Lies the Harper Haters Tell, Part 5

In previous episodes of the Nexus fact check into the Shit Harper Did website, we uncovered dishonest claims about science funding, the G20 summit, and torture in Afghanistan. We've also explored some poorly-supported appeals to religious bigotry.

But in order to conduct the most recent ShitHarperDid fact check, we have to first set the table. To do that, we pay a visit to our old friend Audrey of Enormous Thriving Plants.

Joining a few other far-left bloggers in creeping the facebook page of Conservative Candidate Wally Daudrich, Audrey notes that he identifies Red Dawn as one of his favourite movies, the Tea Party as one of his interests, and Fox News as his favourite media outlet.

Yet there's greater hilarity afoot than simply the creeping of Daudrich's Facebook page. It has to do with a ShitHarperDid claim about water on aboriginal reserves:

Frankly, even one aboriginal community in Canada without safe drinking water is one too many. But the purpose of this claim is clearly to suggest that Harper has done nothing to fix this problem. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the government of Canada spent $735.6 million between 2008-10 dealing with this very problem. The results speak for themselves. While there were 49 First Nations communities under water advisories in March 2010 -- still 49 too many -- this number is down from 193 in 2006.

That's a 75% reduction in Aboriginal communities with high-risk drinking water systems since 2006. Which kind of makes one wonder about what the Liberal Party was doing during their 13 years in power.

Or what Niki Ashton, the NDP MP for Churchill has been doing. From Daudrich's Facebook page:

While the Harper government was budgeting funds to tackle the water problems in Garden Hill, Manitoba and elsewhere, NDP MPs like Niki Ahston were voting against the funding bills.

Facts like this don't even seem to phase the people behind the ShitHarperDid website. They promote the Liberal Party -- who allowed water safety in First Nations communities to deteriorate -- and the NDP -- whose MPs have voted against funding projects to fix the problem -- as better options than the Conservatives, who have made tremendous progress in fixing the problem.

It's just another lie the Harper haters tell.

Oh, My. That's a Devestating Intellectual Argument You've Made There

Clearly following up with certain lunatics who think temper tantrums are a credible alternative to defend one's arguments, it seems that Audrey of ETP apparently wants to muse about the sizes of "appendages":

Apparently, Audrey is uncomfortable enough with the size of her readers and the number and quality of ideas she can offer them (quantity -- very few; quality -- very poor). So her solution is to spread innuendo about anyone who would point this out to her.

One would say "fair enough".

But then one stops to think: doesn't something like this actually undermine the purpose of Audrey's blog. Let your not-so-humble scribe explain it to you.

The purpose of Enormous Thriving Plants -- which, judng from its content, is really just a rip off of the also-dismal Canadian Cynic and Galloping Beaver blogs -- is to attempt to demonstrate that so-called "progressives" are intellectually superior to conservatives.

Audrey doesn't try to accomplish this by attempting to produce a superior package of ideas, or even attempt to demonstrate the superiority of her own ideas. Rather, Audrey attempts to accomplish this by denigrating the ideas of conservatives -- comically, while refusing to even familiarize herself with them (Jonah Goldberg, anyone?).

Yet Audrey has a tendency to pretend that the arguments offered on her blog are intellectually devastating -- even when she tries to read natural selection out of evolutionary theory.

In reality, what Audrey does is attempt to single out fringe elements of conservative thought and treat them as representative of a whole. When she attempts to address the ideas of more mainstream conservatives, she uses a different tactic: deliberately mis-representing their ideas or arguments.

After suffering a long streak of defeats, Audrey's response was to join a blogging embargo against your so-superior-to-twits-like-Audrey-that-there's-no-sense-in-even-pretending-otherwise scribe.

Which, in itself, was an awfully devastating argument.

Apparently, to those on the far side of the blogging iron curtain -- Audrey included -- running away from those who have defeated them is how they ultimately prove they're smarter.

Go figure.

And now Audrey has clearly fallen even further than that. Slander and innuendo may bring a fickle smile to the face of the intellectually cowardly, but your so-very-intellectually-superior-to-Audrey scribe would remind her that, for what she so desperately craves, slander and innuendo won't get it done.

What Audrey needs is a devastating intellectual argument. And considering that she can't even get the difference between astronomy and astrology right, it's pretty clear that's just never going to emerge.

That's why it's time to close the books on Audrey once and for all.

The poor dear just can't keep up. It's time to let her wallow in her intellectual impotency without the attentions provided by the Nexus.

But fear not, Audrey. We'll always have evolutionary theory. And your demonstrated ignorance of it.

Teach the Controversy!

In the most recept dispatch from the far side of the Blogging Iron Curtain, Chickenwanker Audrey of ETP seems to think that AC Grayling gives a fantastic dressing-down of the notion of "teaching the controversy" in class rooms.

Unfortunately for Audrey, Grayling gives a fantastic dressing-down of her, too.

The fun begins at approximately the 0:35 mark of the video, when Grayling says "let's broaden the picture a little bit here and ask whether this means that if you were teaching astronomy in school you should also teach astrology."

This becomes particularly amusing when one considers that Audrey herself is rather confused over the differences between astronomical and astrological phenomenon:

Simply put:

The Zodiac: astrological phenomenon (as it were).
Jovian gravity well: astronomical phenomenon. Not astrology.

