I’m sorry but if any of that were true, where were the Tea Partiers during the last administration? You know, the one that expanded government powers to unprecedented heights and turned a government surplus to record deficits? Call them what they are: Republicans that have been whipped into a frenzy by misinformation and propaganda. They are being used as a tool by the Republican party and the day Republicans take back control of government, suddenly everything will be okay again even though nothing will have changed.
Liberals don’t want to protect people from themselves. They believe one of the roles of government is to protect the weak from the powerful. If government doesn’t do that, what will?
Or you can say that liberals believe it is one of the roles of government to make sure everyone have a fair chance at improving themselves. No one owes you success but I don’t know about you but I would like to live in a society that gives everyone the same shot at trying. Let their talent and luck see where it takes them.
I’d like to point out that, in Alberta at least, it was the conservatives who abolished health care premiums. It is conservatives who want me to have health care without paying for it. I’d have happily paid double if it meant mitigating the problems caused by decades of conservative governance somewhat. It was also conservatives who decided, during a massive windfall due to high oil prices, that it was appropriate to gift every Albertan with a few hundred dollars of financial comfort instead of, you know, using it to run the province.
I think this bears repeating. The Tea Party are a bunch of ignorant, selfish, angry at the world morons. They don’t want nanny state taking care of anyone else, when it should be taking care of them. Morons and hypocrites.
No. You admit hating approximately 50% of the country, for no reason other than they disagree with you on political matters. You indulge in outrageous hyperbole, perpetuate stereotypes, and otherwise use the same sort of rhetoric Fred Phelps and his ilk do, you just target a different segment of the population. You’re a bigot and a hypocrite.
The Tea Partiers were around. Why do you think Bush only had a 34% approval rating? He had the religious right and a few die-hard social conservatives on his side, and that’s about it. Believe me - there was a lot of grumbling about Bush on the right, especially regarding his spending.
So… Bans on trans-fats in New York and smoking bans? Protecting the weak from the powerful? Campus speech codes? Who’s the powerful being protected there? And are you really suggesting that the public labor unions represent ‘the weak’? Who is the powerful they are protecting you from?
You might want to have a look at what liberal policies do in practice, not just in theory. It’s the powerful who benefit. Goldman Sachs and BP have the ear of legislators, and bend regulation to their benefit, AGAINST the ‘weak’.
So you would oppose government policies that give extra benefit to the middle class, as opposed to just helping the poor? Or do you think a professional making $50,000 per year still needs ‘help’ from the government to have a fair chance at improving himself? Because Democratic policy today has gone far past helping the poor and downtrodden - it’s really more about increasing entitlements for people who are already doing just fine.
That would be the Stelmach government, which isn’t particularly conservative, and which is now undergoing a major challenge from the right by Albertans unhappy with it. The Wildrose Party would win an election in Alberta if it were held today. It would win in a landslide, in fact. The Stelmach government is also responsible for the idiotic 2 billion dollar carbon capture project. Not particularly conservative.
Using it to run the province? At a time when we were running record surpluses and were putting money in the Heritage trust fund, and after we had already gone through several years of double-digit increases in government spending? Thank God the government gave the people’s own money back instead of spending it - or we’d have a much bigger government today and would have been in even more trouble when the oil revenues plummeted.
But this is typical of the left - they think that the money belongs to the government, and not the people. Alberta gets a windfall? Hey, that’s the government’s money. It should just spend it and grow bigger. Because Lord knows, it doesn’t belong to the people of Alberta. And if we give them their own money, it’s a ‘gift’, because they don’t really have a right to it, you know.
And as always, to leftists any word associated with that side of the aisle ukltimately means “good” to them. And so, anything which they ever do not like is automatically “conservative” or “right-wing” or “reactionary.” I suppose it must be convenient to have such a short memory.
Eliminating the Alberta Health Care premium was actually done at the behest of the left in Alberta. Alberta Health Care was complained about as a ‘regressive’ tax because it was the same for everyone. It was the equivalent of cutting unemployment insurance taxes or FICA taxes (i.e. benefitting mostly low-income people).
It’s strange that someone on the left would use that as a criticism of the Stelmach government.
So if you favour a handout it’s your just deserts and God’s doing, but if I favour it (which I didn’t) I’m expecting the government to support me (which I don’t). Also, Stelmach takes sugar on his porridge. Got it. But if a consequence of my not being driven around in an ambulance and bleeding to death while the driver looks for an ER that can fit me in right fucking now is listening to you complain about some undefined but apparently frightening Big Government, well, I can buy earplugs.
Sorry for the lack of quotes, the nested quotes became a nightmare but let me just say that I never claimed everything that was done in the name of “liberalism” was right or done well. We are talking about world views here and I believe mine is better than, presumably, yours.
Re: the tea party. You are equating grumbling to a telephone pollster with the craziness we have now?
