As harsh austerity and xenophobic nationalism fester in Europe, Yanis Varoufakis discusses his antidote with Tellus Senior Fellow Allen White.

What inspired your career trajectory from academic economist to prominent supranational activist?

I went into politics because of the financial crisis of 2008. Had financial capitalism not imploded, I would have happily continued my quite obscure academic work at some university. The chain reaction of economic crises, financial bailouts, and the rise of what I call the Nationalist International that almost broke financial capitalism, and brought Greece severe hardship, had a profound impact on me.

In the early to mid-2000s, I was beginning to feel that a crash was approaching. I could see that global financial imbalances were growing exponentially and that our generation or the next would be hampered by a systemic crisis.

I left my cocoon writing about mathematical economics and moved from Sydney to Athens at the time Greece was becoming insolvent. I began writing about the current situation and appearing on TV, warning against covering up insolvency with bailouts. Through these appearances as well as writing about governments role in averting the impending crisis, I drifted into politics.

The second transition, from government to activism, was much simpler. Restructuring Greeces debt was my top priority as Minister of Finance. The moment the Prime Minister surrendered to the austerity demands of the European Commission and accepted another loan without debt restructuring, resignation became the easiest decision of my life. Once I resigned, I was back in the streets, theaters, and town hall meetings setting up the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). I saw activism as the best way to confront the political and banking establishment. Four years later, in July 2019, our Greek branch, entitled MeRA25, entered Parliament with nine MPs. The fight continues.

You are one of the sharpest critics of neoliberalism today. How would you define neoliberalism?

To begin, let me challenge the term neoliberal. The use of the term in relation to West-Soviet relations was just a cloak under which to hide libertarian industrial feudalism, but neoliberalism has as much to do with financialized capital post-1970s as it does with Cold War geopolitical relations. Similarlyand I know this is a controversial statementtheres nothing neoliberal about the world we live in today. It is neither new in the sense of neo nor liberal in the sense of fostering democratic values. Look at what has been happening in Europe over the last decade. Gigantic bank bailouts are funded through taxation. There is nothing really neoliberal about the use of such vast subsidies from the public to finance capitalists.

Even under the government of Margaret Thatcher in the UK from 1979 to 1990, the height of so-called neoliberalism in the UK, the British state grew rapidly, becoming bigger, more powerful, and more authoritarian than ever. We witnessed a state that was weaponized on behalf of the City of London to the benefit of a very small segment of the population. I dont think we should concede the term neoliberalism to the brutish establishment using state power to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots.

How has this brutish establishment become so dominant in shaping the global order?

The first two decades after World War II were the Golden Era of capitalism for a very simple reason: Franklin Roosevelts New Deal was projected onto the rest of the West under the Bretton Woods system. It was a remarkable, though imperfect, system, a kind of enlightenment without socialism. Structures to restrain financial capital were put into place. Banks could not do as they pleased; thats why bankers hated the Bretton Woods system. Recall that Roosevelt banned bankers from attending the Bretton Woods conference and subjected them to reserve controls and rules against shifting money across international borders.

The result of the Bretton Woods system was a remarkable reduction in inequality concurrent with steady growth, low unemployment, and next to zero inflation. The system was predicated upon the USs status as a surplus country, recycling wealth through Europe and Japan in a variety of ways. By the end of the 1960s, however, the Bretton Woods system proved unsustainable. The US began to incur trade deficits with Europe, Japan, and later China at the same time Wall Street, unrestrained by regulatory boundaries, attracted most of the profits from the rest of the world.

Unshackled financial institutions began creating what amounted to private money. Holding an inflow of $5 billion daily for a mere five minutes was enough to divvy it up into derivatives, opaque investment instruments that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. This and other forms of financial engineering produced huge volumes of private money, the value of which, as in the 1929 crash, eventually collapsed in domino-like fashion. Authorities in Washington, Brussels, Paris, and Athens immediately transferred the resulting losses onto the shoulders of taxpayers, a form of socialism for bankers. I described this colossal mishandling of our financial system in my 2009 bookThe Global Minotaur, six years before I became the Greek Minister of Finance.

When I became Minister, I believed that a global crisis of capitalism was underway. Imagine, then, my walking into a meeting of the Eurogroup with all the European finance ministers in the room who knew I held this view. I was the red flag in the eyes of the establishment. In the same vein, the German ambassador to Greece and one of the most powerful (and most corrupt) Greek bankers had warned the future, democratically elected Prime Minster that my appointment as Finance Minister would cause them to close ATMs across the country and lead to collapse of the Greek banking system.

Given your experience inside and outside government, do you believe that there is a fundamental tension between capitalism and democracy?

Yes. Compare the character of a democratic election with a general meeting of shareholders of a private corporation. Both are elections, but in the democratic process, the one person-one vote rule applies, whereas in the corporate process, you have one share-one vote, essentially a wealth-based voting structure. My fellow economists, especially the true believers in free markets, love to portray the market as a voting mechanism. It is true that every time you buy a tub of yogurt, you are voting in favor of that brand. The same applies when you buy a Ford as opposed to a Volkswagen. The more money one has, the more votes one casts.

So, if you think of capitalism as a voting mechanism, it is anti-democratic in the sense that money determines power. The evolution of capitalism over the last few centuries is a history of the constant transfer of power to the wealthy, including the power to make decisions that affect the distribution of income.

Over time, power has been redistributed from the political sphere to the economic sphere. Until the early eighteenth century, there was no difference between these spheres. If you were the king or the baron, you also were rich. And if you were rich, you belonged to the nobility. With the rise of capitalism, a lowly merchant could become economically powerful. As the separation of the political and the economic evolved, power gradually transferred to the latter. What we now call democracy is not real democracy given the growing influence of economic power. To be sure, the voting franchise has been extended to all males (from only landowners), to women, and to blacks. A parallel democratization process has not occurred in the economic sphere, where power has become less inclusive and increasingly concentrated.

From the 1870s to the 1920s, democracy gradually became disempowered as the corporate worlda democracy-free zoneemerged. Since the end of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, power has migrated to finance. Goldman Sachs suddenly became more important than Ford, General Motors, or General Electric. Even corporations like Apple and Google are increasingly becoming financialized. Apple, for example, is sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, and it is operating more like a financier than an iPhone producer.

This dynamic guarantees that when we vote, an act of celebrating democracy, we increasingly are participating in a sphere that has become totally disempowered. Capitalism is predicated on defeating democracy, even as the democratic cloak continues to legitimize the prevailing system.

Given this fundamental tension between capitalism and democracy, do you believe the European Union can be reformed? And if so, how?

We must aim for something much closer to a democratic federated Europe than what we have now. The tragedy is that the moment you start making such a case as the only antidote to disintegration, you serve the cause of nationalists, xenophobes, racists, and fascists. In ten years, either were going to have a democratic federated European Union, or the political monsters will be victorious.

How do we achieve a future democratic federation? The most urgent and difficult task is to go out into the streets of Athens, Rome, Berlin, Paris, and Lisbon and have a discussion with people about the crisis the EU faces. Many dont want to hear about Europes future anymore. What used to be a very attractive vision of a unified Europe as a larger homeland for all its citizens has become toxic in the minds and the hearts of many Europeans. For them, the democratic European Union has become synonymous with an anti-humanist, even totalitarian, vision. We need to construct a new vision to counteract this kind of thinking.

You have been at the forefront of the recently formed Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). Tell us about DiEM25s pan-European mission and strategy.

DiEM25 seeks to put forward proposals that stimulate cooperation that is truly democratic. This will take time and will require recreating European institutions and a political economy that includes a massive Green New Deal or similar strategy. We must spend immediately at least 500 billion Euros annually on green energy, green transport, and a green transition in industry and agriculture. We can do this by creatively harnessing the power of existing institutions. The European Investment Bank, for example, could issue bonds worth half a trillion Euros every year, with that money going toward good-quality green jobs and technologies. The European Central Bank, sitting on the sidelines, could be ready to buy these bonds if needed to keep inflation in check. At the same time, we must engage with a broad spectrum of groups to stabilize Europe and so to bring back hope. With that movement underway, we can then have a discussion about democratic governance of the EU.

Im an old-fashioned lefty. I dont believe in destroying institutions. I believe in taking them over and transforming them into true public servants.

What does DiEM25 offer beyond the proposals of parties like Die Linke in Germany, Podemos in Spain, or other Green or Left parties throughout Europe?

Most members of these groups are our friends and comrades. We share a humanist attitude towards life and capitalism. The reason we created DiEM25 is that the major crises in Europe require local and national action as well as pan-European, if not global, action. It makes no sense to prioritize the local and national over the transnational, or vice versa. We must operate simultaneously at all levels.

For example, the design of urban transportation systems must consider the planetary, or systemic, impacts of alternative choices. The problem with national political parties is that they are not very good at such systemic thinking. What we need in Europe is a pan-European movement, which is more than a confederacy of autonomously operating states that make promises to local and national electorates independently of one another and then get together in Brussels to discuss the promises that each has committed to. This model is doomed to fail.

When DiEM25 was inaugurated in February of 2016, we sought to bring together Podemos, Die Linke, and allies from the UK to develop a Green New Deal for Europe. We hoped to unify such movements around a common pan-European program. It didnt work out that way. Why? Die Linke comprises two distinct groups: one faction believes that the European Union is beyond redemption and should be dismantled; the other believes that the EU is salvageable through democratic activism and social transformation, a view shared by DiEM. This division between supporters of exit and remain stood in the way of an alliance.

Another impediment to unity was that Podemos and others opposed a European voice in national and local policies and decision-making. What is Podemos going to say, for example, about the level and allocation of investment funds among member states? If a Podemos candidate is elected to the European Parliament, what financial policies will she support? We need clarity and unity on such issuesto have a voice not of a Greek, a German, or a Spaniard, but of a European internationalist. We will continue to struggle to create a unified, coherent agenda for all of Europe. Unity without cohesion is the curse of the left.

Lets not forget that the historical call was not for workers of each nation to organize within their borders. It was for workers of the world to unite.

Are there lessons to be learned from previous episodes of leftist internationalism, such as the Internationals, for our current time of global mobilization?

There are many lessons. Anybody who doesnt learn from history is a dangerous fanatic. Lesson number one is that socialist nationalism is the worst antidote to national socialism. Remember what happened in World War I when the German Social Democrats were co-opted into a nationalist agenda and supported the war effort of Germany against the much of Europe. That kind of socialist nationalism will always be gobbled up by Nazism. Anyone who supports a left-wing agenda and at the same time supports a nationalist, populist workers agenda is going to be devoured by fascists. They will end up effectively blowing wind into the fascists sails, intentionally or not.

Lesson number two is that Internationals fail if they are just a confederacy of national parties. The moment agendas and organizations are nationally based, as was the case in postwar Communist parties, the international movement will inevitably fragment and collapse. This is why DiEM25 places all its energies into not becoming a confederacy of a Greek DiEM25, a German DiEM25, and an Italian DiEM25. This is not a theoretical matter, but a practical one: transnationality as opposed to confederacy is critical to building a new, progressive political enterprise. Studying the failures of earlier Internationals is fundamental in shaping this strategy.

