the poor when you have localized (tribalized) governance. Tribalism made for easy colonies when the British used it. Tribalism worked great in Saudi Arabia to keep the elites in power and the poor in Islamic schools. Tribalism is about taking the national politics (the democracy) out of your life altogether.

4)'Trade and Security Through a Canada-US Customs Union' means we loose complete independence. Alberta's Oil will not belong to Albertans. For a long time Albertans were part of the elites that got the oil revenue. When there is a customs union (which means more than NAFTA I can tell from the title) then all trade issues are erased. The American elites will be the beneficiaries of resource wealth in Canada. And you can bet we will never see a dime in taxes from those suckers. Not like we do now where our rich folk pay higher taxes. In the USA the rich have purposely slipped out of paying taxes and Bush gives any revenues from tariffs to corporations. Bush is purposely bankrupting the government of the USA. The plan is to make the dwindling Middle Class in the USA pay for all social programs until they demand a reduction in generosity of governance and learn to be tribal themselves.



"A Canada Strong and Free
Publication Date: April 2005
Publication Format: Books

Author(s):
The Hon. Mike Harris, Former Premier, Government of Ontario,


E. Preston Manning, Former Leader of the Opposition,


Executive Summary: In A Canada Strong and Free, Mike Harris and Preston Manning present a vision to make our country the best democratic federation in the world, offering its citizens the highest quality of life and economic performance, and setting a new standard of international citizenship and leadership. This vision expands freedom of choice and acceptance of personal responsibility in every area of national life and calls for a “rebalancing” of national priorities.

Critical Surgery for Health Care: Canada is currently under-performing virtually all industrialized nations offering universal health coverage. Harris and Manning propose eliminating the federal role in health care management and financing, strengthening health care financing by granting the provinces the tax room vacated by the federal government, eliminating barriers to private delivery and financing of health services, giving Canadians freedom to choose their health care providers, and giving those providers the freedom and incentive to provide faster access to better care at lower cost.

More Wealth in the Hands of Canadians: Canada’s productivity and standard of living are in decline relative to many other industrialized countries. Harris and Manning propose a shift of $80 billion in national income over the next six years from the hands of politicians and bureaucrats into the hands of citizens, families, businesses, and civil society. This shift – aimed at increasing the incomes and opportunities of Canadians – is to be achieved through constraining growth in total government spending to 3.1% per year and passing the tax savings on to Canadians.

Strengthening Democratic Governance: Harris and Manning contend that smaller governments, closer to the people they serve, can be held more democratically accountable than large, distant, and centralized governments. While supporting institutional and electoral system reform, they insist that such measures will succeed in reducing Canada’s democratic deficit only if the size of government itself is constrained and the functions of government are decentralized and localized as much as possible.

Trade and Security Through a Canada-US Customs Union:

SNIP.............."


www.fraserinstitute.ca/strongandfree

[imenja]

1. Why use the term neo-con?

Is that what they call themselves? What I see above is some traditional small government, lower taxes, conservative ideas mixed with some nativism, more Pat Buchanan ("paleo-conservative") than neo-con.

[Maple]

2. Because that's what they are

and it's what Canadians don't want in government.

[applegrove]

3. We have low tax conservatives. Turning the country tribal is a neocon

thing. So is erasing Universal Health Care (neocons assume that the market will in the end always deliver things perfectly ..because it is a market - no conservative party in Canada has advocated undoing the universal health care and making that a big priority).

We didn't have Buchanan conservatives in Canada. We had progressive conservatives. This last lot is neocon. One of the people (Mike Harris) who was at the press conference to release this document was Premier of Ontario for half a decade and he instituted neocon policies including severe and sudden welfare cuts (which caused suicide and horrid consequences for all those on welfare and under leases). Harris is an admitted neocon. He reduced funding for the special needs kids. His empire lasted just a short time. The people of Ontario then booted out the conservatives and have someone in power now who is undoing many of the 'trauma' causing policies.

We in Canada have taken care of our finances by taxing at reasonable levels and cutting costs. We have spent 20 years being fiscal conservatives. The country is not in some financial crisis. The tax breaks in the US were to starve the American government and reduce the popularity of government and social programs,(Even social programs that work much better than the private model ...like health care).

