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Justin Trudeau's Liberals say they are still hearing support from Indigenous people and leaders, despite concerns raised publicly about Trudeau's expulsion of two ex-ministers who had been central to work on reconciliation.

While the Liberals have repeatedly said that addressing the relationship with Indigenous Peoples in Canada is a top priority, that commitment has been openly questioned by some Indigenous leaders, especially since the ejections of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus.

Terry Teegee, the British Columbia regional chief in the Assembly of First Nations, suggested the ejections showed a "deeply flawed and dishonest intent" behind Trudeau's previously stated respect for Indigenous Peoples. Wilson-Raybould was one of his predecessors.

"The balance that was being forged within our societies through the process of reconciliation is now threatened," he said when Trudeau expelled the two. Teegee called the decision "wrathful."

Wilson-Raybould, as justice minister until January, had been the highest-ranking Indigenous person ever in the Canadian government. Philpott had been seen as one of Trudeau's most capable ministers; a shuffle that moved her from the high-profile health portfolio to become minister of Indigenous services was a symbol of how important clean water and good housing on reserves, for instance, were to the Liberal government.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, who had worked closely with both, said that while the government is always mindful of triggering cynicism and concern about the relationship she tends, she is continuing to hear "very positive" feedback.

"Whether I'm on the East Coast or the West Coast or in Manitoba, over the last little while, I have to say that people will quietly take me aside and say, 'We need your government re-elected,' " Bennett said in an interview.

"I would never presume that whomever I'm speaking to is speaking on behalf of more than one person," she added. "I think that it's important now for us to earn the respect and continue to make progress."

In the next election, only First Nations, Inuit and Metis will be able to make ultimate determinations about whether their experience with the government has felt more like a partnership than paternalism, Bennett added.

Last week, Trudeau made the decision to remove Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from the Liberal caucus.

The two former cabinet ministers had been outspoken about political pressure to intervene in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec engineering giant facing bribery charges over contracts in Libya. Wilson-Raybould believes she was shuffled out of the Department of Justice because she wouldn't give Trudeau what he wanted on the file, overruling a prosecutor's decision not to pursue a plea-bargain-like "remediation agreement." Both ultimately resigned from the cabinet.

Trudeau has denied any wrongdoing but has publicly acknowledged there was a breakdown of trust between Wilson-Raybould and his office.

Wilson-Raybould was not available for an interview but Philpott said she does see the controversy as a "setback" in the government's relationship with Indigenous Peoples.

Trudeau's cabinet worked hard on issues including the recognition and affirmation of rights for Indigenous Peoples, Philpott said, and there was "tremendous enthusiasm" about Wilson-Raybould's being the first Indigenous justice minister in Canadian history.

Wilson-Raybould was moved out of the position into the veterans-affairs portfolio, prior to her subsequent cabinet resignation.

"I think particularly the fact that she was moved out of that role and then subsequently resigned from cabinet, is a setback, without doubt," Philpott said.

As an independent MP, Wilson-Raybould continues to have leverage over her former party and Trudeau in particular as members of Indigenous communities watch her words and actions carefully, says University of Saskatchewan professor Joseph Garcea, a political scientist who studies Canadian politics.

"She's got this government's feet to the fire and it is up to her, really, how high she turns up the heat," he said.

In 2015, the Liberal Party was keen to recruit Indigenous candidates and affirm its commitment to solving longstanding problems, including multiyear boil-water advisories on reserves.

Indigenous voters were also far more engaged in the last election. The Assembly of First Nations identified 51 ridings, including several in western Canada, where First Nations voters could affect the outcome and invested a great deal of effort in outreach.

After that election, Elections Canada reported the gap between turnout on reserves and turnout among the general population had been the lowest since it began calculating turnout for Aboriginal populations in 2004 (with the caveat that it does not capture demographic information at the polls and cannot count Aboriginal voters directly, whether they vote on or off reserves).

Compared to the 2011 election, Elections Canada said turnout on reserves increased by 14 percentage points from 47.4 per cent to 61.5 per cent while turnout among the general population increased by six percentage points to 66 per cent.

For his part, Metis National Council President Clement Chartier said he will not allow a "distraction" like the SNC-Lavalin controversy to "derail" the council's efforts to work with the Liberal government.

"Why would we want to destroy something that has been of significant benefit to the Metis Nation?" he said, suggesting the response to the council from the Trudeau government has been "tremendous."

