For only 39.6% of the popular vote, you get… Tax cuts and increased government spending on things you don’t need! Jet planes! Assault vehicles! Riot cops in the country’s most populous city! But wait! There’s more! For calling while the population believed that elections were expensive relative to the annual government budget and while politicians …
Tag: Politics
Why is metaphysics dangerous in the hands of those who govern us?
Metaphysics, i.e the study of “things” outside of physical reality, is incredibly dangerous for politics. But first, why do we use metaphysics?
A Brief Attempt at Elucidating my Political Views
A liberal form of government – i.e. a government which is restrained by an enforceable bill of individual rights and complementary “checks and balances” – is necessary to protect individuals from the great power of the state. This is true and will continue to be true as long as the “state” has more power than …
Evolution of Riley’s Political Views
As a teenager, I was a statist, a borderline fascist. I may have believed in liberal ideas in theory – my grade 11 politics class group was the only group to propose a liberal constitution instead of a utopian one for a project – but I thought the government should draft the unemployed. I was …
An Open Letter, I guess
Dear Mr. Crimmins I read your editorial in June 7th’s Hamilton Spectator with great interest. Your idea of dispensing with elections is compelling: it would save huge amounts of money, it would shorten campaigns and make them completely unpredictable (hopefully saving us from a situation like that of the US, where each campaign begins after …
The US Census
I’ve been spending a lot time watching the Madness over the last few days and I’ve noticed something: embedded PSAs for the US Census.
“Food” and “It took them long enough”
In the CD player: The Violent Femmes
I want to burn Rice, but I won’t…hopefully someone else will
Rice’s confirmation hearing is today. She mentioned this “Town Square Test” (the name of the academic she name-dropped is not important, though I would like to give credit to him or her) that determines whether a society is a “fear society” or not. Apparently, an individual enters the town square and speaks his or her …
Fahrenheit 911 (2004, Michael Moore)
So I saw Fahrenheit 911 last night. I thought I was going to come up with something witty to insult it but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Very polemical and full of the usual publicity stunts (and times when you wonder how insincere Moore was being when he was getting some of these …