To be clear, when we created DiEM25, we envisioned a movement, not a party. And it remains a movement, but we decided about a year ago to create our own electoral wings in each country. In Germany, DiEM25 created Democratie Europa (Democracy in Europe); in Denmark, Alternativet (The Alternative). In short, if you are a member of a DiEM25created party, you also are a member of the larger movement. But you also can be a member of the larger movement without membership in a DiEM25-created party.

In a forthcoming book, you imagine another world in 2035 in which global financial capital is essentially demolished. What would this world look like? What would it take to get there?

I begin with the view that the present system is, simply stated, both awful and unsustainable. My story is told from the perspective of 2035, when my characters discover that, back in 2008, at the height of our crisis, the timeline split into two: one that you and I inhabit and another one that yielded a post-capitalist society. It is my narrative strategy for sketching out how post-capitalism could work and feel today had our response to the 2008 been different.

My forthcoming book, entitledAnother Now: Dispatches from an AlternativePresent, asks the following questions: Could the world be non-capitalist or post-capitalist? Could we see humanism in action? What would it look like? What would socialist corporations look like? How would they function? How would democracy function? What would happen to borders, migration, and defense? I try to create a vision of a liberal, socialist society that is not based on private property but does use money as a vehicle for exchange and markets as coordinating devices. I preserve money and markets because the alternative would be to fall to some fearsome hierarchical control, which, for me, is a nightmare scenario.

A deep transformation of values and institutions is essential to building a world of solidarity, well-being, and ecological resiliencewhat we call a Great Transitionis more urgent than ever. In a dark time, what basis for hope and advice can you offer fellow internationalists at this critical, historic moment?

We have the tools necessary in order to spend at least five percent of the global GDP on a Great Transition that saves the planet. Technically, we know how to create a new Bretton Woods, a progressive Green New Deal that diverts resources to saving the planet and creating quality green jobs across the globe.

To achieve such a future, we must offer a cautionary note regarding the role of borders. Some on the left are unfortunately moving toward the belief that migrants are a threat to domestic workers. That is a right-wing narrative that is factually untrue. We need to emancipate progressives from the notion that strong borders protect the working class. They do not. They are a scar on the face of the Earth, and they harm labor across the world.

Teaser photo credit: By Robert Crc Subversive festival media, FAL

Visit link:

Another Europe is Possible - Resilience

Buy Photo

Tom Cardarella (left), Charles Phinizy (center) and Lou Boden (right) gather for a meeting of the Staunton Secular Humanists at Crucible Coffee on Nov. 3, 2019.(Photo: Rilyn Eischens/The News Leader)

STAUNTON Kim Newton spent Thanksgiving weekend last year constructing a display for Staunton's annual Celebration of Holiday Lights. She painted the Earth on a huge sign, strung lights around it and set it up at Gypsy Hill Park with a few friends.

Newton was gladto see heridentity as a secular humanist represented in the festive display andhoped the sign would raise awareness of the newly established group Staunton Secular Humanists. Several people stopped to ask questions about humanism and group meetings, which Newton took as a positivesign.

Then in December, the group was distressed to see the display's lightsunplugged several times. Member Charles Phinizy started driving through Gypsy HillPark every night to see if it was still lit.

Not a subscriber? Sign up today to support local journalism.

Undeterred by the tension, Staunton Secular Humanistsis gearing up to post another holiday displayand to host its second winter solstice celebration next month. The group has grown since last year and now holds weekly meetings for residents toenjoy the company and communityreligious people might find at churches, mosques and synagogues.

"It's important to me that non-religious identities have equal treatment and are seen and treated with respect in our community," Newton said. "That was a big part of the impetus for wanting to have a public group."

The Staunton Secular Humanists posted their first display in Staunton's Celebration of Lights in 2018.(Photo: Courtesy of Kim Newton)

The share of United States adults who say they aren't affiliated with any religion has increased in recent years, and the percentage of those who identify as Christian has declined. The trend is especially pronounced among people ages 23 to 38, of whom 40% identify as religiously unaffiliated, according to Pew Research Center.

Newton identifies as a secular humanist a philosophy that, broadly, teaches theuse of compassion and critical thinking to do good but the Staunton group is intended to serve all religiously unaffiliated, secular and spiritual residents. Newton and Phinizy explained thatnon-Christians can often feel isolated or even ostracized intraditional regions like the Shenandoah Valley.

More: Find out how this elementary school is accredited despite failing to meet Va. standards

Phinizy said he's experienced this ostracism firsthand. Before he moved to the Valley, many of his coworkers stopped socializing with him and his family when they learned he wasn't Christian, he said. He no longer advertises his identity at work and was eager to learn about the brand-new Staunton group last winter.

"Anything outside of the norm of traditional Christianity is stigmatized," Newton said. "Being more public with your secular identity, being more public with the ideals that you hold and the values that you hold, I think, is actually a good way to help overcome [stereotypes]."

For the last several months, the group has held meetings at Staunton cafesevery Sunday morning. The number of attendees varies week to week, but at least a handful always come to sip coffee and chat, Newton and Phinizy said. The group rarely discusses religion newcomers are more likely to find members talking about weekend plans, hobbies and issues they're passionate about.

More: A tale of two cities: How Staunton and a small city in North Macedonia became friends

Going forward, members plan to shift the group's focus toward community service. They'd also like to see it expand and reachmore local families. Newton, a new mom, said they'vehoped to find a child-friendly space for meetingsbut struggle to find a facility willing to host the secular organization.

"A lot of families get that community support they need from their church, but not everyone has that, and not everyone wants that type of community, so it's important to me to try to make that space for kids and for my kid," Newton said.

On a recent bright Sunday morning, Phinizy and local artists Tom Cardarella and Lou Boden camped out at the end of a long table in Crucible Coffee.They drank hot coffee from white to-go cups and talked about the Staunton art scene, among other topics.

Boden, a retired interfaith minister who said he believes strongly in God,explained thatthe prospect of good conversation with open-minded people drew him to the group.

"No matter what your belief or opinion, you're welcome as long as you respect everyone else's beliefs, and that's what interests me," Boden said.

More information about the group is available on its Facebook page.

More: Chaplain hopes to create culture of mindfulness at Stuart Hall, one breath at a time

Send Rilyn a note at reischens@newsleader.com and follow her on Twitter @rilyneischens.Fill out this short survey to help her better cover our community, andsupport local journalism by subscribing today.

Read or Share this story: https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/2019/11/12/staunton-secular-humanists-aim-create-community-religiously-unaffiliated/4155538002/

See original here:

These Staunton residents struggled to find a secular community so they made their own - The News Leader

At a time when there is so much unrest, violence and hatred among the people in this country, Vipin Tripathi, a retired professor from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, is trying to spread the message of peace and love among people across all the age groups - by distributing flyers, organising workshops on humanism, interacting with them on the serious issues in the country. He started this mission of spreading peace in 1989 and has been practising it till date. He says, "I am doing this because there is so much hatred and violence spewing in the world today. And it has increased in the past few years. Let's take the Kashmir situation post the Article 370 debacle, for example. It has been more than three months since the government has restricted people's movement, they are surrounded by the Indian army and phone calls have also been barred. The present Indian government thinks that they have done something daring, but their approach was completely wrong. They should have taken the Kashmiris into confidence before they could revoke section 370. They are as much Indians as we are. This has led to further polarisation in our country."

When it comes to the issue of Kashmir, Tripathi wants youngsters to raise their voices and tell the government what is right and wrong. He adds, "I want them to understand the agony of Kashmiris so that they can unite and fight on their behalf. I just want to tell them that we are not in war with Kashmir."

Tripathi also works as a convener for a non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation called Sadhbav thataims at developing grassroots resistance against communalism and mobilising people on basic issues like education. He explains, "This organisation was started in 1990 after the Bhagalpur riots and Ramshila Poojan movement which shook our country. We stood for clarity of perception in the midst of communal frenzy and organised marches, fasts, corner meetings and poster and flyer campaigns."

Apart from all this, Tripathi has been distributing flyers among people to educate them about different national and regional issues, all by himself. He also organises workshops for school and college students. While the Science students attend his physics workshop, the Arts students attend history workshops. "Even if you are not a student, you can attend one of these workshops to gain knowledge and interact with people. The speciality of my workshops is that the first half is related to the subject and the second half is all about humanism. I feel that opening up with students and youngsters for dialogue is the only way to curb hatred and violence. The prejudices are so strong that they are rooted in the psyche of young minds. Dialogue will help them to fight their own prejudices. Though it is a slow process, I feel that it will be successful one day," says Tripathi who is trying to reach every corner of North India.

Media plays a negative roleApart from people and the government, the retired Physics professor believes that media including newspaper, television and social media have a greater role to play in conditioning the minds of young citizens. "These days, media hardly talks about the real issues that are of concern to society. By promoting selective news, they are directing people to form wrong opinions about fellow citizens."

NRC to roast the countryAnother issue that Tripathi is worried about is the imposition ofNational Register of Citizens (NRC) policy in Assam that now threatens to be in force in the rest of the country. "When India gained independence in 1947, Gandhi said that people living in this country are the citizens of India. Then why this policy now? A few weeks ago, I travelled to Assam to do some groundwork. Most of these people who are out of the NRC list are not just non-Hindus. It includes poor and hard-working farmers who belong to different castes. Just because they did not have sufficient proof to prove their nationality does not mean they should be thrown out of the country. Hence I am going to pick this issue and talk to the people as well as parliament members."

During the last parliament elections, Tripathi started working on a project that aims to inculcate 'inclusive growth'. This includes the political, cultural, economic and educational inclusivity to bring the marginal section of the society to the mainstream. He says, "I will be conducting workshops on this theme across the country. We have already started writing booklets on this theme."

All 365 days dedicated to social workWhen Tripathi was working at IITD, he would dedicate his summer holidays and evening hours during the college days to reach out to people. Now that he is retired, he dedicates all 365 days to his mission of peace. He says, "My father Hardas Sharma was a freedom fighter and I have always followed the Gandhian principles."

Originally posted here:

This retired professor from IIT-Delhi is on a mission to unite the youth against the rising hatred and intolerance in the country - EdexLive

When Nehru dies, the shock and grief among the progressive writers is near-palpable. They have already come to his defence when he found himself beleaguered after the debacle of the Indo-China war. Writing about the sick and ailing Nehru in Boorha Majhi, Anand Narain Mulla makes a plea to the young and ruthless waiting to seize power:

Mujh ko dhaare se hataane ki yeh koshish na karo...

When the terrible news comes of his death, a vast amount of poetry is written in a near-spontaneous outpouring of grief. Some among the progressives draw solace that Nehrus tired body may have given up, but his spirit will live on. Sahir writes:

Jism ki maut koi maut nahi hotiJism mitt jaane se insaan nahi mar jaate

In much the same vein, in Dil Tang Na Ho, Ravish Siddiqui writes:

Wadi-e ishq se jab baad-e saba aayegiDil-e Nehru ke dhadakne ki sada aayegiin

But Makhdoom Mohiuddin knows the loss is irreplaceable for there may be many like him but theres only one Nehru:

Hazaar pairahan aaiyenge zamane meinMagar woh sandal-o gul ka ghubar, musht-e bahar...

