ruby dhalla may have broken some rules, but they all have. it is more likely that she got disqualified because the party executive doesn't like her politics, and that's fundamentally undemocratic. in a democracy, you don't prevent people from speaking because you don't like their views, you engage with them and try to convince them that they're wrong. it demonstrates a continued weakening of free speech rights in the liberal party that's been ongoing for some time, which everybody should be extremely concerned about.

if the party really doesn't like her views, it should be confident that she'll lose. right? that they can't be confident they can beat her indicates that they don't have confidence in their own grassroots, and perhaps they ought not to, but it would be extremely helpful for everybody to learn just how many votes ruby dhalla can get running on an anti-drug, anti-immigration platform in the liberal party of canada in 2025, and the party might want to learn something from that rather than ban her from speaking. perhaps the truth is that some of their policies on these topics should be modified, because their positions on drug use and immigration are actually borderline insane. members of the grassroots should be given the opportunity to argue that, and the party should listen, if they speak loud enough.

i mean, if even the party grassroots is arguing this point, which is notoriously left wing, the party needs to pull the dildos out of it's ears and start listening.

the liberal party i used to support just wouldn't act like this; it would strenuously argue that when you don't like somebody's views, you engage them in debate and defeat them and aggressively criticize people suggesting otherwise, because you ultimately have to do that in order to change them. banning ruby from running doesn't make her go away, it just means you're ignoring her and choosing not to see her standing in front of you; it's ostrich logic. you have to engage. that's why the liberals opened dialogs with these unliberal groups like muslims in the first place, because they realized you have to engage with them to convince them to change, and that this is necessary moving forward. these unliberal groups in our society like muslims must change.

shutting ruby down on a trivial technicality like this more or less just proves she's right and that, to an extent, we've already lost the fight against the authoritarians, like the fundamentalist muslims that are increasingly taking over the liberal party, because they made the mistake of letting them in.

i wouldn't have voted for ruby, and i haven't identified as a liberal in a very long time, but i'd have ripped up my membership over a party's refusal to uphold basic principles of free speech and free discourse. i wouldn't align with a political movement like that, wouldn't support it, wouldn't donate to it and wouldn't vote for it, and what the liberal party needs to realize and understand is that what's happened is that it's been co-opted by the right-wing foreign religious and immigrant groups that it initially engaged with to try to assimilate. it reached out to these groups to try to change them, and got taken over and overwhelmed by them because it didn't set rules for itself.

i might suggest to more powerful people than i in greater positions of power than i that the liberal party of canada is too important an institution to allow to be overrun by barbarians at the gates, and that they need to take the party back using the methods they have in front of them to do it.

the reality is that the pretty indian woman in makeup got banned from running by the muslim-dominated liberal party executive because she looks like a slut, and this isn't the first time we've seen the liberal party engage in attacks on indians, sikhs or hindus that seem motivated by a fundamentalist muslim perspective. this needs to be understood, exposed, attacked and dismantled.