Of course, there are definite limits to which controversies should be taught in classrooms and which ones shouldn't. Cases of verifiable scientific fact -- such as evolution -- don't fall under this category.

Other cases -- such as climate change -- fall under the category of controversies that need to be taught, as any overwhelming scientific consensus that has emerged on the topic has proven to be entirely artificial.

Another "controversy" which should not be taught in classrooms is whether or not adaptation and natural selection are part of evolutionary theory. Despite certain peoples' efforts to try to write natural selection out of evolutionary theory.

Timestamps!

More untintentional hilarity, as only a Chickenwanker can provide it:

Apparently, timestamps make all the difference in the world.

Particularly when Audrey has so much business lecturing anyone about that.

Yeah, That Was Just a Little Early

Being a Chickenwanker sometimes means that you just don't have to know what day of the week it is, apparently.

Nor does it mean that you have to be, by any means, original. Could "Saturday Sarah" be a facetious off-take of Saturday Cinema?

You be the judge.

Elitism, As It Were

In an amusing dispatch from the far side of the Blogging Iron Curtain that's actually been festering for a few days, Enormous Thriving Plants' Audrey wants to offer a lecture on elitism:

Envoking Plato in order to critique conservative attitudes toward elitism actually reveals a rather dark element to Audrey's attitude toward the same topic.

Plato argued that direct democracy would facilitate tyranny in a case where the majority could not recognize an unjust tyrant, or simply didn't care. He argued that direct democracy in a society where a majority were themselves criminals would produce a government that is similarly corrupt, and would lead the country in the wrong direction.

Plato's thoughts on elitism were fundamentally based on the notion that the people may not know what is best for them, and so needed people with the wisdom to make good judgements on their behalf.

While those with a cynical attitude toward democracy may hold deep appreciation for Plato's thoughts on the matter, many others would likely prefer Socrates, and prefer the notion that a critically-thinking citizenry, taught to deliberate on and question those who aspire to leadership can hold the would-be elites accountable by requiring them to demonstrate their wisdom.

This would include questioning and challenging the wisdom of the elite Audrey seems to yearn for, and requiring them to prove they are qualified to lead "John Q Public".

This is, of course, all before one even addresses the approach individuals like Audrey and the demented narcissists she imitates adopt toward elitism.

From reading Enormous Thriving Plants, it becomes clear that Audrey considers herself part of the group that she believes should be considered the elite. Yet, just as Plato and Socrates both warned, her path to that place amongst the elite is not one of merit earned on the basis of the strength of her ideas.

Rather, reading ETP, it becomes clear that Audrey doesn't have any.

Resultingly, she's content to simply attack the ideas of others. The logical implication of this is that Audrey believes that by discrediting others, she earns credit for herself.

Audrey and the lunatic she emulates both demonstrate that there is a dark side to the philosophy of Socrates: one that emerges when Socratic methods are turned toward the ends of sophism. Particularly, a vicious brand of sophism that reocgnizes no limits to what it can do to anyone it deems to be an enemy.

But they've forgotten the most important lesson posed by history. Simply discrediting others isn't enough. At a certain point, what emerges amidst that questioning of others needs to be a package of ideas fit to serve as an alternative to the ideas one seeks to challenge or, more fickly, single-mindedly discredit.

If one can't produce any ideas as the basis of their purported wisdom, they aren't fit to be considered part of any elite. In a healthy democracy, citizens will be able to recognize that.

Perhaps that's what Audrey fears the most: a healthy democracy. It's very clear she holds the notion itself in disdain.

Let's Discuss "Conclusive Evidence", Shall We?

This author actually intends to let Enormous Thriving Plants proprietor Audrey II's decision to flee debate go with a minimum of further commentary.

But if there's one thing this author is not prepared to do, it's allow Audrey to reinvent old arguments she lost to pretend that she won.

First, one should peruse this particular thread wherein Audrey can pick out nothing in this video that demonstrates that a Tea Party protester intentionally spit on congressman Emanuel Cleaver.

It allegedly takes place at 0:13 of the video.

-Here's a video still from the video in question:

The accused can clearly be seen, hands cupped over his mouth, shouting vociferously at Cleaver as he passes by. From Cleaver's reaction it's clear that something has happened -- as Andy Ostray points out -- from Cleaver's word, he has been spit upon, or as Cleaver subsequently phrased it, the protester in question allowed his saliva to hit Cleaver's face.

The saliva on Cleaver's face should not be in question. Andrew Breitbart offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could produce not video evidence of this spit, as Crooks and Liars and the Huffington Post have claimed, but for hard video evidence that the protesters hurled racial epithets at the congressmen:

"I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point."

Not only have they failed to produce hard video evidence of this -- the actual subject of the offer -- but they've also failed to produce conclusive evidence that a tea party protester intentionally spit on Cleaver.

Yet Audrey continues to pretend that the evidence conclusively shows intent -- despite that she can't point to a single instant from that video that would support this claim.

So perhaps Audrey simply doesn't know what conclusive evidence is. So, one supposes, she'll simply have to be shown some.

Consider a more recent episode in which supporters of Senator Harry Reid (he of the "negro dialect" remark) were videotaped throwing eggs at a bus carrying protesters to a Tea Party protest against Reid. Another counter-protester also threatened Breitbart.

The video clearly shows eggs striking the bus, coming from the direction of the pro-Reid counter-protesters.

