Pierre Elliott Trudeau: a man who was ahead of his time

[4X4]

Originally Posted by fatso

except, apparently, 4X4.

I think it's funny how much you hate me.

[ricosuave]

[starseed]

Originally Posted by redforever

I don't care what their relationship was as long as that relationship never had negative impact on my country.

Reagan and Mulroney had a great personal relationship as did Reagan and Thatcher.

As long as the personal relationship of the leader of my country with the leader of a foreign country does not impact or influence the country I live on, I could care less. And if at all possible, I think it is better for Canada to have a friendly open relationships, as much as possible, with other countries. In most cases, leaving the door open for negotiations is always preferable than closing that door.

I dont know if it has been mentioned already, but I thought it was a good thing that Tudeau went to Cuba and declared viva la amistad cubana-canadiense. Opening borders provides for more open dialogue between the peoples, and helps to influence leaders to give up authoritarian control. Isolating countries tends to do damage to the citizens of those countries, and usually only hardens the stance of the dictator.

Also, I would like to point out to Resolute that the current Liberal leader has repeatedly stood up for Alberta and explained the importance of the Oil Sands to the left-wing nuts. There is a video on youtube of him talking to liberals and some hecklers expressed their disapproval of his support for the Oil Sands, and he did not act PC and tip toe around the issue, he flat out reiterated his support.

jus' sayin'.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by starseed

I dont know if it has been mentioned already, but I thought it was a good thing that Tudeau went to Cuba and declared viva la amistad cubana-canadiense. Opening borders provides for more open dialogue between the peoples, and helps to influence leaders to give up authoritarian control. Isolating countries tends to do damage to the citizens of those countries, and usually only hardens the stance of the dictator.

Also, I would like to point out to Resolute that the current Liberal leader has repeatedly stood up for Alberta and explained the importance of the Oil Sands to the left-wing nuts. There is a video on youtube of him talking to liberals and some hecklers expressed their disapproval of his support for the Oil Sands, and he did not act PC and tip toe around the issue, he flat out reiterated his support.

jus' sayin'.

Ssssh we're not supposed to say good things about Ignatieff. Quick someone mention how he loves Harvard and hates Canada.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

I remember a while ago CBC was doing a vote for the 10 most interesting (or something like that) Canadians in history and then they showed a 1 hour biography on that person... I watched the PET one without really intending to and being I was too young to really remember the mortgage crisis of the 80's or the NEP, (plus I was a kid and it was politics - blech) I walked away thinking wow that guy was cool... he had this dynamic personality, was interesting and was treated like a rock star according to that, obviously, extremely biased show on CBC. It wasn't until after when I mentioned it to my parents that I heard about all the bad... and so then I started doing my own reading up on it... and quickly understood I had been mislead. The show did not highlight the bad or even present his legacy with a balanced approach it was pretty much historical propoganda...

Knowing more now I can't see how anyone would consider him to be a good prime minister, memorable? yes. Is it a shame we have not had another person leading this country that Canadians can get excited or passionate about? yes. Was he a good PM? No...

The thing with Trudeau is that he rarely gets looked at objectively. You have people who either love him or hate him. In all honesty, his legacy is somewhere right in the middle. He wasn't the great PM that many people think that he was (although you don't govern for so long if you don't do some things right), but he wasn't an evil person who calculated ways to destroy Alberta.

Also, rarely does he get judged by people who consider the era and the challenges of the times that he was governing. Governing during the height of the Cold War, during the energy crisis, and during the intense politcal atmosphere of the late 60s and 70s was not easy. What is easy, is looking back now with what is a relatively relaxed (or more experienced) setting and judging him from the perspective we have now.

Of course, this happens with all politicians. Reagan was once considered great during his time, but many of his policies get blasted these days because of how perspectives changed. Unfortunately, you rarely get fair and balanced when looking as politics.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by redforever

This is a pretty simplistic statement. Hating the man is one thing, making statements like this is quite another. Canada never had the problem with Cuba like the USA and has not followed suit with the USA in regards to its foreign policy regarding Cuba. The USA is still at a stalemate with Cuba, you would prefer Canada had followed the lead of the USA?

Trudeau also visited China, and Russia, Communist regimes as well. As did Nixon and various other foreign leaders and dignitaries. So to visit a Communist country must make one a Communist sympathizer, right?

Visiting a country with a different system of government than we have does not make one a sympathizer to that system. It merely states that you are willing to have foreign relations with them. It does not say how far those negotiations will go, just that you do talk with that country and occasionally visit as well.

It's one thing to have official governmental relations with Communist regimes. It's quite another when it goes beyond that to a personal friendship like Castro and Trudeau had.

Trudeau also praised Mao Tse-tung's revolution in China, stating that Mao had delivered a wonderful system to his people. At that time, it was already well-documented in the West that Mao’s gulag had liquidated more than 60 million human lives.

Trudeau’s behaviour becomes understandable in the context of his life-long admiration of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century French philosopher who, in his famous promotion of the submission of the individual to the “general will,” set out the blueprint for the genocide-making not only of the French Revolution, but of the Marxist and Nazi revolutions of the 20th century.

