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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Elections! |
Though I think Neil said it best, there is something of a difference between the US federal election process, and the Canadian Federal Election Process.
The grandest difference is perhaps summed up in the fact that our Prime Minister, on September 7th, 2008, spoke to our Governor General and requested that the present government be dissolved, and replaced with a new one. The date was set for the vote (October 14th, 2008), and butta-bing, butta-boom; no long drawn out campaign, no roller coaster ride - just a bunch of Cannucks collectively saying, "Hmph? We gotta vote again, eh? Oh well, I hope the weather is nice."
As a Canadian, I reserve the right to use Hockey as a teaching tool to explain the intricacies of foreign politics to my Canadian brethren. My fellow Canadians, do you remember when your team was in the running for the Stanley cup that year? Of course you do. Everything looked great, and you were excited about the play offs, right up until your team was disqualified in the first heat. After that, you couldn't really bring yourself to get all that excited about the finals. I mean, sure, you like the Leafs more than you like the Habs, but frankly, neither is your team, and the margin of difference between the two is so minute, you are hard pressed to care one way or the other.
That's the way socially conservative Evangelicals felt when McCain took the nomination. Sure, he's better than "Shrillary" and has more substance than the pop icon "Wham-bama" - but he is about as tasty as those awful, gag-in-the-throat, rice cakes that dieters eat (because they have to). They were lifelessly resigned to go into the voting booth in Novermber, and wheeze out a way-too-dry and dusty, nigh-defeated, sigh as they pulled the Republican lever behind scrunched eyes, clenched teeth, and a sour grimace. Well, most of them anyway.
Yet, when Palin came on the ticket - suddenly there was hope.
Macabre as the thought may be, it is still a thought that many conservatives are entertaining: The odds are not insignificant that a man who has been a senior citizen for pretty much all of the current president's tenor, and is likewise no stranger to re-occurring bouts of cancer - that such a man, however strong his heart may presently be, may well deteriorate (if not expire) in office, as that sometimes happens to old people.
Given this rather dark-horse scenario, grim as it may be, it still offers the conservative base a bone - the possibility, through unfortunate misadventure, of seeing a genuine conservative president in the white house the Poseur Conservative™ they were more or less stuck with.
McCain's choice of Palin put a defibrillator on the flat-lined heart of the conservative base, and I think that is partially why our own conservative Prime minister dissolved Canadian Parliament a week later. I think that a conservative Canadian government stands a better chance of being elected if it looks like there may be a conservative US government as well. It doesn't really matter to our Canadian election who will win the US election - but it sure matters if it looks like a conservative government has a chance...
That is why I am glad that our Canadian elections will now take place two weeks before the US elections. I am sort of glad that our elections are dull and boring compared to the US elections, as I have a bigger stake in our elections, and frankly, I don't like suspense, much less two years of posturing, and mud slinging.
Stay tuned, and I will tell you who wins up north.Labels: Elections 08 |
posted by Daniel @
1:16 PM
 
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| 6 Comments: |
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I know, political post...blah blah.
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I understand the attraction of quick-and-dirty elections, I really do; but I would be very uncomfortably (to put it mildly) if the President, or any other individual or group,could just say, "I don't like this duly-elected congress, eh, pick another one."
I don't like many aspects of our political process, but I definitely like the rules, and that the rules don't allow for whimsical changes in government. At the risk of being accused of national arrogance, this stability is a very large part of why America is great.
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As a Canadian, I too don't care for the whimsical dismissal of an entire Parliament - it makes it rather difficult to know how long a party will be in power - and it makes it easier for a party to stay in power, since they get to choose when the election comes, and invariably do so when it is most convenient for their party.
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Well, we may certainly have a whimsical ability to dissolve Parliament, but I'll tell you one thing: Bill Clinton would never have lasted eight years in this country.
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Interesting post Daniel. It would be nice to have two conservative governments side by side wouldn't it.
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Daniel, excellent observations and analysis.
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I know, political post...blah blah.