While that's far from 100% conclusive, they did manage to produce a photo of one of the egg-throwers midway through his throwing motion:

(It's pretty clear the counter-protester in question throws like a girl.)

So, let's compare:

We have a video of a tea party protester shouting at Congressman Emanuel Cleaver through cupped hands -- shouting before, during, and after the actual spittle even by Cleaver's own account.

On the other hand, we have video of pro-Harry Reid counter-protesters throwing eggs at a bus carring Tea Party protesters, and a photograph of one of them with an egg in the palm of his hand.

One of these things is not like the other. One of these examples is clearly conclusive, and the other is not.

It would be amusing to hear Audrey insist that the counter-protesters in question were "accidentally" throwing the eggs. Unlike Audrey's Ostroy-esque insistence that the notion that Cleaver was sprayed with saliva mid-bellow is ridiculous (an argument that relies on viewing the events in question through a conspiratorial mental lens), that actually would be ridiculous.

It's become clear that it's Audrey, not Andrew Breitbart, who is constructing an alternate reality. It's clear that Audrey subscribes to a "truthi-alty" -- an intellectually selfish conception of the world in which she's not only entitled to her own opinion, but entitled to her own reality.

No one should expect Audrey to acknowledge any of this. After all, she made the decision to run away from debate for a reason.

Hmmmm. Looks Like Someone Didn't Get That Memo...

Over at the home of the newest Chickenwanker, Audrey passes off something that seems suspiciously like an ad hominem attack on an American blogger:

Of course, Audrey insists that it wasn't an ad hominem attack...

(What a relief.)

Unfortunately for Audrey, somebody didn't get the memo:

Because that's just how they roll at ETP.

Sometimes, They're Just Too Stupid To Keep Their Mouths Shut

One almost has to feel sorry for Audrey of Enormous Thriving Plants. She's been having a particularly rough time of things lately. It seems that she can't open her mouth without losing an argument.

Debates with Audrey at her blog have typically followed a very predictable format: Audrey attempts to argue on the basis either of minutiae or of innuendo, cannot support her argument, and eventually attracts the aid of her loyal sidekick Sparky.

After the full extent to which Audrey and Sparky have lost any particular debate becomes clear, the two of them wait until their erstwhile opponent leaves to begin a commiseration process in which the two of them try to convince each other that they didn't lose the argument -- and, unshockingly, they often manage to succeed.

But it seems that the bitterness of defeat has begun to seep indelibly into Audrey's consciousness, as she's made a point of extending that commiseration process into her regular blogposts -- catastrophically reducing the quality of what was already one of the lowest-quality blogs on the internet in the first place.

But one way or the other, Audrey's going to have to learn what her place is in the Canadian blogosphere.

When she starts trying to re-imagine the debates she's lost as if she actually won them, something has to give.

In this particular case it's Audrey's ill-conceived and ill-fated attempt to nitpick on the topic of who, precisely, selects the Prime Minister of Canada.

Audrey insists on adopting a constitutionally minimalist argument that insists that the Governor General, and the Governor General alone, selects the Prime Minister and government.

Yet decades of constitutional convention in Canada make it clear that things are actually rather different: Canadians elect their government, even if indirectly through the process of electing MPs.

Audrey has repeatedly insisted that contemporary political science would not reflect that particular view. Unfortunately for Audrey, she evidently failed to account for the writings of Samuel Bottomley. On page 135 of Politics in North America, Bottomley writes the following:

Certainly, one can expect Audrey to attempt to argue that selection does not necessarily infer election. In order to make that argument, Audrey will willfully overlook any portion of Bottomley's words that do not fit her particular argument -- such as that Bottomley notes that Canadians select the Prime Minister and government through an election, and according to its results.

Audrey would be correct to note that the Constitution doesn't implicitly specify that whichever party wins a plurality is to be designated the governing party in the absence of a workable coalition.

If the Constitution were interpeted purely on its written form, there would actually be no Prime Minister, as the Constitution does not make any direct allusion to that particular office.

The Prime Minister, like the precepts of responsible government that Audrey rests her argument on, is actually a matter of constitutional convention:

The precedents that account for portions of Canada's informal Constitution also include that established during the King/Byng affair, which placed further constraints on the amount of discretion the Governor General may exercise when designating a government, either after an election or following the resignation of the Prime Minister.

In fact, it can easily be argued that the precedent set during the King/Byng affair is that the selection of any government of Canada, be it a majority government, minority government, or coalition government, should reflect the result of an election, and that only the Canadian people may institute a change in government -- however indirectly -- through said electoral processes.

Which brings one down to the matter of the processes themselves.

In the end, it may well be Audrey's own progressive cohorts who put the lie to Audrey's past insistence that Canadians may only vote for a Prime Minister if the office of Prime Minister appears on a ballot.

During the 2008 election, a group of Canadian voters opposed to another Conservative government organized a vote-swapping scheme over Facebook. The premise of the group was very simple: they would attempt to unseat the government of Stephen Harper by swapping votes between Liberal, Green and NDP candidates in various swing ridings.

In the end, they may have swung a few seats away from the Tories, but they failed in their goal of preventing another Harper government. But the important detail is that these individuals were voting against Stephen Harper as Prime Minister -- an argument later resurrected during the coalition crisis of late 2008-early 2009 when they claimed that 62% of Canadians had allegedly voted against Harper.