There is no financial need to reduce taxes. There is not huge capital flight. Our bills get paid. People are happy with the state of our cities, our immigration policies, and the books are balanced. We have a hugely successful 401Ks type savings accounts that allow people to defer taxes on a good portion of their salaries until they are retired. You only pay as you withdraw from the 401Ks. You need a vibrant income tax to make such a policy exist. We have that. We also have a sales tax on top of the income tax (so you pay for health care as you get your hair cut, buy fashions, eat out, etc.). Our immigrants are having a much easier time integrating. A city like Ottawa is now home to a couple of hundred thousand people of Somali origin and they fill our schools and our lives with many children and make our cities richer in every way.

Only neocons would see that as bad. Bad for the US for us to be doing great and looking forward to a renewal of resource wealth and its redistribution amongst all the people in this country. Our middle class is healthy and fine. Even though we face outsourcing.. we were not as dependent on manufacturing as you were.

So people in Canada know what a neocon is. These people are neocons. You don't fix something that is not broke unless you need the "fix" of more wealth for the wealthy and the gutting of the middle class. The neocons in the USA have dreams about an American Empire where all the little people are moving around the world. That is right.. they want labor to be moving out of the USA. That is why with the guest workers.

Neocons are about a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. Societies cannot live peacefully under such archaic values. As a country you either value your wealthy or your middle class. If you value the elites... you must force all the little people into local, tribal units. That is how the elites in Saudi Arabia do it. That is how the neocon elites in the USA are doing it. That is how the British did it when they had an empire. (The Saudis will now have to do democracy as a way to destroy tribalism which hurts the USA in two ways: tribal Saudi Elites own too much of the USA & tribal Islamic Fundies the elites need and fun to keep their own power.. have funded and volunteered for terrorism. Democracy is the cure for tribalism. Tribalism is the cure for Elites who want to have all the wealth).

If you do not believe me then google Mike Harris & neocon & Ontario and see what happens (unfortunately he has not been in power in the last 5 years so keep that in mind). Mike Harris introduced us to the term neocon. You look under neocon in the Canadian dictionary and you see his picture. Whereas Brian Mulroony, who may have been a secret neocon, was never identified as that when he was the Prime Minister. And he championed health care and Nelson Mandela and was not out to destroy the middle class. (Interesting to note Mulrooney is in hospital having had a serious operation.. and he choose to have the operation in Canada despite the fact that he is rich and has a home in the USA).

[imenja]

5. obviously political terms take on different meanings in other countries

but in the US neo-cons are a group of former leftists who turned to the Republican party when the Democrats began to shy away from foreign interventions. The neo-cons advocate a muscular foreign policy in which the US uses its military might to advance its own agenda abroad rather than working within the traditional structure of international organizations and alliances. Neo-cons do not care about taxes and big government. Theirs is a foreign policy agenda.

Now most Americans have no idea what the term means and use it to refer to any Republican proposal they don't like. Neo-con, however, may have an entirely different meaning in Canada. Liberalism, for example, in the US is understood quite differently from other countries.

[applegrove]

6. That is who the neocons were in the 1970s. Now the neocons have

been in power and the reality of their policies is out there for all of us to see. The passage or time and new realities make the neocons who they are today. A group of market Utopians who very much want to see the middle class disappear and the laws of the jungle take over.

So attached to their Utopian ideals, they willfully attack any notion of Universal Health Care which works because it redistributes the Health Care Monopolies to governments and allows for a mixed market delivery of services.

I wonder if we went back in time and took the paradigm 'woman' what would we find. Meanings change over time as new realities and truths replace the old.

Neocons are creeps.

[imenja]

11. neo-conservatism as ideology vs. a slur

I use the term neo-conservative to refer to those who identify themselves as such, or share in their general ideology. Those in the US who identify themselves as neo-conservatives focus on foreign policy rather than the policies you suggest above. In popular usage, the term has become a slur. I myself prefer to use a greater degree of precision is discussing political ideology. Part of the problem with conflating all conservative positions as neo-conservative is that it belies the fact that these are separate interest groups, united only in the fact that they find a champion for their ideas in the Republican party. The neo-conservative agenda is diametrically opposed to the small government, lower taxes conservative position. An empire costs a great deal of money. When we don't recognize there are differences among the right, we ignore opportunities to force a schism that could weaken the Republican party's grip on power.

Again, I claim no knowledge of how the term is used in Canada.

[applegrove]

13. Before Bush got into the WH there was much talk about what the

word neocon meant and whether you had to be Jewish to be one. That argument was very popular for a while. And then 13 people who sign all the PNAC documents got into power in the WH and have thus been lumped in with the rest of their policies. But like Bush, Mike Harris was not Jewish and he drank their kool-aid.

