Happy Birthday, Tea Party!

Conservative political movement came a long way in a short time

Today, the Tea Party celebrates its second anniversary.

In a very short time it's come a long way, accomplished a lot, and overcome many obstacles in order to do so.

Bolstered by the Tea Party, and set back on a path toward fiscal conservatism -- although not solidly enough for many, including Tea Party luminaries Rand Paul and Ron Paul -- the Republican Party swept through the 2010 midterm elections, taking control of the federal House of Representatives, and of governments at the state and local level.

They also provoked the fear and hatred of the American far-left. Acting on the modus operandi recommended by Spencer Ackerman, the far-left accused the Tea Party of racism. In many cases, they doctored evidence of that alleged racism. In other cases, they resorted to Alinsky-ite "crash the Tea Party" tactics to attempt to demonize the Tea Party by publicizing the outlandish and outrageous behaviour of deliberate provocateurs.

If they received so much as a dime in donations from wealthy benefactors, they were deemed "astroturf". If so much as one legitimate Tea Party protester or organizer made an outrageous remark, it was used to condemn the entire movement. If Tea Party organizers or protesters denied they were racist, it was treated by the movement's opponents as evidence of guilt.

The Tea Party was subjected to the ultimate in left-wing McCarthyite tactics. And it persevered.

The Tea Party restored the Republican Party to honesty, rejuvinating the party and making it competitive again. A party that seemed on the verge of complete collapse instead re-surged to a striking 2010 victory.

More importantly than this, the Tea Party helped reveal the intellectual impotence of the modern left. A movement conceived on the basis of foundational beliefs, it challenged the mythos of leftist progressivism. In the face of a movement touting beliefs the left has seeked to supplant -- modernize, if you will -- the left could come up with no effective response.

It was the pathetic attempts to brand political dissent as racist that revealed the intellectual bankruptcy of the modern left. After the Barck Obama election, precipitated on populist promises of hope and change, the left had nothing left in the tank.

The Tea Party prospered off the outrage provoked by a Democratic Party that came to power with a hidden agenda, dropped its mask, and began to implement that extreme agenda. It put the Democrats on the ropes, and is now a year and a half away from sending the Democrats back to the drawing board altogether.

The Tea Party has come a long way, in a short time, and emerged victorious over the most draconian tactics the far-left has ever deployed without resorting to a violent revolution.

Hopefully, the next two years will be just as successful.

Throughout the United States, the Far Left is Seething in Outrage

Somewhere, in the United States, hard-core leftists are branding Seth MacFarlane a traitor.

In the most recent episode of Family Guy, MacFarlane teams up with Rush Limbaugh to ridicule the extreme stereotypes the far left holds of conservatives.

Afer learning that Limbaugh is visiting Quahog, Brian first degenerates into sputtering nonsensical epithets (at one point even prompting Stewie to offer him a do-over). However, after reading one of Limbaugh's books, Brian becomes a full-out dittohead... at least for a time.

With Limbaugh's full support, Brian stops thinking for himself, and promptly believes everything that Limbaugh tells him to.

Naturally, in the end Brian returns to being what Lois describes as a "hard-core liberal". He was never a conservative at all, mostly because he never understood how to be.

Regardless of what some would-be conservatives have to say about it, torture is not a conservative value. Rather, quite the contrary. Conservatives believe in rule of law, and torture is contrary to the rule of law.

Having never been a conservative himself, all Brian can offer is the left-wing cariacture of conservatives.

If not for the participation of Limbaugh himself, many conservatives would likely be outraged. But with Limbaugh's cooperation, the episode instead becomes a parody of everything that the far left thinks about conservatives -- including about Fox News.

For example, Lois declares everything on Fox News to be lies. And even things previously true become a lie once mentioned on Fox. Sounds like the basic knee-jerk reaction that many leftists offer to anything appearing on Fox News.

The Limbaugh episode of Family Guy should offer clarity to the terms of the debate between left and right in the United States. Unfortunately, it probably won't. It will probably just leave the left branding Seth MacFarlane as a tratior.


Seed Newsvine

Mr AUTO, (Don't) Tear Down This WALL

It was once said that the greatest flaw of conservatism is that it doesn't present any view, whatsoever, of utopia.

Certainly, some intellectuals within conservative folds have often tried their hand at utopian imagineering. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged -- wherein the enterprising classes abandon their counterparts, reduced in Rand's mind to collectivist-minded chattle -- is a good example of this.

If WALL-E represnts any particular view of a utopian society, it's Atlas Shrugged turned on its head.

WALL-E presents utopia as any true conservative invariably recognizes it -- as a dystopia. Set nearly 1000 years in the future, the Earth of WALL-E is one abandoned by humanity. The wasteful excesses of consumerism have left the Earth covered in garbage and rendered toxic to life.

Instead, humankind now dwells on massive spaceliners, commissioned by the very mass-consumption-based companies that helped create the mess on planet Earth.

WALL-E (voiced, as it were, by Ben Burtt) is the last of thousands of robots left behind on Earth to clean up the mess. He spends his days compacting refuse into cubes, and building massive piles out of them.

EVE (voiced by Elissa Knight) was sent back to Earth to determine if it's safe to inhabit.

There's only one problem. The Axiom's co-pilot, AUTO (voiced synthetically with computer software), is under orders never to allow the ship to return to Earth and re-colonize, no matter the efforts of the ship's Captain (Jeff Garlin).

And the humans on board the Axiom desperately need to return to Earth. Presumably among the wealthiest and most prominant humans of their time -- after all, travelling into space for an indefinite period is an awfully expensive proposition -- the inhabitants of the Axiom represent not the self-sufficient and enterprising superman Rand imagines, but rather the aimless and sluggish masses they abandon.

Carried about on hover beds, the utopia created for these most wealthy and prominent of humanity has instead enslaved them, and transformed them into something unrecognizable even by the standard of today's epidemic obesity.

WALL-E and Eve ultimately become supporting players in the struggle between the Captain and AUTO. Eve was designed to ensure that evidence of Earth's inhabitability leads to a return to re-colonize Earth.

AUTO, acting in the role of the inflexible bureaucrat -- the foot soldier of progressive visions of utopia -- is determined to prevent her from accomplishing this mission. Orders, after all, are orders, and AUTO is under orders that are more than 700 years old.

In the end, WALL-E presents the Captain -- and the humanity he represents -- with a choice. On one hand they can reclaim their lost humanity, and forsake what seems to be guaranteed survival for the opportunity to, on the other hand, truly live with no such guarantees.

The notion of guaranteed survival in a world rendered perfect -- or at least as close to perfect as its creator can imagine -- is central to utopia.

Conservatives, on the other hand, must understand that reality is never guaranteed. Nor is the answer to simply abandon a world plagued by troubles in favour of building anew.

In the end, WALL-E -- a tool designed in a failed effort to clean up that mess -- becomes instrumental in helping reintroduce humankind to its humanity, even though he often seems as if he's simply being drug along for the ride.

Conservatism is just fine without a vision of utopia. IN fact, political ideologies that rely on utopian thought for their survival are all the poorer for it.

David Cameron and the Puzzle of Progressive Conservatism

David Frum weighs costs, benefits, or ideological reform

Less than one year ago, David Cameron and the Conservative Party of Britain were poised to win an overwhelming majority government.

Less than a year later, on election day, the Tories have come up just short.

Considering how promising things once looked, many British conservatives -- and conservatives around the world -- many will be wondering precisely what went wrong.

Many will surmise that the British citizenry, having bequeathed majority governments to Tony Blair and Labour for as long as many Britons will remember, perhaps they've simply gotten cold feet.

