Centrerion Canadian Politics

About Us

Save this online in Del.icio.us. [?] Vote For this Post

Centrerion: Canadian Politics is a Canadian weblog, or blog for short, which discusses issues pertaining to Canadian politics from a moderate and/or centrist point of view.
---
Guided Tour: Reader Rewards (Next) | Join | Carnivals | Newsletter | Privacy | Interactive | Del.icio.us | Contact
---
The name derives from the French spelling of center, 'centre', in recognition of Canada's French heritage, and from the word centurion, which was the word for general in the Roman Empire. Hence, Centrerion: Canadian Politics is named to suggest an important voice in the Canadian center, le centre Canadien.

Who, What, Where, When, Why, How ??????


Who (Contributors): Centrerion: Canadian Politics' posts and articles are written by
Blue Grit,
Ilya,
Jiggy,
Andrew,
Kerry,
Azuelosn,
and myself, LeCentre.

In addition, we link to other (mainly political) blogs and websites whose opinions we respect, and whose content is of interest to our readers. This is known here at Centrerion: Canadian Politics as the Politics/Web/Humour Club, and effectively functions as our blogroll, for those more familiar with blogging jargon. We're always looking for more people to join the team.
We also host carnivals, which see a broad spectrum of contributors, often from the Club, get involved.

What: See first two paragraphs.

Where (Location): By now it should be obvious that Canada is home to Centrerion: Canadian Politics. Each of us contributes with his own provincial bias, and thus Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia's views are predominant here. Another result is that commentary and analysis of each of those province's politics can also be found here. Other than that, we're obviously online, as well as being an increasingly important part of the growing Canadian blogging world.

When: Founded in December 2005, when the Canadian political scene saw the toppling of then-PM Paul Martin's Liberal minority government, causing the 2005-2006 federal election which gave power to the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.

Why (Aims): I wanted to get my views heard by wider audience, and get involved in politics. Not seeing any party that really reflected my positions, I decided to put my positions out there, to try and influence Canada and Canadians towards centrism.
While I believe that most Canadians are moderates, not everyone is able to articulate what they think, or spend time researching different issues the way we do. Thus, Centrerion: Canadian Politics offers people an concrete expression for their thoughts, and provides them with information and research to help them think about it themselves.
More recently, these aims have been expanded to doing things that can help our readers, mainly in referring them to tools and improving the website. That's why we endorse firefox, del.icio.us, text-link-ads, and use trackbacks, comments, and a few other tools (though the buck we earn from firefox referrals or the $25 for the ad-links referrals are of course appreciated). In any case, if we're endorsing it, we're using it.

How: Besides writing blog posts and articles on a regular basis, we network through blogging carnivals (themed round-ups of blogposts), write letters to the editor (printed in Time magazine, Montreal's The Gazette and The Suburban newspapers) and contribute to forums and communities.

Political Philosophy

Our philosophy on politics is summed up by the old saying: everything in moderation.

Aristotle wrote that since man's proper function was to think, the good man thinks well, which is to say rationally. Expanding on this thought, we consider that thinking rationally will inevitably lead to a moderate position. In other words, the best critical analysis of a problem will always lead to a centrist solution.

Aristotle had another idea: if a law is valid, then any test of this law will naturally conform to what the rule says, proving the law's validity. Nature thus provides proof of the validity of moderation.
Consider the example of an athlete who trains to excess, and consequently injures himself. Then, consider the case of the couch potato who puts himself at high risk of heart disease. From these two cases it is evident that a moderate amount of exercise, avoiding extremes, is the best solution. Political examples also conform to this law. Nazism and Communism, extreme-right and extreme-left ideologies respectively, have both collapsed and been proven dysfunctional as social models. Today's succesful Western democracies follow moderate policies as the result of the debate and compromise between their left-wing and right-wing parties.

The point is that moderation is the route to follow, and this has been proven by rational thought. Aren't we good ? ;)

Related articles:
Moderate Circus of Canadian Politics We host a carnival of ... you guessed it, moderate Canadian politics! (Foreign Contributions welcome; they'll go into the foreign affairs section)
The CBC thought we were left-wing
Canadian Politics: Interview with NDPer and fellow moderate Nicolas Thibodeau

Categories: Canadian politics, moderate, centrist

posted by lecentre @ 9:45 a.m.