Monday, April 25, 2016

It’s the Europeans' Fault



Vincent J. Curtis

25 April 2016


I’m getting tired of being blamed for the deplorable situation in Attawapiskat.  And if it’s not me, then it’s my colonizing European ancestors.

My ancestors came to Hamilton from the British Isles between the 1830s and 1850s.  They were labourers, bookbinders, printers, tailors, shoemakers, confectioners, silversmiths and store clerks.  These colonizers of Corktown and, later, Stinson neighbourhoods, are responsible for the evils that presently befall Canada’s Aboriginals, and particularly the Aboriginals of Attawapiskat, today.  And if not them, it’s me, and people like me.  Certainly more of my money is the cure.

That’s the received theory.  Ask Justice Murray Sinclair, principle author of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report.  And if he isn’t available, Spectator columnist Margaret Skimba can fill you in.

Precisely how British colonizers are responsible, no esteemed worthy explains.  On the face it, the claim seems pretty far-fetched.  And it is far-fetched.

When the big untruth gets repeated loud enough and often enough it becomes the equivalent of the truth.  That those wicked, colonizers from the British Isles are responsible for all that ails the Aboriginals of Canada is true, if you ignore all the responsibility that Aboriginals bear themselves.

None of this finger-pointing is helping anyone in Attawapiskat.  Finger-pointing might give the owner of the finger a sense of moral superiority.  It might make them feel they have done their job by putting the blame somewhere other than on themselves.  But pointing the finger in the wrong direction is of no useful purpose if your intention is to fix the problem.

Fixing the problem starts with correctly identifying the cause.

To someone schooled in moral philosophy, it is obvious that the conditions in Attawapiskat are largely due to the moral bankruptcy of the inhabitants of Attawapiskat. 

As the result of Treaty 9, signed in 1930, the Aboriginals of the James and Hudson’s Bay area of Ontario, which includes Attawapiskat, were relieved of having to meet their own material needs.  They got the food and shelter that they needed to live.  Freed of the necessities of matter, they were free to go forward in a life of reason and virtue.

So what have they made of this freedom to live a life of reason and virtue?  The moral virtues are: prudence, temperance, justice, and courage.  Do the Aboriginals of Attawapiskat exhibit temperance and prudence?  Are drugs a problem?  Justice?  Is corruption rampant?  Courage?  Is anyone confronting it?

Given the disordered conditions of life in Attawapiskat, a disorder quite noticeable in the conditions of the houses, life in Attawapiskat is not ordered to much of anything, including the moral virtues.  Moral virtue appears scarce in Attawapiskat.

What about reason?  Is education valued in Attawapiskat?  Is knowledge for its own sake sought eagerly by the young and encouraged by the old in Attawapiskat?  Are teachers treasured?  Or is “European knowledge” despised as unworthy of a true Aboriginal?

Do they pray?  Do people in Attawapiskat ask God for His grace?

To pose these questions is to answer them, and they are answered by the deplorable conditions in that community.  They also lead to the fundamental question.

The Aboriginals of Attawapiskat face the same question that Aboriginals everywhere in Canada face.  It is, what does it mean to be Aboriginal in the 21st century?

By relieving Aboriginals of the necessities of matter, the wicked British colonizers relieved Aboriginals of the need to do what used to occupy their most of their time.  Hunting, gathering, fishing, and trapping were the time-consuming, primary occupation, and builder of character and self-worth of the Aboriginal male.  The hunter-gatherer lifestyle has become less and less practiced in northern communities like Attawapiskat, and nothing has yet developed to fill all that time.

Development of the moral virtues used to take place by tromping through the wilds finding food and furs for the dependents back home and by engagement in a common activity with one’s fellows.  The development of the Aboriginal mind was ordered toward becoming a better hunter, trapper, fisherman, gatherer, and survivor in the wild.  Proficiency in these arts were valued, and being proficient in them gave one esteem in the community.

In the wild, sometimes they prayed for success, or deliverance.

But the valuing of knowledge for its own sake, of being proficient in an art other than an Aboriginal art, and being morally virtuous plainly are not in evidence in Attawapiskat.