As David Frum and John O'Sullivan point out, however, it may not be Britons who have fotten cold feet. Perhaps it's British small-c conservatives. O'Sullivan writes:

"The Tory party used to win about a third of the working-class vote with its conservative social values and patriotic instincts. For the Tory modernizers, however, these Labour voters are the wrong kind of voters too. David Cameron has spent most of the last few years resolutely refusing to highlight the issues of immigration, Europe, and national solidarity that appeal to them, lest such brutish policies alienate “soft center” votes. Just recently, the Tories have begun to talk about such things, but too little and maybe too late. Cameron will probably get a boost from these voters — and probably a larger boost than that going to the Lib-Dems — but still below what the Thatcherite Tories got in the despised 1980s."

O'Sullivan insists that the Tories have fallen short of a Thatcher-ish majority because they took too much time pandering to non-conservatives, and not enough time pleasing their base. Now, many of the conservatives who feel spurned by Cameron's public rejection of Thatcherism are either going to vote for more conservative fringe parties, or perhaps stay home altogether.

But Allan Massie begs to differ. Rather, he insists that the results of Cameron's leadership has been triumphal compared to previous electoral results:

"The assumption that an unreformed conservatism could prevail in Britain is questionable at best. After all, how did the Tories do in 2001 and 2005? Perhaps conditions were tricky for them then but while that’s true it’s also the case that the public has shown precious little enthusiasm for that kind of Toryism.

Indeed, it’s the failures of the past and that he inherited that make Dave’s task so difficult. If 2005 hadn’t been such a ghastly failure perhaps the Tories wouldn’t need to win an extra 130 seats to win a majority. In other words, they essentially need a landslide just to win a small victory. That’s what Cameron inherited and his critics might care to remember the abject failure of their kind of Toryism. If three thumping defeats don’t demonstrate that the Tories 'own original and successful coalition' has disappeared then I don’t know what does.

...

The anti-reform crew won’t let Dave win, regardless of the election result. If the Tories win a landslide they’ll say that they’d have won without reform anyway; if they eke out a small majority or simply end as the largest party then the reformers are to blame for failing to win a more handsome, sweeping victory."

As Frum points out, both John O'Sullivan and Allan Massie are speaking elements of truth. The situation currently confronting the Brtish Conservative Party demonstrates the risks associated with the ideological reform of a political party -- it's always a gamble.

One is far from guaranteed attracting new supporters under such reform, and runs the risks of almost certainly alienating existing supporters.

Cameron has famously referred to himself as a "progressive conservative". It's a feat that has been attempted before, particularly when John Bracken, the former Progressive Party Premier of Manitoba, insisted that the party change its name to the Progressive Conservative Party before he would agree to assume its leadership.

In the case of the Canadian PC Party, the experiment was arguably a failure. The party would govern for merely 14 of 74 years during which the party would carry that name before merging with the Canadian Alliance to become the Conservative Party of Canada.

In Canada, the gamble ultimately failed. In Britain, it could potentially be successful -- if only individuals like John O'Sullivan are willing to give it the opportunity.

Who Says Hollywood is Too Liberal?

After a recent blogpost by Bobby Drake, the time seems prescient for some discussion of films that exhibit conservative values.

Many conservatives consider Hollywood to be far, far too liberal. Often, they'll complain about alleged hostility to conservative values in the entertainment industry. To do so, they'll cite a veritable who's-who of left-wing celebrities.

But there is no shortage of films that exhibit conservative values. Some of them are well-known. Others are a little more obscure.

Equilibrium may fall into the latter category. Years before Christian Bale starred as Batman, Bale portrayed John Preston, a Tetra Grammaton Cleric. A member of an elite secret police-like organization, it's Prestons job to seek out and destroy art, culture and "sense offenders" in a society that has banned emotion.

The film is set in the future, at a time following a global war that nearly extincted mankind. Humankind's leaders blame emotion for the war, and force humanity onto a drug called Prozium, which flattens the affect of its users.

Preston's slide off of his daily dose begins when he is forced to liquidate his partner, Partridge (a brief appearance by Sean Bean). After accidentally missing one of his doses, Preston eventually decides to come off it altogether, and then the worst (and best) thing for him imaginable happens: he becomes smitten with Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson), a sense offender.

In time, Preston recognizes the pervasive evil of Libria, joins the resistance, and helps them destroy it.

The film is a libertarian opus, reminding one what happens when the state begins to think of itself as omnipotent, and begins to interfere in the lives of its citizens (or, more properly described in such cases, subjects) at an existential level.

Hannah Arendt wrote about this: she considered it one of the building blocks of fascism.

It's actually a shame that director Kurt Wimmer followed Equilibrium with a contemptible piece of crap like Ultraviolet.


Tag! The following bloggers may now consider themselves "it":

Bobby Drake aka The Iceman

Canadian Sense

Dean Skoreyko

Jay Currie

Walker Morrow

Wolverines!!!

For many people in the late '90s, watching Red Dawn on the TBS Superstation (back when there was a TBS Superstation) became something of a Saturday afternoon tradition.

It seemed like it was on every other Saturday.



Produced at the tail end of the Cold War, Red Dawn is a film about what was probably the more likely scenario of conflict. While the notion of nuclear war kept people around the world awake many a night -- and for good reason, as the United States and the Soviet Union alone had enough nuclear weapons to extinguish all life on Earth, before one even gets around to considering Britain, France, China and (eventually) Israel -- the more likely scenario was that of a ground invasion of one country or the other.



Red Dawn is despised by the left-wing for its hyperbolic treatment of the Cold War. There is some grounds for this. The film was released in 1984, and portrayed the ground invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union as a horrific affair in which Soviet soldiers open fire on a school with no amount of provocation.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev would take over as General Secretary of the USSR. His reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika would, in the end, spell the end of the Soviet Union.



Far from being in any condition to launch a ground invasion of the United States, the Soviet Union was at this time actually deeply embroiled in their disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, attempting to prop up the Najibullah regime.



Many conservatives love Red Dawn even knowing how unlikely the scenario portrayed in the film actually was. Many love it for its camp value alone.

Some others may love it simply because the left dis likes it so much. While this alone doesn't justify an appreciation of anything (it would, in fact, be ad hominem reasoning -- assuming something is good just because the political opposition dislikes it), it does remind one of the fickleness of the left wing.



In particular, one is reminded of the left's simmering hatred for neoconservatives, and their insistence on treating them as a grave threat.

But then, one must ask themselves: what is neoconservatism, really?



Unless one were to read some of the literature on the topic produced by conservatives -- those nearest to this particular sub-category -- one may never know what neoconservatism actually is. The left tends to label small government conservatives neoconservatives. Yet, when one reads what actual small government conservatives have to say about neoconservatives, it becomes clear that small government conservatives may love neoconservatives even less than the political left.



As it turns out, the original neoconservatives -- those with whom the movement originated -- were, in fact anti-communist liberals who reocognized the oppressiveness that was so commonplace in communist countries, and were disgusted with what they perceived as the political left's softness on communism.

In response, they shifted right and joined the conservative movement. Small government conservatives became -- and remain -- wary of the big government conservatism offered by neoconservatives. Fairly recently, Michael Tanner referred to it as "leviathan on the right" (in the book of the same title).



Individuals like Adam Curtis have argued that, after the dissolution of the USSR, neoconservatives turned their focus on international terrorism out of need for another external enemy to focus their project of global dominance.

The truth is actually very different. Having once belonged to a movement that proved soft on one particular threat, they became determined to never be soft on another. And while neoconservatives recognized the threat of international terrorism, some of those who came to power by assembling an electoral coalition between small market conservatives, neoconservatives and religious conservatives -- speaking, of course, of George W Bush -- didn't recognize the danger until it was too late, even despite being amply warned.



The left's deep hatred for neoconservatives seems easily explained in one of two ways: either the left is ignorant about the true nature of neoconservatism, or they are well aware of it, and simply resent neoconservatives for recognizing at least elements of the left that were soft on communist tyranny.

Perhaps some of those on the left who seem to despise neoconservatives most -- Murray Dobbin comes to mind -- merely despise them so much because they remind them of the extent to which some elements of the instutionalized left were actually rather sympathetic to communism, perhaps even hoping that foreign communism could help them advance at least portions of their own agenda.



