(no subject)

[frandroid]

Richard Gwyn sometimes spews out completely random garbage. He's got some insights but I refuse to read his column in the Star. I'm reading an article he published in Policy Options a few years back, before the Alliance/PC merger, positing Canada as a one-party state (not just post-1993, but since Confederation, although in a more acute form between 1993 and 2003). He spends a bit talking about how having a one-party state is not necessarily a bad thing, and there he goes:

"Perhaps our best-run province, Alberta, has been a one-party state for almost three quarters of a century, experiencng in that time just one political change, from right-of-centre Social Credit to centre-right Conservative. The Albertan style of democracy has also typically been chracterized by weak oppositions in the legislature and buy the absence of a tradition of press or public dissent, and yet Albertans don't seem to be living in an undemocratic society."

Now, can someone, maybe mrputter, explain to me how Albertan democracy works? If there's no dissent, no opposition, no nothing, and yet it's democratic? I can make some allowances, but I don't quite grasp where I'm supposed to make them.

Comments

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Had I the energy, the patience, and the contacts, I suspect I would have found it interesting to see what parallels, if any, there were between Alberta, Washington DC, and Singapore, and their respective implementations of systems approximating one party states.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Hey I recall Art Hanger trundling off to Singapore to look into caning, in more forthright days...

One of the only times I ever wrote a politician a letter. He replied, by the way, and took up specific points in my letter. In an assholeish way, of course.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Bwahaha, caning, awesome. Too bad Harper is keeping them all under wraps these days. He's definitely stiffling much creative activity there... the Conservative Loonies Performance Art Collective