Dropping the race bomb be it for the purposes of getting us to not use powerful words or arguments is a common neocon tool. I am a little more sophisticated so if you would like to discuss how neocon is used as a slur we can get into it right here. Neocon is used as a slur to mean nasty, hawkish, scorched earth economic policies aimed at leaving the world with a narrow elite in control and governments with no chance to regulate corporations when they have a public good (like health or education) that they want to deliver to their people.

The Neocons in the USA tore apart the world "Liberal" to suit their own needs. I am not one to see a group take some action and then tell me I cannot do the same thing. Quite frankly to have one set of rules for them and one set of rules for everyone else is sociopathic. I am not a rule-maker sociopath, I am a rule-maker human being. And I find the word Neocon to be a great tool The word neocon has meaning and bite and I will use it happily because it works to communicate all that I mean when I use it. It means narrow elites who fulfill their own agendas at the expense of the people around them.

I can use the word neocon to mean the people who are the policy gurus in the WH. The reality is that much of neocon foreign policy is directed at creating very right wing markets overseas that do not promote social programs like universal health care because the neocons believe in a Utopian view of the market and debasing the humanity from all assumptions. It is a flawed logic because it is not separating the market from human emotion.. regulations favoring the elites will still exist. It is just getting rid of the positive emotions like empathy and love from regulations in the market.

History tells us that Utopians are just as dangerous as totalitarians. Already we see the neocons refuse to take ownership of the problems their policies have caused. Rumsfield continues to blame the Turks for the failure of his battle plan. If you do not consider Rumsfield to be a neocon then you have deep issues regarding race and tribal norms you need to work on. I refuse to have anyone telling me what to do who cannot take ownership for their mistakes.

Neocons are neocons. And if the neocons did not want to be branded as policy ideologues and cold hearted market Utopians then they should never have tried to implement their policies in the real world.

In case you have not accurately read up on Neocon writings, they want our social & civic needs to be taken care of by tribal elders in the churches, etc. More human ingenuity was wasted by people following customary law, and serving elites than was gained by the practice. The reason the neocons want this is so that they, as elites, can play world hegemony from above and not worry about elections or the majority of people in the USA getting together and voting them out of office.

Neocons are only for democracy in the places in the world that they want to compete against. Democracy is not for the USA. And I don't know about you.. but I don't want to live under a group of elites who have nobody to answer to but their own selves. That does not work.

Why didn't the neocons tell you? Part of their 'perfect & perpetual' markets involve mass migration out of the USA by the working classes. The "undesirables" will be encouraged to leave in the same way they were by the British in the18th & 19th Century. That is what they want and that is why it is okay with them if the middle class disappears. Easier to encourage people to leave the USA and get citizenship elsewhere if they are dirt poor and hungry and desperate.

[imenja]

15. you misunderstand me

I made no mention of ethnicity and intended none. My only point was that neo-con has come to be used as a catch all phrase for all conservative policies, and always by people who oppose them.

I'm not quite sure where the rest of your post is coming from. If you in anyway interpreted my remarks as a defense of neo-conservatives or their policies, you are badly mistaken. You obviously are free to use any language you choose. I gave my reasons for preferring a greater degree of precision in discussing political groups and ideologies, so I will not repeat them here.

I have no objection to anyone posing an argument that counters one I make, but I cannot and will not defend a position that is not my own.

[applegrove]

17. I have been around alot of the discussion about the word neocon

over the years. It comes and goes the desire to not allow opposition to use the word. I am from Canada and we had neocons in power in Ontario in 1995. Even when I started on the bulletin boards there is a distinct desire to not let the neocons take ownership of their own dam mess by denying us the use of that word.

So they neocons came together with other factions and caused mayhem and hatred. That is why you do not get with mayhem and hatred causers - if you value your good name.

But I think and have read quite a bit about neocons and in their own policies there is quite a bit of elitism and hatred. There is certainly the sociopathic desire to not weigh positive emotional outcomes any different than negative ones. There is simply much to much there to not use the word.


Sorry if I included you in that group of word Nazis. I reposted my post as a thread all of its own.

[imenja]

19. As I repeatedly made clear

I claim no knowledge of how the term is used in Canada.