These efforts reflected an interesting character of the Canadian electoral system -- it is actually rather complex, allowing Canadian citizens to weigh numerous options with their vote, and cast it with any number of purposes in mind.

Just as Canadians can deliberate on their options and vote against a particular candidate for Prime Minister, Canadians can also weigh their options and vote in favour of a Prime Ministerial candidate. Sometimes such a decision does not necessarily entail voting for the preferred candidate's party (think of Liberal voters trying to swing seats away from the Conservatives to, perhaps, the NDP, allowing the Grits to come up the middle and form a minority government).

Canada's complex electoral system -- which, in its own way, reflects its complex constitution -- very much allows voters to make these kinds of decisions, and rationalize them in nearly any way they choose.

Individuals like Audrey lack the imagination to perceive this, and so simply insist that it cannot be the case. Whether this lacking is willful -- adopted in a moment when they think they can use the plausibile deniability of such possibilities to cheaply pursue hollow victories -- or not is a matter that will remain known to such individuals alone.

Oddly enough, this is an argument that Audrey actually lost. Yet her continual pouting over her past defeats has spurned her to keep dredging it into the present.

But individuals like Audrey share one common and serious handicap -- they are too stupid to keep their mouths shut. Perhaps Audrey believes that continually preening to her readers will somehow erase her past defeats. Unfortunately for her, one can already see that it hasn't.

Adventures in Alternate Reality

One has to take a certain amount of amusement at Enormous Thriving Plants' Audrey. Ever the masochist, she just keeps crawling back for more punishment.

In a recent installment at her blog, Audrey waxes triumphally over a video of Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver being spit on by a Tea Party protester.

Of course, the problem for Audrey is that the video in question is far from conclusive. Moreover, Huffington Post blogger Andy Ostroy admits it:

"I admit, it's pretty hard to tell if the enraged Tea Bagger intentionally spit on the Congressman."

With that admission, Ostroy undid what a score of pundits, demagogues and left-wing propagandists have worked so hard to construct: the image of a white Tea Party protester spitting on a black Congressman.

The problem being, of course, that the image doesn't hold up to so much of an ounce of skepticism.

For one thing, as one can clearly see in the video, no less than two black Congressmen pass by the protester in question before Emanuel Cleaver turns away in evident disgust. He angrily turns to face the alleged culprit, who has been bellowing at each of the men who passes.

If Cleaver had been spit upon intentionally because he's black or because he's a Democrat, one would wonder what possessed the alleged culprit to pass up the other two potential targets.

At intervals, he can even be seen drawing deeply for breath. He is, after all, an old man.

Of course, Ostroy is clearly intent to milk the incident for all its worth, no matter how inconclusive the evidence:

"some highly suspect circumstantial evidence clearly exists: (1) Cleaver obviously is either a great physical actor or some "spit-like" fluid definitely hit him in the face as he passed the protester, causing his entire body to jerk away from the accused; (2) the angry, visceral reaction from Cleaver to the protester clearly signals that something very bad had just happened. Something beyond simple partisan, anti-reform shouting; (3) notice how the protester's hands are strategically cupped over his mouth, which would conveniently conceal the act of spitting."

Right. He couldn't possibly be cupping his hands over his mouth because he's screaming very loudly.

Of course, Ostroy seems to think he has the answer to that, too:

"Keep in mind that both men at this point are perhaps two feet away from each other, which would mean the rabid protester's vein-popping shouting at Cleaver would easily be heard sans hand-cupping, and that such distance might also make the "spray it" theory a bit of a stretch;"

The volume of the crowd can clearly be heard in the video in question. And as for why the alleged culprit would be yelling so loudly with the congressmen passing so closely by, one is afraid that there's a simple explanation for that, as well:

The congressmen clearly aren't listening. It's only natural that this individual would do whatever is necessary to render himself unignorable. That requires volume.

So when one considers precisely how evident it is that the whitewash being offered by these individuals just doesn't hold up under scrutiny -- visual or logical -- one has to wonder just why individuals like Audrey and Ostroy want this so badly:

"Why can't Republicans then, out of simple human decency, just acknowledge and condemn this unacceptable behavior? They can't. It's simply not in their DNA."

Oh, right. Because Republicans are mean. And indecent. And... whatever.

Apparently the idea that the Republican Party won't denounce the conduct because there's nothing there worthy of a national public denounciation just doesn't compute.

The amount of deception being employed in this incident -- with a clear "say it, don't spray it" scenario being misrepresented as intentional spitting -- makes it clear that individuals like Audrey and Ostroy are actually in a rush to gift credibility to Michelle Malkin.

Audrey accuses Andrew Breitbart of living in an "alternate reality". Yet the only sense of reality that seems to differ from our own is the one in which the video in question is treated as conclusive -- even Andy Ostroy admits it.

But that's one of Audrey's defining characteristics: when reality doesn't suit her argument, she simply attempts to re-define reality.

Call it equal parts being a deluded ideologue and making the mistake of treating the Huffington Post as a serious news outlet:

Strawman Argument Epic Fail

Enormous Thriving Plants' Audrey apparently wants to mock Jill Stanek for making a "potential people" argument that Audrey doesn't find compelling.

Unfortunately for Audrey, there's just one problem:

Yep. That's Audrey, who loves to accuse her opponents of making strawman arguments, but indulges herself in them at every opportunity she gets.

