Why I am supporting Randy Hillier

This is the first time I have ever done anything like this.  With the current economic times (brought to us by the political elite of all parties over the last few decades) I have to try to do something for my children and grandchildren.

I've looked at all the options for Ontario and Randy is the ONLY one I could vote for.  First, he has to win the nomination for leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.  To do this he needs a lot of votes in the leadership contest in June.  It costs $10 to join the party and as long as this is paid on, or before May 14, 2009, you and any family members over the age of 14 who have joined can go vote.

This is the only true democratic system you will ever get in the provincial and federal systems in Canada.  After the leaders are chosen, that's it for a while.

I asked Randy, “if the ballot for leader had a 'None of the Above' option how many votes would it get”?  His answer was 'A MAJORITY'.  I agreed but pointed out that that is what he is.  He IS 'None of the Above'!  He is not a career politician.  He's just a citizen who finally started to fight back.  It actually won't take that many more of us to dump the current political class.  It is terrifying how few there actually are (mere thousands out of 13,000,000) who have complete control of us and our families.       

Check Randy's background on his website link below.  If he sounds like he shares your fears and hopes, join now and VOTE for him in June.  It's a lot less painful than continuing on the way we’re going.

I've met Randy.  What you see is what you get!.  He is 'just folks'.  He's a union member (IBEW) who sees both the good and bad of that system.  He's a land owner who realizes how badly our rights are being trampled.  He's a new MPP who knows how broken the current government system is.  He is NOT afraid to deal with difficult issues.  He won't run and hide.

Please help get him elected on behalf of all our children and grandchildren!

Bill MacLean

http://www.hillierforleader.com

Law vs. Moral Values

by Walter E. Williams
"A civilized society's first line of defense is not the law, police and courts but customs, traditions and moral values. Behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. The failure to fully transmit values and traditions to subsequent generations represents one of the failings of the so-called greatest generation.
Behavior accepted as the norm today would have been seen as despicable yesteryear. There are television debt relief advertisements that promise to help debtors to pay back only half of what they owe. Foul language is spoken by children in front of and sometimes to teachers and other adults. When I was a youngster, it was unthinkable to use foul language to an adult; it would have meant a smack across the face. Back then, parents and teachers didn't have child-raising "experts" to tell them that "time out" is a means of discipline. Baby showers are held for unwed mothers. Yesteryear, such an acceptance of illegitimacy would have been unthinkable.
To see men sitting whilst a woman or elderly person was standing on a crowded bus or trolley car used to be unthinkable. It was common decency for a man to give up his seat. Today, in some cities there are ordinances requiring public conveyances to set aside seats posted "Senior Citizen Seating." Laws have replaced common decency. Years ago, a young lady who allowed a guy to have his hand in her rear pocket as they strolled down the street would have been seen as a slut. Children addressing adults by first names was unacceptable.
You might be tempted to charge, "Williams, you're a prude!" I'd ask you whether high rates of illegitimacy make a positive contribution to a civilized society. If not, how would you propose that illegitimacy be controlled? In years past, it was controlled through social sanctions like disgrace and shunning. Is foul language to or in the presence of teachers conducive to an atmosphere of discipline and respect necessary for effective education? If not, how would you propose it be controlled? Years ago, simply sassing a teacher would have meant a trip to the vice principal's office for an attitude adjustment administered with a paddle. Years ago, the lowest of lowdown men would not say the kind of things often said to or in front of women today. Gentlemanly behavior protected women from coarse behavior. Today, we expect sexual harassment laws to restrain coarse behavior.
During the 1940s, my family lived in North Philadelphia's Richard Allen housing project. Many families didn't lock doors until late at night, if ever. No one ever thought of installing bars on their windows. Hot, humid summer nights found many people sleeping outside on balconies or lawn chairs. Starting in the '60s and '70s, doing the same in some neighborhoods would have been tantamount to committing suicide. Keep in mind that the 1940s and '50s were a time of gross racial discrimination, high black poverty and few opportunities compared to today. The fact that black neighborhoods were far more civilized at that time should give pause to the excuses of today that blames today's pathology on poverty and discrimination.
Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we've become."
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2009/04/29/law_vs_moral_values

The Dangerous Good Old Boys of the GOP (Sounds Like Canada’s progressives!)

Posted By Adam Graham On April 30, 2009 @ 12:01 am In Politics, US News | 79 Comments

Since the election, the debate has raged. Who is responsible for the 2008 election debacle and the defeat of the Republican Party?

So far this question has centered on various groups’ attempts to reenact the [1] scapegoat scene from Leviticus and cast all the sins of the Republican Party onto cultural conservatives and release their concerns into the wilderness.

