Are libertarians racist?

Strangely, the biggest issue in the recent Ontario election for me had nothing to do with our policy or platform. Two days before polling day, our candidate in Thunder Bay Superior-North (TBSN) purchased a full page ad that took issue with some First Nations' privileges in Ontario. She thought aboriginals had unfair advantages.

I'm sure many of you will think: Really, aboriginals have privileges, advantages? Aren't they second class citizens on their own land? Shouldn't we feel sorry for the way the government treats these people? Aren't Canadian governments criticized around the world for underfunding our First Nations? Shame! (here is media release with links that respond to the issue)

Frankly, I have never thought that, even though I do sympathize with the plight of aboriginals at the hands of governments all over the world.

The story goes back to late winter in 2014, the run up to the June election, which I was convinced was inevitable. The presumptive candidate for the PC party in TBSN, made a comment on her Facebook page that got her turfed out of the candidacy.

By the way, the PC's should change their name to "Politically Correct." And as far as I'm concerned the label Progressive Conservative is just oxymoronic, emphasis on moronic, because that's exactly how they appeared in this past election, but that's another story.

Some members of the party and several of the Libertarian executive committee saw this unfairness issue around aboriginals as needing to be addressed. Anyway, the PC TBSN candidate was forced out, so we asked her to join us and she did. We were attempting to fill the slate (107 ridings) and had candidates in all parts of the province for the first time ever. This candidate had already received media attention in her riding and throughout the North. Several of us spoke to her, and we agreed this was an issue created and exasperated by government and bureaucracy. Perfect for us.

Immediately I received emails and social media messages that accused us of harbouring a racist, and implying Libertarians were racist. I was bothered by this at first, and I even tried to defend the decision, but I soon realized these comments stemmed from outright ignorance.  

As a libertarian from the Objectivist school, I think Ayn Rand explained the foundations of "racism" best in the Virtue of Selfishness:

"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

"Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men."

I've just commented on racism as a form of collectivism, abhorrent to me, so you will pardon me if I attempt to characterize the group (not a collective) called "libertarians."

My experience is that libertarians are the most accommodating people you would ever want to meet, by and large. All of them are, of course, very opinionated, and tend to abhor all the forms of collectivism present in our society. The only preconceived notions libertarians harbour deal with governments, bureaucracies and crony corporatism. On most other issues, libertarians will have an open mind.

So you might wonder why so many libertarian and conservative thinkers are apposed to the way the First Nation's people were dealt with and are being dealt with in Canada? It's definitely not racism.

More next time.

I'm back

I have not posted to this blog for seven months, not good. But the fact is I have been actively posting to Facebook (on several sites) and twitter (on two accounts).
I'll admit it has been difficult to keep up with things since I became a political leader - almost three years now. These past few months were particularly busy because I was fairly certain we were heading for a general election. That actually happened on June 12, 2014, - my party: Ontario Libertarian, did relatively well, and we achieved most of the goals that we had set.
Over the course of the next little while I will highlight some of the things that have happened over the past seven months and during the election. I have to be careful on certain issues, as party leader I speak for the party - so I will need to distinguish between personal views and "official party positions." I hope to be posting at least once a week to this blog and try to regain the readership that I once had. Stay tuned.

Eating healthy in 2014 - gluten free?

Correlation is not cause, but note the rise in obesity with low fats.

This is the time of year we promise to change our bad habits. Canadians think they eat poorly when compared to the official government food guide. No one would ever suspect that the food guide may be erroneous. But what if it were?

I've written about this before, most recently here. Since then more evidence has accumulated and more books have addressed the issue. One of the more outspoken writers, a neurologist, David Perlmutter, suggests that both the Canadian and American food guides are upside-down. Rather than whole grains and carbohydrates being the largest component of a good diet, he suggests they be severely reduced or even eliminated from most people's diets. He points to gluten, a protein in many grains as the culprit. Interestingly, food marketers have already ratcheted up the production, distribution and sale of "gluten-free" products in North America. It's the latest fad. Deservedly or not, gluten has become what fat was from the 1970's to the present day, something to be avoided. Perlmutter and others also suggest that the demonizing of fats, and fat-like substances like cholesterol, has been all wrong.

Articles like this one from a reputable magazine, makes the decades long government sanctioned directive against fats sound like evil propaganda. But there is plenty of evidence to support the benefits of fats. That has not stopped the Ontario Liberals in cahoots with the Ontario Medical Association from regulating school cafeteria lunches and even suggesting food warnings on so-called "junk-food."

This brings up questions that need to be addressed about the fallibility of Ontario government policies. This recent Ontario government document (Memorandum 150), severely limits the sale of fats in school cafeterias while heavily promoting the sale of grain products. If this is wrong, one must ask what other government policies are wrong?       

Climate crapshoot - an Arctic free of ice? Not so fast.

Models diverging with reality but with increasing IPCC certainty

I have written many posts that comment on global warming/climate change. In fact, next to politics, my climate comments are likely the most numerous.

That's no accident, I've always thought that the whole climate issue has become a secular religion, a subset of the environmental movement which also has all the character traits of a religion. I hope I don't need to elaborate on the dangers implicit in religious belief. Any decision or conclusion grounded on faith should not be acted on and certainly no one should be forced to act on faith. Unfortunately in the case of human caused global warming, acting on faith and forcing others has already happened.

This week is the fifth anniversary of one of Al Gore's famous predictions. Five years ago Gore predicted that by 2013, for a few months in the summer, the Arctic oceans will be ice free.

Well, it hasn't happened, not yet anyway. I'm not going to rule out that it won't happen in the future. I believe the data that suggests the volume of Arctic ice has decreased. That seems to me reasonable as an extension of the warming that has been occurring since the end of the last ice age roughly 10,000 years ago. I've always believed that climate changes, and I even believe that humans have been contributing to that change. To believe that humans are the sole or even a major contributor to climate change for me is still a huge stretch. The cliched phrase of "97% consensus of scientists" believe we are the cause, is also a huge stretch.

Science doesn't work by consensus. Galileo was right on the heliocentric model, everyone else was wrong. Darwin was right on natural selection, acts of creation and intelligent design are wrong. Both proposed ideas that were contrarian. Global warming/climate change models don't jive with reality (see chart), and therefore as explanatory theories they seem to be wrong too. The skeptics may prove right. The variables on climate are too numerous and probably not all known, thats why in the chart above the observations diverge from all the models. The error will be magnified with time.

But back to Mr. Gore's prediction. The urgency of his predictions, coincident with hot summers, mild winters, Hurricane Katrina - all that, plus the religious zealotry of environmentalism, gave him undeserved credibility. He still has it. Some governments, Ontario's Liberal government to name one, could not wait to act, so urgent was the belief that something must be done. As a result, Ontario has closed (most, almost all) its coal burning generation facilities and eschewed any fossil fuel alternative (even clean natural gas) for wind and solar power. Burning natural gas of course, still produces the evil CO2. Our electrical grid is in a mess with continually rising prices and a legacy that will take generations to fix, if ever. Meanwhile, real damage caused by humans forcing global warming or climate change may not happen for decades or centuries or ever.