George Orwell’s prescient masterwork 1984 is more or less required reading if one wishes to critically appraise the modern political world. To be sure, it has always been the case that people have exploited war and propaganda for the purposes of seizing and maintaining power, but in an era where mass communication has never been so accessible, …
Category Archive: conservativism
Sep 18 2012
#MittBateman
I have loved some of Brett Easton Ellis’ novels. While he himself is a difficult person to have positive feelings about, his work is excellent and unique. Reading and watching American Psycho has been singularly useful to me in explaining corporate behaviour in the age of #Occupy. And so when I saw this clip of Mitt …
Sep 05 2012
Catching them being honest
One of the pieces of political language that drives me absolutely nuts is the term ‘illegal immigrants’. The system of immigration in both Canada and the United States disincentivizes documented immigration by making it nearly impossible and subject to interference by the capricious whims of the party in power. Looking at it cynically, one could make …
Aug 28 2012
A ten-percent solution, a ten-percent problem
An enduring American meme within the contemporary Republican party*, especially in this latest primary season, is that America is a white country. This one is no longer explicitly vocalized as plain and notorious expressions of racial supremacy have become less acceptable, but in the current political climate the layer of rhetoric that is cloaking the …
Jul 12 2012
Boooooooo!
I will likely never get a chance to ‘boo’ Mitt Romney in person, so I will have to do it on the internet. You may have heard that political windsock Mitt Romney* visited the NAACP yesterday. The audience, obviously predominantly black, booed him when he announced his intention to repeal “Obamacare” should he be elected …
May 14 2012
The paradox of science and conservatism
I expend a great deal of time and effort in the disparagement of conservative ideologies. They oversimplify complex issues to the point where the ‘solutions’ that arise from such ideologies are often more harmful than the problems they purport to ‘fix’. Reality is a multifaceted state of affairs with a lot of moving parts that …
May 08 2012
The worst thing in the world (Tuesday edition)
Trigger warning: graphic violence and extreme racism. Also, Republicans. There was a subtle visual gag in an episode of The Simpsons where a Fox News chopper flies by the camera with a “new” slogan emblazoned on the side: This is more or less how I feel about political conservatism. I don’t believe that racism and political …
May 04 2012
Edwina Rogers: the unanswered questions
Like many of you, I was a bit stunned to learn that the Secular Coalition for America had hired a former Republican operative as their new executive director. Considering the extent to which the Republican party is and has been decidedly anti-secular, the appointment of a party insider to this position struck me as strange. …
May 01 2012
Woodworth? ABORT! ABORT!
This morning I recounted the somewhat bizarre tale of a Republican North Party member of Parliament who tabled a private member’s bill to, in a semi-oblique way, spark debate over access to abortion in Canada. To my sincere surprise, the bill’s author (Stephen Woodworth of Kitchener) was rebuked by all parties in Parliament, including by a …
Apr 19 2012
Cognition, conservatism, and “common sense”
If there is one phrase I would like for people to stop using, at least in approving tones, it’s “common sense”. What I’m sure is meant by the term, when used to praise someone’s rationality, is that someone exercising good “common sense” is making a decision based on good, clear thinking as opposed to convoluted and …
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