I like that phrase "the rhetoric of opposition" which I picked up off a TV show the other day. I think it was about the English Civil War but it could also have been about basketball. It's really all we are about these days:
Whether it's correctly called a movement, a backlash or political theater, state declarations of their rights — or in some cases denunciations of federal authority, amounting to the same thing — are on a roll. Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Friday declaring that the federal regulation of firearms is invalid if a weapon is made and used in South Dakota. On Thursday, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, signed a similar bill for that state. The same day, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved a resolution that Oklahomans should be able to vote on a state constitutional amendment allowing them to opt out of the federal health care overhaul...
Here in Canada this is old news. For decades Federal governments themselves have bent over backwards to reduce the role of the national agenda and strip the Federal system of jurisdiction. Heck, for four years we have had a Prime Minister whose government has acted and sounded as if it were the opposition. Just yesterday, the doltish Senator railed against a seat of privileged, my old school, for not being with his particular brand of "we" to a sufficient degree. He is, of course, nuts. But the "we" in that line of thinking both knows better and is under attack and will be forever as that is what it seems to be about now. Given that "conservative" now includes everything from anarchist individualism of a whacked out Randian to a Bay Street Tory banker, it's that gloss of paranoia of the elect that seems to be key to definition of this sort of "we".
If we don't fight for an underdog against the straw man we aren't really trying. Even if we ourselves are that straw man.
Comments
Hans - March 17, 2010 9:26 AM
Mike The Puffster Duffy is an embarrassment to himself, Canadians and PE Islanders. This shame is only made worse by the fact that his whole phony-Rush-Limbaugh schtick is encouraged if not planned by Prime Minster Harper himself.
Alan - March 17, 2010 10:18 AM
What I find most embarrassing is either he was biased in his journalism years being a secret fellow traveler or he is a lapdog now that he is at the public trough. In either case, it speaks volumes about the man's integrity.
Run for office if you feel it is your place to speak of a "we" that does not include all Canadians.
Ben (The Tiger) - March 17, 2010 11:18 AM
I think that the States may be headed for a new nullification crisis...
Alan - March 17, 2010 11:33 AM
Tea Parties might well recall that in the 1770s the enemy was not the People themselves but the tyrant in another country.
Ben (The Tiger) - March 17, 2010 12:02 PM
Parliament of the 1770s wasn't much of a tyrant.
Enough of one to spark a revolution, apparently, but pretty weak tea all the same.
But it's really a moot point. The courts will take care of the nullification issue, and the next two elections (2010, 2012) will settle where the public is on these policy questions.
Alan - March 17, 2010 12:33 PM
I have to say, I like the Dems getting the spine they ought to have had in 2009. Even if you don't agree with them on all things, the party and agenda that got you elected ought to be worth fighting for.
Ben (The Tiger) - March 17, 2010 12:52 PM
Oh, I've thought the whole time that health care reform was the hill to die on for Democrats.
Pass what you think is best, and dare the public and the Republicans to throw you out and repeal it.
That may yet come to pass. :-) But stand up for it, if that's what you really believe in.
Ben (The Tiger) - March 17, 2010 1:12 PM
Remember this, though:
Since Christmas Eve, there has been _nothing_ in the way of the Democrats passing a version of the health care reform bill.
Once the Senate passed its version with sixty votes, there has been no way for the Republicans to block it. They don't have the votes. They can't do anything except speak up and try to sway public opinion.
If the Democrats decide, collectively, that they want to do it, they can pass the Senate bill and it will be signed and done.
Alan - March 17, 2010 2:22 PM
Yes, that's right. There was a good piece on NCPR on the Clinton budget of 1993 that brought the US into surplus through some difficult measures and how one Representative who lost her seat for how she cast her vote but would do it again: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124742354
Isn't that just what anyone gets elected to do?
Ben (The Tiger) - March 17, 2010 3:22 PM
Ah, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.
She's been in the news since last year. (Not just for her son, who is marrying Chelsea Clinton.)
Well, for those last five or ten votes that Pelosi is trying to get, it probably will come to that...
Jay Currie - March 17, 2010 5:43 PM
Dear Lord, you mean they all have to marry Chelsea? Surely one sacrifice is sufficient.