On 2010-04-17, at 6:43 PM, SA wrote:
> brad bauerly wrote:
>
>> You need to read the history of the NDP. It did not form from a
>> liberal basis but from a populist one arising out of the radical
>> center of the two other parties (particularly the 1929 support of the
>> Conservatives by the Progressive party to defeat the Liberals). [The
>> NDP for those unfamiliar with politics up here is responsible for
>> Canada's socialised medical program.]
>>
>
> This is totally untrue. There was no "radical center." The NDP was a merger between two left-wing currents - the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in the West and the Eastern labor unions. The CCF itself was an alliance between left-wing workers movements in cities such as Winnipeg and farmers influenced by the tradition of Plains populism and interwar rural progressivism. For example, many of the farmers were religious but they subscribed to a Social Gospel type of Protestantism. Tommy Douglas was originally a Baptist minister, but he had trained under Christian Socialist theologians at seminary. Do you realize how utterly, head-spinningly remote this political milieu was from the Tea Party scene?
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Right. The other dominant influence was the British Fabian Society. The CCF's most prominent intellectuals - Frank Underhill, Frank Scott, Gene Forsey and the future NDP leader, David Lewis - were all Oxford educated and active members of the Society. They were influenced more by the Webbs than by left Fabians like GDH Cole.
The more pertinent analogy is between the TP and the right populist Social Credit movement which vied with the social democratic CCF for the farm vote, recognizing of course that a contemporary movement like the tea party can no longer be primarily rooted among farmers, but shares the small propertyholder antipathy towards big city bankers, immigrants, intellectuals, and licentious morality.