The battle has been as entertaining as it has been misguided and pointless. Is there a war between economic conservatives and social conservatives? As someone actively involved in both social and fiscal issues, I’ve seen a lot of crossover between the two sides in terms of people who show up. This crossover is quite common. A leading economic conservative group, Club for Growth, often backed the same candidates as socially conservative groups like National Right to Life, Government Is Not God-PAC, and Focus on the Family Action. Newt Gingrich has begun to go around with slides showing that the most socially conservative members of Congress were also the most fiscally conservative.

I’m going to suggest an alternate conclusion. I’m going to reject the conventional wisdom that the election was lost because of the party grassroots and go out on a limb and suggest that maybe the problem is not the party’s activists. Perhaps (and I know this is shocking) the people who led the party over the cliff are the ones to blame.

The GOP doesn’t have a religious problem, a gay rights problem, or an abortion problem. It fundamentally has a good old boy problem. Let us tell the story of a primary, and we don’t have to name names, because the story is the same across the country.

A vacancy occurs in Congress. Who’s going to fill it? The GOP establishment has its favorite son, an amiable fellow who thinks he’d be one heck of a congressman. And then there are other candidates, probably three or four, who lay hold to the label of true conservatism. They fight it out. Leaders of many right-of-center groups endorse the good old boy. The good old boy is hailed for his electability. He may have his flaws, but he can win, we’re assured. So voters nominate and then elect Congressman Good Old Boy.

Congressman Good Old Boy doesn’t give a lick about issues like right to life or limited government. Sure, he may personally believe in some of these things, but they have nothing to do with why he got into politics. The congressman’s focus is on getting re-elected, so he works his darnedest to bring home tens of millions of dollars in earmarks and to impress a cross-section of special interest groups.

Congressman Good Old Boy is focused on appropriating money, doling out favors, defending the party establishment, and getting re-elected. Rinse, lather, and repeat a hundred times, and you have the story of two-thirds of the Republicans in Congress.

The problem the Republican Party faces is twofold. First is the division between the GOP’s leadership and its membership. Scott Rasmussen has defined a divide in polling between the mainstream (or “populist”) mood and [2] the political class. This is the basic divide within the GOP.

Republican Party activists, however, are there because of issues such as limited government, abortion, gun rights, tax reform, school choice, property rights, etc. The GOP’s leadership showed little appetite for rocking the established order and bringing about fundamental reform during its last 11 years in control of Congress.

Because of the Republican Party’s lack of interest in the ideas that brought passion and energy to the party’s base, many activists began to step away, give less money, not volunteer, and stay home on election day. Conservatives have had cause to be angry after [3] the broken promises that Bush made in 2004.

The general public was also seeing something. In 1994, voters had kicked out-of-touch big-spending Democrats to the curb. However, Republicans became the same scandal-plagued party of government that they’d defeated. Republicans had met the enemy and they were it. The public decided they’d had enough, and Karl Rove’s permanent majority came crashing down.

The instigators of post-election recriminations are a funny lot. They describe themselves as fiscal conservatives and libertarians, but you rarely see them lay out any spending they want to see cut. Nor do you hear them extolling fundamental tax reform. And while they claim to be reformers, their offerings collectively make Bambi look like Rambo.

Where are the great mass movements to make the agendas of David Frum’s  The Conservative Comeback or Ross Douthat’s Grand New Party come to fruition? Lackluster ideas do not inspire great political movements. The irony is that the attacks on members of the grassroots coalition let the real perpetrators of Republican ruin off the hook. Is it a coincidence that four Republican senators who supported TARP were narrowly defeated, while another TARP supporter was forced into a runoff? And this Frankenstein monster of a program has become everything that stalwart conservatives warned it would be back in September, even while the establishment urged us to swallow the “crap sandwich.”

Republicans didn’t lose because we had people at the grassroots of the party with strong viewpoints. Republicans lost because we had hypocritical leadership that gave lip service to ideas but was ultimately focused on its own power. The greatest danger to a GOP resurgence is not those folks who are motivated to political actions by their beliefs, but rather the way-too-powerful good old boys who stalk the halls of Congress and statehouses across America. They continue on, as if trying to repeat the strategy of the amiable Republicans who spent an entire generation as an irrelevant congressional minority from 1955-1994.

The bottom line is that the attempt to pit activists against one another in a blame game is little more than a distraction. We can point fingers all we want, but as long as we continue to put up power-hungry posers, the American people will continue to give us exactly what we deserve: defeat.

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Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-good-old-boy-party/

URLs in this post:
[1] scapegoat scene from Leviticus: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2016:21,%2022&version=48
[2] the political class: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ideology/55_of_americans_are_populist_7_supp
ort_the_political_class

[3] the broken promises that Bush made in 2004: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57466-2004Sep2.html