Friday, March 22, 2013

Israel - the posterchild for nixing proportional representation

Lawrence Solomon:
... Israel, which has the world’s purest system of PR — winning just 2% of the vote entitles any party to sit in parliament. ...

... coalition governments are formed through back-scratching agreements with smaller parties who join the coalition in exchange for getting their way on issues they care most about. Under PR, not only does the tail wag the dog, this dog has many tails — at least one for each coalition member....

... our PR system would be Made-in-Canada, based on Canadian values. We could then protect any Canadian minority view able to muster 2% of the vote, and then with luck leverage that 2% into a conscription of 100% of the population. ...

....The deadly dull unfactionalized politics of Canada could be transformed, with Canadians never knowing quite what would come of their votes, even after they had voted ...
 Less government with "deadly dull unfactionalized politics" is what we should be aiming for.  But academics, media pundits, the flaky fringe and other assorted political junkies keep pressing for PR.  And they'll keep pressing no matter how many times the wise voting public says "NO!".

Mr. Solomon wrote about PR a few years back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That’s definitely an issue that one should bring up with Mr. Harper and his majority Conservative party. I mean we already got affirmative action which entitles a minority new Canadian preference to a job when this minority is competing with 5th generation white Canadians who are native English speakers. It is basically law that any government agency at any level or any non-government agency doing work for the government must adhere to strict rules of affirmative action. Most everyday Canadians don’t even know about affirmative action and frankly don’t care. Mr. Harper and his party are avid supporters of this practice and we keep voting for them. In all reality this is Canada, a multicultural and multi-ethnic nation. We are a country of immigrants. We embrace those from other countries who are impoverished even if the country they come from hates us and wants to kill us. Protecting the minority is one of the major values that defines what Canada is. Mr. Harper has done a tremendous job in protecting these values that Canada stands for.

Example: Canada embraces the concept of multiculturalism to the point that we will sacrifice almost a 160 military soldiers to fight for the freedom of the Islamic republic of Afghanistan and ensure that they have sharia law. While we sacrifice our own soldiers in the name of sharia law, we open the flood gates of immigration to the very people of Afghanistan and do not ask them for their military service to fight for their own country but offer them refuge here in Canada and all the social welfare benefits that they have a right to. Even if a Canadian citizen murders a collation solider fighting against terrorism, we will embrace him and his terrorist family giving them protection and immunity as Canadian citizens. We even embrace those who despise the fact that Canada was once a nation that was founded on the principles of Christianity and British Common law. In combating the issue of Christianity, we have a number of government issued methods of social correcting and addressing political incorrectness such as the human rights commissions, hate crime provisions in the criminal code, affirmative action entrenched in the Charter of Rights and legislated employment equality acts.

Yeah so why not embrace the idea of the 2% PR. It’s really the Canadian way.