I’d rather to live in a country built on the rule of law than the rule of morality. Morality is always a personal thing, and one person’s absolute good can easily be another person’s hell.

I also prefer public debate to clandestine politics.

For example.
The Christian Heritage Party – which is now largely dormant, thanks to its leadership’s general support for the Conservatives – once openly discussed plans to bring creationism to every Canadian school. Today, the debate has gone underground. That is bad for democracy. If any candidate believes creationism should replace evolution in the school system, they should say so.

Also, there are many Parliamentarians, from a variety of political parties, who would happily vote to reinstate the death penalty. In 1987, a free vote on the issue was 148 to 127 in favour of maintaining the abolition of capital punishment. All federal candidates should publicly state their views on this important topic.

For democracy to flourish, public policy debates need to be held in the open. While it is okay for party policy to be hashed out behind closed doors, and for private people to have private discussions, it is not okay for public policy plans to be kept secret, and then implemented after an election.

For instance, in Canada at least, no politician is advocating in public for the implementation of Creationism as part of every high school curriculum, reintroduction of capital punishment, or cutbacks on nuclear safety protocols to save money. Now the BDS campaign is relegated to the same political wasteland. Sure, it’s a free country and anyone can talk about this stuff if they want — but what’s the point?

If politicians want to talk about stuff outside of the mainstream on their own time in the company of close friends, they can go ahead. They just shouldn’t attempt to confuse Canadian voters or their own party that their oddball views are actually official party policy. If they do bizarre stuff in public, they ought to be called out on it.

If boycotts, divestment and sanctions are legitimate tools against Iran, then a free and democratic country such as Canada must allow debate about using those tools against other countries, too.

That’s all I was trying to say!

BTW – Clandestine politics are the roots of dirty and corrupt politics.
Political debates need to be held in the open.

She only apologized because she got in crap for it…and was forced to.

As for Libby’s apology, let’s just say I’ll believe it when I see some action to back it up. To paraphrase my wife, apologies without changing behavior mean nothing.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/canada-to-boycott-ahmadinejad-speech-at-un-1.7371

Please note that Libby posted this on her website three days ago.

http://www.libbydavies.ca./news/update/2010/06/11/libbys-response-inflamatory-editorial.