In relieving them of the necessities of matter, the wicked British colonizers presented Aboriginals with a problem novel to them.  Only they can solve it.
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Sunday, April 24, 2016

Prince and the Nihilation of Norms



Vincent J. Curtis

24 April 2016


I’m in the midst of reading several works by Jacques Maritain.  They are: Existence and the Existent, as well as The Rights of Man and The Natural Law.  Maritain was a Christian philosopher, which means he was of the Aristotelian-Thomist Scholastic tradition, with a special interest in philosophical theology.  He was French Roman Catholic, but he was not hostile to humanism or to modern-day existentialism, insofar as these philosophies did not conflict with Catholic theology.  (Indeed, the point of Existence and the Existent was to make the case that St. Thomas Aquinas was an Existentialist, though a far different one than the modern day version.)

In the course of Existence and the Existent Maritain gets into St. Thomas’s theories concerning good and evil.  Evil is the privation of good, and a person does a good act beginning with the First Cause of God as a shatterable impetus, followed by an act of the human will under that impetus.  A good act is the product of the intellect’s consideration of the rule, and then the shatterable impetus gives way, or fructifies into, the unshatterable impetus of God, and goodness results.

An evil act is the product of the intellect’s non-consideration of the rule – which Maritain describes as an act of nihilation, a nihilation of the shatterable impetus of God as first cause– followed by an act deficient in being, which God permits.  Insofar as the act lacks being, it is evil.  God’s unshatterable impetus can never result in non-being, or evil.

For example, a lie is an evil act, and the non-being consists in the non-being of truth in the statement uttered.

The idea of nihilation is interesting in respect of the death last week of the musician Prince, apparently of a drug-overdose.  Personally, I found Prince’s act to be repugnant and I paid him no heed over the course of his career.  But what struck me was the coverage of his death by Fox News anchor the wholesome Megyn Kelly.  Why would someone as apparently wholesome as Megyn Kelly give the likes of Prince the full hour-long tribute?  She seemed actually to have liked his work.

So, why would someone wholesome like Prince’s act and work?

In coming to grips with this question, I’d like to start with why they should not.  And the place to start is the nihiliation of norms.  At 5’2” tall and of slight build, Prince was a runt.  He portrayed himself as a sexually ambiguous come-on, always with the seductive look and make-up.  You couldn’t tell whether he was vamping up a gay sexuality, or this was his way of getting girls.  This act of his was a nihilation of sexual norms.

Next is a brief assessment of his work, which was by accounts prolific.  He was a talented musician who could play many instruments.  Kelly mentioned specifically his work, “1999” and “Little Red Corvette” as classics and favorites of hers.  I watched the videos of his performance of these pieces in concert, and then read the lyrics.  On the written page, the lyrics are base drivel.  They don’t really say anything, and are written in a pseudo-ghetto patois.  There is nothing in them that appeals to the rational nature of man, but much to his animal nature.  The baser instincts of man is where one finds the broadest appeal, and that may explain why these songs could appeal to so broad an audience.  (He sold 100 million albums over his career, apparently.)  Clusters of words contribute to the musicality of the pieces, such as a rhythmic “little red corvette” and “party like it’s 1999” which do not carry the overt appeal to sex that is carried in the verses.  Through repetition in the chorus, one gains awareness of these phrases; but base appeals to sex hide amidst the musical sound in the performance of the verses.

Thus the lyrics of a typical Prince musical piece nihilate the norms of decency, though that may not be readily apparent.  The casual listener may not be aware of what is actually being said in the piece (and being intellectual drivel there is little reason for the intellect to pay attention), which may explain why a casual listener may not be particularly offended if things like decency mean something to that person.  Other nihilation of the norms of decency can be seen in many official photographs of his, for publicity and otherwise.

Prince’s voice was also lauded in his many tributes for its range and versatility.  Frankly, I don’t hear it.  The amount of sound contributed by his voice is small compared to the instrumentation in his performances.  His voice was a small instrument in the overall combination of instruments.  He was certainly no Pavarotti, no Phil Collins, and no Frank Sinatra in terms of vocals, whose voices were the primary instruments and carried the songs.

Prince was obviously not secure in his musical performance in concert.  His acts seem full of fireworks, light shows, and amazing (and destructive) acts of physicality including jumping from heights onto the stage floor.  These things certainly contributed to the overall sense-experience of the show for the audience, for not only were they entertained by sound but by sight and by shock.  The music was not, apparently, enough of an appeal in Prince’s mind, and he resorted to the tricks that so many other modern musicians do also to gain and hold audience appeal.

