Friends are Electric

I can think of three main reasons why someone would care passionatly about spelling, and none are flattering.

The first relates to bitterness.  I can imagine someone caring passionatly about spelling if they were forced to learn to spell perfectly from a very young age.  These people would be bitter about all this wasted time, and take out the angstiness they feel on the world at large by always taking the time to point out every spelling mistake they see.

The second is a serious lack in pattern matching ability.  If you are so handy capped, you may be unable to understand the meaning of a word if it is not exactly spelled out.  In some cases, this is a legitimate worry, for instance form and from.  The difference in stratigraphy and stratgiraphy, however, is slight.  Anyone being a stickler in the later case is probably just an asshole.

The third and final reason I can think of why anyone would care passionately about spelling is a superiority complex.  You correct spelling because it gives you something by which you feel you can legitimately place yourself above other people.  In this case you are an asshole.

Now, before anyone tells me that correcting spelling comes from a legitimate desire to protect the english language, or even from love of it, I’ll point out that if you truly cared you would cease preventing its natural progression.  I would also inquire about your slang usage, and whether you use the original spellings as layed out by the original dictionaries.   The dictionary spellings reflect common usage today, which has often changed over the years.  The original was written out before the majority were literate, and thus reflects closer how whoever wrote it down felt it should be spelled.  I understand that those who care will continue to care and force their ridiculous nitpick on the word as a whole, and feel as though any transgression is the greatest crime imaginable (except of course suggesting that they are misguided), but for all of us who don’t care or who feel hostile towards their tyrannical behaviour, I’m with you.  I’ve got your back.

Now that Parliament has been suspended for a month, it is time to examine the entire crisis as a whole.

Rick Mercer had a number of intelligent things to say on the subject.  He is essentially saying that Harper screwed up and is now clinging to power, while Dion is hell-bent on having his revenge on the Conservative Leader.

Werner Patels is saying that the NDP and its supporters are the biggest losers in the crisis, since as a member of the coalition, no one cares what Mr. Layton has to say.

I have seen people on both sides of the debate call the opposite fascists.

And I’ve seen Americans trying to explain the crisis.

On the whole, I am glad we now have a break.  Although I wish that all parties would stop spewing lies all over the place.  I can now sit back and digest exactly what happened, and perhaps muse on the best way to solve it all.  I’m still hoping that everyone can work together, but I somehow doubt that will happen.

I really wanted to keep from writing about politics here.  However, sometimes, we have to do things we do not necessarily wish to.  So here we go.

When people talk about the `Left’ and the `Right,’ they often are quite confused.  On the left they place socialists, greens, communists, social democrats and even others.  They claim the right is populated by liberals*, conservatives, fascists, Christian democrats and others.   They are not wrong, but to pretend that greens, social democrats and communists are the same is foolhardy.  And while many like to compare conservatives to fascists, there exists a world of difference between them.   The whole left/right system is nothing but confusing and, when used this way, useless.

Enter a second axis.  Surely we could use more, and this would further help us characterise political ideologies, however the added complexity is not necessary for an average citizen, only professional political scientists.   Our second axis refers to social policy, leaving the old left/right for economics.

On one side, you have liberals, greens and social democrats.  On the other you have communists, fascists, Christian democrats and conservatives.   The first is called `GAL,’ which stands for Green, Alternative, Libertarian.  The second `TAN,’ Traditional, Authoritarian, Nationalist.

This helps explain differences in ideology in a much more clear way than just using the old terminology of left/right.  GAL/TAN has another use, as well.  The Left/Right divide refers to traditional politics, where class differences were the key issue in elections.  The Left and Right defined an economic standpoint: a continuum from a totally free market to an entirely planned economy.  Of course, most parties were not at the extremes on this scale, but fell somewhere between.

New politics is much more based in social issues, rather than economics.  Here the continuum is between government authority and personal freedoms.  Rather than asking “How much taxation and income redistribution should the citizens face?”, new politics asks “How much control should the government have in peoples’ lives?”  A good example of this divide is if homosexuals should have the right to get married.  Traditionalists believe the answer is no, based on their beliefs, the past, and in many cases religious texts.  The Libertarians believe hat this right should be granted, since they feel the government has no place legislating how people live their lives.

Again, at the extremes, we have very few parties.  On one side, you would have an Orwellian dictatorship of perfect totalitarianism, on the other the government would cease to exist.  Each of these is as undesirable as a completely free market or an entirely planned economy.

Finally, the reason why this was necissary.   When we vote, we have to know what we are voting for.  Thinking that a party’s economic stance is the only important thing is foolhardy, just as ignoring it entirely would be.  Remember to take both new and old politics into consideration when we vote.  There is often nothing wrong with their policies on one axis, however, often there are things hidden on the other.

*A final note: A liberal is someone who believes in total freedom, much like libertarians.  In fact, the world outside of North America, where most democracies exist, use the world liberal where North Americans would use libertarian.  By these definitions, liberals are Right-GAL.  North American Liberals, on the other hand, are centrists, and tend to focus on compromise between the left and right, and usually tend to be on the GAL side of things.