See original here:

Nehru and Hindi, Urdu Writers: How They Enriched Each Other - The Quint

This week I sat on a panel on LGBTQ+ spirituality organized by the multicultural office and the social work department at the University of Arkansas.

First question out of the gate: Do you consider yourself more spiritual or religious?

As I sat and listened to responses, I realized this discussion, about spiritual vs. religious, is really part of the popular conversation. Panelists had very thoughtful things to say.

Meanwhile, I kept thinking to myself: I dont consider myself spiritualor religious. I dont really use those categories when I speak or write.

So then what am I if Im neither spiritual nor religious? Clearly Im not one of the nones or dones. Im a Lutheran pastor who blogs at the Progressive Christian channel on Patheos, after all. How can I be neither spiritual nor religious?

By the time it was my turn to speak, I decided to answer simply: I dont think of myself as spiritual or religious. I think of myself as someone trying to practice Christianity in the social gospel tradition.

Let me try to unpack that. So first, I do believe that faith is centered in life lived together. This is perhaps my one struggle with those who say they are spiritual but not religious. I totally believe them that they are. But I do think when people say that they are thinking of spirituality as a largely individual activity. Its something you are, not something done together.

So thesocial gospel emphasizes the social implications of the good news of Jesus. In the most religious way of talking about this, people would say we try to live like Jesus, practice social justice in theway of Jesus. This is why frequently social gospel Christianity gets involved in politics, or community organizing, or shareholder meetings. Because it is a faith that has direct social implications. Always.

And it is thegospel because gospel is whatever it was that Jesus (and the movement he started) was teaching and enacting in the coming kin-dom of God. Good news for the poor and oppressed. Liberation for those in bondage.

So you could say social gospel is both religious (in that it applies to institutions and structures) and spiritual (maintaining a spirited connection to the teachings of Jesus). But I wonder if perhaps it can be clarifying and freeing to consider dropping the terms religious and spiritual altogether in order to get beyond a false dichotomy between individualized spirituality and institutionalized religion.

Another way to talk about this kind of Christianity may be to call it Christian humanism. One of my favorite Lutheran theologians, N.F.S. Grundtvig, frequently emphasized in his writings that we are human first, then Christian.

Human first, then Christian.

I think this is perhaps one of the reasons many who are finding a more mature form of faith in their own lives feel a need to reject religion. Its because the religious community they experienced turned on them, betrayed them, lost its way somehow, and did so in the name of faith.

And typically that harm came because the community allowed its religious commitments, its doctrine or norms, to take precedence over the shared humanity of those in the community.

Once you harm or alienate someone in the name of faith, you are putting Christianity ahead of humanity.

And then Grundtvig will remind you, Human first, then Christian.

A commitment to Christian humanism is also a much more open faith than the closed faith of more doctrinally pure communities. If the human comes first, then there is space for the Christian to engage the Muslim, the Buddhist, the agnostic, in ways that celebrate the shared humanity between them, and then discover how their faith tradition enhances and strengthens their shared humanity.

Recently my own seminary alma mater published a study indicating that based on current projections, average weekly attendance in our denomination will drop from 899,000 in 2017 to just 15,811 in 2041.

No, there arent typos in those two numbers.

People have all kinds of theories on why faith in the United States is in decline, and how to reverse it. Large conservative groups typically say its because the liberal churches are becoming too much like the culture. Liberal churches say it is because the conservatives are harming people and then alienating them.

In a bigger view, a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that we simply live in a society where it is increasingly difficult to believe in God, and instead people are shifting their faith commitments to other things.

Were enchanted by capitalism, for example. Its the new religion AND the new spirituality all woven together.

I do not have a clear-eyed simple explanation for why the decline is happening. The decline probably has multiple causes, not the least of which are decreasing birth rates, a move towards individualism, and more.

But I do know that for my money, getting beyond the hand-wringing over decline and simply living the social gospel is my way forward.

Dont get me wrong. I very much love many of the ways religious community has functioned as a voluntary society in my life. I love corporate worship and potlucks and all of that.

But because the gospel has social implications, I tend to think discipleship is much less about getting everyone to sign back up for all the measures by which we measured religiosity in the 20th century, and instead start wondering, Who is going to city council meeting Tuesday night to advocate for better bussing? Where are all the voices of people of faith in the public square?

Even if Christianity becomes a small voice in United States culture, if that voice both speaks and enacts the kin-dom of God in tangible ways in the world, then there would not have actually been a decline at all, just a shift.

Maybe the best thing for Christianity in this moment is for it to become neither religious nor spiritual.

Then the community that does exist will have learned to do the hard work of the gospel in the world rather than asking everybody outside the church to do the hard work of coming back into it.

Excerpt from:

Three Reasons I'm Neither Spiritual Nor Religious - Patheos

Mutti, Germans call her, an endearing term for mother", with all the warmth, kindness and inclination to occasionally use the metaphorical stick. When she speaks, the world listens.

Angela Merkel, the first woman to become the chancellor of Germany in 2005, will not seek re-election in 2021. In a week when the world is looking at history to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, her name figures right up there along with the worlds greats. Without pomp, and even less pageantry, whether at glitzy events like the annual World Economic Forum at Davos or the closed conclaves of the Group of Seven, and even in smaller settings like bilateral meetings with some of the worlds most powerful leadersshe was recently in IndiaMerkel has never let herself become the story.

Her priority has been Germany and Europe, and building a strong European foreign policy. In a world that is badly in need of healing and mending, even her worst critics cannot find any fault with her, other than to say that shes too inclusive.

Born in Hamburg, West Germany, Merkel moved to East Germany as a child with her family. She has a doctorate in quantum chemistry and worked as a research scientist, entering politics only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. She was elected to the German Bundestag and rose in politics as the protg of chancellor Helmut Kohl. Merkel held several political positions till she was elected secretary general of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), before becoming its first female leader. In October 2018, Merkel said she would not seek re-election as the CDUs, nor as Germanys chancellor the year after next.

One area where Merkels voice is already being missed is the current tensions in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), the post-war grouping of the Allies. French President Emmanuel Macron recently said theres a brain drain within, and that Natos headNorways Jens Stoltenbergis a lightweight. Relations between Europe and the US have never been as acrimonious as they are now, and US President Donald Trump appears to be fishing in troubled waters from across the pond.

Merkel exemplifies a range of leadership qualities, from rigorous resilience and fair-play to humanity and hard work, all rolled in one. These are qualities that European Union (EU) leaders can take lessons fromespecially at a time when Europe is in search of an identity that would enable it to preserve its differences and diversity without having to sacrifice much-needed economic growth.

Germans are Europes most productive people (they work the least number of hours, much to the envy of the French), and, at a little over 80 million, they carry the industrial gravitas of China, which is over a billion strong. Merkel was the first to lead a trade delegation to China, followed by France.

The German work ethic, of which Merkel is a complete reflection, is not a fairy tale. It is a reality that comes from self respect and respect for ones country. Its a sentiment that is nurtured by the countrys education system and instilled in its workforce, be it in dealing with its current economic issuesinfrastructure, for exampleor pulling back from a heavy dependence on coal.

Merkel has just announced an ambitious environmental programme. A Lutheran who has studied Marxism and Leninism, she is no evangelist of any ism" other than pragmatism and humanism. Her kind of rigorous compassion is a combination of skill and experience that few leaders have. Among the Europeans who have displayed such capacity was probably the French visionary Jacques Delors, who knit socialist policies with market forces to draw the grand lines of the European common market as it began to take shape.

Two recent instances where Merkel bit the bullet show her vision and quest for a democratic middle ground. One was when she hit the ground running and saved the EU from doddering after the Greek financial crisis a decade ago. The other was her decision to take over a million Syrians fleeing war and poverty some years ago. We can do this," she told her nation. The salient message to the world, especially to those across the pond, was this: You cannot ceaselessly bomb a people and expect them not to run to safety. Dislocation has never been a natural choice for human beings, and it has not got any better in a world where people want more and more, and where theres less and less of everything, except instruments of war and nervous leaders.

History will prove her right," the European Commissions president Jean-Claude Junker had told Germanys mass circulation daily, Bild, and that if she had closed the German borders, Austria and Hungary would have collapsed due to the high number of refugees."

When Merkel said, we can do this", apropos Syrian refugees, she wasnt looking for applause. European prosperity is the direct result of the absence of war and a difficult relationship with Russia (with which west European countries share borders) that few non-Europeans comprehend.

Perhaps the one time she gave any emotion away without words was during a photo-op, when Trump invited her to stand next to him in the first row while she preferred to stay in the second rung. Cameras caught her gently rolling her eyes after the US president had turned his back. Non-committal, yet determined in her own waythats Angela Merkel.

Chitra Subramaniam is an award-winning journalist and author.

See the original post here:

Opinion | Angela Merkel's inclusive and firm leadership shall be missed - Livemint

(Photo by Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images)

The paradox of believing in conspiracy theories is thatdespite the distrust and paranoia reflected in themadherents often deeply desire a sense of order in the world.

Introduction

The rise of Trumpism signifies the emergence of an age of bullshit to use Princeton University philosopher Harry Frankfurts infamous term. According to Frankfurt, bullsh-t needs to be philosophically distinguished with great care from mere dishonesty, which it resembles but isnt reducible to. A dishonest liar is still cognizant of the distinction between truth and falsityin some cases so much so that they go to great lengths to conceal their deceit. In the realm of politics, Machiavelli insists that the Prince must be willing to lie to others to advance their agenda. But the Prince must always be aware that he is misrepresenting the world; failing to do so risks falling victim to ones own illusions. By contrast, a bullsh-tter is someone who has no interest in truth or falsity one way or another. The bullsh-tter sees little motivation to be concerned with how the world is, particularly where that contrasts with what he or she wishes it to be. As Frankfurt puts it:

This is the crux of the distinction between [the bullsh-tter] and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor co conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.

Since George Carlins seminal monologue on the topic, many commentators have expressed concern that American culture is becoming saturated with bullsh-t. Few have done more to perpetuate this process that Dinesh DSouza, a far-right pundit who once took a stab at academic respectability before going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theorizing. Some of DSouzas more interesting claims in his latest film Death of a Nation include that Hitler was actually tolerant of LGBTQ people despite many gay Germans being imprisoned in concentration campsand that despite coining the term alt-right, white nationalist Richard Spencer is, in fact,a progressive Democrat. More recently DSouza made headlines forcomparing 16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg to subjects in Nazi propaganda images. This is particularly ironic givenDSouzas calls earlier this year for Donald Trump to send in the National Guard to put a stop to Antifa on college campuses. When it comes to substantial analysis, DSouzas work is of little interest outsides the cheese value of its brazen bullsh-t, but it is worth pointing to as representative of a broader cultural dynamic. In this article, I will briefly unpack the appeal of such conspiracy theorizing and manic partisanship in post-modern culture, before suggesting how it can be countered.

The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to peoples fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. Thats why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. Its an innocent form of exaggerationand a very effective form of promotion.

Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal

On the surface, it can be difficult to understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and manic partisanship. To come back to Frankfurt, like most bullsh-t claims they are often readily falsifiable with little effort. The hypocrisy is often blatant, and many of us become deeply resentful that anyone would think us gullible enough to buy into them. Yet despite living in a period where it is easier than ever to probe the truth or falsity of conspiracy theorizing and bullsh-t, they are not only persisting, but, in many respects, they are thriving. Part of this may be attributable to declining public trust in traditional sources of epistemic authority. There are repeated polls suggesting that many people no longer trust the media, academics, and politicians to the extent they used to. This creates a knowledge-vacuum, which can be readily filled by politicians like President Trump and pundits such as DSouza who affirm these concerns and suggest the public put its faith in them instead. But pointing to these empirical reorientations doesnt adequately explain why individuals came to distrust conventional epistemic authorities in the first placeor why bullsh-t and conspiracy theorizing become appealing in post-modernity. While part of it may well be a healthy skepticism towards the alleged neutrality of the media, academics and so on, I think the roots run far deeper.

One of the features of post-modernity I have discussed at some length is the collapsing faith in grand or meta-narratives, which provided a unified structure through which individuals interpreted the world. These were often propped up by epistemic authorities, whether one is speaking about the Church or rationalistic liberal academics, who provided an intellectual justification for the overall structure. As put by the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard in his classic work The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge:

In contemporary society and culture post-industrial society, postmodern culture the question of the legitimation of knowledge is formulated in different terms. The grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification it uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation.

As faith in this these narratives declined under the pressures of political diversification, growing scientific and philosophical skepticism, and technologically-mediated exposure to the flaws of authority figures, many no longer knew who to trust or believe. This generated a tremendous sense of uncertainty in a world which often appeared increasingly complex and multi-faceted, resisting efforts to assimilate its subtleties within the confines of a new unified structure. Such anxieties were general in nature, but they particularly impacted conservatives and other right leaning individuals, who as Jonathan Haidtput it are frequently more emotionally attracted to order and stability than their liberal counterparts. For progressives, the decline of meta-narratives offered an opportunity for traditionally marginalized or experimental identities to agitate for political reform, given the window opened by collapsing traditionalism. For conservatives attracted to the DSouzas and Trumps of the world it generated a compulsion for a new kind of grand narratives, which would simultaneously help make sense of an ever more chaotic reality while generating an antagonistic responsible for the crisis in epistemic authority.

The paradox of believing in conspiracy theories is thatdespite the distrust and paranoia reflected in themadherents often deeply desire a sense of order in the world. Like the Emperor who thinks hes making a slick deal buying an invisible and weightless pair of clothes, the personality attracted to conspiracy theories thinks he is opting into a more skeptical set of beliefs about the world. However, this often entails accepting even the most transparent bullsh-t. This is because conspiracy theories are, in some ways, an optimistic way of looking at the world. Rather than confronting a world that is chaotic and beyond the purview of human control, negative events can be attributed to an antagonist who is hyper-rational and manipulating everything. The world, then, is no longer a complex and overdetermined assemblage of technological changes, economic forces, and political pressures which have primarily destabilized social identity and national homogeneity. Instead, it is the story of a Democratic Party who wishes to bring in ever more immigrants in order to secure further their grip on power. It isnt a centuries long history of the process of secularization, spearheaded by sophisticated critiques of traditionalist religious worldviews, which has contributed to declining faith. Instead it is campus liberals and theirculture war. It is not that the President tells lies which can be readily disproven; rather it is that the media fact checkers are the enemies of the people. Each of these conspiracy theories have just enough of a veneer of truth to be plausible to those who are primed to believe them. They simultaneously manage to affirm the believer as a victim who is tormented by an oppressive antagonist, while flattering their ego as one of the few who has actually managed to look behind the curtain to grasp the scheme of the puppet masters.

And most importantly a belief in these explanations provides the conspiracy theorist with a sense of security that the world is, in fact, ordered and interpretable according to a grand narrative: one in which there is a shadowy and malicious antagonist opposed by a victimized but growing band of the knowing. Relative to the agonistic dualism of this worldview, the material complexities of 21st century life are quite a bit more frightening. We are increasingly confronted by developments, from man-made climate change on down. Our day-to day-lives are highly determined by economic and social forces which, despite emerging from human activity, seem to transcend ready understanding. Even the most powerful states and figures are readily beholden to these forces, as the 2008 Recession eminently displayed. The decline of essentialist narratives about human nature brings with it the possibility of post-humanism and the potential reconfiguration of the most basic features of our biological identity, while simultaneously time raising serious ethical and empirical questions which allow no easy answers. The conspiracy theorist evades these issues by reducing them to a simplistic agonism which is easily disseminated and understoodsay through hokey documentary films or through bombastic tweets and rhetoric. To invoke Trumps own statements, the appeal of conspiracy bullsh-tor to use its politically correct name truthful hyperboleisnt its facticity. Its instead to give people something spectacular to believe in which helps restore the sense that they understand the world. This takes the place of actually having to epistemically confront complexities.

Conclusion

Nothing in this piece should be taken as suggesting that genuine conspiracies do not existor that all agonistic narratives are predicated on bullsh-t. Much as there are indeed wealthy and powerful individuals who enjoy undue influence over political affairs, there have historically been conspiracies operating on the margins which sought to interfere with the world for nefarious purposes. One could even truly put on the tinfoil hat and speculate about a world where the President of the United State was willing to pardon criminals who say nice things about him. My point here was simply to explain the attraction of such conspiracy theories within post-modernity, particularly to the political right. Figures like Dinesh DSouza and Donald Trump generated significant followings because they catered to a need for epistemic order in an increasingly skeptical and uncertain world. That many of their positions are readily falsified has little to do with this emotional desire; indeed, it can even calcify the beliefs of their adherents. This is characteristic of conspiracy theorizing and bullsh-t in that both can be self-validating, much as the Emperors apparent nudity was only proof that he wore invisible clothes. The absence of evidence confirming the narrative only demonstrates how efficient the conspiracy is in concealing its activities and marginalizing critics, while even the slenderest fact or gossip in its favor is ballooned into incontrovertible proof of the desired claims.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to fight against such self-validating norms, given they are construed to be immunized from criticism. The only possibility is to continue insisting on the complexities of the world, while trying to expose and delegitimize those who sell bullsh-t as through it were holy writ. The one consolation is that the impotent bigness of conspiracy theories, truthful hyperbole, is such that the narrative must always expand to become more self-contradicting and transparently unrealistic as history goes on. No matter how hard one tries to dismiss reality, it has an insistent way of making itself heard. One can only hope that these edifices collapse under their own weight in the fullness of time.

Matt McManus is currently Professor of Politics and International Relations at TEC De Monterrey. His book Making Human Dignity Central to International Human Rights Law is forthcoming with the University of Wales Press. His books, The Rise of Post-modern Conservatism and What is Post-Modern Conservatism, will be published with Palgrave MacMillan and Zero Books, respectively. Matt can be reached at mattmcmanus300@gmail.comor added on Twitter via @MattPolProf.

See more here:

Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories - Merion West

CHICAGO Catholic fiction, poetry and drama are poised for a Renaissance of sorts, according to participants of this years Catholic Imagination Conference Sept. 19-21 at Loyola University Chicago.

Organized under the theme The Future of the Catholic Literary Tradition, the event attracted nearly 500 writers, poets, educators, graduate students and journalists to an examination of the significance of the Catholic voice in contemporary fiction and fine art.

Michael Murphy, director of the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University, was host for this years biannual conference. Previous conferences took place in 2015 in Los Angeles and in 2017 at Fordham University in New York.

The Hank Center was founded in 2006 to investigate Catholic thought and its links to all academic disciplines. But it was the literary arts, particularly fiction, poetry, drama and film that dominated discussion at the 2019 event.

What is the state of discourses in faith and Christian humanism in a world increasingly described as postmodern, post-Christian, post-religious, Murphy asked in describing some of the inspiration for the conference. How is Catholic thought and practice represented in literature, poetry and cinema?

Interest in the Catholic voice in art surged ahead in 2004 with the appearance of essays in Catholic periodicals bemoaning the lack of meaningful faith-based content in contemporary fiction. Except for small religious publishing houses, Catholic-themed material has had few outlets, especially since the passing of celebrated Catholic writer Flannery OConnor in 1964.

In a December 2013 essay, U.S. poet Dana Gioia wrote that the Catholic voice is heard less often in public conversations informing American culture.

Catholics have lost the power to bring their own best writers to the attention of a broader audience, Gioia said. Today if any living Catholic novelist or poet has a major reputation, that reputation has not been made by Catholic critics but by the secular literary world, often in spite of their religious identity.

The former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia was one of the driving forces in looking to stem the decline of Catholicism in American letters. He hosted the first Catholic Imagination Conference and was one of the main speakers at this years affair.

The Catholic voice in literature matters in two important ways, Gioia told Catholic News Service. First, it allows Catholics to hear their experience and worldview articulated from their own perspective. Second, it enriches and enlarges American literature by reflecting the lives of its largest religious group. Without a vital Catholic presence, American literature is not merely diminished, but incomplete.

Gioia is excited by the growing interest and enthusiasm for similar Catholic-themed conferences.

Without any doubt, there has been a growing interest and confidence among Catholic writers over the four years since our first conference, he added. They have gradually realized how large and talented their own community is. They no longer feel so isolated and alone.

The energy, intelligence and talent present at this conference left everyone but the hardcore cynics full of optimism for the future of Catholic literature.

Other conference delegates agreed with the need to emphasize the Catholic voice in American fine arts. Robin Hart-Winter, director of the St. Catherine of Siena Center at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, said it was refreshing to hear from so many scholars, authors, poets and dreamers at the event.

The Siena Center examines critical issues of church and society in light of faith and scholarship, so the Catholic Imagination Conference is a place I go for inspiration both personally and professionally, Hart-Winter said.

For his part, Murphy believes the Catholic imagination conferences serve as a valuable resource for those concerned with bringing the authentic Catholic voice to fiction and other fine art.

It matters deeply that we keep this alive, he said. In many ways, we are emulating and participating in the precise way that Jesus taught. His was a Catholic imagination if there ever was one. But to teach about the uniqueness of our lives in God precisely through story, narrative art and public oratory is the clue to how important all of this is.

In addition to poetry and fiction readings from authors, the conference featured the presentation of a lifetime achievement award to Paul Mariani, the chair of English studies at Boston College. Mariani is a poet, educator and author of authoritative biographies of several poets including Jesuit Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Lowell and John Berryman.

The conference also included the presentation of the Hunt Prize for excellence in journalism, arts and letters to poet Mary Szybist, associate professor of English at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Mastromatteo, a Toronto-based writer and editor, writes regularly about Catholic writers for an ongoing CNS series.

Crux is dedicated to smart, wired and independent reporting on the Vatican and worldwide Catholic Church. That kind of reporting doesnt come cheap, and we need your support. You can help Crux bygiving a small amount monthly, or witha onetime gift. Please remember, Crux is a for-profit organization, so contributions are not tax-deductible.