The result of his dangerous jumps from heights (in high heels) was that by the age of 40 he was in need of hip replacements.  Many members of his bands left because they too suffered from physical ailments.  His ultimately fatal addiction to pain killers may have arisen as a result of the pain he suffered as a result of his concert performances.  One might label this a nihilation of physical norms.

Another sign of his nihilation of physical norms were his body piercings.  He appeared once on the interview show Larry King Live with what looked like half a pound of ear piercings.  I bet they hurt to get done and to be put in.

There is a famous episode in which he demonstrated a remarkable prowess with the guitar, and then at at the end he contemptuously tossed the guitar over his shoulder, to no one in particular. Presumably, the guitar was broken.  This act was a nihilation of value.

Prince had a contract dispute with Warner Brothers, and to gain revenge he changed his name from Prince to “The Artist, formerly known as Prince” and an unpronounceable cypher was designed as representative of his new name.  This would be a nihilation of identity combined with a nihilation of sensibility, since the cypher was unpronounceable and without meaning.  Not even Prince tried to give sound to it, and so the “The Artist, formerly known as Prince” became his name.  For a while.  Until he changed it back.  Because the unpronounceable was too weird, and bad for business.

The nihilation of so many things can be mildly interesting and mildly entertaining to the casual listener.  As Aristotle observed in The Art of Rhetoric, the mass of people are base, and so long as they aren’t the ones being harmed (at least immediately) they are beguiled by base things, such as the nihilation of sexual norms, decency, physical well-being, identity, value, and sensibility.

As the center of this storm of nihilation, Prince felt the need to live this life of nihilation full time.  As a result, he never had real friends around him.  Oh, he had friendly people around him, but no real friend as Aristotle described them in The Nichomachean Ethics.  He had no one around him to tell him to slow down, to get real for a while, and to stop hurting himself.  (If someone around him did say this, he probably would have driven them away.)  Nihilation results in an absence of being, that is, something containing evil, and nihilation of norms was Prince’s act, that by means of which he drew attention to himself, the quality of his work being insufficient in itself, by his own reckoning.

Norms are the standards of good, and Prince was into nihilation of norms.

In the end, the nihilation of his physical well-being led to an addiction to painkillers, and the overuse and misuse of these led to his demise.  His prior addition to nihilation led to his having no real friends who might have tried to stop his self-destruction.

The result of Maritain’s analysis of God’s shatterable and unshatterable impetus and the nihilation of God’s shatterable impetus by mans’ willing the intellect to not consider the rule, is that man is solely responsible for evil in the world, not God.  Weep not, then, for Prince, for his nihilations were his own, and they were what was good for his business.

So, why would someone apparently wholesome be downcast and sad over the death of Prince?  Well, it may be a sign of baseness in the apparently wholesome person.  It may also be a sign of the non-consideration of the nihilation presented to them as a fan, a listener, or an audience member.  Nihilation may be entertaining and pleasant in some way.  Lacking being, the act may lack disquieting reminders of what good is.  The acts may simply not be taken seriously.  Appeals to the animal nature of man deliberately aim to avoid engaging the rational nature of man, and the intellect is where serious consideration is found.

Thus a tinge of baseness combined with failing to seriously intellectualize what is being made sensible before one (a case of nihilation of the intellect) account for why an apparently wholesome person would be sad and downcast over the death of someone who made nihilation the center of their creative career.
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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Margaret Skimba's Accusing Finger

Vincent J. Curtis

19 April 2016

Margaret Skimba is a some-time opinion columnist for the Hamilton Spectator.  With a Skimba column you don't just get opinion, you get sheer opinion, and, commonly, utterly uninformed opinion. 

The kind of opinion you'd get from a closed-minded bigot who is appalled at hearing contrary opinions.

Yesterday's column was no exception.  Skimba wrote about the situation in Attawapiskat, for which the European colonizing racists are completely responsible, and who must atone by spending more money and listening to (another) scolding, from her.

No talk of how the Aboriginals are abusing their liberty.  No talk of the moral bankruptcy of the people living in Attawapiskat.  No suggestion of the curious fact that Aboriginals seem to have been born without bootstraps by which they can pull themselves up.  No, it's white people like me who are responsible.  She's alright, Jack, because she's the one pointing the accusing finger.