Enormous Thriving Plants: dishonestly blogging about February 9's news today.

Self-Awareness, as the Lunatics Do It

Big talk from someone who's clearly avoiding a very painful inner journey.

Politcal Studies Epic Fail

When one is so intent to building a blogging career (however far as one would consider blogging a "career") on nitpicking, it's only inevitable that this practice is going to get one burned.

Especially when one isn't terribly bright.

Such is the case for Audrey of Enormous Thriving Plants, whose efforts at nit-picking recently resulted in what is going to be a very humilating experience for her.

It isn't her first tragic experience trying to argue over Canadian political science.

In an earlier attempt at nitpicking, Audrey objected to the notion that Canadians vote for their Prime Minister. Instead, Audrey decided to argue the matter from the perspective of a 19th century-era political theory that allowed Canadians to elect Members of Parliament, then the Governor General to select the Prime Minister according to their unencumbered judgement.

Audrey's argument overlooked more than a century of Constitutional convention which has clearly impressed upon the office of the Governor General that whichever party wins a plurality in an election is expected to be designated as the government.

(A clear exception was the King-Byng affair, wherein William Lyon MacKenzie King, having failed to win such a plurality, approached the Governor General before a government was appointed with a temporarily-workable coalition with the Progressive Party. It helped that Mackenzie King declined to resign as Prime Minister following the election.)

Audrey failed to recognize the statement as one that was simultaneously positive -- reflecting the effect that an individual's vote has on the selection of the government through their effect on the formation of Parliamentary caucus -- and also normative -- reflecting the understanding Canadians have about this process when they cast their vote.

Audrey failed to recognize that, however indirectly, Canadians do get to elect their Prime Minister -- unless one is living in the 19th century.

Recent attempts at nitpicking, however, have revealed that Audrey very much is living in the 19th century -- although living in it as if she knows nothing about what actually happened at that time.

Audrey's ill-conceived attempt at nitpicking was based on a number of assertions:

-That Canada is not formally a confederacy.
-That Canada is a decentralized constitutional monarchy.

One of these statements is actually true in the sense that Audrey asserts.

Oddly enough, it's the one concerning an argument that was never in place. (A search of the post in question for the word "confederacy" yields interesting results.)

Audrey would, of course, be correct to suggest that Canada is a Constitutional Monarchy. She is actually correct to state that Canada is highly decentralized.

However, Audrey's argument fails on a crucial point: in 1867 the provinces that joined to form the Dominion of Canada -- Eastern Canada (Quebec), Western Canada (Ontario), New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island -- were colonies of an entity that no longer exists. Moreover, the federal state that was established was also a colony.

But this is no longer the case.

The British Empire has long been dismantled. Canada attained full sovereignty over a period of 115 years. Among the key milestones were the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the Citizenship Act (1946), and the re-patriation of the Constitution in 1982.

If Canadian Confederation -- the agreement under which the country was established -- were dissolved, sovereignty could not be retained by a federal government that would cease to exist. Furthermore, there is no British Empire to recover sovereignty that was conclusively ceded in 1982.

The only political entities to which full sovereignty could revert under such conditions is to each province. (The Territories are a much more arguable point.)

As a result, a Canadian state that is not a Confederacy by nature of its creation has effectively become a Confederacy by nature of its function, and as a consequence of historical circumstance.

Unless, of course, Audrey would like to argue that the federal government has the power to unilaterally re-draw the boundaries of each province and force them to unify with a foreign country.

Which would make the idea of Audrey as Intergovernmental Affairs Minister an intriguing prospect:

"Guess what, provinces? You're our bitches. That's right."

ETP's Audrey: A Permanent Epic Fail

There's something about the arrogance of fools that makes them oddly compelling to watch. Kind of like an inept clown. One wonders how such folks are going to fuck themselves up next.

An interesting case in point is Audrey II, the proprietor of Enormous Thriving Plants -- or, as Maria Nunes calls her, "jungle lady".

People like Audrey are often eager to dress their shenanigans up in the garb of arrogance, and like to pretend that will cover up their general indeptitude. Take, for example, an edit to a recent ill-conceived jab from those parts, wherein Audrey basically argues that she should be able to lose an argument and still be able to nitpick at other people.

But if Audrey's inability to win an argument over the difference between political theory and political reality is amusing, one only needs to remember that it's basically part of an ongoing campaign at ETP, wherein she thinks she can nitpick and slime her way to prominence in Canada's left-wing blogosphere.

Take, for example, the "Golden Puddle awards", wherein Audrey attempted to smear any conservative blogger who so much as spoke of the Christmas Day terror attempt.

Not only was the response to Audrey's bit extremely tepid, but it turned out that her hero fundamentally disagreed with her on this topic.

Simply put, Audrey's award sent the message that she didn't think the Christmas Day terror attempt was a big deal in its own regard -- and that she could mock those who simply spoke about the attacks right along with those who responded to it by proprosing reactionary measures.

Meanwhile, her idol -- the individual whom she so pathetically wishes to emulate -- understood that the attack itself was actually a very serious matter, and the only thing that saved the lives of those aboard that Detroit-bound airliner was the terrorist's own ineptitude.

In short, Audrey was also wrong about the Christmas Day terror attack, and still thought she should be able to mock other people for it.

