Over the years we have realized that most of our regular readers of Babel-on-the-Bay are among the more progressive liberals. We certainly enjoy a healthy level of readership and get a good number of supportive e-mails from them. The practice of rabble.ca picking up some of our commentaries has also led to some very interesting (but less complementary) notes from New Democratic Party supporters. Their e-mails are not always as positive since we wrote in early 2015 that the Orange Wave in Quebec had become something of an undertow.
One of the NDP readers sent us an e-mail last week after Babel-on-the-Bay made another plea for a merger of the Liberals and the NDP to create a Canadian social democratic party. We were told that “As usual another bloody liberal telling the dippers how to run their party.”
We can assure you that if we were telling the New Democrats how to run their party, it would be far more successful than it is today.
Back when we were welcome at Queen’s Park and took responsibility for much of the Liberal Party’s public relations from Toronto, we considered the opposition parties part of the public. We did not have to be a card-carrying member to learn the ins and outs of the various parties. Back before Google, you had to know everything about the leaders and their key people. Some became friends. You hardly write political commentaries not knowing the key people, their party history and how the various parties operate.
But it is hardly our intent to tell any party (other than the Liberal Party of Canada) how to do its business today. There is nothing we want from politics today but peace, order and good government. (And if you recognize that as the title of a book, it was.)
No party is perfect. There are wide gaps between party objectives and accomplishments. We find to-day’s ideologies frightening. We despair for ignorance. We are concerned about the public attention level, interests, savvy and tolerance.
But we were writing about the e-mail from the NDP guy. His title for the note was “bollocks.” That is a term more common to Great Britain than to Canada. We assume it was in admiration for our cojones in suggesting the wedding of Liberal and NDP parties.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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