See the original post:

Catholic voice in fiction and fine art poised for new relevance - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

LAST year Christians in New Zealand got the hump when Jesus was turfed out of parliament following a decision by the speaker Labours Trevor Mallard to remove all references to Christ in official government prayers.

Although Mallard unfortunately stopped short of banishing prayer altogether God still gets a mention around 1,000 Christians, who labeled him Dishonorable Judas Mallard, descended on parliament to protest the move. Some of the fools are pictured above.

Then earlier this year, New Zealand scrapped its archaic blasphemy law a move welcomed byJolene Phipps, President of Humanists NZ, who stated:

Blasphemy laws have never served a useful or justifiable purpose. Instead they have been used to limit freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. Where they exist, blasphemy laws often incite violence rather than prevent it.

Charges of blasphemy are regularly used to persecute political or business rivals or to suppress minority groups. People accused of blasphemy have been stoned or hacked to death, and lawyers and judges intimidated with death threats or killed. We know a number of humanists accused of blasphemy who have sought refuge in New Zealand to escape persecution.

Now the country is back in the news following a report that the number of New Zealanders with no religion has officially surpassed the number of those who call themselves Christian.

Newly released data from the 2018 shows that 48.59 per cent of New Zealanders are not religious up from 41.92 at the 2013 Census.

The number of people identifying with the Christian superstition has fallen from 47.65 per cent in 2013 to 37.31 per cent this year.

In a press release today, Humanists NZ said the numbers suggest its time to re-think the concessions and privileges afforded to Christians.

Christianity has a privileged position in public policy today that is out of step with modern New Zealand. From parliamentary prayers to classrooms closing during the school day so that Christian groups can run religious instruction, the concessions awarded to religious organisations clash with human rights and our concept of a free and fair society.

She added:

In our hospitals, 10 Christian churches get 100 per cent of the funding for chaplaincy, pastoral and spiritual support from the Ministry of Health.

Religious groups are awarded charity status and tax exemptions just for promoting religion.

Non-religious people need more recognition, support, services, and representation. We want to work together to ensure our voices are heard.

For the record, NZs Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, 39, ditched the Mormon faith in her twenties because of its hostility towards gays, and now calls herself an agnostic.

Last year she became the first NZ PM to join a Pride parade in Auckland, as the pic above shows.

The 2018 Census numbers also show rising numbers of people identifying with other religions.

The number of Sikhs has more than doubled, from 19,191 in 2013 to 40,908 in 2018.

The number of those practising Islam has risen from 46,149 in 2013 to 61,455 in 2018.

And the number of Hindus also continues to climb, going from 89,319 in 2013 to 123,534 in 2018.

Link:

Good news: Christianity in NZ is fast heading towards extinction - Patheos

I believe I was the first to propose the creation of an Economists Party, a political movement that would advocate for the sorts of policies favoured by people who study economics for a living, based on the principles at its core.

It could not happen, of course, any more than the existing parties are likely to suddenly embrace the teachings of economists they have so cheerfully ignored until now, and for the same reason: because politics is, at its core, the opposite of economics.

The basic principle of economics is that everything is scarce. The basic principle of politics is that nothing is scarce. Economics teaches that more of one thing can only be had at the expense of less of another. Politics teaches that we can have more of both things, and of everything else besides.

Since more of one thing means less of another, economics tells us there is no point in favouring one part of the economy over another: the resources diverted to one firm, industry or region are simply resources denied to all the rest. Whereas politics is all about such transfers: a perpetual merry-go-round of redistribution, not from rich to poor, which is appropriate, but from everybody to everybody, which is impossible.

One has to suppose that the current generation of Conservatives feels at least some discomfort at the dogs breakfast they are asked to endorse

And if, for some reason, a politician were to resist this impulse, he would shortly find himself out of work. For whereas the benefits of a given intervention are typically concentrated on this or that group, the costs are spread widely; its beneficiaries, accordingly, have every incentive to organize and agitate on its behalf, while those footing the bill consumers, taxpayers, or both have comparatively little at stake as individuals. They may not even know who they are.

Thus it is that politics inclines, more or less inevitably, to prefer the narrow interest over the broad; producers over consumers; the present over the future. The only difference between the parties is whether this bias to the expedient is dressed up as a philosophy and celebrated as a positive good, or merely yielded to.

In practice this is only really an issue for the Conservative party. If you genuinely believe that scarcity is a myth that deficits, far from a vice, are a virtue; that only cruelty and superstition, and not observation and analysis, prevents governments from substituting their own beliefs for how resources should be allocated for those of people with actual skin in the game then your conscience is clear: muck about all you like.

But Conservatives have occasionally affected some familiarity with economics. For brief periods in the recent past within living memory, at any rate Conservatives have professed to believe in such ideas as balanced budgets, free trade and private ownership; to favour a neutral tax system and broad-based tax cuts over narrowly targeted deductions and credits; to understand how price signals are superior to regulatory edicts as spurs to efficient resource use.

So one has to suppose that the current generation of Conservatives, under first Stephen Harper and now Andrew Scheer, feels at least some discomfort at the dogs breakfast they are asked to endorse as party economic policy.

Where once the party stood for bold, broad tax reform, it now confines itself to a clutch of micro-targeted boutique tax credits, such as for childrens fitness or transit passes: spending programs by another name, of precisely the sort of busy-bodying, social-engineering bent that Conservatives used to disdain, and not very effective even at that. Harper could be faulted for taking the party down this road, but Scheer now proposes to revive the same credits even after their abolition by the Liberals.

Or where the party does get around to proposing more broad-based cuts, it does so in a way calculated to produce the least bang for the buck. It was the GST cuts under Harper; it is the cut to the 15 per cent base rate of personal income tax now. As before, the proposal will cost billions, at the expense, not of spending the party is no longer meaningfully committed to balanced budgets but of the deeper cuts in the middle and top marginal rates that the same money would have bought: the kind of cuts that would actually do the economy some good.

(Wait, cut taxes at the top? Heresy! But much of the benefit of the Tory cut would go to those higher up the income scale they pay the 15 per cent rate, too, on the first $47,630 of their income. Only it would take the form of a windfall, rather than an incentive to higher productivity, inasmuch as it would apply to income they had already earned, rather than to income they were thinking of earning to the next investment, or the next hour worked. Want to help the working poor? Enrich the federal Working Income Tax Benefit, which doesnt go to rich people.)

The news is a little better when it comes to business subsidies. But even as Scheer was announcing he would cut such corporate welfare payments by $1.5 billion annually a fraction of the total he was insisting he would preserve those distributed by the sordid pork-barrel rackets known as the regional development agencies. As for supply management, the state-organized price-fixing rings into which much of Canadian agriculture has been organized, we know where Scheer stands on that.

Which rather makes a mockery of his professed concern to make life more affordable for ordinary Canadians, as in his mulish opposition to the federal carbon tax a tax that, unlike the costs of his own, more regulatory-heavy climate change plan, is refunded to consumers. Once, not so long ago, we might have expected the Conservatives to offer a more market-oriented alternative to the Liberals. But now I guess it will have to fall to the Economists Party.

See original here:

Andrew Coyne: How do you tell a Conservative from a Liberal? Ask an economist - National Post

Many liberals think loving Jesus means loving you-know-who. Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Next door to the parsonage of the small Christian church (Disciples of Christ) congregation, of which I am a member, live a militantly progressive couple who are estranged from their conservative religious upbringing. For years they exchanged pleasantries with the pastor, before stumbling into a political discussion in which they discovered he was not, to their surprise, a right-winger. Oh, I get it: Youre not those Christians, the husband exclaimed. The couple soon became regulars at our church.

I mention this anecdote in connection with new research showing that the political views of conservative Christians notably the militant Christian right composed mostly of white Evangelicals though with some Catholic traditionalists in harness with them are pushing people who strongly disagree with them away from Christianity (or any other religious faith). Amelia Thomson-Deveaux and Daniel Cox explain:

Researchers havent found a comprehensive explanation for why the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased over the past few years the shift is too large and too complex. But a recent swell of social science research suggests that even if politics wasnt the sole culprit, it was an important contributor. Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are, saidMichele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.

This isnt just a hunch, by the way. The data on who is falling away from religion and why is becoming pretty compelling:

[W]hen two sociologists,Michael HoutandClaude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular conventional reasons couldnt explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldnt fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives.In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian rights involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

It hasnt helped, of course, that politically active conservative Christians get enormous attention from secular media. It often seems they are the only real Christians, as they so often profess. To the extent that Christianity is identified with hostility to equality for women or LGBTQ folk, it has a particularly lethal effect on younger Americans an effect that snowballs when their parents are secular liberals as well:

Its no coincidence then that the youngest liberals who never lived in a political world before the Christian right are also the most secular. Its very, very unlikely that a kid raised in a nonreligious liberal household would suddenly consider going to church, Margolis said.

A majority of self-identified Democrats, to be sure, are still religiously affiliated (particularly among African-American and Latino Democrats), but the trend toward non-affiliation is strong and unmistakable enough so that the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution this summer proclaiming the partys welcoming attitude toward the nonreligious (a stance Republicans are not about to emulate). The polarizing force of politicized religion got a little bit stronger when the very prominent Trump-loving Baptist minister Robert Jeffress went on Lou Dobbss show on Fox to declare the Democratic Party godless.

This dynamic is obviously troubling to religious folk who are politically progressive, and/or who would like to see religious leaders speak a bit less confidently about what God wants to do. As the New York Times reported recently in a piece on Rutgers Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, some mainline (i.e., non-Evangelical) Protestant churches are trying to get ahead of the curve by appealing to the religiously unaffiliated on the basis of a common commitment to progressive causes:

Sharing a belief in God any God at all isnt necessary. Instead, the community there has been cobbled together by a different code of convictions, pulled in by social justice efforts, activism against climate change, meal programs for the homeless and atask force to help refugee families.

Houses of worship including Christian churches from a range of denominations, as well as synagogues have positioned themselves as potent forces on progressive issues, promoting activism on social justice causes and inviting in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But religious scholars said that Rutgers was reaching a new frontier where its social agenda in some ways overshadowed its religious one.

You could argue that such pioneers are simply engaged in the time-honored practice of missionary outreach or you might fear they are following their conservative cousins in focusing so much on secular political goals that religion does become secondary. But at least they are helping to challenge the stereotypical Christian right and secular view that if you love Jesus, you must hate gays and legalized abortion and environmental paganism and those sneaky and sinister Muslims. The more non-religiously-affiliated Americans think Robert Jeffress or Mike Pence or (shudder) Donald Trump speak for God in this country, the less likely they will ever darken the door of a church, where it is assumed those Christians are stewing in their cultural pathologies.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

More:

Christian Conservative Politics Are Driving Liberals Out of the Pews - New York Magazine

A liberal commentator admitted on Wednesday that he often thinks about driving his car into Trump Plaza following an incident that took place at a Trump-branded property.

The bizarre admission was made after a car reportedly lost control and plowed through the lobby of a Trump Plaza condominium complex just outside New YorkCityon Tuesday night.