("Soft on terror" doesn't at all seem like an unfair label to apply in this particular case.)

Frankly, these are the kinds of things that Audrey seems to fail to comprehend on an ongoing basis. She fails to understand that her pig-headed demands that Canadians adhere to 19th century political theory (despite the passing from an era of aristocratic government to an era of democratic government) suggests that she her nostalgia for political antiquity extends far beyond the function of the Governor General in Canadian politics. Just like she fails to understand that her treatment of a terror attack averted only by the terrorist's incompetence suggests that she doesn't take terrorism seriously.

(Some would say "suggests". Others would say "makes it obvious".)

It must be a hard reality to wake up one day and realize one's entire blog should be set to the tune of "yakity sax". But when one aspires to be nothing more than another ideological clown, one shouldn't be shocked to find out that they've succeeded.

Alas, The Arrogance of Fools

"Progressive" pushes outdated concept of Canadian politics

In yet another ill-conceived jab at anyone who dares disagree with her, Enormous Thriving Plants proprietor Audrey II evidently wishes to take issue with the ideas expressed in a not-so-recent video published here at the Nexus.

(Ironically, her true quarrel is with John Ibbitson, but we'll overlook that for the moment.)

Audrey apparently thinks it's amusing to suggest that Canadians vote for their Prime Minister, despite the fact that the realities of Canadian politics -- even if not the theory -- demonstrate it to be the case.

Audrey has a tendency to appeal to the theory of Responsible Government -- the notion that, in Canada, the Governor General, and not the people, decides who the government shall be. After an election, the Governor General invites a Member of Parliament to become Prime Minister, and form a government that can hold Parliament's confidence.

As it appears on paper, this is precisely how Canadian politics is said to function. But unfortunately for Audrey, it isn't the way Canadian politics has functioned in real life.

It's amazing that Audrey would evidently appeal to Canadian political theory as it appears on paper, and so blatantly ignore how it has actually worked in real life. In order to reveal how this is the case, one only requires a perfunctory examination of Canadian history. Moreover, one simply needs to ask themselves this question:

Of all the people who have served as Canadian Prime Minister, how many of them were not the leader of a political party?

The answer, as it turns out, is zero.

Certainly, Audrey could argue that, under the concept of responsible government, as it appears on paper, the Governor General could invite anyone he or she wished to become Prime Minister and lead the government of Canada -- even an Independent MP. Under the theoretical concept of responsible government, as it appears on paper, all that would be necessary is that this individual and their cabinet be able to maintain the confidence of Parliament.

Unfortunately for Audrey, the Parliament of Canada doesn't merely exist on paper. It has to exist and function in a place the rest of us like to call "the real world", and as it turns out, this is a place that Audrey is fundamentally unfamiliar with.

It's the functioning of Parliament and government within "the real world" that separates the realities of Canadian politics from its theoretical foundation, and Audrey's fantasies from that reality.

Seeing as how the long-standing tradition of Canadian politics has been for the Governor General to invite the party that wins a plurality of seats to form the government -- a tradition violated only once, and only briefly, in 1925, after then-Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie King and Progressive Party leader Robert Forke formed a coalition government immediately after the general election, and thus before then-Governor General Lord Bing had chosen Canada's Prime Minister -- Audrey has willfully overlooked a basic functional truth of Canada's political system.

Canadians vote for their Prime Minister through the parties they vote for. The marketplace-styled mode of Canadian politics -- especially in the modern era, in which the news media tends to direct voters' attention toward party leaders and a small band of elite personalities within each party -- drives Canadian voters toward choosing parties over local candidates.

In most cases, it requires a major misstep or political scandal for a local candidate to attract any significant national media attention. Except to the politically engaged, local candidates tend to toil in anonymity.

In many cases in Canada, most Canadians could not name any of their local candidates on the day before an election day, although they would be able to identify the party -- and party leader -- they intended to vote in favour of. This shouldn't be mistaken for an affirmative comment on the virtue of this state of affairs -- just a statement of reality.

In other words, most Canadians do not vote with their local candidates in mind. They vote with party brand identity and leadership in mind.

Canadians very much do vote for Prime Minister -- they merely do so indirectly.

Audrey appeals to long-outdated notions of Canadian politics in order to avoid admitting that:

1. As Canadians have nurtured a long tradition of plurality-winning parties forming the government, and

2. As Canadians tend to cast their votes with party brand identity and leadership in mind, and

3. As only party leaders are invited to become Prime Minister and form the government in Canada, therefore:

Canadians vote for their Prime Minister, even if indirectly. And thus the selection process for party leadership -- which John Ibbitson offers a brilliant critique of in Open and Shut -- decides who the candidates for Prime Minister will be.

It's a simple three-step self-indulgent failure in pragmatic political cognition that has led Audrey into a land of folly into which virtually any anti-democratic attitude can be justified -- including Stephane Dion's ill-fated Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois coalition.

It's rather amusing that a so-called "progressive" wants to push a self-serving conceptualization of "responsible government" that not only appeals to long-outdated elements of the Canadian system, but also appeals to a manner in which the Canadian political system has not functioned, and likely never could function.

In being a "progressive", Audrey has evidently forgotten about the key functional word of that concept: notably, "progress".

