The barbarians have arrived

[Homeownertoo]

I had to think some time on this issue before understanding the language with which it could be described. Normal political discourse does not do justice to the damage to our nation and society that it both entails and intends.

Here's the issue: the often unfathomable Toronto City Council has decided to let foreign nationals vote in civic elections. Worse, the premier of that benighted (that's actually too-exculpating a term) province, is gung-ho on the idea, so we can expect it will soon be on her agenda for all Ontario jurisdictions. She justifies her support by invoking the mantra of 'diversity', in yet one more example of the usual leftwing doublespeak. And since every repugnant left-wing idea seems eventually to become the norm, we can expect it will find its way here. (It is probably already making its way to the agenda of the loopy Vancouver city council).

So what is wrong with this?

Yes, that is just a rhetorical question. Anyone whose brain has not been pickled in far-Left dreck since childhood understands exactly what is going on here, even if the words to describe it may fail because, well, who really thought the barbarians would be this audacious already. Apparently they are.

Barbarians is the correct word because barbarism is the political process we face. We are increasingly ruled by barbarians whose agenda is to destroy the political and social system developed over the past couple of centuries out of the often terrible experiences of the centuries before then. Being barbarians, they have nothing to replace it with other than a childlike vision of society based on the illusions of Rousseau, and whose illusions have already wreaked so much social damage over the past several decades.

In this specific case, they want to destroy the concept of citizenship by rendering it devoid of any meaning.

There was once a time when an immigrant to Canada waited five years to apply for citizenship. It was reasonably deemed that such time was needed for the immigrant to absorb the values and structures of the society they were petitioning to become a member of, to feel a part of it, and to loosen the bonds that hold everyone to the last place they called home. Some years ago, the lessons of civilization already weakening, that time period was recklessly reduced to three years, while the idea began to take hold that the nation's and society's underpinnings could absorb any number of entrants from any culture, no matter how foreign. That idea is now the national religion.

But that was not enough for the barbarians. After all, they have no interest in what I have called the values and structures of the nation. They loathe the idea that Canada should in any way be defined by the set of values that are most closely linked to the exigencies of a liberal democracy or even the concept of nationhood, because that would discriminate against cultures that, whatever their other merits, do not share those attributes. Citizenship? That is merely the ruling elite's tool for maintaining control. Voting rights for citizens? The same.

It should be obvious what are the goals of barbarians like the Toronto City Council and the reckless premier of Ontario. They long to tear down the barriers -- political, economic, social and cultural -- that that distinguish one country or one nation from another (unless we are talking about the euphemistically labeled 'First Nations' whose cultural distinctions, should they still exist, are to be honored and preserved from further infection by the colonizing powers), as if the cultures upon which nations are built are irrelevant and meaningless. And if in doing so they destroy that which makes a country like Canada attractive to foreigners, so be it. They would not mourn its loss, as long as the pension cheques keep arriving.

We need no longer peruse the pages of Gibbons' Decline and Fall to understand how a great society collapses. It happens because we allow ourselves to be persuaded that the blessings of nationhood and liberal democracy are our birthright and are eternal, and could withstand any and all abuses. Like the Romans, we cede more and more of our civilization to the political barbarians until we lose the capacity to distinguish between civilization and barbarism. The end result will not be pretty, according to Gibbons.

[grammafreddy]

This has concerned me for a long, long time.

[JLives]

First of all I reject your projection of this on the left wing. You could have left it to the particular politicians involved as it just sets up walls to the discussion to begin with.

I don't think any people have the right to hold any part of the world as their own. Freedom of movement should be a right. Borders are unnatural and create division. Our team vs. your team. You are awful but we are better. I feel it is only through true worldwide diversity that we will find common ground. It is only now that our cultures are beginning to merge like this and we don't really know what the outcome will be. I don't like many religious beliefs and believe they have caused great harm but I don't see how isolating them will help make that stop. Only through working together and finding common ground can we ever make progress towards peace.

With that said I don't think that foreigners should have voting rights with the way the rules are now. I agree that religion is causing far too much violence and death in the world and would like to minimize it's impact. It is something we should fighting against. I support a secular society.

[Glacier]

I told my wife about this story today, and even though she is not a citizen, she thinks it's absolutely preposterous.

[Homeownertoo]

First of all I reject your projection of this on the left wing. You could have left it to the particular politicians involved as it just sets up walls to the discussion to begin with.

Except that all the processes I am talking about come out of the Left and are, indeed, praised by the Left. Kinda hard to ignore the connection. And anyway, doing as you suggest would render meaningless any attempt to understand why it is happening.

I don't think any people have the right to hold any part of the world as their own. Freedom of movement should be a right. Borders are unnatural and create division. Our team vs. your team. You are awful but we are better.

Yes, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Fact is, culture matters to people and to nations. You want to flood Canada with Muslims, better be prepared to replace your cherished civil and human rights (gee, I wonder where they came from?) with Shariah law. That's reality. Wishing it away doesn't make it disappear.

I feel it is only through true worldwide diversity that we will find common ground. It is only now that our cultures are beginning to merge like this and we don't really know what the outcome will be. I don't like many religious beliefs and believe they have caused great harm but I don't see how isolating them will help make that stop. Only through working together and finding common ground can we ever make progress towards peace.

Do you really think that the common ground you blithely assume would emerge from your melding of cultures will include the civil and human rights you cherish. It may well be a far darker common ground, one more common to the history of humanity, than you would like.

With that said I don't think that foreigners should have voting rights with the way the rules are now. I agree that religion is causing far too much violence and death in the world and would like to minimize it's impact. It is something we should fighting against. I support a secular society.

Many don't, including many many of those you would welcome into Canada with no restrictions. I would never stoop to labeling people, but the word 'naive' comes to mind whenever I read one of your posts, Jenny.