My own goal is to dislodge Republican domination of my own government. To do that, we on the American left need to understand who makes up the Republican party and and what the various division lines are among conservatives. George Bush faces a growing, though not widely reported, opposition by traditional conservatives who resent the ballooning deficit and are skeptical of costly interventions abroad. Those traditional conservatives rhetorically distinguish themselves the neo-cons, and they use the term to refer to those who self-identity as neo-conservative. The Christian Right is yet another group that has power within the Republican party. Whatever words leftists choose to use to refer to these people is really not as important as understanding that divisions exist and figuring out ways to turn them to our own advantage. If we imagine they are all a single united front, we cede to them too much power.

[imenja]

16. Wikipedia on neo-conservatism

I provide for your convenience a discussion of neo-conservatism from Wikipedia. You may read or disregard it as you choose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_%28United_States%29

[applegrove]

18. Thank you for the link. I read the first line and agree neocon is a

controversial term. I still say that if you do not want your good name to be included with the hatred causers and the elites then you do not work with such groups.

I am tired of neocons refusing to take responsibility for their actions. They did the deed and got with the GOP and other elites. Deal with it.

[Spazito]

7. Because the real Conservative party was taken over

by the radical right-wing, aka neocon party. The Progressive Conservative party would fit your definition of traditional. The faux Con party considers your current repub/neocon government something to aspire to.

[applegrove]

9. Exactly! n/t

:headbang:

[Jdemsindiana]

4. Nothing to get your panties in a bind over

Yes "neo-cons" in canada what should we be afriad of next "neo-cons"
in space im sorry but this stuff sounds kind of lyndon larouseisque
Canada is a solidly liberal nation and in my humble opinion it will remain so for many for year and thank heavans for that

[applegrove]

8. Our Prime Minister was screaming yesterday when the information

was released. The new 'conservative' party has an agenda to gut national health care and it was layed bare in this document. We don't like Richard Perle or his "norms". It has not worked out so well for the Iraqi people (because in reality, Rumsfield could not control people like in a vacuum). But the neocons in the USA keep insisting the world has to be as they thought it should be one the day they realized that being Trotskyiets was not smart. That day was about 60 years ago.

What year are you 'identifying' neocons as. Me - I'm in 2005.

[Jdemsindiana]

10. canada

ok yes 2005 the reality is Pearle has no power no position in the government this sound like some lyndon larouchedouch consiracy theories that I don't buy it but are becoming increasing popular with some

[applegrove]

12. What conspiracy. It is common history.

they did in the USA (well cheney & rumsfield were not neocon in their first incantations).

Not conspiracy but it is H I S T O R Y

I'm sorry but you are name calling to shut me up. Everyone in Canada knows that Mike Harris is a neocon. Neocons are the only ones who breaks things so that they get to fix them. Very Disraeli of them. And my liberal democracy works great for me. So piss off. You only have 29 posts. I cannot get bogged down with name calling by someone who only has 29 posts. Sorry. You should have gotten on and listened a little before you started with the name calling. Gotta say goodbye and talk to you when you have over 1000 posts.

Bye.

[applegrove]

14. Buddy are you aware that calling someone a conspiracy theorist

when they speak common knowledge is a common trick used by sociopaths? Are you also aware that it can be traumatizing.

I hope you are enjoying yourself.

[Jdemsindiana]

20. the "neo-Con" label

it seems these days that everyone who does not like someone else calls
them a "neo-con" Im sick of the term think of something else to call Harris like "Uber-conservative"

[applegrove]

21. Harris is a neocon. So is Harper. That is the words that will be used

in the election. If the neocons did not want to get nailed for their behavior they should not have behaved the way they have and 'got with' the people they did.

Neocons are the biggest group of babies I have ever experienced in my life. When things go wrong they blame other people that their utopia didn't pan out. It makes us all sick.

So when they want to 'rebrand' after being in power for 5 years and messing up - it is just one more attempt not take responsibility for their own dam actions. These people do not belong on student's council let alone the greatest halls of power.

Neocon it is! And people will automatically hate them because they are neocons. Because people know what neocon means these days.. they did not until the neocons got into power. Now they understand very deeply that it means our worlds will be remade by people with elite agendas and no regard for the effects of death on people and generations. Neocons think we are stupid. They want us to go back to tribal hierarchies to live out sorry little lies kept busy by the darkness and with no say in how the world turns out. Neocons think that the positive feelings we have for mankind should be shutdown and that the negative feelings should be encouraged.