Ruminations on neoconservatism aside, what makes this particular version of Red Dawn so priceless is that it treats the film with the seriousness it deserves, particularly when Russian, Cuban, and Nicaraguan soldiers happen to be speaking over subtitles.

Lines such as "homey don't PLAY this shit" and "we got some haters up in here now" make this version of the film worth watching the first time, but also for the second, third, or (possibly) thirty-third time.

Softening the Hard Right Turn

To succeed, the Republican Party needs moderate conservatives

Writing recently in the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg notes that many American left-wingers believe these are very, very good times for them.

Why are these very, very good times for the left wing? Certainly not because they're implementing their agenda on issues like health care reform. As Goldberg notes, and certain less-than-gifted bloggers are more than willing to confirm, many left-wingers -- particularly socialist progressives -- think these are good times for them only because they believe the conservative cupboard to be effectively bare:

"If there's one thing liberal pundits are experts on these days, it's the sorry state of conservatism. The airwaves and the Op-Ed pages brim with more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger lamentations on the GOP's failure to get with President Obama's program, the party's inevitable demographic demise and its thralldom to the demonic deities of the right -- Limbaugh, Beck, Palin.

Such sages as the New York Times' Sam Tanenhaus and Frank Rich insist that the right is out of ideas. After all, the religious dogmatism and 'market fundamentalism' of the Bush administration were entirely discredited, leaving the GOP with its intellectual cupboard bare.

'During the two terms of George W Bush,' Tanenhaus declares in his latest book, 'conservative ideas were not merely tested but also pursued with dogmatic fixity.'

Even worse than being brain dead, the right is blackhearted, hating good-and-fair Obama for his skin color and obvious do-goodery."

The idea of ideological civil war among conservatives was even enough to distract various left-wing thinkers and commentators from what was then the then-impending defeat of two Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia which are being said to effectively cast a pall over Barack Obama as he plots his next move forward.

"The same voices seem eager to cast Republican Dede Scozzafava's withdrawal from the congressional race in New York's 23rd District not only as proof that their interpretation is correct; they're also determined to cast it as a far more important news story than the Democrats' parlous standing with the voters. Don't look at the potential historic gubernatorial blowout in Virginia, or the Jon Corzine train wreck in the New Jersey election, or the flocking of independents to the GOP in the major races. No, let's all titter and gape at the cannibalistic 'civil war' on the right."

Just as Goldberg notes in Liberal Fascism, many of these commentators have naturally drawn comparisons between what is currently going on within conservative circles with fascism -- in this case, Joseph Stalin.

As Goldberg notes, it's just one of many such allusions that is particularly troubled:

"Frank Rich, gifted psephologist, finds the perfect parallel to the GOP's squabbles in Stalin's murderous purges.

'Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators,' Rich writes, 'it is they who are reenacting Stalinism in full purge mode.' Stalin's 'full purge mode' involved the systematized exile and slaughter of hundreds of thousands (not counting his genocide of millions). The GOP's purge has so far caused one very liberal Republican to halt her bid for Congress."

Indeed, Goldberg wants to offer a different explanation altogether:

"Let me offer a counter-theory, admittedly lacking in such color but making up for it with evidence and consideration of what conservatives actually believe.

After 15 or 20 years of steady moderation, many conservatives think it might be time to give their ideas a try.

Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' was promoted as an alternative to traditional conservatism. Bush promised to be a 'different kind of Republican,' and he kept that promise. He advocated government activism, and he put our money where his mouth was. He federalized education with No Child Left Behind -- coauthored by Teddy Kennedy -- and oversaw the biggest increase in education spending (58%) in history, according to the Heritage Foundation, while doing next to nothing to advance the conservative idea known as school choice.

With the prescription drug benefit, he created the biggest new entitlement since the Great Society (Obama is poised to topple that record). He increased spending on the National Institutes of Health by 36% and international aid by 74%, according to Heritage. He oversaw the largest, most porktacular farm bills ever. He signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a massive new regulation of Wall Street. His administration defended affirmative action before the Supreme Court. He pushed amnesty for immigrants, raised steel tariffs, supported Title IX and signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

Oh, and he, not Obama, initiated the first bailouts and TARP.

Now, not all of these positions were wrong or indefensible. But the notion that Bush pursued conservative ideas with 'dogmatic fixity' is dogmatic nonsense."

Indeed, in Liberal Fascism, Goldberg argues that in George W Bush's speeches one can find firmly entrenched the ideals of the Protestant Social Gospel.

Indeed, Bush belongs to the United Methodist Church (prior to 1977 he was an Episcopalian). The United Methodist Church fuses the outreach of the social gospel with the personal holiness aspect of traditional Evengelical churches.

This firm belief in human charity is an often-overlooked side of Bush:

"Most Democrats were blinded to all of this because of their anger over the Iraq war and an often irrational hatred of Bush. Republicans, meanwhile, defended Bush far more than they would have had it not been for 9/11 and the hysteria of his enemies."

One could argue further that many of Bush's opponents were indeed deeply ideologically invested in ignoring these elements of his political identity.

But Bush left behind him a particularly toxic political environment -- much of which was the doing of his supporters, and much of which was the doing of his opponents -- and left the Republicans and Democrats alike facing a stark dilemma:

"In 2008, the primaries lacked a Bush proxy who could have siphoned off much of the discontent on the right. Moreover, the party made the political calculation that John McCain -- another unorthodox and inconsistent conservative -- was the best candidate to beat Obama."

Moreover, the opponents of George W Bush campaigned against John McCain as if he himself were Bush.

When Obama defeated McCain in the election, much of the triumphal reaction was seeped in the language of electoral vengeance -- this despite the fact that had not (and still haven't) beaten Bush, but instead defeated a candidate who was at least partially selected for his ability to reach out to moderate and conservative Democrats.

But, as Goldberg himself notes, the Republicans may have miscalcuated the will of their base to sacrifice their ideological expectations and adhere to the Republican brand.

"In short, conservatives have had to not only put up with a lot of moderation and ideological flexibility, we've had to endure nearly a decade of taunting from gargoyles insisting that the GOP is run by crazed radicals.

Now the rank and file might be wrong to want to get back to basics, but I don't think so. With Obama racing to transform America into a European welfare state fueled by terrifying deficit spending, this seems like a good moment to argue for limited government.

Oh, and a little forgiveness, please, for not trusting the judgment of the experts who insist they know what's happening on the racist, paranoid, market fundamentalist, Stalinist right."

What Goldberg seems to be suggesting is that many American conservatives have tired of the "big tent" vision of conservatism pursued by the Republican Party.

What he doesn't seem to understand is the perils of abandoning that particular model. And while the Republican Gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia (both states that went firmly in favour of Barack Obama in 2008) are indeed illustrative of the current state of the Democratic Party, the victory of Democrat Bill Owens very much does present this dilemma in all its glory.

When the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava quit this particular election and supported Owens, the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, enjoyed a brief surge. Many conservatives -- and many conservative media commentators -- believed he could win the race in a lock.

But Scozzafava's exit from the race added a lot of undecided voters to the mix. On election night they decided to follow Scozzafava's lead and support Owens. The hard conservative vote in the district wasn't enough to secure a victory for Hoffman.

The lesson the episode offers is a very simple one: there aren't enough hard conservative voters in the United States to guarantee a victory for a hard conservative Republican Party, or even for a Conservative Party with no Republican opponents.

While hard conservative voters have proven to be enough to get the Republicans in the game, so to speak, they need moderate voters to put them over the top. That means moderating their conservative ideology in recognition that, yes, there are voters in the United States other than merely conservatives, and, yes, they deserve to be heard too, and not just by the Democrats or the Green Party.

A strong argument certainly does exist for the need for Republicans to harden their conservative policies. One could easily argue that Republican brass has been spooked by the taunting (as Goldberg puts it) of progressive socialists who declare anyone who isn't as far left as they are to be of the "extreme right".