Videos of the crash posted to social media shortly after 9 p.m. show a damaged black Mercedes-Benz inside the marble lobby of the 40-story luxury residential building inNew Rochelle, N.Y., about 18 miles north of Manhattan.

Police told Fox Newsthe driver and two pedestrians suffered non-life-threatening injuries. An investigation is ongoing. Authorities said it is too early to tellif drugs or alcohol were involved. The crash is believed to have been an accident.

MSNBC GUEST SAYS HE WANTS'PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES' OUTSIDE PRO-TRUMP EQUINOX CHAIRMAN'S HOUSE

On the heels of the report, Above the Law executive editor and occasionalMSNBC guest Elie Mystal took to Twitter and saidhe sometimes thinks about doing the same --except it wouldn't have been an accident.

"Real talk: When you come out of the parking lot of this mall/movie theater, you have to sit a red light staring right into this lobby. Ive thought about driving my car through it EVERY TIME. Basic humanity keeps me from doing it, but JUST," Mystal wrote in a Twitter thread flagged by Mediaite. "The view in this picture is exactly the view you have from the stop light. Its a long light. You have a lot of time to ... think."

Mystal went on to speculate that the incident wasn't an "accident," and said that he shouldn't be selected as a juror in the case.

"Anyway, innocent until proven guilty but ... 'accident'doesnt seem likely to me. Maybe thats my own bias. Defense counsel should NOT put me on this guys jury, I know too much," Mystal said, adding a smiley face emoticon.

Last month, Mystal appeared on MSNBC and called for "pitchforks and torches" outside the Hamptons residence of Equinox and SoulCycle chairman Stephen Ross after it became known that he was hosting a fundraiser forPresident Trump.

"I want pitchforks and torches outside this man's house in the Hamptons," Mystal said. "I've been to the Hamptons, it's very nice. There's no reason it has to be. There's no reason he should be able to have a nice little party. There's no reason why people shouldn't be able to be outside of his house and making their voices peacefully understood."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWSAPP

Mystal has also said Trump supporters should be "destroyed" at the ballot box.

"You don't communicate it to them -- you beat them. Beat them. They are not the majority of this country. The majority of white people in this country are not a majority of the country," Mystal said while appearing onMSNBC's "AM Joy."

"And all the people who are not fooled by this need to come together, go to the polls, go to the protests, do whatever you have to do.You do not negotiate with these people -- you destroy them."

Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

Go here to read the rest:

Liberal pundit tweets daydream of destroying president's property with car after Trump Plaza incident - Fox News

Freedom. Rights. Equality. Democracy. Rule of Law. Free Enterprise. These are the tenets of liberal democracy (the word liberal referring not to left-leaning progressivism but to the Latin word for freedom). Most Americans across the political spectrum take these principles for granted. But today liberal democracy is being attacked from both the left and the right.

Despite the alleged polarization of our politics, some conservatives and some liberals are agreeing with each other that our constitutional liberties and system of government (and their equivalent in other parts of the world) are to blame. But, of course, they criticize it for different reasons.

To generalize, the Left is currently frustrated with such constitutional rights as religious liberty, the right to keep and bear arms, and freedom of speech, believing that they give the individual too much latitude and prevent the government from taking collective action to ensure justice for all, including preventing discrimination. Politically, the Left would like to change the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, and tenets of democratic federalism that helped elect Donald Trump. Liberal democracy empowers individuals at the expense of groups and makes for smaller, weaker governments that cannot take effective action against social injustice.

But the Lefts problems with liberal democracy go deeper. Accompanying personal and political freedom is economic freedom, a.k.a., capitalism, which has enabled some individuals to become extremely wealthy and politically influential. This is held to contradict the democratic principle of equality and to allow the wealthy and members of other privileged groups to exercise power over workers, minorities, women, the poor, and other marginalized groups.

Continuing the generalizations, the Right believes that the freedom made possible by liberal democracy undermines the family, destroys communities, and weakens the church and other moral authorities. This side, like the Left, also criticizes free market economics for pursuing profit over the needs of local communities and replacing national interests with economic globalism.

We have blogged about the religious rejection of liberal democracy in the Catholic movement known as integralism, but some political conservatives are also raising doubts about some traditional American principles, suggesting that democracy is too individualistic to promote the common good.

The left-leaning online magazine Voxgives the reasoning from both sides. ReadZack Beauchamp, The anti-liberal moment, with the deck Critics on the left and right are waging war on liberalism. And liberals dont seem to have a good defense. Here are some excerpts:

[From the Left]

Liberalisms core error, in this view, comes from a mistake in its vision of democracy. Liberals support democracy as a matter of principle, believing that individuals have a right to shape decisions that affect their lives in deep and important ways. But liberals curiously excludes parts of economic life from this zone of collective self-determination, seeing the market as a place where people have individual but not collective rights. Liberalism sees nothing wrong with the heads of Amazon and Facebook making decisions that have implications for the entire economy.

So long as capitalists are free from democratic constraint, leftists argue, liberal democracy is on dangerous footing. The super-rich use the power their accumulated wealth provides to influence political life, rearranging policy to protect and expand their fortunes. The rise of neoliberalism is, per thesocialist writer Peter Frase, this process in action: proof that capitalism will invariably corrupt liberalisms promise of freedom and equality.

The rights attack on liberalism is even more sweeping than the lefts.

Conservative anti-liberals question not only freedom in the economic sphere, but the value of pluralistic democracy itself arguing that core liberal ideals about tolerance and equality actually produce an insidious form of tyranny that destroys communities and deadens the human spirit. . . .

Liberalisms foundational premise is that the government must defend liberty: that people should be free to choose their paths in life, and that the states role should first and foremost be protecting and enabling the exercise of this freedom. Conservative critics believe this basic liberal picture is rooted in a false, impoverished view of human life there is not, and never has been, such a thing as freely choosing, autonomous individuals.

Actual people are embedded inside social relations and identities most notably, family, faith, and community without which they lack meaning and purpose. Liberalism elevates the will of the individual at the expense of these pre-political bonds. . . .

For decades now our politics and culture have been dominated by a particular philosophy of freedom, [Missouri Senator Josh] Hawley writes in an essay published byChristianity Today. It is a philosophy of liberation from family and tradition, of escape from God and community, a philosophy of self-creation and unrestricted, unfettered free choice.

The pursuit of profit erodes social ties, creating incentives for people to pursue their self-interest rather than build families or embed themselves in communities. Young people leave their small towns in search of career and meaning in anonymous big cities, destroying the communal ethos that allowed people to feel happy and secure. Rising inequality chips away at the bonds of social solidarity, hollowing out the middle class and placing deep barriers between citizens. . . .

The political project of liberalism is shaping us intoincreasingly separate, autonomous, non-relational selves replete with rights and defined by our liberty, but insecure, powerless, afraid, and alone, [Notre Dame political theorist Patrick] Deneen, probably the sharpest of these conservative anti-liberals, writes in his bookWhy Liberalism Failed.

What do you think about all of this? Have you, for reasons either of the Right or the Left, given up on freedom and democracy? If not, how would you defend these principles against their critics? If so, what alternatives to our current constitutional order do you envision?

Illustration: Democracy Chronicles, Public Domain via Flickr.

Continued here:

Both the Left and the Right Are Attacking Liberal Democracy - Patheos

Challenges to the election of embattled Liberal MP Gladys Liu and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, over allegedly misleading signs at polling booths will go to trial in the federal court.

Justice Michelle Gordon made the direction on Wednesday in the high court, sitting as the court of disputed returns, to move the matter down so it could be dealt with more efficiently.

She said the lower court would be better placed to handle issues over access to information.

Liu and Frydenberg, who hold federal seats in Victoria, are being challenged over controversial signs authorised by the Liberal party that were displayed at polling booths in their electorates of Chisholm and Kooyong on the day of Mays federal election.

They were in the Australian Electoral Commissions official colours of purple and white, had no Liberal branding, did not refer to the Liberal candidates or policies, and were in Chinese.

The translation of the words was: The right way to vote: On the green ballot paper fill in 1 next to the candidate of Liberal Party and fill in the numbers from smallest to largest in the rest of the boxes.

The matter has been taken to court by Oliver Yates, one of the former candidates for Frydenbergs seat for Kooyong, and retired social worker and climate campaigner, Leslie Hall.

At a directions hearing on Wednesday, Lisa De Ferrari SC, acting for Yates and Hall said her side had hoped lawyers for the MPs would agree to hand over information.

But she said it hadnt happened, making it necessary for the court to issue orders to help them get it.

Gordon said the court of disputed returns would not ordinarily deal with such an order, deciding instead it should go to a trial judge at the federal court.

De Ferrari said she believed the other side would be withholding either way.

Theyre going to be combative. Theyre going to be combative in this court, theyre going to be combative in the federal court, she said.

Philip Solomon QC, for Frydenberg and Liu, said his side would make substantial admissions.

It may be that those admissions have the consequences that many of the documentary requests fall away, he told the court.

But he acknowledged that knowledge remained an issue.

Here is the original post:

Challenge to Liberals' Chinese election signs to go to trial in federal court - The Guardian

Liberal Party leader and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Sept. 11, 2019.

DAVE CHAN/AFP/Getty Images

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is delaying the release of independent reports on the cost of his promises and will not be submitting all of his election pledges for review by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

It is the first election campaign in which political parties have the option of submitting potential campaign promises to the PBO in confidence for an analysis of the estimated cost. If the party decides to go ahead with the idea, it can then authorize the PBO to post its analysis online.

The Liberals legislated the new rules after promising the change in their 2015 platform, which said it would help Canadians make informed decisions during elections.

Story continues below advertisement

However, the Liberal campaign team said the party is only submitting big ticket proposals to the PBO for costing. The party is also delaying the release of related PBO reports until the full platform is released because some promises are connected and releasing costing reports individually wouldnt tell the whole story.

By contrast, the Conservative Party is submitting all of their campaign promises for costing by the PBO.

So far, the PBO has posted reports on six Conservative Party campaign announcements and two NDP announcements. The reports summarize each promise and provide an estimate by fiscal year of how the measure would affect Ottawas bottom line. The estimates provide significantly more detail than is commonly found in political party platforms and the figures are regularly quoted by journalists covering the specific announcements.

The PBO has not posted any analysis of Liberal announcements, even though Mr. Trudeau has been touring the country making election promises.

On Tuesday in St. Johns, Mr. Trudeau promised that a re-elected Liberal government would make maternity and parental benefits tax-exempt. When Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer made a similar promise earlier in the campaign, the Conservatives approved the release of the PBOs costing document, which said the measure would reduce federal revenues by more than $1-billion a year once fully implemented.

A Liberal Party news release said the cost of its Tuesday announcement would rise to $1.2-billion by 2023-24. Yet no PBO document was released in relation to the Liberal version of the promise.

We have made use of the Parliamentary Budget Officers new powers to cost political parties platforms. We have used them on a number of our platform announcements that will be forthcoming, Mr. Trudeau said when asked why the Liberals have not released a related costing document by the PBO.

Story continues below advertisement

Story continues below advertisement

We know its important for Canadians to have an objective review of the cost of various platforms and I can assure you that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has been very much engaged by the Liberal Party on a number of elements within our platform costing and when our full platform costing comes out in the coming weeks, that will be abundantly clear.