Skimba's column starts off about her Scottish roots, and how she got a frisson from seeing the Scottish Highlands for the first time.  From this she projects similar feelings into the Aboriginals of Attawapiskat.  Then she's off to the races with what would be called racism from the likes of me, and motivated by the kind of self-loathing that excuses itself by blaming others of her race for their racism.

Anyhow, my comments:


No doubt about it, Margaret Skimba is a racist.  And a not-well-informed racist at that.

Her column on the situation in Attawapiskat was based upon the soft-bigotry of low expectations in respect of Aboriginals, and upon the theory of the white-man’s burden.  Racism through and through.

She also seems quite unaware of history of the region around Hudson’s and James Bay.  She claims that this land was usurped by European colonists, and leased or sold to third party interests.  I wonder if Skimba has ever heard of Rupert’s Land, or of the Numbered Treaties, specifically Treaties 3 and 9?  These lands were not “usurped,” nor were they ever colonized by Europeans.

She also denounced what was a sensible solution offered by former Indian Affairs Minister and Prime Minister Jean Chretien.  It would make sense to evacuate Attawapiskat and move the residents to a suburb of Thunder Bay.  There, they will have greater job opportunities, and closer access to the civilization of the rest of the world.  And they would not be far from the land to which they are so profoundly “attached,” according to Skimba’s racist projections.

Skimba’s racist solution is to throw the white man’s guilty money at the problem until it goes away.  But because of corruption – aboriginal corruption – that money would be wasted.  Is it racist to say that even aboriginals can be corrupt?

Nevertheless, a real solution to the problem in Attawapiskat is to evacuate the place.  And racism be damned.
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Thursday, April 14, 2016

Supreme Court, MPs make mincemeat of Constitution and Democracy

Vincent J. Curtis

14 April 2016


The assisted dying business is now tearing at the heart of Canada’s constitutional order and democracy.

This matter began when the Supreme Court of Canada directed the government to pass legislation to tidy up a legal mess it created.  Now it is proposed that the Bill put before the House of Commons tidying up that mess be put before the Supreme Court for its approval.

A submission like this was deemed “both smart and compassionate”  by Liberal MP Rob Oliphant, who co-chaired the special joint Parliamentary committee on “assisted dying.”

It’s going to save some private person the money of challenging the law before the Supreme Court.

So, this is what Canadian democracy has come down to: five of nine ermined judges now have the authority to direct the government to pass legislation, and the people’s elected representatives jump to attention and ask whether they’ve jumped high enough for the satisfaction of the court.

To me, the merits of the legislation are deplorable, but even if you're hot for assisted suicide, the way in which this business has proceeded lays down disturbing markers for future challenges to the democratic order.  This whole assisted dying mess undermines democratic order, and moves Canada towards a constitutional crisis.

Consider that a perfectly valid manner for Parliament to have proceeded against this challenge to Parliamentary supremacy was to pass a law voiding the Supreme Court’s decision, and to have stripped the Supreme Court from having jurisdiction in the matter in future.

Such an assertion of the power of Parliament would have gotten the entire commentariat atwitter; condemnations and worrisome noises would have filled the airwaves.  But such an assertion of Parliamentary authority would have made clear that it’s the people’s representatives who run the country, and who doesn’t.

Instead, seeing nothing larger than the politics of a particular issue, our Parliamentarians submit to the order of the Supreme Court.  This is not healthy for democracy in Canada.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Charlie Angus: No Friend of Aboriginals

Vincent J. Curtis

13 April 2016

Due to the high number of recent suicides in the town of Attapwapiskat, an aboriginal community in Ontario near the shore of James Bay, the Canadian House of Commons held a special debate on the matter last night.



I wondered what intelligent things were to be said in the special House of Commons debate upon the mental health crisis in Attawapiskat.  It turned out that nothing new or insightful was said; it was simply an exercise for showing “concern,” and engaging in a bit of flagellation. 

Some politicians are quite un-selfaware.  For example, the NDP MP for the Attawapiskat area, Charlie Angus, said that the issue is “not partisan”, but has been the result of a “150 year system of systemic discrimination and racist denial.”