But conservatives -- and especially not the Republican Party -- cannot afford to harden their conservative policies at the expense of being able to reach out to political moderates.

To do this is political suicide, regardless of whether or not American conservatives think this is "their turn".

The Modus Operandi of the Living Dead, Redux

Or, explaining intellectualism to people too lazy to be intellectuals

Readers of the Nexus will by now be familiar with Enormous Thriving Plants' Audrey, and her numerous ill-avised attempts to declare the death of intellectual conservatism.

Well, Audrey is at it once again. This time her complaint is about a Jonah Goldberg op/ed column "defending" Glenn Beck.

In the column, Goldberg simply posits that Beck is a conservative alternative to left-wing figures like Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken and Keith Olbermann -- the last of whom he says "pretends he's Edward R Murrow reincarnated when he's really Al Franken with more important hair". He notes that the critical response to Beck is one that has been repeated over and over again.

Goldberg's argument is, indeed, that Beck has made conservatism more accessible and less pretentious than individuals like William F Buckey ever could.

But he also notes that Beck has been extremely successful in promoting serious works of conservative intellectualism (Audrey goes so far as to surround "serious works" with quotation marks).

Audrey concludes with a less-than-austere plea: "Please, Jonah... continue to join Beck, Palin, Meghan McCain, and Joe the Plumber in the ongoing effort at making conservatism 'more accessible'. If only Buckley were still alive to witness the 'intellectualism' of it all."

Interestingly enough, even Goldberg himself notes that many of the criticisms raised against Beck are valid -- and they most certainly are.

The problem for individuals like Audrey is that they advance their arguments -- in this case, trying to further an argument that conservative intellectualism is a spent force -- under the guise of intellectualism while acting in a manner that strongly suggests that they have no clue what intellectualism is, much less are they prepared to engage in it.

Intellectualism works rather simply: one fashions an argument, makes their argument, and then defends it against the counter-arguments of those who disagree.

It's become utterly obvious that people like Audrey disagree with the arguments of people like Goldberg, but the problem for them is (oddly enough) one well described by this particular commentator (who mostly speaks in words small enough that Audrey can understand them):

"If you don't like something, you say that it sucks, then you make a buncha more things against it.

But the thing is, half of these people who are against it aren't making anything. All they're doing is posting TinyURL links to child pornography, and they're, uh, you know, writing 'desu desu desu desu' a lot. And I tell ya, I've been doing that stuff for years and it is entertaining, but don't expect your opinion to be taken [to be] any more valuable than mine."

It's a sad statement on the level of Audrey's intellectual skill when her folly can be so easily be revealled by an online miscreant in a Guy Fawkes mask.

But few people have ever described the level of discourse that emanates from Enormous Thriving Plants -- and from the vast majority of her blogging compatriots in the Hateful Left -- better.

So while Audrey can run down the works of Jonah Goldberg to her heart's content, she cannot escape from the reality that at least Goldberg has produced an argument, while Audrey hasn't.

Certainly, she can offer the political blogging equivalent of "desu desu desu" to her heart's content. But until she can offer a cogent argument in response to Goldberg's work, at what point does she honestly expect her opinion to be taken to be more valuable than his? Or, for that point, anyone else's?

No one can stop Audrey from offering snickers in response to the works of conservative intellectuals. But seeing as how laughter is not, in itself, an argument, that would still leave Audrey's own brand of intellectualism (un)dead in the water.

Canadian Conservatism's Troubled Symmetry

Two provinces, two parties, two different directions, and one big problem for Canadian Conservatives

While Alberta's Wildrose Alliance was meeting this past weekend to elect Danielle Smith the new leader of the party, another provincial conservative party was meeting to elect its leader.

The Action Democratique du Quebec met and elected Gilles Taillon as its new leader -- only the second in its entire history.

There are many similarities between the circumstances faced by the two parties, and each leader.

Each party has few seats in the provincial legislature, and each faces the monumental task of building its organization. Unfortunately for the ADQ, this is where the similarities stop.

The Wildrose Alliance is coming off of an exciting and vibrant leadership campaign in which ideas were strongly contested between the two competitors: namely, whether the party would proceed in a libertarian or social conservative direction (the party chose the course of libertarianism).

The ADQ, meanwhile, is stumbling out of a leadership contest in which personal animosity and smear politics seemed to be the order of the day.

While the Alliance leadership campaign attracted national attention, the ADQ contest was largely invisible on the national stage.

If Smith's election as the leader of the Alliance is truly one of the most exciting developments in the history of Canadian conservatism, the election of Taillon as the ADQ leader was purely underwhelming. This is unfortunate not only for the ADQ, but for Canadian conservatism as a whole.

In Daifallah's estimation, Taillon's prospects as the leader of the ADQ are sorely limited by a number of factors.

"Taillon is well-known, but he’s an uninspiring choice for a party looking to renew. He’s the oldest of the three major Quebec party leaders, questions about his health abound and he lost his seat in the National Assembly in the last election," Daifallah notes. "His politics are decidedly centrist. If he has his way, there will likely be little difference between the ADQ and the Parti Québécois. A number of prominent conservative ADQ members have already quit since Sunday."

"Taillon’s centrist approach is particularly unfortunate given that more and more Quebecers are coming to realize the unsustainability of their massive welfare programs and statist business model," Daifallah continues. "The prospects in Quebec for a party advocating smaller government and more personal responsibility should improve in the coming years."

The problem is that, unless Taillon steers his party back away from the centre, Quebec will have no such party to take advantage of such an ideological shift in the province.

Quebec is one of two provinces in Canada with no active provincial Conservative party. In Saskatchewan the banner of conservative politics is being carried by Brad Wall's Saskatchewan party. Although a provincial Progressive Conservative party remains registered, it doesn't run candidates.

If one considers provinces where a provincial Conservative party remains active but is politically marginal, the case of British Columbia stands out as well.

Likewise, the decimation of the New Brunswick PCs -- a ship since righted by Bernard Lord -- by the Confederation of Regions party isn't as far in past as many New Brunswick Tories would like to pretend.

If Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance are successful, Alberta could soon be added to this list. Historically when Albertans have changed governments they practically erase the preceding government. Social Credit and the United Farmers of Alberta were once mighty political forces. Today Social Credit is entirely peripheral to Albertan politics.

The problem that quickly emerges is not for Canadian conservatives, but rather for Canadian Conservatives. While cross-party cooperation in matters of federal politics is far from ruled out, it can be politically perilous for conservative politicians -- particularly in Saskatchewan, and possibly soon in Alberta -- to be seen working too closely with the federal incarnation of a party they have either worked so hard to depose (as would be the case in Alberta) or has a troubled history (as is the case in Saskatchewan).

It can be particularly unseemingly in terms of the recruitment of federal candidates out of provincial ranks. While such a transition is far from unheard of -- in particular, federal Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski was formerly the General Manager of the Saskatchewan party.

By comparison, however, the Liberal party and NDP each have provincial parties in every province in Canada. While the Liberal party isn't particularly strong in Alberta, or especially in Saskatchewan, it can freely shuttle candidates back and forth between provincial and federal parties. A clear example is Dr Eric Hoskins, who was an unsuccessful federal candidate before running for the McGuinty Liberals in St Paul's.

In Quebec and Saskatchewan the Tories may get occasional help from the Saskatchewan party or the ADQ, but it has to do the bulk of its organizing and recruitment entirely on its own.

Provincial parties also offer the potential advantage -- or disadvantage -- of having another party to help build the brand image. If there is a shift underway the likes of which Daifallah suggests, the Conservative party currently has no provincial party there to help them take advantage of this shift.

It's on this note that it would perhaps be partially irrelevant if Quebec had a conservative leader like Danielle Smith -- at least for capital-C Conservatives. For small-c conservatives, it would be like a dream.