The Metis National Council will reach out to all the political parties before the election on policy positions, he said, adding Metis citizens can decide for themselves whom to support.

"Until there's an election, we will continue to support this prime minister and this government," he said.

Wilson-Raybould's tenure as the first Indigenous justice minister in Canada will remain a "huge breakthrough," Bennett said. She said her team is very sad there was an erosion of trust with her colleagues.

"We would prefer that [Philpott and Wilson-Raybould] were still members of the team, still supporting the prime minister, but unfortunately that didn't happen," she said, but she believes the government's Indigenous partners want to move on.

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Liberals move ahead on Indigenous agenda after SNC affair ...

GroupthinkDostoevsky foresaw how 21st-century liberalism would undermine itself

6 mins07 February 2019

The revolutionary theorist Shigalyov in Fyodor Dostoevksys novelDemonssums up the progress of his thought: Starting with unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.

This celebrated sentence has long been read as Dostoevskys prognosis of the terrorism that plagued Russia in the late 19th century. Aiming to achieve an unprecedented freedom, small groups of revolutionaries denied freedom and life itself to their own members.

The same transformation occurred on a vast scale when terror was practised by a revolutionary state. Understood as a critique of communism, the formula Dostoevsky put into his characters mouth was prophetic. Wherever the communist project has been attempted, the result has been the same: an eclipse of freedom more complete than any that existed in the tyrannies the revolutionaries overthrew.

Yet the ideas that are the true demons in Dostoevskys novel are not only those that fuelled late 19th-century terrorism and 20th-century communism. They are found among liberals today, who are ready to dissolve religion, family, nationality and the practice of tolerance in order to bring into the world a kind of freedom that has never before been known. Some on the Right believe this freedom will come from unfettered market forces, while others on the Left favour using education to deconstruct practices and institutions that have held societies together in the past. Like the Russian revolutionaries, these liberals are possessed by a vision of ever-increasing human freedom that can only end in tyranny. If Dostoevsky was a prophet of 20th-century totalitarianism, he also foresaw how 21st-century liberalism would undermine itself.

It is easy to forget that Dostoevsky began as a liberal himself. When he was arrested in April 1849 as a member of a group of dissident intellectuals he shared the beliefs of the progressive Russian thinkers of his day. Passionately promoting what they perceived as the most advanced European thinking, they rejected religion and any morality that was based on it. Society had to be founded on scientific materialism and governed by an ethic based in science. Several intellectual movements came together in this mishmash of ideas.

Some favoured the roseate visions of French utopian thinkers such as Charles Fourier, who envisioned society reorganised into phalansteries, ideal communities where work would become a type of play and the task of rubbish collection assigned to dirt-loving children. (Another side of Fouriers thought is shown in his proposal that Jews be confined to duties as farm labourers.) Others were more drawn to hard-headed English Utilitarianism or the radical humanism of the German thinker Ludwig Feuerbach, who interpreted the idea of God as an image of the unlimited possibilities of the human species. All believed that human beings must fashion their own values and make a new world.

Suggested reading

By John Gray

By the 1860s, these ideas had come to be called nihilism, a term made popular in Russia by Ivan Turgenevs novel Fathers and Sons (1862). Today, nihilism means the denial that human life or history have any meaning. In its mid-19th century meaning, however, nihilism accurately describes our contemporary liberal consensus. Like the progressive Russian intelligentsia to which Dostoevsky initially belonged, early 21st-century liberals believe the human future will be shaped by science and values that are somehow derived from science. Religion and everything connected with it must be rejected an obstacle to progress. A nave version of this sort of nihilism is presented in the writings of Steven Pinker.

After his arrest and exile, Dostoevsky rejected the liberal ideas of his day forever. Condemned to death a sentence commuted to hard labour in Siberia after a mock execution by firing squad he returned to St Petersburg in 1860 a lifelong enemy of the ideas for which he had been exiled. His own ideas a murky mix of Russian messianism with a rather dubious version of Orthodox Christianity do not amount to anything much. But his subsequent writings, above all Demons, reveal an astonishingly prescient insight into the liberal mind today.

Published in 1872, the book tells how an ideal in which human beings are freed from any authority or constraint morphs into squalid violence and pervasive repression. Based on an actual incident in which a student who had questioned the leadership of the terrorist Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882) who argued that any means were justified if they contributed to a progressive transformation in society was murdered with Nechaevs complicity, the novel provides a pitiless and extremely funny account of the self-immolation of liberalism.

