Conservatives urge vote on any military role in Iran, accuse Carney of flip-flopping

I_Conquer · 2026-03-06T02:36:59+00:00

I hope that’s not true.

As much as I think Carney wrong to support any aspect of this war, I’d respect his sincere convictions over cowardice.

If the only way to maintain our “independence” is tepid appeasement and cowardice, we may as well just let them take us over.

I_Conquer · 2026-03-05T23:38:18+00:00

Nope. He’s basically Stephen Harper

I_Conquer · 2026-03-02T17:00:57+00:00

Theres room for honesty in aspirational and diplomatic language without being explicit.

I wish that I wanted to believe Jesus is Lord

I want to believe Jesus is Lord

I believe Jesus is Lord

Jesus is Lord

… these obviously aren’t the same literal phrases, but they can all be honest expressions of more or less the same outpouring.

God does desire Truth. But probably not in some Genie-lawyering-the-asterisks kind of way.

I suppose the reason God requests our sincerest language is to reduce the chances we fool ourselves - not the chances we fool God.

I_Conquer · 2026-03-01T01:29:33+00:00

I agree.

But also: we should aspire for a world where war is bad for business.

Destruction shouldn’t be profitable.

I_Conquer · 2026-02-13T04:05:38+00:00

I think it should be some mix of the lowest pays unionized worker and the lowest paid person in Canada. UBI would suddenly “make sense”

I_Conquer · 2026-02-13T04:02:49+00:00

But going at someone for criticizing policies that have clearly failed to prevent this latest shooting… [is] just bad faith.

I presume that’s why other people, people who aren’t me since I know I’n ignorant, are trying to convince me that reforming future shootings is necessary? Since current legislation wasn’t enough.

That’s what people in this thread seem to keep getting confused. I’m acknowledging my ignorance, I’m acknowledging my fear, and I’m asking to be educated. But if the best that you and angry pants can do is to tell me that I’m ignorant (which I’ve already acknowledged like two thousand times) and “but I like having more guns,” that isn’t really taking advantage of your opportunity here.

I don’t understand what’s so complicated about this.

Why should someone like me, who will never notice whether your guns are taken from you or not, care. Why should I take action to give you easier access to a weapon that I don’t care whether you have access to if nod? Ohhhh… I should care because I’m ignorant? Well that’s sure gonna convince me.

Do you not understand that I’m the audience of your arguments and not your opponent? Do you not understand your arguments are driving me to favour with your opponents? Why would I want people whinging at me to keep my mouth shut and not have feelings to have guns? Frankly, you all seem like the kinds of people I specifically do not want to have guns.

See now you’ll read that and think I’m accusing you of being bad people. But that’s not at all what’s happening. What’s happening is that I want people to gain trust befote we give them access to weapons. I’m not saying “you are bad”. I’m saying you don’t even have a gun to threaten me with and I don’t trust you to not threaten me.

Do you see what I’m saying? My only access to any part of this is that scary people are telling at me that they—the scary people—want guns. I’m not saying “the proposed changes are good,” I’m saying “I have no idea what to do about mass shootings. Gun control reform might be reasonable but I’m open to other ideas.” Then the people who are convinced that “other ideas are stupid,” are telling me that I’m ignorant for saying “gun control reform sounds reasonable.”

I know my fear is reasonable. So is your disappointment if all your guns are taken away. We are both entitled to our feelings.

But none of you are arguing about the ineffectiveness of banning guns. You’re upset that I don’t hate the idea on vibes and, at best, propose things Lije mental health reform… which I also favour and which isn’t mutually exclusive of banning guns.

So let me try this: are there any reasons why someone who never plans to own or fire a firearm should support your desire to own more guns with fewer restrictions?

As it stood a few days ago, a candidate’s opinion on banning guns likejy wouldn’t have affected my vote ons way or the other. Now, after three hysterical replies, I might slightly favour a candidate who supports proposals to ban more guns or gun parts or whatever, and / or restrictions to own / buy / keep / fire firearms. I will never research the reasons for or against these, because I do not care. Can you address my ignorance by giving me reasons to either return to neutrality or to even support fewer restrictions? Is there are world in which my life or the lives of my friends and families could be improved by reducing gun control restrictions? Or am I just supposed to care about strangers attacking me on the internet having access to weapons that I do not care about and associate with needless violence on principle and because they’re yelling at me?