But like any political movement, conservatives fare best when they work together. Anything that impedes that kind of cooperation should properly be viewed as an impediment -- even if an impediment that some conservatives will view as a necessary evil.

It's long been past time for Canadian conservatives to learn to moderate themselves from within their provincial parties, as opposed to having to build entire vote- and activist-splitting alternative parties.

Derailing (and Re-Railing) The Train of Public Virtue

Time for the Conservative Party to offer its own model of public virtue

Writing in an op/ed in the Ottawa Citizen, David Warren offers his take on Barry Cooper's recent opus It's the Regime, Stupid!.

Cooper is one of the better-kept secrets of Canadian political science: a paleo-conservative with one eye on Canada's past, another on its future, and his finger on the pulse of Canada's present.

Cooper's book offers a scathing critique of Laurenti-o-centric politics and where it has led the country:

"Looked at from another angle, we are the curious aggregate of 'two founding cultures' -- the combination of French Canadian nationalist whining and extortion, with the old English Canadian Loyalist junction and anti-American malice, in a kleptomanic welfare state -- fuelled by revenue appropriated from Western Canadian resources.

This is not exactly my way of looking at post-war Canada, and perhaps an over-simplification of Cooper's, but there's a lot of truth in it all the same. A 'regime,' which we may fairly associate with the Liberal party (though spread through other parties by such mechanisms as the 'sacred trust' of our dysfunctional medicare system), has embedded itself in Canadian life, in the form of a self-interested and self-serving federal bureaucracy of extraordinary size.

The notion that Canada consists centrally of ourselves -- the Laurentianistas -- plus imperial extensions east, north, and west, would come very close to being the irritant that has inspired Cooper to produce his string of pearls on Canadian politics, the most memorable of which before the book now published was entitled, Deconfederation (1991), co-written with David Bercuson. It was a book that proposed to call Quebec's separatist bluff, by sketching out the benefits to the Rest of Canada over and above the transaction costs, if Quebec would only leave."

Cooper's and Bercuson's argument circulated around the notion of the politics of public virtue. Although they argued that the politics of public virtue -- leaing Canada inexorably into the era of the welfare state -- actually originated with John Diefenbaker, who they identify as the first Prime Minister to govern with social justice as a central preoccupation (although the traces of this notion can be identified earlier at the provincial level, in the Saskatchewan government of Tommy Douglas and Alberta government of -- believe it or not -- William Aberhart), it was the fight against Quebec separatism that truly entrenched those ideals as central to Canadian governance.

The Liberals struggles to find ways to fund their efforts to use democratic socialism to soften the demand for Quebec sovereignty often led to ham-fisted attempts to suck revenue out of the Western provinces, and often became as big a threat to national unity as anything imagined by Rene Levesque or Luicen Bouchard.

The growing public bureaucracy became a symbol to the west of the country financing Liberal attempts to pander to Quebec separatism at Western Canada's expense.

The election of (briefly) Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister did little to stem this slide itno a bureaucratic and self-interested state. By the time Paul Martin -- who at times seemed to possess the will to turn the tide -- his party's own excesses in twisting Canadian governance to their own benefit finally bit him.

The election of Stephen Harper resulted not only from the nadir of the sense of entitlement born out of the Liberal party's vision of the politics of public virtue, but also of a slowly-emerging distaste for that particular status quo, and a desire for real change.

But, just as the Liberal vision of the politics of public virtue was fraught with peril, so is Warren's view of how Stephen Harper should proceed:

"My own view, that Harper's political strategy is simply to remain in power for as long as possible, governing with as much common sense as circumstances will allow, until the hegemony of the Liberal party recedes into memory, would probably answer to Cooper's requirements. Harper is a transitional figure; not the new regime but the man who allows one to emerge over time. He is astute in his grasp of his own limitations.

In particular, he must stay in power until the threat has passed of the Liberals replacing their old divide-and-conquer 'national unity' fraud, with a new divide-and-conquer environmentalist fraud. The global warming hysteria -- seized upon by bureaucrats all over the world as the means to advance and consolidate the Nanny State -- is itself receding. We must wait it out."

Warren's view seems to be that the Conservative party should simply outwait the allegedly waning surge of environmentalism. But this may is an ultimately short-sighted view.

The enthusiasm for the apocalyptic view of environmentalism may indeed be waning -- it's usually difficult to tell for certain.

But to pretend that the Liberal party couldn't profit politically from a new environmental focus is naive. Even if Canadians stop fearing an environmental apocalypse, the environment is still central to the issue of quality of life.

This is the conservative angle on the environmental issue. Even if apocalyptic zealots are outraged at the very idea that an environmental catastrophe may not be as imminent as activist scientists have insisted it is.

The other issue with Warren's thesis is the notion of Stephen Harper needing to remain in power for as long as possible.

The strength of Cooper's thesis is that it reflects a change in the purpose of Canadian government. Retaining power for power's own sake -- or even out-waiting political changes that may favour his party -- doesn't reflect these changes away from aelf-serving politics of public virtue and toward more responsible and accountable government.

Harper achieved this by doing what Tom Flanagan described as "tightening the screws" on government -- not only through a program of tax cuts, but also by trimming old Liberal party-era social engineering projects, as embodied by the court challenges program and by the ideological direction of the Status of Women.

Some would have expected that Harper's re-adjustment of the Royal Commission for the Status of Women -- as well as suggestions that Harper has treated women as a "left-wing fringe group" -- it seems that female voters are continually softening toward Harper.

The termination of the Liberal agenda of social engineering via various pet projects doesn't seem nearly as threatening to many Canadians as left-wing Canadians would have the rest of us believe.

Last but not least, dismissing national unity and environmentalism as fraudulent is intellectually perilous. Canada came within less than a percentage point of breaking up during the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum because the Liberal government of Jean Chretien was inattentive to, and bungled, the national unity file. Not because concerns regarding national unity are fraudulent.

Brian Lee Crowley has recently noted (and Denis Stairs noted before him), demographic shifts within Quebec will soon take the teeth out of Quebec separatism. This will change the form the national unity debate takes in Canada, but it will not lay the issue to rest.

Likewise environmentalism is not fraudulent. Whether the action taken on preserving the environment is taken to head off an apocalypse or is taken simply to improve the quality of life of Canadians, the issue of the environment is crucial.

The Conservative party needs to stop short of abolishing the politics of public virtue, and instead offer Canadians an alternative to the tired version of it to which they had once resigned themselves.

A conservative version of the politics of public virtue will very likely share the most compelling elements of the Liberal version. The difference, of course, should be that the conservative model shouldn't rely on state action to achieve that vision, but rather make it possible for citizens to accomplish those goals on their own -- even if the state provides some help along the way.

Wailing, Gnashing of Teeth, Interrupted

Reports of the demise of conservative intellectualism greatly exaggerated

As one delves deeper and deeper into the depths of Canada's ideological extreme left, one thing becomes immediately clear: these people hate conservatives with the kind of passion that would seduce the most devout nun.

But perhaps even more than they hate conservatives, they hate conservatism.

These particular individuals despise conservatism and its every trace and vestige as an obstacle to their extreme left-wing agenda.

It's one of the reasons why they're so eager to declare intellectual conservatism to be dead. In stylings befitting of the typically vapid etchings posted at Enormous Thriving Plants, that blog's proprietor recently insisted that Jonah Goldberg somehow stands as evidence that conservatism, as an intellectual force, is dying:

"Living illustration of the death of conservative intellectualism...

...is 'unconcerned' about the death of conservative intellectualism.

Goldberg seems blissfully unaware of the history of the machiavellian employment of populism to 'smash through the gates'. How ironic, given the subject matter of his last populist-oriented work.It was nice, however, of Jonah to admit that the rejection of integrity and intellectual appeal in favour of an ends-justify-the-means pursuit of populism has been a deliberate and conscious choice amongst some on the US political right.