Demonshas often been attacked as being didactic in tone a criticism that misses the dark humour that runs throughout the novel. But it is true that Dostoevsky aimed to teach a lesson. Revolutionary radicalism in politics has its ultimate source in atheism. Dostoevsky conveys this lesson through the character of Kirillov, an engineer and member of the radical group, who contends that if you do not believe in God you must become God yourself:

To recognise that there is no God, and not to recognise thatat thesame time you have become God, is an absurdity I have found it:the attribute of my divinity is Self-will

Kirillov believes that in order to demonstrate his divinity he must kill himself. By doing so, he would prove that human beings are not ruled by mechanical laws but possess a god-like freedom to do as they will. The core of his atheism is the assertion that without God human beings are free do whatever they chose. Exercising his freedom as a god-man, Kirillov shoots himself.

Kirillov is possessed by the idea, which Dostoevsky explored in Crime and Punishment(1866) and Brothers Karamazov (1879), that if there is no God everything is permitted. Generations of secular thinkers have attacked this as nonsense, and it is true that ethical life can be understood in strictly naturalistic terms. Morality is as much a part of what it means to be human as language. But in a naturalistic perspective, a liberal way of life is only one of many the human animal has invented. The belief that only one morality is ordained for all is a relic of monotheism, and Dostoevsky presents a compelling account of how an idea of unlimited freedom derived from Christianity became the inner logic of liberal humanism.

Among Russian nihilists, atheism meant the replacement of God by humanity a universal subject that shapes its own future by deploying the power acquired by growing scientific knowledge. In this version, atheism is a project of collective human self-deification. Though they are careful to avoid such language, todays liberal humanists pursue the same project. Claiming for the human species the freedom that Christianity attributes to God, they believe humankind can fashion a good life for all of its members.

According to Dostoevsky, however, the end-point of this kind of atheism is each human being acting just as they please. Nechaev justified terror on the ground that it is necessary in order to create an earthly paradise. But if human beings can adopt any means to achieve this end, why cant they also chose their own ends? Why should anyone serve humanity an entity as elusive as the Deity or concern themselves with something as nebulous universal freedom? If any means is allowable, so too is any end. The attempt to create a new world collapses into Kirillovs self-will. It is not surprising that Nietzsche recognised in Dostoevsky one of his predecessors.

Suggested reading

By Giles Fraser

Historically, liberal humanism is a footnote to theism. John Locke grounded human rights in duties to God, while Kant argued for the immortality of the soul as a necessary basis for human freedom. Here again, generations of secular thinkers have insisted that liberal values do not depend on religion. Yet liberal humanists continue to rely on the belief that human beings are by nature freedom-loving a view that is certainly not based on empirical observation. Liberals might respond by asserting that human nature is not fixed it can be transformed by political action. But if human beings are free to alter their nature, what is there to say they will remake themselves as free beings? They may prefer the tranquillized peace of a society like that imagined in Huxleys Brave New World. Or decide that the freedoms of the past are relics of oppression, which must be swept away for the sake of social justice.

The liberal mind at present divides into two schools. One is composed of people who call themselves classical liberals, unwitting disciples of the Russian nihilists that believe human progress is ensured by the continuing advance of science. The other comprises postmodern liberals, who view science as little more than congealed ideology. The two are very much at odds, and yet both are possessed by an idea of unfettered freedom.

Suggested reading

By James Bloodworth

If classical liberals believe human beings can use the laws of nature formulated in science to make a new world, postmodern liberals believe scientific laws including those that apply to human nature, a concept they reject are no more than cultural constructs. The upshot is the same. Humankind can shape its own future unconstrained by any external force or authority. But if freedom is unlimited it is also empty. Whatever latter-day nihilists may say, science cannot supply human values. There is nothing in the laws of physics that prohibits the Holocaust. Equally, deconstructing science cannot validate whatever values are currently regarded as progressive. If science is ideology and human nature a fiction, anything goes. The alt-Right is as much a product of postmodernism as the alt-Left. Either way, the practices of tolerance and free expression that used to underpin liberal values are consumed in culture-wars between rival mobs.

