Psst - we don't really need liberals

I can't get too excited about Marsden. Her Anne Coulter act appears to be just that.... an act. She has a very checkered past, and uses every Cintonesque tactic to sidestep taking responsibility for her own actions.

The Western Standard (a conservative news mag) did a very good article on her. You can read it at: http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/files/marsden_story.pdf

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Marsden

"Marsden first came to national attention when, as a student at Simon Fraser University, she accused her swim coach of sexual harassment. The coach, Liam Donnelly, was fired on May 23, 1997, but rehired after evidence was disclosed that Marsden herself had been "stalking him and had sent him gifts and sexually explicit e-mails". [3] SFU paid Donnelly $35,000 in legal fees and removed all findings of harassment in his file. University president John Stubbs resigned in the wake of the scandal. [4] After Donnelly's reinstatement, Marsden, appearing on CBC Television's The National, accused him of sexual assault."

"Years later, Marsden was reportedly contacted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in regards to harrassment allegations by criminology professor Neil Boyd. [5]"

"In 2002, Marsden was arrested for harassing Vancouver broadcaster and ex-boyfriend Michael Morgan. She was jailed "for over 24 hours before being released on strict conditions of bail." [6] In 2004 she pled guilty to and was convicted of criminal stalking. On October 12, 2004, she was given a conditional discharge and one year of probation. Upon her meeting the conditions of discharge and probation, she will have no criminal record. The ruling said that though Morgan had told Marsden that he "never wanted to see nor hear from her again," Marsden continued to send him e-mails and "vindictive and threatening" voice messages. She also contacted others including Morgan's son, sister, and business associate, some of whom added Marsden to their e-mail account block list. After her arrest, a search of Marsden's belongings showed that she had activated a function to blindly forward Morgan's email correspondence to her without his knowledge. [7]"

"....After Marsden asserted her right to criticize the personal lives of public figures on her radio show, reporter Bob McKeown asked her how she "handled [her] own background in that context?" Marsden asked, "my own background being what?," to which McKeown responded by citing the Donnelly and Morgan controversies. Marsden insisted that her personal life was "not relevant to what I do" and declined to comment further."

In response to “Psst – we don’t really need liberals”-November 1, 2005
http://torontosun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Marsden_Rachel/2005/11/01/1288191.html