Thus, in Trudeau’s philosophical outlook, the innocent victims of Castro’s and Mao’s concentration camps were not to be thought about in their human context, but only in abstract terms - if at all.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArti...px?ARTID=22480

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Dion

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArti...px?ARTID=22480

No offense, but I think you really need to consider the source in this case. This article seems to have a lot of rhetoric and strawman arguments in it, and the website seems pretty politcally motivated.

Interesting read though.

[Yeah_Baby]

Weren't their at one point rumors that Trudeau was going to turn the Bowden institution into a quasi political gulag?

[Canuck-Hater]

Its gonna be hard to convince conservative calgarypuck.

[jammies]

Trudeau was absolutely hated around my house growing up; looking back he isn't as big a villain as I thought at the time, but his flaw was always that he thought he was smarter than everybody else. His vision of a more centralized Canada was never a workable one, but he was unable to see that his continual drive to increase the power of the federal government would eventually end up bringing the nation to the brink of dissolution. His arrogance nearly cost the nation its very existence and that is what is truly unforgivable.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Canuck-Hater

Its gonna be hard to convince conservative calgarypuck.

Convince them of what?

I lived through the entire era...was a victim of policies implemented by the man for the "good of the country".

he was a brutally horrible Prime Minister. Period.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by jammies

Trudeau was absolutely hated around my house growing up; looking back he isn't as big a villain as I thought at the time, but his flaw was always that he thought he was smarter than everybody else. His vision of a more centralized Canada was never a workable one, but he was unable to see that his continual drive to increase the power of the federal government would eventually end up bringing the nation to the brink of dissolution. His arrogance nearly cost the nation its very existence and that is what is truly unforgivable.

If only MacDonald et al had the knowledge of all the 'nothing' powers they allowed the provinces to have would become some of THE most important issues in 20th Century eh?

[bcb]

Feds have the power, Provinces have the money...

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by flamesfever

I have to say that I was caught up in the Trudeaumania that took place back in the 60's. I liked him for his strong personality and the respect he commanded on the World Stage. However I believe he was far too socialistic and many of his policies were ill conceived.

.

Man who does this bring to mind today?

[fatso]

Originally Posted by 4X4

I think it's funny how much you hate me.

believe me my sub-######ed friend, the feeling is mutual.

[redforever]

Originally Posted by Dion

It's one thing to have official governmental relations with Communist regimes. It's quite another when it goes beyond that to a personal friendship like Castro and Trudeau had.

I don't buy that at all. As I said before, as long as the personal relations do not lead to policies or decisions that negatively affect the country I live in, I have no problem with leaders of 2 countries getting along. In fact, I would rather they have a good working and personal relationship than a negative relationship.

And even if you argue the relationship went too far, it does not make Trudeau or any other politician in those circumstances, Communist sympathizers.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by redforever

I don't buy that at all. As I said before, as long as the personal relations do not lead to policies or decisions that negatively affect the country I live in, I have no problem with leaders of 2 countries getting along. In fact, I would rather they have a good working and personal relationship than a negative relationship.

And even if you argue the relationship went too far, it does not make Trudeau or any other politician in those circumstances, Communist sympathizers.

It does in my books. Establishing a friendship with a leader and ignoring what he has done to his people. Guess we'll agree to disagree on this issue.

[Ford Prefect]

Peeair Turdo, as Charlie Farquharson liked to call him, was nothing but a grade A jackass who didn't care whose toes he stepped on or who he alienated. Any good he did for the country was more than offset by the harm he did. If he was a man ahead of his time, his time has not yet come.

What's the point of this thread anyway? This is a debate that is older than dirt, and not likely to yield anything new or useful.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

If only MacDonald et al had the knowledge of all the 'nothing' powers they allowed the provinces to have would become some of THE most important issues in 20th Century eh?

Well at the time it was inconceivable that government of any kind could be as powerful as either the federal or provincial governments became; such powers as each had were never intended to clash as they weren't perceived as conflicting. Once the federal government under Trudeau became cognizant of its power to use the redistribution of tax monies to affect provincial policies in areas it otherwise had no claim to influence, though, the fight was on, and successive federal governments have been reluctant to scale back, regardless of political composition.

Back in the 19th century, though, governments in general were much smaller and mainly funded by duties and excise taxes. There simply wasn't enough money at stake to have one level of government dictate to another, nor could there have been much enthusiasm to even try, as governments were much less interventionist philosophically. Now we see the provinces trying to influence municipalities (like giving Calgary $25 million for infrastructure that ends up spent on a foot-bridge, for example) through redistributing tax income, and the feds doing the same to the provinces (with the prime example being health-care).

I'd like to see what might happen if transfer of money between levels of government was illegal; I suspect it would lead to different inefficiencies and problems that wouldn't necessarily be any worse or better than we have now, but at least the added leakage of money lost in the transfer between levels would permanently go away.

[redforever]

Originally Posted by Dion

It does in my books. Establishing a friendship with a leader and ignoring what he has done to his people. Guess we'll agree to disagree on this issue.

Sorry, that is simply the state of world politics. This is nothing new and certainly can not be attributed to PET.

How many countries, including Canada, are presently friends with Saudi Arabia and other countries where it is common knowledge that women simply do not count in society, or are friends of countries where honor killings are still accepted, and the list goes on?

If you go by your standards, we would have diplomatic relations with very few countries in this world.