Apolitical Staples

Please don’t call him a socialist. If we are going to widen the net broad enough to cover Bob Rae, you may also qualify as a socialist. ;)

Greg..LOL Rae IS a far left socialist and worse yet just another Power Corp Puppet like the last four Clowns who sat in the PM’s chair. Have you not yet learned that what a leftist says is always just the popular view until elected then Bam more bans more ridicules social engineering. Rae will tell you anything you want to hear, just don’t expect him to honor anything he says. People seldom change radically over a life time, never in a relatively short time, judge a person by their past actions, not but what they say presently. It’s a far more accurate way to essence a person’s character.

I’m with Sinister Greg on this one—this is a classic example of the expansion of the term ‘socialist’ to where it no longer holds any meaning. Socialism actually has an established definition: an ideology that promotes social control of the distribution of wealth and property, and state or collective ownership of the means of production. If Bob Rae has ever supported those things, he’s never bothered to tell anyone else about it. Using the term ‘socialist’ as shorthand for ‘NDP member/supporter’ is wholly inaccurate—while some of us are socialists, the party itself hasn’t advocated socialism for a long time, if ever.

This is a peculiarly Canadian misuse of the term, by the way, and would be seen as entirely ridiculous by the rest of the world. Especially those countries that actually have socialist governments.

I will give you the “failed”. He failed to give us state car insurance for example.

Responding to your update questions:

I don’t know what Jack Layton would call himself, but I’d call him a social democrat. I suspect he’d avoid labeling himself, though, because he doesn’t want to alienate the segment of the party that does consider itself socialist. He’s in Edmonton tonight—I should ask him. ;-)

As for the “failed” part of what you said—I think that’s inarguable, no matter what you think of Rae. You can argue that it wasn’t his fault, but he certainly failed as premier of Ontario. But what do I know? Canada was but a distant dream in my mind’s eye at that point!

“He failed to give us state car insurance for example.”

Failed socialist then, ‘cause he promised it and if nationalizing (provincializing?)car insurance is not socialist then nothing is.

Ontario hydro, nough said. Socialist. Look into his background for christs sake, state control is almost rae’s middle name. State controled media CRTC, state funded and controled hospitals, state sets educational corriculum, state controled speach, state forced language laws, and many more areas of intrusion. we may not be fully socialist but we are getting there. If someone were to explain modern Canada to a Canadian in the 1960’s they would think you were nuts and Canada could never become what it has become. Any state control of social issues is Socialism.

Greg, you know my opinion of Bob Rae. He was the second Liberal premier after Peterson.

I’ve met Rae. If anything, I’d call him a “reformed” socialist or something of the sort. When I met him, his understanding of right-wing positions was sophomoric at best, but he wasn’t a socialist per se. He was an implacable advocate of NAFTA and globalization, for example. The 1995 election took the true socialist inside of him and strangled him to death.

Well, okay, if you mean by “failed socialist” that he tried to be a socialist and failed, then I suppose that’s possible (I don’t know enough about what his goals were to say). But again, the word ‘socialist’ means something bigger than just ‘government-run’, so saying “if state-run car insurance isn’t socialist, then nothing is” is just silly. Reread the definition I linked to. Ask yourself: does this policy I want to call socialist have to do with “social control of the distribution of wealth and property, and state or collective ownership of the means of production”? No? Then it might be a policy many socialists would like, but it ain’t inherently socialist.

C’mon, Greg, you care so much about using words according to their established meanings! Give the poor English language a break. ;-) And as for a new, more accurate adjective to describe this kind of policy, what’s wrong with the old standby “left-wing”?

I think left and right wing have even less meaning. I assume that any policy that has the state taking over something that industry can run it is socialist. Maybe I should stick to statist. I find that term a little more harsh but I guess if the shoe fits…

Short answer to question: Yes.

Greg, I am not suggesting that the NDP did not have some socialist policy positions, I am just saying Rae walked away from them and ruled like the Liberal he was and is. That’s why he is not very popular in my circles. So I guess he failed at being a socialist.