The PBO is an independent office staffed by researchers and economists that reports to Parliament on a wide range of issues related to government spending and economic trends.

The Liberals changes to the Parliament of Canada Act that gave the PBO these new powers clearly states that once a costed-promise has been made public, the PBO should release its costing document as soon as possible. In practice, the PBO has released other costing documents on the same day they were announced.

In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, Yves Giroux, the PBO, said that for a costing report to be posted to the PBO website, two requirements must be met. Firstly, the party must submit its request for costing, and secondly, the party must notify the PBO that the policy has been announced and the costing can be released.

Until both conditions are satisfied, we cannot post, he said. Given the confidentiality rules under our electoral proposal costing mandate, I can unfortunately not say anything further.

The PBOs website also states that its mandate is to cost individual policy promises and not entire party platforms.

Story continues below advertisement

The PBO will prepare each estimate independently, so the PBO will not consider the consequences that a partys proposal may have for the financial cost of its other proposals, the office states in its written guidelines.

Conservative Party spokesman Simon Jefferies said all of Mr. Scheers campaign promises will be costed by the PBO.

Justin Trudeau and the Liberals should be up front and honest with Canadians and release their costing as they make their platform commitments, he said in an e-mail. Its starting to look they have something to hide and are preparing a document dump days before election day."

Mr. Jefferies also accused Mr. Trudeau of being cagey as to whether or not all of the Liberal Partys promises will be vetted by the PBO.

"This begs the question, why? Did they not get an answer they were looking for from the PBO? he asked.

The Conservative Party had initially expressed reservations about participating in the PBO process out of concern that promises could potentially be leaked. However, the party decided to submit its promises to the PBO after receiving personal assurances from Mr. Giroux about the measures the office would take to keep information secret until it is released.

Story continues below advertisement

NDP spokeswoman Mlanie Richer noted in an e-mail that her party was the first to approve the release of a PBO costing report. She said the NDP is working with the PBO on many of its commitments, but declined to say whether all NDP promises were costed.

What we are concerned about is that Mr. Trudeau has not been clear about where he is going to get the funds to pay for his promises," she said.

Read more here:

Liberals delay release of PBO platform costings, say only big ticket pledges will get independent review - The Globe and Mail

It seemsthe sky is the limit for the Liberal Democrats at the moment, as unbridled optimism sweeps overthe partys annual gathering.

After years in the wilderness, the Lib Dems are on the up and they are clearly feelingjubilant.

Chuka Umunna, one of the partys recent converts, claimed itcould win 200 seats in the next election, while Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat leader, said she was aiming for a slightlymore moderate100 seats.

From 15p 0.18 $0.18 USD 0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.

Thepartys ranks were bolstered by former Tory MP Sam Gyimah on Saturday, who became the sixth MP to defect to the Liberal Democrats in recent months.

He joins ex-Conservatives Sarah Wollaston and Phillip Lee, as well as former Labour MPs Luciana Berger, Umunna and Angela Smith in moving over to Jo Swinsonsnewly energisedparty.

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AP

Getty Images

EPA

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AP

AP

PA

AP

AP

AP

AP

AP

PA

EPA

AP

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AFP/Getty Images

Getty Images

AP

AP

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AP

Getty Images

EPA

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AP

AP

PA

AP

AP

AP

AP

AP

PA

EPA

AP

AP

AFP/Getty Images

AFP/Getty Images

Getty Images

AP

AP

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

But it remains to be seen whether this momentum can be turned into votes at an early general election.

Recent opinion polls tend to put the Lib Dems in third place behind the Tories and Labour, with the latest survey by Opinium putting the party on 16 per cent.

If the party wants to make serious gainsit will need to consolidate the Remain vote, which has been fragmented since the referendum.

The Lib Dems unashamed support for Remain has contrasted positively with Labours equivocation. ButJeremy Corbyns party is nowshifting towards a more pro-EU position.

So Swinson has gone even harder, telling the party faithful in Bournemouth that the Lib Dems would revoke Article 50 without a referendum if she was inDowning Street.

The move has caused fury amongBrexiteers, who deem it undemocratic, as well as ripples of concern among advocates for a Final Say referendum.

But Swinson is gamblingthis will play well for her Europhile base. The Opinium poll found55 per cent of Remain voters supported cancelling Brexit, and only 26 per cent support extending the Brexit negotiations and putting a revised deal to a public vote.

The pledge is designed to offer a distinctive message from Labour,in advance of its annual conference in Brighton this weekend.

Labour has already shifted towards supporting a referendum on any deal and pro-EU activists will be piling the pressure on Corbyn to commit to campaigning for Remain.

The problem for the Lib Dems will be transforming the energy and optimism into Westminster seats.

Veteran pollster Sir John Curtice said there wereonly 22 constituencies where the Lib Dems came within 25 points of the winning candidate in 2017, which he himself describes as a generous definition ofa marginal seat.

Independent Minds Events: get involved in the news agenda

Of these seats, plenty were in Leave areas and would involve taking on the Tories, who are starting to hoover up the Brexit Party vote.

The Lib Dems and Labour could end up scrabbling over the same voters in pro-EU areas leaving the way clear for the Conservatives.

An upcoming election will undoubtedly be a Brexit election, but the Lib Dems will want to think carefully about what else they stand for, if they want to win big.

See more here:

Can the Liberal Democrats turn momentum into votes? - The Independent

The campaign trail is always a long and tiring one. For federal Liberals in Alberta, it might also be an uphill climb.

Amarjeet Sohi is one of three Liberals in the province running for re-election. On a sunny evening, just days into the fall campaign, Sohi knocks on doors in his Edmonton-Mill Woods constituency, asking many of the people who answer just one question.

Im here to ask you if I am living up to your expectations as your member of Parliament, he asks.

READ MORE: A really tight race: Conservatives, Liberals locked in dead heat, Ipsos poll says

Sohi hopes to hear support he needs it. In 2015, he beat Conservative Tim Uppal by a mere 92 votes. Four years later, the incumbent faces the same challenger but under different circumstances.

Watch below: In this election edition of Alberta Matters, Fletcher Kent looks at the forecast for Alberta ridings and what poll results mean for Liberal incumbents and voters too.

Economic pain in Alberta, coupled with pipeline delays, have plagued the federal Liberals on the Prairies and Sohi has been the point man on the pipeline file. Since last July, he has been the Minister of Natural Resources.

Some of the answers he gets to his living up to your expectations question focuses on that anger.

Absolutely we hear concerns around pipelines, but we understand in order to move forward on large energy projects, we need to fix the process, Sohi says.

I have been having these conversations for the last four years, so these conversations are nothing new.

Sohi is one of three Liberal MPs in Alberta running for re-election. Hes joined by Edmonton-Centres Randy Boissonnault and Calgary-Centres Kent Hehr.

On the same day as Sohi is doorknocking, Hehr also navigates his community and talks to voters. At one door, he begins explaining the federal carbon tax and how it puts a price on carbon.

For what purpose though? asks the voter. Hehr brings up climate change and the voter is dismissive, saying the entire economy and a lot of political parties are scaring people with climate change.

READ MORE: Alberta Premier vows to campaign to keep federal Liberals from second term

Despite discussions like this, Hehr paints a rosy picture of his campaign so far.

This is my fourth election running as a Liberal in this city, he says. I can say I have never had it better on the doors. [Ive] never felt better about a campaign, never raised as much money, never had as many volunteers.

His Conservative opponent, Greg McLean, doubts any of that will translate to votes for Liberals.

A lot has changed in four years. People have actually seen what electing a Liberal government has done, McLean says. To give them another four years, I think, would be a travesty.

Not surprisingly, McLeans colleague (and Sohis rival) Tim Uppal says hes hearing the same thing from his Edmonton constituents.

Im talking to a lot people who did support the Liberals or Amarjeet Sohi in the last election who are now saying, You know what? We are just so frustrated with Justin Trudeau. So many people are saying, Forget it. Were voting for change this time and were going to vote Conservative.'

READ MORE: Edmonton a key battleground in 2019 federal election: political scientist

Clearly, voter assessments from the candidates are unscientific, at best. Thats where Faron Ellis comes in. He teaches at Lethbridge College and his students conduct polling.

The most recent poll shows Conservative support in Alberta exceeding 70 per cent. But even the political scientist says you dont need science to understand this election.

The results in Alberta are pretty much predetermined, Ellis says.

All the incumbent Liberals are going to have a tough time retaining their seats, and I wouldnt be surprised at all it its a Conservative sweep.

Its conceivable [Justin Trudeau] might be wiped out in Saskatchewan as well. It might not be just Alberta, there may be two provinces where Liberals have no elected representation.

What that could mean to Albertans depends largely on who wins the election.

The same polls that say Alberta will reject the Liberals also say the party could hang on to power nationally.

A re-elected Justin Trudeau is going to have a very difficult job getting an Alberta voice around the cabinet table, Ellis says.

Minimal regional cabinet representation wouldnt be a first for Alberta.

For most of the governments led by Jean Chrtien, there were only two Alberta MPs.

In 1980, when Justin Trudeaus father Pierre Trudeau beat Joe Clark, no Liberals were elected west of Manitoba. In order to get regional representation in cabinet, the elder Trudeau appointed Alberta senators to his cabinet.

Clark did the same thing in 1979 when his crop of PC MPs included only one from Quebec.

Justin Trudeau might have a difficult time following that parliamentary practice if he loses a number of his western MPs. There are no more Liberal senators and Trudeau has only appointed Independents.

Ellis points out that a minority government is also a possibility. Depending on the size of the minority, a strong showing from the Green Party could lead to a scenario where a Liberal government, propped up by the Green Party, is working to build the Trans-Mountain pipeline and no Albertans are at the cabinet table.

The outcome will be hugely significant, Ellis says.

READ MORE: Analysis: A Scheer victory does not guarantee carbon tax repeal

However, the possible scenarios for Albertans arent limited to ones involving a Liberal government.

If the Conservatives win nationally, Ellis points out Andrew Scheer would have plenty of Alberta-based cabinet options from which to choose.

Id be very surprised if Michelle Rempel is not in a Conservative cabinet, he says.

Ellis says Edmonton-Wetaskiwins Mike Lake could be another consideration, or Ron Liepert from Calgary-Signal Hill. Liepert hasnt been around federal politics for long but he served in Albertas provincial cabinet.

Ellis also says there may be room for some young faces like Michael Cooper or Garnett Genuis. He also points out that the party has seen a lot of turnover since Stephen Harper lost in 2015. Only nine candidates from the Harper years remain.

It is unlikely many of the candidates are thinking much about their cabinet chances.

There are still five weeks of campaigning left, five more weeks of doorknocking and debating with the hopes of attracting a few more voters.

At this point, the Conservatives and the Liberals both say theyre feeling pretty confident about their chances in Alberta.

History has shown Canadians a couple of things: First, polls done early havent always proven accurate; second, campaigns matter, perhaps even this year in Alberta.

2019Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

More:

A Liberal fight in Conservative Alberta what this election could mean to you - Global News

Two Montreal-area riding associations filedpolice complaints Monday after several of their campaign signs were defaced with swastikas.