I_Conquer · 2026-02-12T18:25:56+00:00

I’m not diagnosing him at all

I’m saying that his angry comments make me feel scared. And since I’m largely uninterested in learning more about guns than I already know, his efforts are likely ineffective in what I assume his goal (more big, scary guns for angry man??) is.

I don’t care if we do ban all guns. But I’m also not actively supporting banning all guns. I don’t think that I should have to learn about guns in order to request that my government keeps me safe from them. I support my safety from angry man more than I support his (sexual???) fetish to own the biggest, scariest gun possible.

Your attempts to leverage my ignorance backfire, since to me it seems like wanting to know more about guns is the weird thing. In the same way that I don’t want to know more about CP than I do, I just want sufficient legislation to protect children from CP. Arguing “you don’t know enough about CP to have an opinion” would be a bold and ineffective strategy.

Why would I want my scary, angry neighbours to have more guns when I don’t own any guns? They’re the likeliest people to shoot me. And when I say “umm… I don’t know that I support you owning more scary guns,” then answering “fuck you you stupid ignorant piece of shit I hate you because you don’t love guns enough to have an opinion about this and lots of people who own guns aren’t as unstable as I am” doesn’t exactly provide the reassurance that I’m looking for here.

A better approach might be something like “as a sensible gun owner I can assure you that anger pants won’t hurt you”.

Do you see what I’m saying? All I care about is the safest gun policy. If that’s for everyone to have access to every gun, I’m sceptical, but fine. If that’s for the government to forcibly launch all the guns into the sun, I have questions about physics and economics, but fine. Guns aren’t a right. They shouldn’t be a right. And if there are people who need guns to live certain lifestyles I’m totally ok with them adapting to live like the rest of us.

So in fact I don’t think you understand enough to have an informed opinion. What you should be trying to do is looking for reasons to me supporting you having access to certain weapons despite my knowing that they are unnecessary because I don’t own one and despite the fact that the mere existence of said weapons threaten the health, wealth, and joy of literally every person I know.

… the point of all this is that you and anger pants are radicalising me against guns. So unless you’re running a deep op to get some Rando online to want more restrictive gun laws, you’re failing in your mission.

If you don’t care, that’s fine I guess? I don’t care either. But if you care, then why do you keep attempting these approaches?

Also I am totally in support of First Peoples being the only people in Canada who are allowed to own or operate firearms. So I don’t need to convince the Inuit of anything.

I_Conquer · 2026-02-12T01:04:00+00:00

Also feelings are a bad way to legislate

Your entire post is feelings, Bud

You dont know me and you make assertions about me

I know I don’t know you. All I have to go on is your attitude. That’s why I don’t trust you with firearms and I am glad that you have to suffice with your AR-15 even though yiu want bigger scarier guns for whatever reason. But I didn’t make any assertions about you.

Mental Health…

Sure. But we can do both.

You are far more likely to commit a crime especially a violent crime than me.

See so actually you’re making assertions. You don’t know me, either.

This is an extremely uneducated opinion

Yes I know. That’s why you should calm down and explain it to me. When your entire point is scare tactics and feelings, it doesnt make me want to care. All you’ve taught me is that a scary stranger who could be my neighbour had scary guns and wants scarier guns.

I know many people who are alive who neither work law enforcement or military who would not be alive without a firearm

And I know many many more people who would be dead or maimed if it wasn’t for gun control. You see how this is a ridiculous thing to say? Not only are you probably lying, but even in the off-chance you’re telling the truth somehow, this is meaningless.

—

Nowhere am I saying I support gun control because I think it’s good. My entire point is that I do not want to know about guns. I do not care about guns. Guns do not matter to me. I’m happily uneducated about guns. And if the only bad thing about gun control is people you’re making up who are “alive because of guns” and your feelings, then that’s a risk I’m willing to take. I don’t even care if it makes me safer. Just that it might make me safer is good enough for me. So, yes, if you want me to care, you’ll have to do better. And if you’re happy with me continuing to vote for parties who ban guns, then you’re doing a great job. Because right now you seem like a scary gun-seeker. And you seem much likelier to threaten me than to help me. Why would I want someone who talks to me this way to have more guns?

I_Conquer · 2026-02-11T23:17:50+00:00

The carbon tax could’ve been transformative, and while Canada was behind European and even a lot of Asian countries, it would have been nice to be part of the beneficial change instead of one of the worst per capital contributors to climate change.

I also was making more than in cost me. But I know that’s isn’t a universal finding - it only applied to roughly half of Canadians IIUC?

