Raise the Hammer

I agree with ya J Morse, courage is crucially important. But after a decade and change of political organizing, it seems to me that it's not the voting majority that has trouble with it. What I've witnessed looks more like mortal terror on behalf of leaders to tell the public what they really think. The NDP is perhaps the best example of this there's a virtually pathological fear inside the party that if they ever took a truly "radical" stand that they'd be chased out of town with pitchforks and torches. And so while they work hard to "moderate" their platform, the Liberals simply take their pick of catchy looking progressive politics, promise pretty much the same thing, and forget virtually all of it once they win the election. Why would people vote for a "radical" party with little in their platform which is any more progressive or radical than the default centrist party (Liberals)?

If Preston Manning and Stephen Harper prove anything, it's that the Canadian voting public is more than willing to sign up for ideas which were considered for generations well outside our polite Canadian political spectrum. Everyone's tired of the status quo. But when faced with alternatives like the NDP or Communist parties, it's easy to see why most people don't just run out and sign up to fight the man. But if they were presented with something that looked like it actually might work, it would be a totally different story.

Preston Manning and the Reform Party got where they did because of his populist policies. Referendums, recall votes, abolishing the senate etc - all badly needed reforms of our colonial-era parliamentary system. Predictably, it's now all been lost in the American-style conservatism of Stephen Harper and his other Albertan-oil-sheik buddies, but it does point to some very real desires for democratic democratic reform among Canadians. One really wonders what would happen if a sustainably-minded, socially conscious populist party hit the ballots, one could see the parliamentary landscape changing pretty quick.