So Tommy wasn’t really a Dipper after all. He sounds like an uncompassionate conservative.
He must be rolling over in his grave knowing that our Illness Care system in Ontario pays for sex changes but won’t cover the cost of an eye examination. The system has morphed into something he had not contemplated.
The key point made here is that his solutions seem to lack compassion. But we should be careful with the jargon of the day – his uncompassionate “subnormal” in schools today are called “special needs” kids. A recently retired schoolteacher friend of mine said "special needs"was taking nearly all of her time. The silent majority of kids in the middle are being dropped to the lowest common denominator of the classroom. That’s why people that can afford it will put their kids in an independent school. Tommy’s language goes overboard but his concept of isolating the problem is not without merit.
On religion, Tommy doesn’t sound much different than the Reverend that Mayor Miller brought up from New York to talk about how to solve youth gang related problems. The Dippers still believe this, except they only allow one religion to rule their theocracy – Marxism.
DT: I wonder if anyone caight the glaring hypocrisy in that picture/description of Tommy's "subnormal" family....and how it bore a stark resemblance to his own as a child.
As I stated before a psychologist would have a party analysing Tommy's traumatized childhood and the abnormal obsessionist persobality it produced. One wonders if his need to erase his "shame" as a poor kid himself and his shame of his poor family was so great he patterned his eugenics programs and "subnormals" thesis in an attempt to symbolically kill off this demon that haunted him all his life.
To say that Douglas was an obsessive abnormal personality prone to evangelize extreme ideologies is an understatement.
nomdenet writes: "So Tommy wasn’t really a Dipper after all. He sounds like an uncompassionate conservative"
Let's not get caught up in the fraudulent left-right paradigm and slap political partisan labels on ideologies that transcend the narrow left-right partisan discourse.
ALL statists are "Uncompassionate" regardless of the political stripe they hide their statist agenda behind.
Tommy was an brutish statist thug who wanted to weild the state's power like a war club and use it to invade people's lives and demand conformity to his narrow (psychotic) social deconstructionist ideals.....he just hid this Orwellian statist goonery behind happy-face prairie populism and a clerical collar.
Conversely there were many "conservatives" in the day that believed eugenics was an abomination and an invasion of the state into the civil right of the individual, even though these jurasic Tories were mostly economic darwinists. Old line Tories may have believed that people were poor by their own personal choices but they did believe they deserved the respect of the state as individuals not to pry into their private affairs or control them like cattle with social regulation.
There were also many "enlightened" Liberals that supported eugenics and it's dark handmaiden, state sponsored population control...that is another hypocrisy and the key break between classic Liberalism ( protectiuon of the individual's rights) to modern Liberalism ( repression of the individual and the catagorization of society into patronage "groups" and non client groups under a quasi- police state power brokering system)
Dippers may be ideologically deranged but Liberals have become criminal statists who run patronage syndicates and repress free speech or thought which dissents to their narrow statist ideals. Ironically enough, this was the role the landed gentry "Tory" political cartel played in the early years of Canada...now the roles are reversed and the Liberals are the party of corporate feudalism, patronage brokering and repressive statist solutions while the new Conservatives are individual rights oriented and promote open accountable government and populist solutions.....Of course, being linear the Dippers are still politically schizophrenic but have actually entrenched the lunatic fringe into mainstream political discourse and gained some media acceptance ...but they have company in the BQ seats who are national socialists (like the French Vichy government).....so political brand manes are deceptive in this era.....it's best not for reasoned thinkers ( or voters) to get themselves caught up in this fraudulent partisan camp warring....the only political paradigm that makes sense to you as a free citizen is state guaranteed and protected individual and collective freedoms and the liberty to exercise them...pick parties and governments that protect and enhance it...not remove it...like Tommy's Trotskyites.
MLK, I agree with virtually everything you and DT state on this post. However, I’m frankly having trouble with the notion that Douglas was a “statist thug wanting to control lives” to the extent that we’ve ended up with. Up until now I’ve believed things went beyond what he intended, but I’m admittedly not a student of Douglas’ activities. On the other hand I view Shirley Douglas as a “statist thug” vis a vis her picketing of private radiation treatment clinics. Maybe that's a clue? Maybe she’s a chip off the old block.
I just think we should be careful to remember the language of the day – 1950’s language such as “subnormal” sounds worse than it might have been intended. Just as Barry Goldwater sounds worse today than I think he intended. I think if we are ever going to get out the truth on these leftie trouble makers ( Trudeau and Douglas and Levesque) we should also acknowledge some of what they were trying to achieve might have been worthwhile in the context of their day.
For instance, the farming business is seasonal and cynical and medical needs can occur in a downturn on the farm, so a medical safety net in Saskatchewan makes sense. What we have ended up with certainly doesn’t make sense.
Ditto with Trudeau who gets an F on fiscal policy but I would give him an A on taking down the terrorist in Quebec that for all we know were funded by international commie forces.
