“lack of sense of inner self-restraint”

If you only read one article on Canada today, I hope you read this.

The University of Ottawa's Ralph Heintzman, who created and headed the federal Public Service Office of Values and Ethics, provides an important insight into what’s happening here: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the prime minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
Many good, direct, indisputable examples to support Caplan's arguments.  Read them for yourself.

Caplan tells us what we face, and why.  What we need to add to this is how we can fight this very hostile takeover of our democracy and our identity.

As Caplan, Lawrence, and several other journalists have pointed out recently, the regular systems of keeping such a prime minister and his mouth pieces in check are not only helpless to stop the devastation of Parliament and our institutions, those very systems serve as fodder to promote hate, confusion, and diversion as harper lies about them and re-shapes them into costly or commie gremlins in the minds of the less-than-informed.

If harper and his CONsorts are indeed treating their rule as a war against anything that doesn't promote their narrow ideology and goals (and I have no doubt this is the case), then the rest of Canada - the sane part - had better wake up to the fact that our own government is waging war on us and act accordingly.

I'm not suggesting we break the law.  I am saying we need to get far more creative, we need to be far more vocal, and we need to find legal ways of stopping harper's destructive acts and takeovers even if our efforts fail.  The efforts themselves will draw attention to the issues and to the fact that in many case, if not most, the majority of Canadians don't approve of his changes to our country and will not sit passively by.

The hell with politeness and verbal restraint.  In this, I'm not saying use profanities as a point (although it took one little potty word to finally draw attention publicly to the CON's sick actions and words concerning banning delegates from Durban), but I am saying that any rules - informal or not - of respect for government simply because it is government do not apply.  In a state of war, we aren't expected to say please or thank you as our front doors are being kicked in.

But our counter attacks should be fact-based, and I am proud to say that's not a problem for those currently expressing their outrage against this government.  Hell, harper gives us enough ammunition without having to invent a thing.

Better networking, coordinated efforts, high profile petitions to the GG, more involvement in well organized groups that offer resistance...what else?

One thing is certain: we can't afford to sit back passively with the excuse that this takeover is just to big to take on.  Every voice silenced gives a bigger platform for the hostile CONs and their mindless followers.  And dammit, really rip into those who say all political parties are corrupt, so why bother getting involved?