...Gotta love the conservative penchant for self-infliction of wounds. Not to fret,though Conservative intellectuals: there's always Meghan McCain and Sarah Palin to save the future of the ideology!"

Certainly, one imagines that Audrey would like to believe that intellectual conservatism is dead. And so long as Audrey is willing to take her insistence that Goldberg is the embodiment of its death on her own say-so, one may even accept this to be the case.

But Audrey -- who frequently insists that "reality has a liberal bias" (which basically shows us that she has yet to realize that reality, by its very nature, is unbiased) is moving much too quickly to gloat over the grave of intellectual conservatism. If she were to take off the blinders she has so eagerly donned -- and stop insisting that others wear them as well -- she would quickly realize this.

Audrey's announcement of the death of intellectual conservatism is one made by many denizens of the far left, and as Goldberg helps to point out, it stems from the left's refusal to acknowledge intellectual conservative thinkers until after their passing.

Barry Goldwater, William F Buckley Jr, Ronald Reagan and Irving Kristol were despised by the left during their lifetimes. Its only now that they're dead that they're given their intellectual due.

Likewise -- particularly north of the 49th parallel -- thinkers like Tom Flanagan, Preston Manning, Adam Daifallah and Tasha Kheiriddin, among others, are particularly despised by the political left.

David Frum is a Canadian conservative thinker particularly detested on both sides of the border.

At the end of the day it becomes entirely evident that the preening announcement of the death of intellectual conservatism made by people like Audrey are based on two things: waiting until after the death of a conservative thinker to recognize their prowess, and lowest-common-denominator denunciations of fringe movements like conservapedia and various right-wing bloggers who don't in any sense represent conservative intellectualism.

It's a pronouncement made of equal parts cherry-picking and self-fulfilling prophecy -- moreover, a prophecy that is self-fulfilling by design.

It's only someone deeply invested in their own artificial sense of intellectual superiority who could pretend that intellectual conservatism is dead even while Brian Lee Crowley's Fearful Symmetry emerges hot on the heels of Barry Cooper's It's the Regime, Stupid.

One shouldn't expect Audrey to forgive conservatives if they decline to wail and gnash their teeth over the alleged death of intellectual conservatism.

Intellectual conservatives know full well that it's alive and well -- even if one can fully expect Audrey to never, ever admit it.

Canadian Conservatism Needs to Save Itself

Adam Daifallah annoints Tim Hudak as conservative saviour

Writing in a blog post on the National Post's Full Comment blog, Adam Daifallah all but annoints Tim Hudak as the saviour of conservatism not only in Ontario, but perhaps in all of Canada:

"Tim Hudak's ascension to the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is an important development in the Canadian conservative movement for several reasons. Most importantly, it represents a clean break from the rudderless and inept leadership that has guided the party for more than five years. Let's not mince words: Ernie Eves and John Tory were unmitigated disasters as leaders. Hudak represents a clear return to the conviction-based politics that vaulted the Tories to power -- and kept them there -- in the 1990s."

It would be unreasonable to suggest that Tory and Eves, as leaders, could not have done more.

That being said, it's unreasonable to overlook the fact that, as leaders, Tory and Eves had to work with what Harris had left behind him when he resigned as leader. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Mike Harris left behind him an extremely unpopular incumbent party, which had failed to deliver on its espoused fiscally conservative principles, had made controversial moves in relation to education and relations with municipal governments, and had often stirred up a wasp's nest of public protest against it.

To saddle Tory and Eves firmly with the failure of the Ontario Tories to retain power -- or win it back from Dalton McGuinty in the years since -- is partially unfair. While one cannot overlook their own failures as leaders, one also has to remember the position Harris had left them in.

Yet Daifallah seems to believe that only a leader practically hand-picked by Harris can deliver the Ontario Tories from the ignominous position they currently find themselves in.

"For the first time in recent memory, during the course of the leadership race no candidate ran on an explicitly centre-left platform. Hudak, runner-up Frank Klees and maverick Randy Hillier all staked out clear conservative ground. Christine Elliott ran a formidable campaign and was essentially forced into positioning herself as the centrist candidate due to crowding on the right. (Frequent cheerleading from the Toronto Star also helped burnish her image in that regard.)"

Daifallah seems to do everything but label Elliott Liberal-lite.

"Elliott miscalculated in making the policy of abolishing the Ontario Human Rights Commission -- a cause championed by Hudak and Hiller -- a wedge issue. This didn't sit well with Hudak's and Hillier's supporters, whose second-choice votes she needed to gain in the preferential ballot voting system. Her announcement that she would implement a flat tax if elected -- effectively outflanking Hudak on the right -- sent an electroshock through the other camps. In the end, Elliott proved to be a master of the air war, but lacked the ground game necessary to mount a serious challenge."

But Daifallah would be foolish to insist that the policy of abolishing the Ontario Human Rights Commission was not, in and of itself, designed to be a wedge issue.

Hudak used that policy as a method to determine those who were, allegedly, true conservatives from those who were simply "Liberal lite" -- a label he applied to both Elliott and Klees.

"The significance of the Hudak victory should not be downplayed. The Ontario Tories now have a leader who, unlike his predecessor, won't shy away from drawing clear distinctions between himself and the McGuinty Liberals. Hudak believes in ideas -- he won't be afraid of making bold proposals going forward. His mandate of presenting policies that respect conservative principles yet recognize the current difficult economic context will neutralize Liberal attempts to paint him as a reincarnation of Mike Harris."

And yet Hudak's branding of himself as a "common sense conservative" has already done so much to accomplish this very act.

Distancing himself from Harris will be a difficult act for someone who enjoyed such fervent support from Harris to do. And, really, one may wonder what reason Hudak would have to want to distance himself from who has proven to be his most valuable supporter.

"The McGuinty government is vulnerable on almost every important issue: Ontario's economy is in shambles, taxes are up, spending has soared with no correlative improvement in service quality, unemployment is skyrocketing and the deficit and debt have ballooned. Admittedly, not all of these problems are Dalton McGuinty's own fault, but in politics, the party in power wears the good news and the bad, regardless of its cause.

The next provincial election is still more than two years away. Anything can happen in that time, and it is still unknown whether McGuinty will run for a third term. But if he does, he will be ripe for defeat as an out-of-touch, tired leader who bungled the economy. In the meantime, the way Hudak conducts himself as opposition leader will have important ramifications far beyond Ontario politics."

Hudak has yet to accomplish anything during his (to date short) audition to be Premier of Ontario.

Yet Daifallah already seems to have Hudak pegged as a successor to Stephen Harper's leadership of Canadian conservatism, particularly fiscal conservatism:

"Small-c conservatives across the country are disheartened by the Harper government's numerous capitulations on a whole host of red-meat issues. They are desperately looking for a new champion for the conservative cause. If Hudak can make conservative policies stick and bring the Ontario Tories up in the polls -- and, in the unlikely event that the 2011 election occurs before the next federal campaign, win a government -- it will give great comfort to principled conservatives to know that their ideas still have traction. It would also discredit the Harper government's calculation that the public is only interested in statist solutions to the current economic situation."

Yet Daifallah seems to be overlooking what the historical trend in Canadian politics has tended to be.

That is, when Liberal governments reign in Ottawa, Conservatives tend to win power in Provincial elections. When Conservative governments are in power in Ottawa, Liberals and the NDP tend to win in the provinces.

While the Saskatchewan party claimed victory in the first post-Harper election in the Land of Living Skies and Danny Williams' Progressive Conservatives won in Newfoundland, it's worth noting that Rodney MacDonald's Conservatives were defeated by the NDP, Gordon Campbell's Liberals retained power in British Columbia and Gary Doer's NDP won the 2007 vote in Manitoba.

To expect that Hudak alone will be enough to buck this trend in Ontario and deliver salvation to the federal Tories is, in and of itself, a bit of a pipe dream. Hudak has to be up to the task, and we have yet to see if he actually is.