Among western traditions, there are some that limit human freedom without invoking theism. Ancient Greek drama and Shakespeare show human beings are trapped by their own deeds and characters whatever they may will. A sceptic like Montaigne used reason to humble the human mind, not exalt it. The implication of Wittgensteins later philosophy is that freedom is situated in particular forms of life. When all the ways of life humans have fashioned for themselves are rejected as exercises in repression, nothing remains but the assertion of will or feeling. That is pretty much where we are now.

If liberalism were a scientific hypothesis, it would have been falsified many times over. But for its disciples, it is far from being a mere hypothesis. As the ex-liberal Dostoevsky understood, liberalism is nothing if not a religion. In the past, this may have been a strength. Today it is a weakness, and possibly fatal. Shigalyov was right. Trashing old freedoms in order to bring about a new state of unbounded freedom can only lead to despotism. Liberals cannot stem the on-going retreat of liberal values because it is they that are driving it.

Suggested reading

By John Gray

Go here to read the rest:
You're reaping what you sowed, liberals - UnHerd

Hey Devin Nunes, your sheep say fuck your feelings all the time. How about you do the same?

Big Pharma is inefficient and greedy. CEOs should not dictate the prices on medicine.

The GOP use 1984 as party manual.

Trump punches down to feel better about his loveless, humorless, empty life.

After a gunman left 50 dead in an anti-Muslim massacre at two mosques in New Zealand, President Trump did not condemn the white supremacy extolled by the alleged shooter, nor did he express explicit sympathy with Muslims around the globe.

Trump wonders why he gets blame.

socialjusticeinamerica:

Russia hacked their emails, too. Google Smartech. These hacks of emails has been going on for years.

Graham, Corker, and Flake had their emails hack from Smartech servers. Notice how they all went from Trump critics to Trump ass-kissers?

(via recall-all-republicans)

There is no moral or intellectual reason that will persuade them. There is no respectful conversation to be had with people who argue in bad faith. - Jennifer Rubin

Religious leaders on the Right should be ashamed and held accountable by their parishioners, unless both have forgotten why they follow Jesus and his words of love and forgiveness.

Jerry Jr is a fraud in love with himself.

Trump is a lifelong racist scumbag living off inherited wealth. At 72, he is at his worst.

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Liberals Are Cool

White liberals present themselves as less competent when addressing minorities, while conservatives use the same vocabulary no matter what the race of their audience, according to a newly released study.

Yale and Princeton researchers found that white Democratic presidential candidates and self-identified liberals played down their competence when speaking to minorities, using fewer words that conveyed accomplishment and more words that expressed warmth.

On the other hand, there were no significant differences in how white conservatives, including Republican presidential candidates, spoke to white versus minority audiences.

White liberals self-present less competence to minorities than to other Whites that is, they patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent, according to the studys abstract.

Cydney Dupree, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, said she was surprised by the findings of the study, which sought to discover how well-intentioned whites interact with minorities.

It was kind of an unpleasant surprise to see this subtle but persistent effect, Ms. Dupree said. Even if its ultimately well-intentioned, it could be seen as patronizing.

The study flies in the face of a standard talking point of the political left that white conservatives are racist while raising questions about whether liberals are perpetuating racial stereotypes about blacks being less competent than whites.

The paper, which is slated for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, first examined speeches by Republican and Democratic presidential candidates to mostly white and mostly minority audiences dating back 25 years.

Ms. Dupree and Princetons Susan Fiske analyzed the text for words related to competence such as assertive and competitive and words related to warmth such as supportive and compassionate.

The team found that Democratic candidates used fewer competence-related words in speeches delivered to mostly minority audiences than they did in speeches delivered to mostly white audiences, said the Yale press release. The difference wasnt statistically significant in speeches by Republican candidates.

Ms. Dupree noted that Republicans also gave fewer speeches to minority audiences.

The researchers then set up an experiment in which white liberals were asked to respond to hypothetical individuals named Emily and Lakisha.

Liberal individuals were less likely to use words that would make them appear highly competent when the person they were addressing was presumed to be black rather than white, said the release. No significant differences were seen in the word selection of conservatives based on the presumed race of their partner.

Ms. Dupree said the competence downshift could indicate a greater eagerness by white liberals to connect with those of other races.

My hope is that this work will help include well-intentioned people who see themselves as allies but who may be unwittingly contributing to group divides, said Ms. Dupree. There is a broader need to include them in the conversation.