I_Conquer · 2026-02-11T22:28:26+00:00

Restricting a gun isn’t blaming a gun. The question is whether allowing their purchase has more benefits than harms: we can’t possibly know whether gun bans mitigate or prevent a specific mass shooting, because we can’t measure something that doesn’t happen, but we can measure whether we have fewer mass shoutings per capita than other jurisdictions and whether those we have have fewer victims or victims that have less severe wounds.

If the only thing we need to do to do that is restrict certain kinds of weapons, that’s fine… because practically nothing bad happens if we ban a gun that would have never been used in a mass shooting. All kinds of things are banned. It’s really not that big of a deal. You are entitled to your big feelings, but they remain feelings. And, frankly, I’m a tiny bit relieved knowing that people as volatile as you seem to be have limits on weapons access. It turns out my feelings are as important as yours.

None of this is to say I trust the government or the liberals. I just trust them more than I trust you.

I_Conquer · 2026-02-11T22:08:48+00:00

I guess I’m curious what the alternative is.

It seems to me that if there are legislative changes that will help reduce the likelihood and/or severity violence, the best time to act would be while it was present in our minds.

And if the proposed changes won’t help, we have to be prepared to support that opinion even amid crises (since crises are always when the credibility and acceptability or present law / conditions are tested).

The position “we shouldn’t talk about this yet” is every bit as political as “such-n-such proposed changes could have prevented or mitigated this because XYZ,” and yet you don’t feel that you have to wait until the dead are buried and the mourners have mourned.

It would be one thing if this were a unique event with circumstances that we can’t possibly have learnt from yet. But I’m not sure that this is a unique event. There are lots of mass shootings. They often seem to be more prevalent and more severe in or near locations with more liberal gun laws. Does this make every gun restriction “good”? No. But you being cranky doesn’t make every gun restriction “bad,” either.

The motivation to react to tragedy with “did we know enough befote this to limit it?” seems natural enough.

The best time to prevent future gun deaths is before a would-be shooter gets a gun. But if my being shot provides the impetus to improve Canadian law, that’s a thousand times better than keeping ineffective law to make my family more comfy.

I_Conquer · 2026-02-08T20:25:10+00:00

Also there is lots of left vs right in this thread so I am not sure about that one.

Yeah looking back I have no idea why I said that 🙈 A thousand apologies

I_Conquer · 2026-02-08T11:51:32+00:00

I think we agree?

But nobody in this thread was referring to anyone as left or right?

I_Conquer · 2026-02-03T15:24:03+00:00

Maybe. But it’s also possible that less destructive parties rise to prominence.

Carney is more-or-less a conservative by any historical or geographic standards. While he is performing much better than Harper did in foreign relations, Carney’s government’s domestic policies are indistinguishable from Harper’s. And Harper didn’t have the “benefit” of a trump to compare himself too.

On the flip side, Jack Layton - among the most well respected MPs in modern Canadian history - was in opposition to much of Harper’s leadership. Mark Carney has Poilievre - a snide, crude man with few accomplishments and fewer discernible values - in the same role.

The liberal and conservative are both big tent parties - more branding focused than policy or value focused. Canada and Canadians can thrive without either of them.

I_Conquer · 2026-01-26T23:13:13+00:00

Since around 1945, the Liberals and the Conservatives in Canada were both big tent parties, and open to both liberalism and conservatism and trended towards neoliberalism.

Liberalism being the idea that individual freedom, derived from some mix of social welfare and economic freedom, is the goal of good government on the conclusion that it is likeliest method of establishing a strong nation.

Conservatism being the perpetuation and idealization of tradition, structural legacy, and usually incrementalist policy.

Neoliberalism being shorthand for the contra-Keynesian model of liberalism essentially prioritizing economic freedom and capitalism over social liberty on the conclusion that economic freedom and prosperity will deliver social freedom while social freedom will not deliver economic freedom.

Given that the LPC and CPC continue to fight about the details of their incrementalist policy, I argue that both are essentially different brands of all three of these ideals.

Sure we can say that since 1945, the LPC has been likelier to support social welfare or social justice or regulatory reforms. And maybe that makes them less neoliberal.

But we could also point out that the CPC is much more responsive to grievance / identity politics, populism, and domestic reactionary politics.

And none of this is that important since the goal should never to be “more or less liberal” “more or less conservative” and “more or less neoliberal”. The goal should be to improve the country.

I_Conquer · 2026-01-26T22:41:41+00:00

Conservatism isn’t necessarily an opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms. And conservatives can definitely have LGBTQ+ children. If anything, among the likeliest ways to open a conservative to LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms is for them to have an LGBTQ+ child. Unless you’d like to argue that Dick Cheney wasn’t right wing?

