King Arthur Movie Tristan

My pal Gerry Nicholls has quite a funny column on Stephane Dion in today's Sun: Let's replace Dion with a carrot.

My favourite bits:

Stephane Dion wants to move the Liberal Party to the Left.
A carrot is good for your eyesight.
Advantage: The Carrot

Stephane Dion is a former academic with a keen interest in constitutional affairs.
A carrot is an inert piece of vegetable matter.
Advantage: The Carrot

Stephane Dion has a green plan.
A carrot is actually organic and has a green stem and feathery green leaves.
Advantage: The Carrot

Read the rest here, with Sheila Copps less amusing, slightly more personal re-jab comparing Harper to a rutabega here.

Never mind the politics, someone pass a slab of meat.

I have thrown Tater Tots, an orange, a shrimp ring, a donut and pickles at Gerry Nicholls and Rondi Adamson. They have countered in similar fashion, although that ice cream that Gerry threw was cold.

I mention this because both had columns in today's papers, Gerry in the Sun media, Vote For None of the Above, the first of a regular column this summer (and hopefully beyond). Rondi's is in the Globe, but is firewalled. However, I can report that I saw it, read it, thought well of it.

Congratulations to both of you for fine work, it is an honour to be allowed to throw Tandoori Chicken at you.

After reading this quote in this story:

...one nudist I met offered me a tour. (He knew the area well -- he happens to also work for the NCC.)

I thought "thank God Gerry Nicholls isn't with them anymore."

Then I realized they meant the National Capital Commision, not the National Citizens Coalition.

Whew!

Back on April 2nd, Gerry Nicholls offered what he opined to be the best five baseball movies:

• The Natural
• 61*
• The Rookie
• The Sandlot
• For the Love of the Game

Then, for good measure, he threw in a link to Abbot and Costello's who's on first.



I piped in that he missed Bull Durham, and offered a couple of routines to back me up:

And talk about great comedy routines, the meeting on the mound:

Larry: Excuse me, but what the hell's going on out here?
Crash Davis: Well, Nuke's scared because his eyelids are jammed and his old man's here. We need a live... is it a live rooster?
[Jose nods]
Crash Davis: . We need a live rooster to take the curse off Jose's glove and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present.
[to the players]
Crash Davis: Is that about right?
[the players nod]
Crash Davis: We're dealing with a lot of shit.
Larry: Okay, well, uh... candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she's registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let's get two! Go get 'em.

This ones not bad either:

Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers!
Skip: Lollygaggers.

Then yesterday the Toronto Sun ran this quote in a small caption they call Say it Again:

Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring; besides that, they're fascist. Throw some more ground balls. It's more democratic.

Strikeouts are fascist; ground balls democratic. You would think that would be the kind of line Gerry Nicholls and myself would remember. Considering the nature of our blogs, you would think that this might have been mentioned.

Aand you would think wrong. Consider the record straightened.

David Asper has a piece today in the National Post about honouring international law. Entitled Our Hypocrisy on the World Stage, Asper does a nice piece on UN treaties rights ignored by Canada. What set Asper off was a piece in yesterdays post regarding the un-elected Senate's recent report, Children: The Silenced Citizens.

What interested me was Asper's part on Private Property Rights:

The granddaddy of them all is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It was followed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966. Canada has ratified both of these documents...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, confers a right to own property. But property rights are not included in the Canadian Charter of Rights.

I have been on this issue before, back when Paul Martin was blathering on about people who "cherry-pick rights":

If you are talking rights, and things like 'fundamental human rights' we need to know what are human rights. Which leads us to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Note, this is from the UN's Commision on Human Rights and has been in effect for 57 years now. Here's a little something from the preamble:

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

'Member States have pledged themselves to achieve...human rights and fundamental freedoms'...

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

... Rights are fundamental and cannot be cherry-picked or they are not. Property rights has been clearly spelled out in international law...

When people like myself, or maybe Gerry Nicholls' complain about the Conservatives not acting conservative, here's what we mean. From the founding principles of the Conservative Party of Canada:

The Conservative Party will be guided in its constitutional framework and its policy basis by the following principles:

... A belief that the best guarantors of the prosperity and well-being of the people of Canada are:

• The freedom of individual Canadians to pursue their enlightened and legitimate self-interest within a competitive economy;

• The freedom of individual Canadians to enjoy the fruits of their labour to the greatest possible extent; and

• The right to own property;

It's a UN right, it's a conservative principle and, as Asper points out, it's our obligation under international law. Further more, we are one of the few jurisdictions in the world that doesn't guarantee property rights.

Why does nobody ever want to tackle this important issue in this country? Where is Canada's John Locke?

Nice article today in the National Post by former vice-president of the NAC Gerry Nicholls:

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper deserves credit for uniting the Conservative Party of Canada, he must also take the blame for dividing the conservative movement.

And make no mistake, Harper's deliberate strategy of diluting conservative principles and moving the party to the left has split the movement into two factions.

The members of one faction, who might be dubbed the "Tory Partisans," support the Prime Minister as they would support their favourite sports team. Ideology doesn't necessarily matter to them. What matters above all to Tory Partisans is winning.

The other faction, which might be called the "Principled Conservatives," are horrified with what Harper is doing; they believe the Conservative party must actually stand for certain values and ideas.

In other words, the Principled Conservatives want the Conservative party to be truly conservative-- that is, a party which stands for free enterprise and less government.

I have long struggled with the political question of what I am, trying to define myself within our limited system. For a while I felt I was a libertarian, but those guys are somewhat anarchistic for my taste. Small 'c' conservative seemed a good fit, but was terribly unimaginative. Lately, I have settled on 'classical liberal.' Individual freedom within our political and economic system, government that should show an explicit reason for ever involving itself in peoples lives, and evidence that such involvement will solve, or at least improve, the problem.

While defining what I am has been recent, I have always known where I stand. No party has ever truly spoken for me and that is as true today as it was in 1977 or 1997. I actually thought Stephen Harper could be the guy, would be conservative fiscally, liberal in everything else (liberal, not Liberal. Two very different things). So far, the evidence is not good.

My lot lies with the Conservative Party, I don't see how that can change, not in the near future. But boy they are making it hard. So yes, Principled Conservative fits, but it does imply association. So if you don't mind Gerry, you can use my name to bolster your argument, but I think I'll stick with classical liberal.