"Tim Hudak as Canadian conservatism's saviour? Someone needs to assume the role, and I know he would relish it."

Not only does Daifallah's analysis of Hudak's emerging role within Canadian conservatism seem overly Wagnerian, it's also deftly out of touch with the roots of the conservative movement in Canada.

Lloyd Mackey provides a reasonable list of the differing philosophical strains on conservatism. He classifies them as following:

1. Fiscal conservatism - This is the strain of conservatism that prefers controls on government taxation and spending. This is also the very strain of conservatism that Daifallah seems to appeal to most in this article.

2. Social conservatism - Social conservatives prefer family-friendly policies and government regulation -- if not outright prohibition -- of abortion. This particular strain of conservatism has found itself at odds with Human Rights Commissions as many of its most vociferous proponents find themselves paraded before them on an ongoing basis.

3. Democratic populism - Democratic populism insists that the spirit of democracy is found in the will of the people. It favours the "common sense of common people", and has been most strongly represented nationally by Preston Manning.

4. Progressive Conservatism - Progressive conservatism, as embodied by leaders such as Joe Clark, John Diefenbaker and the late Robert Stanfield, advocates using conservatism to moderate political and social change.

5. British Toryism - Proponents of British Toryism favour the preservation of existing institutions, including current parliamentary structures and offices such as Canada's various vice-regal offices such as the Governor General and Lieutenant Governors.

6. Libertarianism - Libertarians prefer that government stay out of the lives of its citizens as much as possible. Libertarians favour as much freedom as possible for citizens, and tend to be the strongest voices in favour of small government.

Of Mackey's six strains of Canadian conservatism, only one -- British Toryism -- arguably sets the table to favour the salvation of Canadian conservatism by a single leader.

Where the other strains of conservatism -- notably libertarianism and democratic populism -- weigh in on this topic, they weigh in against such an option.

Where Daifallah would argue that Tim Hudak is the one man who can save conservatism in Canada, democratic populists would rebel against the notion of any single leader leading Canadian conservatism without a strong consensus to back his direction. That was the act that Preston Manning accomplished so masterfully as leader of the Reform party.

Libertarians would point out the sheer scope of the power, influence and authority conservatives would have to grant such an individual upon being annointed as a conservative "messiah". Libertarians would reject such a notion outright.

Small-p, small-c progressive conservatives would find the urge to reject Hudak as a conservative saviour almost irresistable. To such individuals, Hudak represents the kind of ideologically-isolated neoconservatism that is utterly offensive to their particular values, even as fiscal and social conservatives would likely react favourably to Hudak in such a role.

Contrary to whatever Adam Daifallah may like to believe about Tim Hudak, no one man can save conservatism. Not in Ontario, and not in the rest of Canada. Rather, conservatives must save conservatism together by maintaining the common bonds between its varying -- although often over-simplified, by Lloyd Mackey's own admission -- strains.

Conservatism must save itself.

Sizing Up Conservatism's Challenges

Conservatives in Canada, US and UK face very different challenges

In a blog post on the National Post's Full Comment blog, Hugh Segal makes the case that the challenges to conservative parties being posed by elections are largely immaterial compared to the challenges being posed by the current economic times.

At a time when even conservative administrations are instituting lavish Kenyesian economic policies, it's easy for fiscal conservatives to wonder precisely what this means for conservatism and the free market:

"Imminent elections focus the mind. But the global intellectual challenge to those of us who consider belief in free markets an integral part of our conservatism is larger than the next or last election.

The fact that parties of the left and centre left did not do well in recent European elections is a hint that voters do not see either an ideological culprit for the collapse of over-engineered credit structures or an ideological saviour from anti-free market apostles. What is apparent is that balance and fairness do matter and are not outside the conservative political realm."

Segal is making an important point by noting this.

While the election of Barak Obama as US President is being viewed by many as the nadir of conservatism, perhaps not even merely in the United States, it's important to note that other left-of-centre parties are not enjoying the same level of success.

"The political geography of each of the UK, US and Canada is vastly different. Americans have just come off two terms of Republican prominence. The UK is at the point where a Labour Finance Minister who managed during good times finds special challenges managing in different times. In Canada, what is still a fledgling Tory minority faces a more competitive Liberal opposition. So the short-term challenges for conservatives are genuine but not insurmountable. The American Republicans must be credible and engaged by the mid-terms in less than two years. Both David Cameron in the UK and Prime Minister Harper here face more pressing moments of truth."

In Canada, Stephen Harper may be facing a fall election opposing a strengthened and (at least temporarily) re-engergized Liberal party led by Michael Ignatieff.

In Britain, David Cameron isn't expected to have to fight an election against Gordon Brown and the Labour party until 2010, but the expectation is that he may win a Tony Blair-style majority government.

What remains to be seen for Harper is whether or not he can keep is majority government alive at all, let alone manage to win a majority. For Davoid Cameron, the test will be whether or not he can successfully defeat the Labour party during what is expected to be a time of economic recovery.

In the United States, meanwhile, Republicans are facing an althogether different challenge -- the challenge of not shooting themselves in the foot:

"In the United States, the Obama presidency, while not flawless, is sophisticated in ways the United States has not seen before. Some conservatives, doing themselves and the Republican Party's mid-term election prospects absolutely no good, have chosen an arch ideological scream over reasoned and thoughtful engagement. With the US government now owning large chunks of the financial and industrial United States, the intellectual challenge for Republican conservatives is defining the new balance between social and economic opportunity, necessary stability and the market freedom vital to rebuild the US economy."

If one reduces conservatism to the preservation of the status quo, one has to realize that government ownership of formerly private enterprise -- General Motors clearly being the most prominent example -- will have become part of that status quo.

If one subscribes to a far more nuanced definition of conservatism, one still has to realize the scope of the challenge that government ownership of financial and industrial industry poses.

One way or the other, conservatives will have to address the issue of this ownership. Privatization of these industries would be a simple solution for conservatives to pursue.

Yet when government privatizes public assets or enterprises one thing that is undeniably part of the transaction is a depreciated return on the public's investment. Privatized government assets have proven to be a bargain for many private buyers for this very reason.

But considering the scope of the public investment in ownership of these industries, government has the responsibility to recover the maximum value of that investment. As Benjamin Barber pointed out to Tim Geithner, the public has absorbed a great deal of risk in helping these companies effectively "start over" (something that has made GMs batch of PR ads on this very topic very much insufferable). The public has the right to expect a return on that risky investment.

For some conservatives, this may seem far too much like government reaping profits better left for private investors. This is market conservatism ad extremis -- one that denies the reality of this particular matter to the extent of being nearly self-destructive.

Conservatives the world over, meanwhile, should be as lucky as the British Conservative party's David Cameron:

"In the UK, Tory leader David Cameron, in embracing decentralization and more popular restraint on government excess, is true to both the Thatcherite and 'wet' side of Britain's Tory spectrum and the core centralizing myopia of 'big Government' Labour party approaches. The fact that this is done with a strong tilt to 'compassionate conservatism' provides both a spectrum-broadening base and intellectual frame for an eventual victory. But the intellectual challenge for British conservatism is being embraced head on.

At home, the universal kudos among critical international bodies like the OECD and World Bank for Canada's handling of the credit meltdown and US prime mortgage collapse speaking well of how Stephen Harper has managed to date. But the conservative intellectual challenge will also have to be met during the next election."

In facing the strengthening federal Liberal party, Stephen Harper will face a very different challenge than Cameron's.

For one thing, the Canadian Liberal party hasn't managed to burn nearly as many bridges as the British Labour party. And, as Barry Cooper points out, the Conservative party isn't nearly as adept at exploiting bureaucratic survival instincts for its own political advantage as the Liberals have been.