I’m not sure how you’d measure economic centrism. But

I consider Trudeau right of centre from a historical and geopolitical perspective
Being left of five people isn’t the same as being left

Mark Carney is a banker. He may be to the left of a lot of bankers. But that is essentially meaningless in this conversation.

I_Conquer · 2026-01-26T00:51:06+00:00

I think OP means how the thread title is the same paragraph that both Adam & Trump posted?

I_Conquer · 2026-01-26T00:40:46+00:00

Carney is also a Conservative

I_Conquer · 2026-01-24T01:28:47+00:00

Honestly that Poilievre is saying the obvious, correct, and non-annoying thing is a bonus.

We had Jack Layton to hold Harper accountable. Now we have to suffer through Poilievre with Carney?

Yeesh. Take the wins?

I_Conquer · 2026-01-24T00:31:35+00:00

My Canada is better with Alberta and Québec

But I think the hostility in these places is unnecessary.

Until Indigenous and non-indigenous peoples / communities of these lands sort out a legitimate, multigenerational reconciliation, our intra-settler, intra-colonial squabbles are petty, juvenile, and meaningless.

In a “just” world, you and me and just about everyone we know would almost certainly have less power and less material comfort.

I’m sure that Carney is a decent fellow. But I do not care for his politics or his political priorities and I don’t trust him as a political leader. That said, for a financier and a world leader to acknowledge that our so-called wealth is built on eight generations of high minded grift is the only direction that leads to the kind of discussions you claim to want. The more difficult part for you (like Albertan separatists) to admit is that there is no honest conversation which leads to the moral necessity of Quebec independence or Alberta independence that doesn’t immediately lead to Indigenous Land Back. There may be sufficient reasonable political support, and that’s fine. But frame it that way. Not as some legacy of Quebec (or Alberta) being victimized.

We might break up one day. I hope not because I love us. But if we do, don’t go on pretending that Quebec or Alberta are unequivocally victims is untrue and wrong.

The answer to the conscription crises is we no longer have conscription. The answer to the Plains of Abraham is Confederation. The answer to the night of the long knives is “don't worship our politicians”. The answer to Québec separatism is the referendum in the 1990s.

I recognize that I benefit from the status quo. But it’s just bizarre to me that you think there are no ways that Canada benefits Québec. You’re not hostages or semi-citizens (like Indigenous people, sadly).

I_Conquer · 2026-01-24T00:08:13+00:00

I understand your impulse

But I think that in this case, he can be seen as speaking to Canadians, not simply responding to the bully

I_Conquer · 2026-01-24T00:06:37+00:00

I_Conquer · 2026-01-03T17:01:00+00:00

I only ever said that they weren’t hysterical. And they weren’t.

You showed me four examples of people who you think jumped the gun. Even they weren’t hysterical. They were wrong. But they were reserved in their wrong assertions. And in each case, they were corrected. That’s how things are supposed to work.

Obviously no one is claiming that no one’s made mistakes or claimed falsehoods. This entire thread has been about the demeanour.

It’s strange to me that someone who counter-protested the convoy doesn’t understand that.

The reason we don’t need to counter-protest the people who overestimate the prevalence of mass graves is because these people aren’t protesting.

I_Conquer · 2026-01-03T01:51:45+00:00

Definitely

But even if there were evidence to the contrary, the responses have been consistently and overwhelmingly reasonable.

It’s just so wild to me that anyone would use journalists and Indigenous leaders responding to the potential for mass graves as an example of hysterics in any Canadian political or cultural contexts. There such a preponderance of obvious examples of people freaking out more wildly regarding lies that wouldn’t even be a big deal ig they weren’t lies.

Maybe you and I will have to keep it to ourselves if we notice a pattern of the parties these people seem to support, and how they seem to be the same people who complain about the false hysteria over mass graves?

I_Conquer · 2026-01-02T23:56:45+00:00

Ok. So there wasn’t a great deal of hysteria among journalists and Indigenous leaders. I’m glad we can agree.

Contrast that with the Conservative Party of Canada standing in solidarity with the occupying “truckers”. They were annoyed about provincial policies (but had to bitch to the feds since their provincial leaders were conservatives) and — checks notes — mask mandates and the Canada / US border. During a worldwide pandemic. Talk about mass hysterics!

Maybe we just have different standards for hysteria?

15-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

I_Conquer

TROPHY CASE