Identity Politics and Some Numbers

The No True Scotsman fallacy often appears in arguments about philosophy or religion.  It has some bearing on the change that is about to engulf Alberta.  The fallacy would sound something like this in a conversation about Alberta politics:

You:     No conservative would vote for the Progressive Conservative Party
Me:      Well...last election 58% of Albertans voted PC, and I think they would call themselves conservative
You:    Ah...well no true conservative would vote PC.

It seems that Alberta is on a collision course with a severe case of right wing identity politics. The biggest scandals of the Wildrose campaign, a  homophobic rant, and a weird statement about caucasian power, are clear examples of the right wing's obsession with identity and conformance. However, I'm pretty sure most Albertan's who got on the Danielle Smith bus think it's really about abstract notions of populism or change. Or even just the opportunity presented by an incompetent PC campaign, an organization seemingly in it's last days. Thus, the main question of the 2012 election seems to be, who are the real conservatives? This question wrapped in the grade school rhetoric of a family feud has overshadowed other topics.

But before we can unravel this question of who the real conservatives are, we have to consider the polling numbers.  Historically, conservative parties in Alberta get between 50% to 60% of the popular vote. In 2008 it was 58%, in 2004 57% and in 2001 61%. That range holds fairly true federally as well for Albertan voters.

In the 2012 election polling suggests that the combined conservative vote will be around 70%. The one I last saw reported 41% for Wildrose and 32% for PC, a total of 73%.  So it appears that this election has magically created an addition 10-15% more conservative voters.

It's obvious that a big chunk of Wildrose voters are coming over from the PC Party, but not enough to explain the 73% estimate.  The drop in PC support is probably more precipitous than we know and may be masked by Alberta Liberal party voters moving to the PC party out of fear and loathing.  What is actually left of the PC party will be an interesting question to look into next week.

That  leaves the original question of who are the real conservatives who will take power tomorrow? Well, the Wildrose Party will cruise to victory on a well crafted narrative that they are Alberta's true conservatives. They and their friends in the media, managed to demonize Alison Redford as a "liberal" and I saw the word socialist thrown around for good measure. So the Liberal Party and the Alberta NDP never really got into the game because Redford and the PC Party became the surrogate for everything true Alberta conservatives are supposed to hate.  They appear to have tapped into some powerful voodoo about what a true Albertan is.

I suspect that the 73% conservative vote estimate will snap back to the historical range when the votes are counted.  But that won't be enough to stop the Wildrose identity movement of true and pure conservatism from being elected.  And you know that that identity will be projected onto the national stage as what every damn Albertan bar none believes.   Gird your loins.

I can just hear it now....no true Albertan would tolerate a human rights commission...










Please recommend this post

Ed's Fake Outrage. Or Inherit the Tory Wind

Ed Stelmach stormed out of the Legislature today because of a poorly thought out taunt by Liberal MLA Dave Taylor. Taylor's reference to the Scope's Monkey trial went over the head of Stelmach. Although the taunt was ill-advised it did have its own wit. When Taylor was a talk show host on the local Corus station he routinely talked over the heads of the mostly conservative audience.

Later in today's session, Taylor apologized. Hopefully the Health Minister was watching and learning.

I'm surprised that Stelmach has not yet flown into a rage over Ezra Levant's comment about Lindsey Blackett being an uppity token. Waiting... Waiting...

The hackneyed shenanigans of Question Period aside, I have really deep concerns about creating a new category of human rights that have to do with parental objections to school curriculum. Parents have had this right since the 1960's. Any one my age clearly remembers the first sex ed class where the kids with chin beards and bonnets got up and left.

If I understand the legislation correctly students who are exempted from, for example, evolution theory in biology class, cannot be punished academically. This will create a huge dilemma for the teacher and the curriculum writers. If you follow the strategy of creationists in the United States, their goal is to get public school boards and public post-secondary institutions to put Creationism on a peer to peer level with Biology, Chemistry and Geology. "Parental rights" will no doubt lead to curriculum dilution or injection of pseudo-science. At which point the Government will conveniently shrug its shoulders and say human rights, what can you do.

The whole thing is deeply suspicious, and occurs at a time when Alberta schools need to be better managed, better funded, and when our scientific literacy needs to be raised.

I do not trust the Alberta Government on issues like this. They are poor strategists and never see the coming train wreck. Please recommend this post

Quebec: This is What Calgary Thinks of You

From the Calgary Sun, during the last election:



The Calgary Media had no real legitimate arguments against Stephane Dion's platform in the last election so they ran a never ending series of ad hominem attacks. Most of them were harmless and a few were actually funny.

This cartoon went a few steps further and mocked a man merely because English is his second language and he sounded funny. To me this is an expression of racism and xenophobia and not funny. One wonders why this type of thing plays so well in Calgary, a diverse place with the usual amount of higher education.

Its sort of like kick a red-head day, with large numbers of people who don't have red hair saying, hey its just harmeless fun...

Imagine if you are a recent immigrant to Calgary, probably struggling with English and its weird verbs and illogical idioms and you see something like this. What's the message?

