Canadian Politics Today

Sure, but even expressing reality as you have here is tantamount to advanced calculus in today's political discourse.

And yet these same people insist that there is a 'Canada' with 'Canadian Values'.  Separating out an area in which details can be discussed, and trade-offs can be proposed would be a sea-change and huge leap in actually making 'politics' where before there was grandstanding.

There is a Canada and there are Canadian values. Think of values as a hierarchal model. On the topmost level we have beliefs in theories like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, democracy, a secular culture, basic justice and fairness and how to treat one another (politeness and no punching). I think almost all of us agree with this almost all of the topmost level of values. Then there are more values that come underneath. These are more amorphous and require more rationalizing, and they are open to disagreement about methods.

Value: Help the poor.
Left wing. Give them money!
Right wing. Give them tools to help themselves.

So maybe that isn't so much a difference in values as it is in how to bring about those values.

Value: Law and order
Left wing: Let's not be too stern here. People are imperfect. Forgiveness is a virtue.
Right wing: Crucify them! Otherwise society will degenerate and we'll have riots in the street!

Perhaps that's a different definition of what constitutes law and order.

Diversity is our strength? What kind of a value would we put that under? Some people think it is our strength and some believe it a weakness. Is that a clash of values? Perhaps you could say the Left wants an inclusive society that is tolerant of each others differences. The Right, meanwhile, suspects that if we bring in masses of people who have different top level hierarchal values than us that might water down the general acceptance of those top-level hierarchal values and thus eventually threaten them - and our society.

Yet even this is not, I think so much a clash of values as a clash of beliefs in the danger to our shared values.

I hate to be a downer. But neither did that because of any care in honest government. Chretien did it to screw over Paul Martin, who was pushing him out, and Harper did it to screw the Liberals, who had always gotten most of their donations in big dollar amounts from a few rich donors (the conservative tended to get theirs in small dollar amounts from many donors).

Sigh.  Ok.

Yes, worse than before...   I got that, but didn’t finish my sentence.

I’m not convinced that democracy (in Canada?  USA?  The world?) is any worse than it was in the past (10 years?  50 years?).  I actually believe it has gotten better in Canada than it was with the introduction of the Charter not so long ago.

Can you clarify when and where has gotten worse?

I had an early interest in politics. I used to go down to the HoC and sit in the gallery during question period to watch the interplay between Trudeau (sr) and Stanfield, and a variety of others. I would say there was a collegial atmosphere among them, a well-mannered and mature belief that all were there to do what was right for Canada, even if they disagreed on what was right. Now I see a measure of contempt for each other and for those who disagree which didn't seem present then, something that is more than simple dislike but more like complete rejection, and an easy resort to insults and sneers due to lack of respect for each other. That has spread to the population at large - it wasn't the other way around.

So maybe that isn't so much a difference in values as it is in how to bring about those values.

Called 'solutioning'.

Diversity is our strength? What kind of a value would we put that under? Some people think it is our strength and some believe it a weakness. Is that a clash of values?

Tolerance, pluralism, live and let live...

Perhaps you could say the Left wants an inclusive society that is tolerant of each others differences. The Right, meanwhile, suspects that if we bring in masses of people who have different top level hierarchal values than us that might water down the general acceptance of those top-level hierarchal values and thus eventually threaten them - and our society.

Actually I think that 'personalities of left/right' guideline you have punished works better.
 

Can we 'ignore' on here ?

The feature doesn't work properly.

If I pound on the forum, Fonzie-like, will it get fixed ?

Sure seems like an interesting idea.  In a world where web-bots have more influence than people, bringing back the face-to-face seems essential.  But why is a Republican interested in taking money out of the system ?