The Liberal riding association of Hochelaga, in east-end Montreal, contacted police when they found the Nazi symbol spray-painted on at least six signs for candidateSoraya Martinez Ferrada, aformer city councillor.

Deputy campaign manager Lionel Fritz Adimi spent Monday morning removing themand plans to hand them overto police as evidence.

The signs werevandalized to include a swastika over the Liberal logoand a mark that looks like a bullet hole on the candidate's head.

Adimihas worked on several campaigns and says he expected some of Ferrada's signs to be vandalized. But he said the campaign decided to file a police complaint because of the hateful nature of the graffiti.

"Such hate doesn't have a place in Canadian politics," he said. "Everyone should call out such actions."

In Pierrefonds-Dollard, at least three campaign signs belonging to Conservative candidateMariamIshakwere also defaced withswastikas.

Helen Thibault, a spokespersonfor Ishak's campaign, said they began noticing the vandalized signs on Sunday. They too filed a police complaint on Monday.

"There's just no room for hate in the community of Pierrefonds-Dollard, nor is there room for hate in any community across Canada. We need to be better than this," she said.

It's not clear whether either candidate was specifically targeted; neither is Jewish.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs issued a statement decrying the signs.

"Defacing election signs is illegal and anti-democratic. Using swastikas is particularly egregious," it wrote on Twitter.

Read more:

2 Montreal-area campaigns file police complaints after swastikas painted on signs - CBC News

Ralph Goodale is an anomaly.

For 26 straight years, he has been the representative in parliament for Regina Wascana often the lone splash of red on an electoral map covered in Tory blue with sprinkles of NDP orange.

So how is Goodale able to keep winning?

"It's not a Liberal riding, it's a Goodale riding for sure," said David Herle, a political strategist and pollster.

"There are 14 federal ridings in Saskatchewan. In [2011]half of all the people in Saskatchewan who voted for the Liberal Party voted for Ralph."

Goodale has won eight straight elections, starting in 1993.Before the current election period began, he was tied as the third-longest-serving active MP. Hewas first elected to Parliament in 1974 at age 24.

"I had no intention for this to be a long-term endeavour,"Goodale said.

"But at the same time it never occurred to me in that first election back in Assiniboia in 1974 that I might lose. As it turns out, we won."

The initial win would be followed, though, bya string of losses for more than a decade.

Now seeking a ninth straight election victory,Goodale faces familiar criticisms of western abandonment by Ottawa and a motivated Conservative challenger inMichael Kram, who Goodale defeated in the 2015 election.

None of this has him considering leaving politics. He said that decision will be made by his constituents.

"Voters always ultimately have the final decision. Never assume you're entitled to a vote. Go over there and earn it," Goodale said.

After his breakthrough in 1974, Goodale lost in federal elections in 1979 and 1980, after which hemoved to provincial politics and lost a provincial byelection in Estevan.

Goodale became Saskatchewan Liberal Party Leader in 1981 and was again defeated in the 1982 provincial election. Four years later, he won the party's only seat in the legislature. In 1988, he would step down to seek a federal seat, only to lose in that year's election.

If you're keeping score that'stwo wins and five losses at the polls in 14 years.

"I had the humbling experience of writing Ralph Goodale's political obituary in 1988,"said Dale Eisler, a former Regina Leader-Post journalist.

"I figured having lost federally three times and provincially twice and then resigning after winning provincially, there were no other avenues open. But of course, I underestimated Ralph."

Eisler referred to Goodale's lonely years as provincial Liberal leader to a "long-distance runner."

He recalls Goodale "sitting in the Speaker's gallery day in, day out for question period. The one that didn't have a seat in the legislature."

Before he made his way back to Ottawa, Goodale's executive assistant wasJason Kenney now the premier of Alberta.

To keep his political career alive,Goodale had to win the party's nomination in 1993 for the riding of Regina Wascana.

For help, he called on David Herle, who first worked forGoodale in 1980 as a volunteer on his byelection bid in Estevan.

"He's my first mentor in politics," saidHerle, who went on to run campaigns for Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin.

"Without him, I wouldn't have had the life in politics that I've had. He trusted me at a very young age. He's a remarkable mentor."

In 1993,Herle came back from Ontario to help Goodalewinthe Regina Wascana nomination against well-known Regina lawyer Tony Merchant.

"It was the biggest nomination that Saskatchewan had had in quite some time,"said Herle.

Merchant sold more memberships, he said, but Goodale had more supporters show up in the end.

"It was the people that were determined to elect Ralph that made the difference."

This fall, Goodale is in for another battle.

He is facingan anti-Liberal sentiment in the Western Canada, a billboard campaign, and criticism of his party's energy policies most notably the carbon tax.

He's also faced pointed criticism from Premier Scott Moe over pool projects in Regina.

And for the first time in his 26-year run, Goodale has an opponent taking a run at him in a second straight election.

"I'm starting to feel optimistic. The feedback I'm getting this time has been very positive compared to four years ago," said Regina Wascana Conservative candidate Michael Kram.

Goodale beat Kramby 10,000 votes in 2015.

"You have to reapply for your job every four years, and just because you won 10 or 20 years ago doesn't mean you'll win this time around."

Kram says he has heard "many people" on the doorstep tell him they have voted for Goodale in the past but are switching their vote to the Conservative Party this time.

Herle, though, saysthe seat is the Liberal "beachhead" in Saskatchewan.

"Ralph Goodale is one of the most talented people in the government. It would be a terrible blow for the government to lose him," he said.

University of Regina political studies professor Jim Farney thinks Goodale is in for a bigger challenge this year.

"I would guess that the race is going to be closer than it was last time, but that kind of name recognition the 30 years of networking in public service is probably going to see another Goodale victory," hesaid.

Goodale said he will ignore polls.

"I always assume you're 100 votes behind and you've got to go find those 100 extra supporters," he said.

"You're always working at the task of earning support."

Goodale has faced anti-government sentiment before,including in 2011, when the Liberals won the lowest number of seats in their history.

"Any Liberal who was able to survive the 2011 election is one of the safest Liberals in the country," said CBC polling analyst ric Grenier.

The other candidates in Wascana are Hailey Clark (NDP), Tamela Friesen (Green Party) and Mario Milanovski (People's Party of Canada).

Since 1993,a second LiberalMP has been elected in Saskatchewan on two occasions.

"Most Canadians vote for parties first and they'll pay attention to who their representative is after. I think with Ralph, it's the other way around. It's a really deep personal connection," the U of R's Farney said.

"He represents the party people in Saskatchewan don't like and after 40 years, he's more popular than he ever was before," agreed Herle.

"In his own constituency, they refer to 'Goodale Liberals,'"said Eisler.

"So these are people who maybe aren't Liberals in the sense of strong adherence to the Liberal Party of Canada, but they feel a real sort of commitment to Goodale because they see him as a competent and credible guy."

Eisler added Goodale is seen around Regina at events and has given the city a voice at the cabinet table.

"There are some MPs I've seen over time that have, once they got elected moved to Ottawa and then went back to their riding when they wanted to," Goodale said.

"Your approach has to be the other way around. I've always lived in Regina Wascana. I go to Ottawa when I have to."

Goodale, who turns 70 two weeks before election day, said he is motivated by seeing policy through. He highlighted his support for the "Big Dig,"which deepened Regina's Wascana Lake, and a newer proposal to have Lake Diefenbaker linked to the Qu'Appelle Valley river system.

"There's always a new challenge," Goodale said. "There's always a new issue to be tackled or problem to be solved."

Goodale's latest challenge will come when Canadians vote on Oct. 21.

Read the original:

Lone Sask. Liberal Ralph Goodale facing challenge to keep election streak alive - CBC.ca

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer was caught off guard this week when he learned that Maxime Bernier, the former Tory who fell out with Mr. Scheer last year and launched a new right-wing party, had suddenly been invited to two major coming leaders debates.

The decision was made by the Leaders Debates Commission, a body created and chosen by the Trudeau government and given the mandate to organize two televised debates one in French and and one in English during every federal general election.

For Mr. Scheer, something didnt smell right.

Story continues below advertisement

Its no big surprise that Justin Trudeaus hand-picked debate panel [justified] Mr. Berniers attendance at the debate," his press secretary, Daniel Schow, said in a statement.

Mr. Scheers charge of favouritism is partly self-serving. It is also understandable. Until Monday, he thought he would be facing off against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in two five-person debates that would also include NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Bloc Qubcois Leader Yves-Franois Blanchet.

Now, he will also have to share the stage with a man leading a marginal party purpose-built to steal votes from his candidates. The presence of Mr. Bernier may give the Peoples Party of Canada Leader a last-minute boost in credibility, which would hurt the Conservatives and help the Liberals.

Given that the Leaders Debates Commission was created unilaterally by the Liberal government, which set its criteria and named its lead commissioner, the charge that Mr. Trudeaus hand-picked debate panel" is playing politics will resonate with Conservative voters.

Their suspicions could further be buttressed by the thinking used by the commission in its decision to include Mr. Bernier in the debates.

The commission originally told Mr. Bernier in August that he wasnt invited, as his party failed to satisfy at least two of three criteria established by the (Liberal) order-in-council creating the debates commission: It had candidates in more than 90 per cent of the ridings, but it isnt represented in Parliament by an MP who was elected as a member of the PPC, and the commission saw no evidence it would be able to elect more than one candidate in October.

But the commission also gave Mr. Bernier the opportunity to change its mind, by naming ridings where he believed PPC candidates had a legitimate shot.

Story continues below advertisement

Story continues below advertisement

Mr. Bernier named five ridings, including his own and two ridings where the PPC candidates are former Conservative MPs. He also pointed to Etobicoke North, where his star candidate is Renata Ford, the widow of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

The commission then did polling in those ridings and found that anywhere between 25 per cent and 34 per cent of those surveyed were at least considering voting PPC. Based on that, and on Mr. Berniers social-media activity, his media profile and his standing as a former cabinet minister, the commission changed its mind and ruled that the PPC has a legitimate chance of electing more than one candidate.

However, what the PPC candidates in question are much more likely to do is split the Conservative vote in those ridings, thereby opening the door to the Liberals. That means the PPC is, in fact, unlikely to meet the criteria for debate participation.

The bottom line is that there are serious problems with the Leaders Debate Commission.

Its not the commissions criteria; the question of who should be invited to a leaders debate is inherently subjective. The problem is that those criteria were unilaterally set by the Trudeau government. Its not a great look.

The goal was the establishment of an independent body to organize televised leaders debates and put an end to partisan bickering over who would attend what and when. Instead, compared with 2015, there will be fewer debates this time partly because Mr. Trudeau is using the commissions two official debates as cover for avoiding debates organized by independent groups.

Story continues below advertisement

And now, a last-minute change in the attendees list, based on the subjective interpretation of various factors, and which appears to favour the Liberal Party, has raised doubt about the commissions independence.

The Leaders Debate Commission might have been a good idea in theory, but it is failing its first real-world test. It should not survive the election in its current form.

View post:

The Liberals set up a debates commission, and now theyre benefitting from it - The Globe and Mail