I know that there are many Francophones who dislike Stephane Dion and might find this funny, but remember the Sun is taking aim at you too. If this is how they view someone like Dion imagine what kind of hatred they would throw at a Quebec nationalist.

Oh sorry, I forgot, Mr. Harper has had a hate on for you for some time.

Update: Edit "funny" to "not funny". Please recommend this post

A Vortex of Hypocrisy and Shame

I was really saddened this week when I read about the death of 16 year old Aqsa Parvez, allegedly murdered by her father. I was having a bad week to begin with and events like this don't help any of us. To me it is purely a case of domestic abuse and not an issue of immigration, race or religion. Nonetheless, the blogospere swarmed on the story, and honestly I found a lot of the commentary quite disgusting.

Unfortunately this tragedy is being used as a wedge in the ongoing Islamophobia that our society has steadily descended into since September 11, 2001.

I grew up with a friend whom I'll call B. When we were children our fathers were good friends so we saw each other a lot. I don't know how our fathers met. B's father was a WWII Pow in Hong Kong and had life long health problems because of the starvation and torture he endured. After my father passed away I didn't see B nearly as much. B and myself and our families were remarkably alike. Born in the 60's, white protestants, United Church, Boy Scouts of Canda, parents who moved into the new suburbs of Edmonton to raise their new families, etc.

B's mom and my mom occasionally talked and I'd often hear about what he was up to. After high school he had a deep Christian experience and became active in a large Pentecostal church. Neither he nor his family were particularly religious as far as I can remember. Eventually he became a leader in the Church, married and started a family. As some point I lost track of him as he moved to BC.

Sometime in 2006 B was arrested and charged in suspicion of the murder of his 16 year old daughter. I couldn't have been more shocked and saddened by this news. Talk about the last thing you would expect to find out about someone you knew.

The murder did not make the national news. It made the news in the locality where it occurred and made the news in Edmonton, but only because they were from there. The story quickly fell off the media radar and is difficult to find references on the internet at all. I still don't know if B has been convicted and sentenced yet. Last bit of information was the judge sending him off for a Psych evaluation.

When this crime occurred there was not widespread swarming in the blogosphere. No one made broad sweeping hate filled comments about Pentecostals. No one demanded that B go back where he came from. No one blamed it on the fact that B refused to assimilate into our way of life. (An Orwellian term if there ever was one. ) No one cried moral outrage because Pentecostal leaders did not hold press conferences to denounce the crime.

I'm afraid I find this contrast slightly jarring and not particularly flattering to our attitudes. I grieve for an old friend and his family. And I grieve for another family that I do not know who in addition to all else, has to deal with media glare and tightly focused racism. Please recommend this post

Is your face in order?

Canada's new government: Mouth open. Yelling. Finger pointing. Bad hair.

Canada is a difficult country to manage. Almost everything in Canada is based on some type of accommodation. That's why we have Catholic Schools, RCMP officers wearing Turbans, bilingual courts and Ben Mulroney on television.

One of the main differences between Canadian conservatives and Canadian liberals is that conservatives have no interest in accommodation. They want to throw everything into a blender and have it come out pure white. It's their way or no way.

Hence the current fake debate over women wearing religious facial covering while voting. Oh, the outrage. My preference would be to have Muslim women reveal their faces when voting but if they do not wish to then it is a relatively harmless compromise to show sufficient documentation. It is also, mostly, none of my business. In no way does this compromise take away my rights, any more than the happiness of a gay couple will ruin some straight couple's marriage.

I have voted in many elections in Alberta and I cannot remember ever having a returning office look at my face. It goes more like this: take driver's license, look up address on voter register, cross voter off list. With 10's of thousands of voters passing through a polling station and a horde of returning officers, it seems unlikely that seeing someone's face would have any particular deterrent effect.

Maybe the returning officers should be required to ask you if you are gay, collect stamps, or believe in evolution. Seems like common sense to me.

I pity the first returning officer who turns away a WHITE voter because their hair has been died blue and they've grown a large porn star mustache in the intervening years since they got their driver's license photo updated.

To say that something is required because it is common sense is not an argument and has no weight because common sense is just a euphemism for my opinion. We obviously know by now that Mr. Harper is a bully and not a consensus builder. Intimidating an independent body that is commissioned to oversee election fairness is very very scary scenario. It is no different than Harper's frequent intimidation of Judges. Harper's generalissimo personality will be his undoing.

Remember, it was Stephen Harper who forced the Canadian Taxpayer to spend millions of dollars defending electoral fairness laws when Harper was the head of the National Citizen's Coalition. Who was Harper representing? Sorry, Mr. Transparency would never say.

Where was the outrage when Alberta's Provincial Progressive Conservatives were found to be at the centre of the Ward 10 voting scandal in Calgary's last civic election. In this case, a large number of mail in ballots were forged. Although they got caught, the punishment was ridiculously light, and some of the players were never even brought to trial. And, of course, no finger wagging from Mr. Harper.

Our Constitution guarantees us certain rights, such as the freedom of religion, the freedom of conscience and the right to lawfully participate in elections. Mr. Harper's intimidation cannot change that. Please recommend this post