Politics – Brian Panhuyzen

Yellow Vests Canada Facebook group: a forum for Canadian hate and ignorance

Leave a Comment / Activism, Conservatism, Environment, Guns, Human Rights, Justice, Politics / Brian Panhuyzen / 20 June 2020

Trigger warning: This post contains an image of a Facebook post containing racist language, and a reference to dehumanizing words used to describe a trans person. Canadians watch with smug superiority the hate and anti-science movements in the United States, but fail to recognize that regressive attitudes flourish here too. You might be surprised to […]

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And if there isn’t a democratic solution…?

Leave a Comment / Conservatism, Environment, Politics / Brian Panhuyzen / 25 April 2013

On my bicycle commute today I stopped along a trail for a moment – okay, it was to step behind some trees to pee – and I’d been listening to the haunting Radiolab podcast Dark Side of the Earth. I had just heard David Wolf’s account of spacewalking outside the Mir spacecraft with fellow astronaut

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The Austerity Myth

Leave a Comment / Conservatism, Politics / Brian Panhuyzen / 18 December 2012

“The problem is that although austerity may work for individuals, it seldom works for economies. To the contrary, frequently it makes matters worse. If all individuals tighten their belts, demand for goods and services will fall, workers will be fired, and demand will fall even more. Business won’t invest without growing sales: this was Keynes’s

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Cons Say: “Liberals Are Selfish”

Leave a Comment / Conservatism, Politics / Brian Panhuyzen / 5 November 2012

This morning I listened to This American Life’s episode #478: Red State Blue State about rifts in families and friendships caused by clashing politics. On it, we heard from a Republican woman who cannot fathom her friend’s Democratic views because, to paraphrase, “she’s not selfish, but liberals are selfish.” This is standard rightwing fodder, the

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Voting, or, Pushing a Whale

1 Comment / government, Politics / Brian Panhuyzen / 1 November 2012

A recent Freakonomics podcast explained that economists do not vote, because, according to Steve Levitt, “there never has been, and there never will be, a vote cast in a presidential election that could possibly be decisive.” He’s wrong. Think of voting like “pushing a whale.” A whale* washes up on a beach. The townspeople collect,

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9-11 Revenge

Leave a Comment / Conservatism, Politics / Brian Panhuyzen / 13 September 2012

According to the Costs of War project, which continues to assess the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the death toll attributable to direct violence from these wars currently stands at 300,000. The death toll from the 9-11 attacks was approximately 3000. This would put the “revenge

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