If the issue is non-partisan, why is Mr. Angus invoking the oldest, most exhausted tropes of progressivist ideology – racism – against people like me?  The non-partisan Angus condemned half a dozen generations of white Canadians for being racist.  He condemned most of the people around him in the House as racist, and this is supposed to win support for his cause?  In order for a white person to concur with Mr. Angus, he has to confess to being an anti-Aboriginal racist, by the non-partisan reasoning of Mr. Angus.

Angus’s solution to the problem?  Spend more money!  How original of him.  He would prefer to castigate over the past then offer serious and searching solutions for the future.

The arrow through the heart of Angus’s argument was his point about how the people of Attawapiskat really want a nation-to-nation relationship with Canada, and it begins when “we get past the talk.”  In plain English, aboriginals want to be treated as a separate, sovereign people, and not as fellow Canadians.  Hence, money spent on aboriginals by Canada is akin to foreign aid, or a treaty subvention, or plain and simple extortion money in exchange for non-violence.

Progressives like Mr. Angus probably think of themselves as good friends of aboriginals, and people like me fall under his category of racist.  He indulges native self-pity.  He wants to treat them like children, except when they are in a “nation-to-nation” relationship with my country, Canada.

I submit that it is not racist to be from the tough-love school of thought.   Aboriginals do have problems, but racism by whites isn’t one of them.  The problem lies in this essential issue: what does it mean to be Aboriginal in the 21st Century?   The hunter-gatherer lifestyle which defined Aboriginal life in the 19th century and for millennia previously is no longer possible, and with modern 21st century communications, aboriginals in places like Attawapiskat can see what they’re missing.  There isn’t much of an exciting future for an aboriginal in Attawapiskat.

Anything the government does to address the present issue in Attawapiskat will be temporary, because it fails to address the essential issue.  What it means to be aboriginal in the 21st century is something only aboriginals can answer, either individually or collectively.  We Canadians should be open to their answer, and I think it is a question we should hold before them if they don’t want to address it, and yet expect Canada to come to their rescue whenever a psychological crisis erupts.
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Monday, April 11, 2016

Lloyd Ferguson: Political Pinata

Vincent J. Curtis

7 April 2016

In a previous posting, I commented upon the predicament of Councillor Lloyd Ferguson, who represents the Flamborough area on Hamilton's City Council.  He got himself accused of being politically incorrect for the manner in which he corrected a city staffer who made impertinent comments regarding how far advanced Columbia was over Hamilton in respect of the socialization of means of transport.  As a result, he became a political pinata, with every progressive busy-body taking a shot at him.

I advised that Ferguson tell them all to go to hell, and this advice was published on the day he capitulated and apologized.  I forecasted that an apology would gain him no respite, and it hasn't. Now, the Columbian Refugee Association is trying to harass him through the city ethics commissioner.

Below is a further comment on the situation. 

That there is something called the “Columbian Refugee Association” is telling.  It says that at one time Columbia was a third-world hell-hole that some of its citizens fled as refugees.  These refugees are now condemning Councillor Lloyd Ferguson for describing Columbia as a third-world hell-hole.

The totalitarian instinct must go to the bone in Columbians.  That would explain why, after finding sanctuary in Canada, these refugees want to shut down the political speech of a Canadian politician in the act of doing his job.  I wonder how many Vietnamese refugees would object to a Canadian politician describing Vietnam as a communist dictatorship?

It is one thing for progressives to shut down the free speech of people they don’t like (by calling them racists), but that act becomes intolerable when refugees get into it too.  It’s quite racist of them, in fact.  By speaking in English, they are engaged in cultural appropriation, and that’s racist. 

Canada has these quaint cultural ideas of free speech, especially political free speech, and these refugees are trying to destroy that cultural tradition, and that’s quite racist of them.  To say nothing of being ungrateful, since, after all, if it weren’t for Canada, they’d likely have been tortured or killed.  That’s why they’re refugees, isn’t it?

Rather than trying to make Canada into Columbia, these refugees ought to be trying to become more Canadian, if that isn’t too racist of me to say.  They might try to familiarize themselves with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and learn that they have to take some things in stride, like speech they don’t like.  And jokes.