Moreover, it's actually extremely amusing that Audrey would dare bandy about the very notion of "responsible government", considering what her idea of responsible is:

In Audrey's fantasy world, the Governor General could appoint anyone they personally wished as Prime Minister, regardless of how Canadians voted, or the expectations of Canadian citizens. There is nothing responsible about this, just like there is nothing responsible about mortgaging the Canadian government to a separatist party -- all while concealing the terms of the deal in question from the Canadian public.

In the real world, we have things we call "elections", and Canadians expect Canada's political parties -- not to mention the Governor General -- to respect them. If one needs proof of this, one needs look no further than the public response to Dion's coalition proposal.

A poll taken after Dion's proposal indicated that only 37% of Canadians favoured allowing that coalition to take power immediately. 32% of Canadians preferred holding a federal election, while 24% of Canadians were uncertain.

In other words, whatever Canadians wanted moving forward from the then-potential defeat of the Conservative government, the majority of Canadians did not want the coalition.

When one considers the argument that 63% of Canadians had voted for the Liberals, NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Green Party combined, it points to what should amount, for Audrey, to be a very startling reality: just short of half of the Canadians who voted for those three parties wouldn't support a coalition hastily implemented after a defeat of the sitting government.

In other words, Canadians recognized that the election had been contested, that the Conservative Party had won, that the Conservative Party formed the government of Canada, and expected that if that government were defeated, they would have the opportunity to vote on who will form the government -- again, even if indirectly -- in a new election.

Naturally, this notion offends Audrey's nostalgia for the pure concept of a political system formulated in the 19th century -- when women and non-property owning men couldn't vote, and Canada was still a Dominion of the British Empire. Britain is now a foreign country, and Canada is a sovereign state.

In the end, it's all terribly conservative of Audrey. Conservative in the most extreme. Conservative in the sense that it is less progressive, and more regressive.

Which is actually ironic from someone who so obviously hates conservatives, hates conservatism, and hates each to the extent that she's willing to ignore the realities of Canadian politics so that she may attack it.

But little details like this, amusingly enough, are lost on people who are so arrogant that they believe their willful ignorance of these realities is actually a virtue.

Waking the (Un)Dead, Part 3

In a recent bit of unintentional comedy genius, Enormous Thriving Plants Audrey insists Glenn Beck is "flinging poop at the wall", and "desperately hoping some of it will stick".

The comedy becomes evident when one considers that this is actually Audrey's approach to blogging, and especially to the topic of Jonah Goldberg.

In a recent post at her blog, Audrey makes one of her patented "criticisms without an actual criticism" of Goldberg.

Which, of course, necessitates drawing attention back to her mockery of Liberal Fascism, and another one of Audrey's great criticisms without an actual criticism.

While Audrey seems to delight in taking potshots at Goldberg when she thinks she can gain rhetorical advantage, the truth is that she has little familiarity with what Goldberg's ideas are at all -- mostly because she's stridently refused to familiarize themselves with them at all. The case in point is Liberal Fascism.

Audrey has been perfectly content to echo the far-left line of feigning offense at the book. Yet Liberal Fascism contains many criticisms of conservatism as well.

Perhaps most pointedly is Goldberg's criticism of former US President George W Bush. Goldberg criticizes Bush harshly for his flirtations with the Protestant Social Gospel that informs so many left-wing progressive movements.

Goldberg refers to this brand of "conservative statism" as "me too conservatism". To underscore this criticism, Golderb quotes a Bush speech in which the former President annonced "when somebody's hurts, government has got to move". Goldberg treats this comment as an implication that government has an overarching responsibility to alleviate human wanting through its activity.

In her exporations of fascism, Hannah Arendt famously wrote about the notion of "human omnipotence", as exercised through the state. Goldberg alludes to this same notion in relation to Bush's version of conservative statism.

In other words, Goldberg notes, the fascist notion of human ominipotence that lies at the core of fascist ideology isn't merely an ideological and philosophical dilemma for progressives alone -- the same dilemma confronts conservatives as well, and just as liberals have to be wary of this trap, so do conservatives.

In a proper intellectual response to a work like Liberal Fascism, a caveat like this wouldn't go undetected.

But truth be told, intellectualism is hard work. As for Audrey, she's simply too intellectually lazy to bother.

Can You Imagine...

...What this cretin must have sounded like on 9/11?

Maybe a little bit like this lunatic.

Digging Up Old News...

...To the sound of chirping crickets.

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out the point that Enormous Thriving Plants proprietor Audrey is trying to make with this hiccup-lengthed screed, digging up a news story more than a year old for what can only be considered dubious purposes.

But considering that Audrey is more than willing to attempt hasty re-writes of evolutonary theory when it suits her purposes, it's simply impossible to take her seriously.

It shouldn't be pretended that the number of Albertans who reject such basic science as evolution isn't troubling. But dredge the matter out of the "old news" box for the sole purpose of stirring up hostility against an entire Province?

It should just remind us of the character of the people we're dealing with.

Waking the (Un)Dead, Part 2

When a blogger insists that they're reaching to to an "intellectually mature" audience, one also imagines that it isn't too much to ask for that blogger to actually discuss the ideas they would like to critique.

It seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation.

Such is the expectation that an intellectually mature audience should expect of Enormous Thriving Plants proprietor Audrey, who has apparently taken quite the exception to the ideas of Jonah Goldberg.