[Homeownertoo]

I told my wife about this story today, and even though she is not a citizen, she thinks it's absolutely preposterous.

I told my wife about this story yesterday, and even though she is a naturalized citizen, she thinks it's absolutely preposterous.

[Thinktank]

24,000 migrant agricultural workers come to Canada each year - mostly to Ontario. They pay income tax and contribute to Canada’s employment insurance and pension plans, just like Canadian workers. Sometimes they use dangerous chemicals/pesticides with no safety equipment, protection or training, and work 12 to 15 hours without overtime or holiday pay. I don't think there's a Canadian alive that doesn't like the idea of cheap immigrants doing the dirty work for us. We 'allow' these immigrants from Mexico and Jamaica to work in the fields treated with pesticides, thanks to those 'Barbarians' in the government that Homeownertoo is talking about.

We had Barbarians in Canada's government in 1914, when thousands of Ukrainians were used to develop Canadian infrastructure as "forced-labourers" just because they had "Austria" on their passports. They were used to develop Banff National Park, the logging industry in Northern Ontario & Quebec, the steel mills in Ontario & Nova Scotia, and in the mines in British Columbia, Ontario & Nova Scotia. This infrastructure development program benefited Canadian corporations to such a degree that the internment was carried on for two years after the end of World War I. None of those Ukrainians were ever compensated by Canada's 'Barbarians' for being forced to work as slaves. In fact, the government destroyed a big percentage of the documents of Canada's First National Internment Operations in the 1950's because they were ashamed of what they did - and also they didn't want to $ pay for it.

The internment issue exposed many of the anti-immigrant feelings of the general population of the day. Reading through some of the references, it is shocking that the fundamental comments made 80 years ago are also prevalent in today's society.

I say let them vote. Maybe they help remove the Barbarians with their vote.




http://www.infoukes.com/history/internment/

[grammafreddy]

I say let them vote.

Are you married or have daughters or maybe a girlfriend?

Ask them how they would feel living under Sharia Law.

[Thinktank]

...how they would feel living under Sharia Law.

I don't think our Barbarians (govt) care much about Sharia law.

The United States has a very special relationship with Saudi Arabia. This is largely based upon the importance of the trade of oil and other goods for both countries, but Saudi Arabia has also been courted by the United States due to its strategic location and importance in the Middle East. The good relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia, ... is very important for the US politically as well as economically.

And besides, it is the regimes in those countries that impose Sharia law on the people. When Canada helped USA bomb Iraq the first time, ( remember USA's Albright said killing 500,000 children was worth it) the people in that country were supposedly going to welcome us with flowers, and thank us for liberating them from a bad regime. Why would they vote for Sharia law here?

Arabs own 2.6% of America's debt. We love them, and they love us. We would never complain about Sharia law to them.

http://www.arabamericangiving.org/the-i ... conomy.php

..

[Captain Awesome]

the often unfathomable Toronto City Council has decided to let foreign nationals vote in civic elections.

Well, if you think about it, it kinda makes sense. It's only civic elections after all.

Federal elections deal with the direction the country is going - and people who are most affected by it - citizens are the ones voting.
Civic elections deal with how city functions - and people who are the most affected by it - the ones who live in that city are the ones voting.

You don't have to be a Canadian citizen to be affected by city politics - you just have to live there.

In all honesty, it sounds like a good idea.

[occasional thoughts]

I had to check out the original story, given the good chance of mis- or dis-information from the original poster. For what its worth, voting would be restricted to "permanent residents" and not wide opened to "foreign nationals" as the poster stated. Which is not to say, so spare me, that permanent residents aren't nationals of some foreign country. But it shows they have a slight level of commitment to Canada. And while we are rapidly ceasing to be a "Christian" nation, we are (over the dead bodies of some Christians) the increasingly secularized version of Christian culture.

That said, I have mixed feelings, but bottom line I don't like it. Not too long ago British and was it even Commonwealth citizens were allowed to vote in our federal elections. That was lingering colonialism. This is pandering of some sort, I'd say. The challenge is not to become racist as one expresses opposition to this sort of thing.

[Thinktank]

DELETED

[Homeownertoo]

I had to check out the original story, given the good chance of mis- or dis-information from the original poster. For what its worth, voting would be restricted to "permanent residents" and not wide opened to "foreign nationals" as the poster stated. Which is not to say, so spare me, that permanent residents aren't nationals of some foreign country. But it shows they have a slight level of commitment to Canada. And while we are rapidly ceasing to be a "Christian" nation, we are (over the dead bodies of some Christians) the increasingly secularized version of Christian culture.

That said, I have mixed feelings, but bottom line I don't like it. Not too long ago British and was it even Commonwealth citizens were allowed to vote in our federal elections. That was lingering colonialism. This is pandering of some sort, I'd say. The challenge is not to become racist as one expresses opposition to this sort of thing.

It's not racist to believe foreign citizens (not dual citizens, a separate issue) should not have the right to vote. To raise that as an issue in this discussion is race-mongering.

[occasional thoughts]

I guess we should ask for some demographics on who would become entitled to vote in Toronto under the proposal, because your original post sideswiped the "racist" question, and subsequent posters went right to attacking people who want to live under sharia law. If most of the people who would be newly empowered to vote in Toronto were expat Americans or Brits or Argentinians or Chileans, etc., etc., I don't think you'd be raising the issue. BTW, I like our liberal democracy just fine and would do a lot to defend it, which allows simultaneous propounding by lefist dreck (?) and rightist neo Nazi thugs (Harper's cronies) without any of them risking death, at the hands of the state at least.

[Homeownertoo]

So now you're a mindreader.

If you're not interested in posting in good faith, why bother posting at all. Your ugly suppositions are, at best, a distraction, at worst, despicable.