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White liberals 'patronize' minorities by downplaying ...

Thats the law. Nothing can be done about it.

And thats the liberal reaction to any rational action to stop the stampede of unruly, fractious, antagonistic masses toward and over the U.S. southern border. Liberals call law-enforcement unlawful. Or, they shoehorn the act of holding the line into the unlawful category.

Prevent uninvited masses from entering the country: Unlawful.

Tear gas marauding migrants for stoning Border Patrol personnel: Illegal, possibly even criminal.

Unconstitutional. Immoral. Un-American. These are some of the refrains deployed by wily pitchmen to stigmatize and end any action to stop, disincentivize and summarily deport caravans of grifters, bound for the U.S. in their thousands.

Our avatars of morality and legality seldom cite legal chapter-and-verse in support of their case for an immigration free-for-all.

To go by the law, as professed by the liberal cognoscenti, claims-makers must be allowed to make their claims.

Could the cuddly treatment mandated be predicated on the Christine Blasey Ford standard? Brett Kavanaughs accuser claimed she had A Story to tell. So, the country had to hear her tell it. A compelling standard.

Thats what happens when feelings and fancy replace reason and facts.

No wonder the noise-makers are drowning-out the authentic claims-makers in society. Against the sainted noise-makers on the border all laws appear to be null and void or tantamount to torture

The Left is creating reality on the ground, all right. But the prime real estate liberals hope to colonize is in every Americans head.

Ruffians are breaching the U.S. border near Tijuana, demanding access to the American Welfare State. Thats the reality! Helped by the American lefts monopoly over the intellectual means of productionthe average American is being encouraged to look at this aberrant apparition and think:

Awesome. This is who we are. American laws are amazing for inviting this.

Illegal, immoral, un-American: These are all pejoratives reserved not for the grifters making claims against Americans; but for the Americans resisting their claims.

To listen to the liberal propagandist class is to come away believing that breaking into America is legal so long as you call yourself a refugee or an asylee and are seeking a better life. Moreover, provided an asylee, refugee or saint in disguise appears at a port of entry (San Ysidro, in our case), then he must be admitted into America.

So, is The Law an ass or are those lying about the law the real asses?

A bit of both.

The Center for Immigration Studies provides something of a corrective. The gist of it is simple:

The Border Patrol has the authority to not only arrest those who enter illegally, but also to dissuade their entry. There is nothing in the law that requires the Border Patrol to allow aliens to enter the United States illegally, and then arrest them. Simply put, aliens do not have a right to illegally enter the United States.

Essentially, the opportunity to assert "a credible fear" of persecution, as explained by Andrew R. Arthur of the CIS, doesnt give a scofflaw the right to enter the country and claim asylum.

To the contrary: The credible fear provision, evidently being misused and misconstrued, doesnt exist to facilitate asylum claims. Rather, it exists to facilitate the removal from the United States of aliens who have attempted entry through fraud or without proper documents.

This charitable interpretation struggles to convince. Notwithstanding a defense of lousy and lax lawit nevertheless seems true to state that U.S. laws governing the admission of asylum-seekers and refugees will still process people based on a tale told at a port of entry, and despite disqualifying conduct: the brazen, even criminal, behavior evinced by the Central American caravanners rushing our border.

As practiced, the law is worse than an ass. Its perverse in the extreme.

In the context of law misconstrued or reinvented, the chant about the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act is as telling. Its the excuse parroted by almost everybody, Republicans included, for a lack of vigorous military action against an en masse breach of the southern border.

With their Posse Comitatus chant, the no-borders crowd is claiming that sending the U.S. Military to the border is tantamount to deploying the military for civilian purposes.

If an ongoing, sustained, intentional and international invasion of U.S. territory by foreign nationals is considered a domestic dispute to be handled by civil authoritiesthen America, plain and simple, is both defenseless and borderless; there is, seemingly, no law thatll defend American borders.

What those liberals colonizing our heads are attempting to convey is that a good America, a just America, a moral America is de facto and de jure a borderless America.

In truth, and according to the Congressional Research Service, as relayed by the Military Times, Posse Comitatus means that the U.S. military is not to be used to control or defeat American citizens on U.S. soil.

The hordes amassed on the border with Mexico, and rushing the port of entry in San Ysidro, California, are not American citizens. They are not even very nice.

More here:
Liberals Want America To Go Borderless - townhall.com