Unfortunately, the problem for Audrey is that she continues to neglect to offer any kind of a cogent criticism of Goldberg's work, and has instead simply opted to ridicule it (possibly not understanding that ridicule is actually not an argument).

As mentioned during a previous attempt to coax Audrey into offering a more cogent critique of Goldberg's work by sharing with her some details of what his book actually contains, Goldberg also offers a critique of some fascist elements within conservative thought, including noting the fascist characteristics of some movies typically enjoyed by conservatives.

One of those movies is Death Wish. Like Dirty Harry, Death Wish spawned a whole series of sequels, creating a film franchise in which a vigilante exposes the inadequacies of the social order.

In Death Wish, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is an ordinary man whose wife and daughter are both killed during a home invasion. The police prove incapable of brining the guilty to justice, so Kersey doggedly pursues the guilty on his own.

Like in Dirty Harry, the social order in the Death Wish franchise has been subverted by weakness, and that weakness allows violent outsiders to flourish.

Moreover, these outsiders -- very often (but not always) members of racial minorities -- excel at turning the weakness of the system against itself. In Death Wish IV an elderly man uses a gun to drive home invaders from his apartment. His assailants call the police, who come and seize his gun under a handgun ban in the city. The very same night, his assailants return and murder his wife.

Dirty Harry's Harry Calahan can at least defend himself under the pretext of being an authority of the system. Paul Kersey is a vigilante, pure and simple.

His actions are even more threatening to the system than Calahan's, as he operates entirely outside of it. As a result, Kersey's actions may have even greater potential to be truly transformative.

Neither Dirty Harry nor Death Wish seem like films that liberals would enjoy. Jonah Goldberg admits as much in his book. Individuals like Audrey may have known about this if they had read the book.

But they evidently haven't. It's the kind of thing that should seriously call into question their ability to criticize his work.

It should, but considering that the best rhetoric they can muster to date is to accuse him of "doubling down on dumb", one shouldn't expect an argument that demonstrates any actual knowledge of Goldberg's arguments. At least not until after a lot more coaxing.

...And speaking of "doubling down on dumb", this is an individual who apparently thinks that the proper way to approach Goldberg's work is to mock him for ignorance of "astrological phenomonon" like the Jovian gravity well. And presumably, Taurus.

Waking the (Un)Dead, Part 1

Jonah Goldberg stirred up something of a controversy when he published Liberal Fascism.

The expressed goal of the book is to counter arguments that modern conservatism is essentially fascist in nature by pointing out that modern liberalism shares an intellectual ancestry with fascism.

Recently, certain individuals in the blogosphere have been making a point out of expressing their bemusement at his work.

In Liberal Fascism, Goldberg argues that modern liberalism -- better described as socialist progressivism -- shares key elements of the intellectual origins of fascism.

The counter-argument, as is advanced by many outraged left-wingers, is that Goldberg singles out the left and attempts to declare them guilty by association.

But this raises the question as to whether or not those complaining about Goldberg's work in Liberal Fascism. If they had, they would know that it isn't actually liberalism alone that Golberg suggests shares an intellectual ancestry with fascism. He notes that modern conservatism shares much of the same ancestry.

In one of the concluding chapters of the book, Goldberg explains how many popular movies have distinct fascist undertones.

Oddly enough, one of the movies Goldberg examines is more popular among conservatives than it is among liberals.

That movie is Dirty Harry.

In the film, Clint Eastwood plays one of his signature roles: Police Inspector Harry Callahan. A detective with the LAPD, Callahan does more shooting than actual investigative work. Callahan is the prototypical supercop character, excessively resorting to deadly force at the drop of a hat.

In the course of foiling a bank robbery, Callahan explodes in violence, killing all but one of the perpetrators -- all of whom are black -- with his .44 magnum.

Callahan's style of justice is technically lawful, but only by merit of his possession of a police badge that he effectively treats as a license to kill. He's effectively forced to resort to such violence by a system that is corrupted by a weakness that prevents it from dealing effectively with criminals, particularly the Scorpio Killer (Andrew Robinson).

He exhibits no hesitation in resorting to such violence. There's a nihilism at the very core of his actions that exhibits a "will to power". In this case, Callahan siezes for himself the power to transform the society in which he lives through violence far beyond any reasonable mandate his badge may afford him.

Of course, whatever fascist overtones appear in the film are not intentional.

"I don't think Dirty Harry was a fascist picture at all," Eastwood said in an interview for Playboy Magazine. "It's just the story of one frustrated police officer in a frustrating situation on one particular case. I think that's why police officers were attracted to the film. Most of the films that were coming out at that time, in 1972, were extremely anti-cop. They were about the cop on the take, you know. And this was a film that showed the frustrations of the job, but at the same time, it wasn't a glorification of police work."

However, in a sense it could be considered the corruption of that system that often made the kind of violence Callahan engages in at least seem necessary. The corruption of law enforcement breeds a weakness into a society that leaves it vulnerable to the lawless.

A key tenet of any fascist argument is that the social system in question has been corrupted, and rendered weak and impotent, and must be replaced. Fascists argue that not only violence an acceptable means of replacing that corrupted system, but a necessary means.

Certainly, few would expect such a critique of such a film as Dirty Harry to be found within Jonah Goldberg's work. The question that quickly emerges is this: will Goldberg receive credit for this kind of honesty from those who are bound and determined to discredit his work through ridicule alone?