For most of my life I've engaged in one form of political activity or another.
From the age of 15 to about the age of 30, it would have been accurate to describe me as a democratic socialist. During most of those years, I was living in Canada and was active in the NDP at the constituency association level, as a parliamentary intern and as the convention youth organizer for the late Alexa McDonough's NDP leadership campaign in 1995.
Just days before my 29th birthday, I jettisoned my association with the NDP after the attacks of September 11, 2001. By this time, I had lived in this country for about 18 months. Over the next year or so, my politics moved to the right and by 2003 I identified as a conservative was writing for conservative online publications. Between 2009 and 2016, I was a regular contributor to The American Spectator.
During my last year or so writing for TAS, I was very highly critical of Donald Trump. After Trump won the GOP nomination, I was told by publisher R. Emmett Tyrell to stop criticizing Trump. I refused and I resigned and began this blog. Although I contributed a few articles to National Review Online my politics gradually moved back leftward especially after the COVID pandemic. If not for the pandemic, I probably would not have voted for Joe Biden in 2020 or voted for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff during my brief tenure in Georgia.
Although I am a registered independent, I will not cast a ballot for a Republican so long as they champion authoritarian values of Trumpism which is built on a foundation of conspiracy theories constructed out of whole cloth. I am satisfied with President Biden's tenure in the White House and will vote for him again next year. Aside from his work regarding COVID relief, vaccine distribution, infrastructure funding, enabling Medicare to negotiate to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and efforts to reduce the burden of student loan debts, I am heartened by his remarks in support of Israel during its hour of need.
However, the left-wing of the Democratic Party is viscerally hostile towards Israel particularly the likes of Democratic Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar (who claimed to show an image of dead Palestinian children who were in fact Syrian) and Cori Bush.
This is similarly true in my home and native land. Fred Hahn, the President of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) praised Hamas' "resistance" as Jews were being slaughtered. When Hahn was taken to task for those remarks, CUPE issued a statement which read in part:
Now we find ourselves targeted by a highly organized pro-Israel lobby that seeks to control the anti-Palestinian narrative fed to Canadians and intimidate any person or organization that fails to comply with its agenda.
In other words, CUPE is claiming it is a victim of a Jewish conspiracy.
Not to be outdone Ontario NDP MPP Sarah Jama issued a tweet characterizing Israel as "an apartheid regime" and that the violence against Israelis was rooted in "settler colonialism". Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles demanded Jama take down her post. Jama defied Stiles and instead issued a non-apology, apology. Stiles considered the matter closed and yet Jama's tweet remains. Stiles utterly failed to rein in anti-Semitism within her party. Such tolerance of anti-Semitism on the part of Stiles and the Ontario NDP reaffirms my decision to part ways with them more than two decades ago was the correct one.
Nevertheless, my parting ways with the GOP and conservatism is equally correct and defeated, former President Trump's unhinged public attack against Israel a few days ago reaffirms that decision. So where does that leave me?
Although my politics have moved leftward since 2016, so long as the Left views Israel with such inherent hostility and embraces anti-Semitism then I cannot identify myself as left-wing. In view of these facts, my politics are best described as centrist. Yet wherever I am on the political spectrum one thing has remained constant - my temperament. I am a raging moderate.
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