Questions of the damned

By Collin Gallant

Shortly after Albert Einstein immigrated to the United States fleeing Germany, Hitler set about deriding his theories as wrong and the work of Jewry. A large panel of top Nazi scientists was assembled and began deconstructing his work. Again and again they lashed out, claiming his work shoddy, his theories impossible and his character deplorable.

To his credit, Einstein’s response to the numerous attacks was calm; it would not take an entire panel to prove him wrong, but simply one professor asking the right questions.

We are now facing a similar problem without the benefit of such eloquent advice.

We are 20 years into the Information Age and already the lines of logic are blurring.

In this day, the winners are the narrow-minded. They prove their points not through logic, but through volume and repetition to a blasé population. After all, in a generation of wafflers only zealots prevail. You don’t need to be correct anymore you just need to be in it for the long haul.

For too long in Alberta, few have asked the right questions. Even fewer are demanding answers. Answers are, in the style of the day, sound bites.

Look to our (believe or not) ongoing health care debate. In the beginning, the closed-rank Tories said no more than the bill would "relieve suffering." Since then, no more than vague guarantees have surfaced.

Are we too willing to consider the other side–our arguments becoming a washed-out non-opinion?

It is not wrong to consider the opposite stance, but sitting on the slippery slope of this philosophy plays into the hands of the Albertan dictatorship with its unquestioning ranks.

Some questions I would like answers to:

If public hospitals have waste and private hospitals have profit, don’t those numbers mean roughly the same amount of money? Isn’t "profit" a much better word than "waste"? If private hospitals are lean, do you really want the leanest medical care possible?

Isn’t waste simply higher wages for regular citizens? Doesn’t profit end up in the hands of an elite few who will soon benefit from a flat tax? Will the former owners of West Edmonton Mall get some dough out of this deal?

Conservative logic states a gradiated tax system discourages personal initiative, so why are there so many people in high tax brackets? Don’t they realize they should be taking advantage of the system? Will there be more "rich" people after the flat-tax takes effect?

If high taxes are strangling the economy, why is it booming like never before? If it ain’t broke should we be fixing it?

Was Wrestlemania last weekend? Who won?