I’m just saying, that now that we have freedom of the press on blogs, let’s also try to keep perspective on some of these old lefties who weren’t 100% bad and evil. It is quite possible that the Liberal/Dippers (Chrétien and Layton) took the ball and ran it much further to the left with statism than the so-called fathers of the left ever intended. But as Rummy says “some things are unknowable”.
Bottom line, I’ve only made one mistake voting, my first vote in 1968 was for Trudeau; every since I’ve believed that even “progressive” Conservatives were better no Conservatives.
nomdenet: I agree with you 100%. I'll be interested in your comments when I post my conclusions.
The NDP/CBC are very good at hiding their past. People forget that in the 1950's the CCF government in Saskatchewan had a "work for welfare" program. The exact details I don't know, it is very difficult to get any information out of an NDP controlled government, but basically any able bodied male on welfare had to spend his days digging ditches in order to receive his welfare check. I don't really have a problem with that, but if such a program is even hinted at today the moonbats start screaming "fascist!".
It just rots your gut that Tommy was named the Greatest Canadian ever, doesn't it?
Actually Robert, it should rot yours if you value truth!
By the way, what do you think of Tommy's views?
I think that Tommy, like most Canadians 50 years ago, had some pretty stupid views. But that doesn't detract from what he accomplished one bit. By the way, I hope, but don't expect, you'll include that Douglas refuted those earlier views later in life after coming to realize how stupid they were.
Not everyone thought that way 50 years ago. That is just a cheap excuse for Tommy's Nazi thinking. Why don't you post a link to this on your blog?? Better yet, why doesn't the Douglas Family release the thesis so everyone can read it and make up their own minds?
As far as the CBC naming Tommy "The Greatest Canadian", it really means nothing, other thatn to show how well the Dippers can pull together when they want to.
And one last thing, Tommy was pretty much run out of town in the 1960's. When he ran for Member of Parliment in Regina he lost by almost 10,000 votes! He left town with his tail between his legs and his head hung in shame. Good thing too, he had increased the provincial debt from $120,000,000 in 1944 to $450,000,000 in 1961. Not to mention having the most financially corrupt provincial government ever in Canadian history. Check it out.
I hate to agree with Mr. McClelland, but he has a point.
If we were all held to account for our beliefs as young men, most of us would be quite embarrassed.
Take the views of any person at twenty-one, then contrast them with same at age sixty-one.
We were so naive. I voted for Trudeau first time 'round,too. He dazzled us with his U.S. style campaign tactics.
Voluptuous young women in tight orange T-shirts with "Trudeau" across the, uh..
I stood in the crowd in new Westminster when he paraded through. You could see jaws dropping all along the parade route. He dazzled us yokels with glitz and glamour.
Opposite him was everyone's grandfather, Bob Stanfield, from the family that kept us warm all winter.
Poor Bob, never stood a chance.
Now, as an old timer, I wonder what in hell we were thinking.
I for one, have never seen proof the Tommy Douglas recanted his beliefs. I've heard many apologists do so, but not Tommy. As far as his views having to be taken in context with the period; I'll cover that in my conclusion. Stay tuned!
There is video, in the CBC archives, of the 1968 federal campaign inwhich Tommy calls homosexuality a mental disorder that should be treated in a mental hospital. At that time Tommy was well into his sixties. Anyone care to explain that?
dmorris hits the nail on the head. I for one would kick my ass if I ever travelled back in time and met a 20 year old me.
Nomdenet said: "I’m frankly having trouble with the notion that Douglas was a “statist thug wanting to control lives” to the extent that we’ve ended up with. Up until now I’ve believed things went beyond what he intended, "
I have to disagre. The natural progression and preordained conclusion of state interventionism is the tyranny of the police state. All statist collectivist social theories end up as limited democracies or statist kleptocracies in practical opolitical implimentation....from there the state become more aggressive in its intrusions and eventuallym individual freedoms and privacy are compromised to a point where the individual goes from being a subservianr ward of the nanny state to a slave of the state and the political apparatis that state's elite unaccountable central ruling cabal create to demand compliance with state social policy edict.
It is Douglas's thesis on the nature of government which makes him a statist thug....possibly a thig with the happy face of piopulism hiding his statist agenda...but a thug as far as free individuals are concerned none the less.
Douglas has a lot of his bastard children in the current Liberal political syndicate....and of course the moonbat Dippers but they are less organized and unschooled in the subversive political networking needed to entrench the kleptocracy of the single party state that Tommy's centralist interventionist state has progressed to.
A conditioned Dipper regugitates this mantra on cue:" It just rots your gut that Tommy was named the Greatest Canadian ever, doesn't it?"
DT do you hear the flutter of moonbat wings hovering over your blog? ;-)
Actually it saddens me Canadians are so politically and historically deceived to accept such an mindless, vacant myth without detecting the political manipulation. Maybe they just don't deserve anything better than Tommy's kleptocratic nanny state.
Commenting by HaloScan