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Dear Ms. Marsden,
I am not a regular reader of the Toronto Sun, but as I combed beneath the seats of a late night streetcar for reading material I came across your column from this Tuesday past (Psst - we don't really need liberals). I clipped your article and put it aside, for I wanted to respond with due consideration to the arguments presented.
You start your article with some vague and derogatory descriptions of those you deem to slur as liberal.
“Recent events in American politics suggest liberals are clowns with zero sense of perspective.”
You go on to explain how liberal voices have been effectively marginalized in the US, and that Canadians should learn by example. Your notion of liberalism is representative of a malignant trend in journalism, supported by a fragmented ideology, and strung together by numerous fallacies.
But let’s not get off on the wrong foot. I am writing to you because I hope to clarify your notion of liberal.
I suspect that I am not the first person to inform you that the United States of America, of which you speak so highly, was founded on the principles of liberalism: The founding fathers (Franklin, Jefferson, Washington) had more than a taste for the great liberal philosophers (Paine, Locke, Hume). Two of these men even contributed to a little ditty based on these theories called, The Constitution Of The United States’, and the other penned The Declaration of Independence.
But your use of the term liberal, not surprisingly, is much closer to that expressed in a recent publishing industry phenomenon wafting from south of the border - books with catchy titles of the "Why Liberals Are Stupid" variety. In this view liberals are defined as traitors, either through contempt for morality or naiveté. Ironically, your definition is not far from the one maintained by a dogmatic sect of the radical left; when I was in university it was in vogue to use “liberal” as a synonym for “sell out” or “hypocrite” among the Che Guevara t-shirt crowd.
I checked the Oxford English Dictionary for definitions that might support your view, and you may be surprised to know that I did not find any. Not to say that the OED has the last word on meaning, or that lexicographers at the OED will not, at some point in the near future, pick up on this popular idiom, and add or amend the definition to something more serpentine. Wouldn’t that be a great victory? Keep using “liberal” like a Cromwellian slur and then eventually it becomes one!
“We don't need liberals. Not only do these perpetual pessimists consume valuable oxygen which, as they keep telling us, will be gone soon enough…conservatives are capable of opposing themselves quite effectively.”
In this utopian conservative government that you envision, I’m curious to know, how liberal one has to be before they lose their vote? What kind of dissent is produced in this perfect anti-liberal society? A debate over how many lashes to give those Cadillac-driving welfare mothers we used to hear so much about during the glory days of the Common Sense Revolution.
There are, as you pointed out, people who do cheer on those dubbed “terrorists” or “insurgents” in Iraq, but who have been accurately called “theocratic fascists” by more learned men. The glib Michael Moore has compared these murderers to the Minutemen of the American Revolution. But does his penchant for stupidity make him a liberal? If that were true the Regan government’s Iran-Contra scandal, which you also mention, could be defined as liberal. I suppose Iran-Contra was as much a liberal interpretation of foreign policy and the rule of law as it was the cynical funding of a covert war to replace a democratically elected government with a fascist military state.
However, I did say I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot, so let us give your view of liberalism a fair shake. Let us assume that you, like those great media gurus who have spawned our new definition of liberal, believe that an evil schism has occurred within contemporary politics, and all that was once good and decent in western civilization has been usurped by the corruption of universal morality and a disloyalty to the values that society was built on. It is everything that fits into this category, which we may now define as liberal: Abortion, gay-marriage, public healthcare, the anti-war movement, the anti-globalization movement, income tax, and the metric system. These, I think you would agree, all fit into your definition of liberal. If we can both agree to that, I believe we have a starting point for debate.
I stress the point of agreement because I find your use of the word in question confusing. Your article does not distinguish between liberals (in the ideological sense) and Liberals (members of the governing party of Canada).
The governing Grits have much to answer for, and as the impending election will most likely prove, they will not have sufficient answers. But is corruption a liberal value? It fits your ambiguous definition, but I must remind you that so called conservatives are just as capable of corruption. You mentioned Watergate, so I know you’ve heard of Tricky Dick. The motives for Adscam seem to have little to do with “liberal issues”; they are a fungus from a Federalist tree, a conservative issue by any stretch, mired in the hands of pathetic men.
Your use of the word “liberal” is both tactical and nonsensical. Calling someone a “liberal” is a convenient way to acquire a patsy for the convenient purpose of excluding him or her from debate. It’s a propaganda cycle that perpetuates itself – you never run out of straw men to burn in effigy.
And yet, as we have already established, contemporary conservatism exists only within the context of liberal philosophy. Therefore, this type of liberal bashing can be viewed only as a deranged form of self-loathing.
A story in the news this morning reports that US President Bush is poised to veto a defence bill amended by Senator John McCain, altered to include a provision outlawing degrading or inhumane treatment of foreign prisoners. This comes in light of the fact that the Bush administration has attempted to do an end-run around US civil rights law, The International Declaration of Human Rights, The Geneva Convention, Habeas Corpus, and thus deny any and all prisoner rights, in order that they can “interrogate” suspected Al Qaeda agents at Guantanamo Bay, and other international locations, for an undetermined period of time. Merely by classifying the persons in question as “enemy combatants” the Pentagon achieves a gulag-like bureaucracy that can hold prisoners without rights, public trials or due process. Numerous credible stories confirming prisoner abuse and torture have been backed by sources including the Red Cross and the FBI. The Bush administration refuses to acknowledge any wrong doing at Guantanamo.
With these facts in mind, do you believe that Republican Representative John McCain, the FBI and the Red Cross are involved in a liberal media conspiracy to defame conservatives? Is the rule of law one of those nasty liberal values? I would say McCain’s attempt to preserve human rights is quite conservative. Although his criticism of his own president’s War on Terror is liberal in the sense the founding father’s intended. But McCain has seen darkness at noon, so you’ll have to excuse him, I suspect he might have a bit of a bleeding heart.

John David Palmer

"The glib Michael Moore has compared these murderers to the Minutemen of the American Revolution. But does his penchant for stupidity make him a liberal? "

We don't need Michale Moore's brand of liberalism. He's a traitor and a lying, slandering hypocrite. He's not stupid either. He knows what he's doing.

"Merely by classifying the persons in question as “enemy combatants” the Pentagon achieves a gulag-like bureaucracy that can hold prisoners without rights, public trials or due process. Numerous credible stories confirming prisoner abuse and torture have been backed by sources "

This is it? This is what gets you fired up? I tell you what gets me going. Hearing about terrorists who kill kids, plant bombs on their bodies, wait for the parents to show up to mourn over their dead child and then detonate the bomb. Another thing that rather irks me, is terrorists strapping bombs to their bodies, walking into weddings and blowing 70 innocent people to bits for the offence of being happy. Oh and don't let it slip your mind how they kill soldiers and the kids that they are passing out toys to.

And so I say the terrorists need to be exterminated like bugs. Because if they think we have any hesitation about wiping them off the face of the earth, they will be emboldened and this war will last five times longer than it needs to and more innocents will die. Now as to the side issue of how captive terrorists are treated. Yeah let's treat them decently. But let's not forget what they are and what they do. The trouble is, certain kinds of liberals like Michale Moore do forget. Hell they don't forget, they don't care. They are too busy hating America.