If Canadian politicians want to play progressive games with each other, and try to shut each other down, that is not a game for a refugee to imitate.  It’s bad form.  It’s also racist because it amounts to cultural appropriation.  But if you really feel that Columbia is not the third-world hell-hole that Councillor Ferguson said it was, and you find the Canadian custom of free speech intolerable, you can always prove Councillor Ferguson wrong by returning to Columbia.  That is, if you are not afraid of being persecuted.
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Saturday, April 9, 2016

Ranked Balloting in Ontario



Vincent J. Curtis

9 April 2016

In its never ending battle to change something that works well, progressives of the Ontario government are trying to get the ranked balloting accepted in Ontario as the means of selecting representatives to municipal council.  These busy-bodies have been here before.  In 2007, they tried to get Mixed Member Proportional Representation accepted in Ontario, and they got chased out of town with a 60 % - 40 % defeat.  Now, they're back.  They don't respect democracy because they don't take no for an answer, and are counting on the electorate being tired of saying no.

Below is an op-ed submission.


Plurality election is the principle by which she with the most votes, wins.  One man, one vote, one result.  When Ontario Minister Ted McMeekin introduced ranked balloting, he said he was making democracy as simple as one, two, three.  Democracy under plurality election is as simple as one, period.  The outcome is unambiguous.  It is simpler than an ambiguous one, two, or, maybe, three system.

Plurality election is usually referred to in the press as the, ‘first-past-the-post-system’ or the ‘winner-take-all’ system.  These expressions are pejorative.  They are intended to poke fun of the principle of our system of election.  The first expression reduces elections to a horse race, while the second makes it seem unfair in some way.

What these pejorative ways of referring to plurality election make plain is that there are different value systems at work when judging the merits of one system over another.  If you are a meddlesome, busy-body progressive, you apply one value system, while if you are an Aristotelian-Thomist scholastic realist you apply another.  Both sides may use the same terms, such as fairness and democratic, but each side means something different by them.

The side favoring plurality elections would begin their defence by referring to justice, legitimacy, and civil peace.  Which system more just?  Does the method confer legitimacy on the “winner”?  Does the method hold to its principles?

Behind these questions of justice and legitimacy is the matter of civil peace.  The importance of civil peace in society cannot be overestimated, and can best be understood by its absence, civil strife.  When civil strife prevails, you have race-riots, civil disobedience, and even civil war.  Canadian society is blessed by civil peace, the most precious thing that the Common Good can provide, and I for one am loath to put it at risk.

Civil peace is disrupted when illegitimate civil authority acts beyond the bounds of what a segment of society will tolerate.  An action of the authority is seen as unjust, and because the authority is illegitimate the injustice becomes intolerable.  Violence is not far behind.

The ranked-balloting side has to begin their case by disparaging the plurality system.  They have to say that it is unjust in some way, and that therefore the results are less than legitimate.

They must say this for otherwise there is no reason to consider the method they propose, ranked-balloting.  If the plurality election is just, democratic and confers legitimacy, then why would a wise society want to fix something that isn’t broken?  Why would a wise society want to gamble with civil peace?

Supporters of ranked balloting say that most of the time ranked balloting will produce results the same as plurality election, and therefore there is no harm in it.  When ranked balloting becomes interesting is when it produces results that differ from plurality election.  In this case, the legerdemain of the ranking formula makes a loser of the winner, and some committee names an also-ran as the one actually elected.

It is not hard to see that when ranked balloting produces a result that differs from plurality election, the legitimacy of the also-ran to hold the office can be held in disrepute.  The stench of illegitimacy that clings to the also-ran will hamper his ability to lead politically.  And that isn’t fair, either to him or to the electorate he is supposed to represent.  The winner by plurality has a greater claim to legitimacy.

If plurality election is undemocratic, the results of ranked balloting are still undemocratic.  The winner of a ranked ballot could be nobody’s first choice!  All we get with ranked balloting is the result of plurality election put through a mathematical formula.  Rank balloting simply buries the fallacy it purports to eliminate.

Ranked balloting is a solution to a non-problem.  Ranked-balloting is not simple, the ranking formula provides ample room for disagreement, and in the end it cannot follow its own principle.  In short, it is the ranked-balloting system that falls short on the question of legitimacy.

We’ve seen these busy-bodies before.  They tried to foist mixed member proportional representation in Ontario.  They don’t respect democracy because they won’t take no for an answer.  They keep coming back, hoping that this time the electorate will be tired of saying no. 

As a scientist, am not opposed to experiments.  But I am experienced enough to know that it is unwise to fix something that isn’t broken, especially when you can already see the dangerous imperfections of the substitute.

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