Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

A chance to kick Alison Redford out of office

Alberta is on the verge of a provincial election. Sometime in coming days or weeks, Alison Redford, who has been Tory Premier since last October, is expected to visit Lieutenant-Governor Donald Ethell and ask him to drop the writs unleashing a frenetic 28-day campaign.

Ms. Redford has been Premier for nearly six months without having been elected to the job. She assumed the post after being selected last October by the Progressive Conservatives to succeed the bumbling Ed Stelmach as their leader. With any luck, the left-leaning, autocratically inclined, meddlesome, nanny statist will be ousted on election day.

The Premier doesn't like Albertans much. She thinks we drink too much and are a menace on Alberta's streets and roads. Indeed, in her holier-than-thou mindset, she is sure that any drinking before driving is too much, even just a glass of wine during a restaurant dinner.

Ms. Redford is also convinced that Alberta parents are a hindrance to the teaching of communal values in the classroom. Her Education Minister is pushing amendments to the provincial Education Act that would remove parents as the "primary educators" of their children (with schools as complements to the home), and replace home values with the provisions of the Alberta Human Rights Act.

This, the Minister, Thomas Lukaszuk, insists, is not the intent of the amendments. But whether or not it is the intent, it will be the effect. Alberta is one of the few remaining provinces in which parents are still recognized in law as the chief teachers of their children. Unseating them from that perch and replacing them with the commissioners and investigators of a human rights tribunal cannot help but have a profound impact over time on the nature of schooling, whether Mr. Lukaszuk is perceptive enough to see that or not.


This change, too, is Ms. Redford's doing.

As a former United Nations bureaucrat and a long-time advocate of the politically correct version of human rights - in which the ancient freedoms of free speech, free assembly and private property are trumped by modern notions of fairness, tolerance and self-esteem - Alberta's new Premier has wanted since she was attorneygeneral under Mr. Stelmach to give parents no options about the ideals their children must absorb at school. Within days of winning the Tory leadership contest, Ms. Redford said she would end parents' ability to exempt their sons and daughters from sex-ed and life-skills courses that included lessons that undermine many family beliefs.

The changes that Mr. Lukaszuk insists will not upend parental authority have been devised by the Premier to do exactly that. The Minister is merely the smiling face on her larger plan. Indeed, Ms. Redford is said to be pushing with all her might to get the amendments approved before the election commences so voters won't notice the change until it is too late.

It has long been the goal of radical unionists within the Alberta Teachers' Association to replace parents with education bureaucrats and ideologues. And since Ms. Redford owes her current job to a lastminute push by lefty teachers to take out Tory memberships and vote for her, these amendments are partial payment for their help.

She has changed estate law in the province to remove the freedom of testators to leave their earthly goods to whomever they wish, and has increased the power of the courts to redistribute the assets of the deceased in ways that judges think are fairer than those laid out in wills.

And Mr. Redford nearly provoked a caucus revolt when she forced through changes to Alberta's impaireddriving laws that would have seen the cars and trucks of Albertans confiscated if they had a single glass of wine or a couple of beers at a dinner out. No trial. No effective appeal. No presumption of innocence. Blow over 0.05% blood alcohol content and - bam! - you'd suffer the wrath of Mother Alison.

Nor is it just what Ms. Redford does, but how she does it. She often governs by decree, as though she had been selected supreme commander rather than merely Tory leader.

No matter what party she nominally belongs to, she is the first NDP premier of Alberta. The sooner we Albertans see the back of her, the better.

Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Lorne Gunter

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