The origins of the conservative temperament

In an excerpt from his new book, "Enlightment 2.0", Joseph Heath gives two examples illustrating the "hubris of modern rationalism", saying:

... the conservative temperament was born, as a defence of tradition against the tendency of Enlightenment rationalism to take things apart without knowing how to put them back together again, much less improve them. [It occurs to me that another example of modern hyper-rational hubris at work can be found in the scientific claims of climate alarmism.]

Heath's idea's were a constant theme in Friedrich Hayek's writing.  His book should be a good read.

A liberal win in Calgary

The only way for liberals to win in Alberta is to pose as conservatives.  Ron Liepert won the federal Conservative nomination in the new riding of Calgary Signal Hill.  The CBC seems happy as do many of it's readers, so what does that tell you?

Conservative philosophy

 Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton with Ezra Levant:

Brian's green blarney

Peter Foster:

Brian Mulroney’s speech earlier this week to Canada 2020 – a “progressive” group of PR/government advisory types who pretend to chart the country’s future – presumably involved walking a fine pipeline.

...  he leavened his recommendations with an attack on Mr. Harper’s leadership on energy and climate issues.

... shouldn’t the man who dismantled the National Energy Program be a little more skeptical about grand strategies?

...  it was Mr. Mulroney, by his early promotion of climate catastrophe, and his cuddling up to the subversive issue of sustainable development, who in many ways created the bed of policy nails on which Mr. Harper is forced to lie.

... Mr. Mulroney promoted the kinds of toxic policies with whose consequences Mr. Harper has had to struggle, accusing our current PM of lack of vision amounts go to green gall in more ways than one.

Buzz off Brian, you've had your chance.  And, haven't you heard, it's exceedingly bad form to bad-mouth a fellow Prime Minister.

Fair Elections Act - media hyperventilating

Andrew Coyne and his fellow Media Party partisans (and liberal "experts") continue their hysterical campaign to discredit changes that amount mostly to common sense administrative minutiae in the electoral process.  Arguably, the biggest issue in their litany of gripes, disallowing the practice of vouching, rises above the level of minutiae.  But even if, as they claim, there is little evidence of its having been fraudulently used, vouching is wide open to fraud and so should be banned. Banning it is a no-brainer.  Vouching is not permitted in either Ontario or Quebec elections (over 60% of Cdn voters) - have Coyne et al ever hyperventilated about this travesty?  Didn't think so.

Ezra Levant's rebuttal of the hysteria highlights the 2006 election result for the Sask. riding of Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River - a razor-thin defeat of an incumbent Conservative by a Liberal.  Vouching was involved at an Indian reserve where more than 100% voter turnout was observed and a big-screen TV raffled "to get out the Liberal vote" (all laughed off by Elections Canada "investigators").

Global warming review 2014 - latest UN IPCC report is "climate porn"

Ezra Levant:

Global warming alarmists try to reposition fear as fact

Do Skeptics ‘Reposition’ Warming as ‘Theory’ or Do Alarmists ‘Reposition’ Fear as ‘Fact’? Revisiting an Urban Legend by Marlo Lewis

... The key climate science question for policymakers and citizens is not whether anthropogenic global warming is real but whether, in Al Gore’s words, climate change is “a planetary emergency — a crisis that threatens the survival of civilization and the habitability of the Earth.” The climate alarm narrative was not a “fact” in 1991 and certainly is not today.

Mounting evidence indicates that the climate is substantially less sensitive (reactive) to greenhouse gas emissions than “consensus” science had assumed. ... the climate trilogy of terror – ocean circulation collapse, rapid ice sheet disintegration, and runaway climate change (the methane “bomb”) – has far less scientific plausibility today than it did in 1991.

Gore and other climate campaigners have been trying for decades to reposition fear as fact. Their j’accuse directed at skeptics is Orwellian. ...