Even beyond this particular disadvantage, that the Canadian Conservative party has embraced stimulus economics with a fervour that seems to put the lie to fiscal conservatism, many of the challenges the Tories will face will be a result of their own emergency economic policy:

"That challenge might best be described this way. If stimulus and corporate stability investments have, along with economic downturn and tax cuts, produced a short-term deficit, what are the values Tories want to sustain through this for which they seek a mandate? This is not about what any government is doing or seeks to do in the future. This is about why we want to do it."

The Conservative party has provided a solid roadmap out of the current economic crisis for the country at large.

What the party has not produced is a solid roadmap for its own return to the fiscal conservative principles its expected to embody. This is certainly a problem, as it leads to a glut of policy deficiencies on numerous issues:

"National security is about domestic social and economic opportunity as well as a robust foreign and highly deployable defence capacity. It is about market freedom as an instrument of economic expansion and environmental competence. Ceding any of this ground to other parties weakens the Tory claim to a new mandate. Embracing it with clarity and intellectual integrity is what Canadians have the right to expect; it is what Conservatives under Prime Minister Harper have done when at their best. The argument to do it again has never been more compelling."

Of course, therein lies the rub.

It's easy for conservative political parties to be at their best during times of economic prosperity. They can move ahead on fiscally conservative programs without seeming callous or careless.

When times are bad, however, is when left-of-centre political parties tend to shine brightest. Canada's Conservative party hasn't led the country on any kind of a national project since sir John A MacDonald's ambitious railroad building project. This is a real problem for the party, as it leaves these opportunities to its left-of-centre opponents, who have led Canadians on national projects such as public health care.

Sadly, something in the conservative imagination tells conservatives that national projects are, in and of themselves, left-wing social engineering projects that undermine conservative values.

Yet an ambitious national project conceptualized and completed under the public-private partnership model embraces the principles of conservatives such as Segal. Such a project could be nation and enterprise at its best -- if only Canadian conservatives can muster the courage to attempt it.

There could even be opportunities to attempt such projects on an international scale:

"Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, recently called for an economic and social contract to ensure that the recovery does not make things worse for developing countries. In every country, the way out of the recession will be bracketed by concerns about market freedom and social justice. The challenge for Tories in the anglosphere is the same--a coherent plan for the way ahead that embraces both pillars underlying successful societies, market freedom and genuine equality of opportunity. Deserting either of these is not a rational way ahead in any industrialized country, and certainly not appropriate for conservatives of any variety."

As the world navigates its course out of the current economic crisis and its accompanying recession, we will also be confronted with opportunities to change the way we have approached policy issues such as foreign aid.

Jeffrey Sachs will certainly be first in line to attempt to re-start his (mostly) failed policies in the developing world. But conservative governments in countries such as Canada and (by then) Britain could -- and should -- quite easily bypass individuals such as Sachs and employ the wisdom of economists such as William Easterly, whose proposed policies vis a vis foreign aid call simply scream out for the P3 model.

The various industrial and financial firms that governments now find themselves owning significant portions of could even be offered the opportunity to work off their debt to the state by investing in these kinds of programs, allowing people in developing countries to shape aid programs through market forces and helping themselves out of poverty, as opposed to waiting to be saved.

It's on this note that one must remember something that Hugh Segal would certainly want Canadian conservatives to recognize: the current political and economic climate poses serious challenges to conservatives. But with difficult challenges come fantastic opportunities.

Conservatives, in Canada and elsewhere, can benefit greatly from these challenges if they can only prove able to grow into them.

Progressive Conservatism Is Not "Standing for Nothing"

Randy Hillier embraces small tent conservatism

When the Ontario Progressive Conservative party leadership candidates locked horns in a leader's debate at the University of Ottawa, it couldn't have possibly become any clearer that the 2009 Ontario PC leadership race is a battle for the very heart and soul of the party.

The battle lines seem to be drawn: Tim Hudak and Randy Hillier firmly favouring the socons, and Christine Elliott and Frank Klees carrying the banner for procons.

Perhaps no one in the field has embraced this apparent internal culture war as Hillier, who told Elliott that "watered-down conservatism" will not lead the party to victory, and power.

"When we stand for nothing, we lose everything," Hillier insisted.

Elliott had previously described herself as a "compassionate" conservative.

Hillier seemed to be thinking in a similar vein as Tom Long, who recently gave a speech to the Manning Institute's Networking Conference in which he took note of the fact that, in recent history, hardline Mike Harris' fiscal conservatism has been more successful than its more progressive counterpart -- as recently represented in leadership by John Tory.

Such ideas stand in stark contrast to the widely-disseminated beliefs of Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who continues to insist that building consensus between the various strains of conservatism -- usually defined in Canada as fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, democratic populism, progressive conservatism, British Toryism and libertarianism -- in order to be truly successful. Segal has often added that the best way to do so is within a "nation and enterprise" model in which government collaborates with society's various institutions in order to produce an environment in which free markets can provide for the needs of Canadians.

As Lloyd Mackey noted of David Orchard -- who ceded the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative party to Peter MacKay only under the condition that he refused to merge the party with the stronger Canadian Alliance -- people like Hillier and Long represent a sense that their particular brand of conservatism is the only truly "pure" brand of conservatism. Consider the rhetorical implications of Long's description of his favoured strain of conservatism as "unhyphenated" conservatism.

Mackey brilliantly describes individuals with such small-tent notions of conservatism, such as Orchard and Hillier, as virtual mirror images of each other.

Hillier's particular brand of conservatism is best described as a fusion of fiscal conservatism with libertarianism -- a stark contrast to Elliott's mix of fiscal conservatism and progressive conservatism.

Whether Hillier agrees with it or not, Elliott's progressive conservatism is necessary to strike a balance with his particular brand of conservatism. Even though Long may disagree, the only conservatism that has ever proven sustainable in Ontario was a conservatism respectful of progressive values.

Though Long may not understand it, Mike Harris' hard fiscal conservative coalition was not sustainable without its progressive counterparts. If it had been, Ontario wouldn't be governed by the Dalton McGuinty Liberal party right now.

Randy Hillier's and Christine Elliott's strains of conservatism need each other. It's rather unfortunate that Hillier doesn't seem to have the wisdom to recognize this.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy - "Randy Hillier for Premier"

A Killing Joke for American Conservatism

Many American conservatives don't get Stephen Colbert

There is no doubt that Stephen Colbert is a comic genius.

In just a few short years on the air, the Colbert Report has managed to eclipse Jon Stewart's Daily Show in popularity, and has endeared itself to many people around the world -- within the United States and outside of it -- as a masterful parody of American arch-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and "Papa Bear" Bill O'Reilly.

Yet for concerned American conservatives -- those who probably love Colbert's show as much as anyone -- a recent study conducted by the University of Ohio has revealed a disturbing factoid about the show. It seems that a majority of American conservatives may believe that Colbert is actually one of them.

Colbert's parody may be more stunningly close to the genuine article than many people had realized.

"I'm thrilled by it!" Colbert says of the study. "From the very beginning, I wanted to jump back and forth over the line of meaning what I say, and the truth of the matter is I'm not on anyone's side, I'm on my side."

"The important thing is that the audience laughs," he adds.

The audience has, indeed, laughed, including at Colbert's appearance at the 2006 White House Correspondant's Dinner, when it seemed that then-US President George W Bush may not have understood Colbert's parody until it was utterly too late for him.

But this revelation should be especially disturbing to American conservatives who have become concerned about the direction that individuals like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and others have drug American conservatism -- into the fringes of lunacy and extremism.

The self-glorifying, barely-functional image Colbert portrays on the show is not one that embodies the finest intellectual traditions of American conservatism. American conservatism, it seems, has come a long way down since the days of William F Buckley.

Buckley had always insisted that conservative political parties should support conservative movements, as opposed to conservative movements supporting political parties. Buckley's brand of conservatism was one that stood by its principles and thought for itself -- a stark contrast to the parodic conservatism of the Colbert Report, in which Colbert issues marching orders to the "Nation" and the Nation complies.

Buckley's conservatism was one that would stand against the Republican party when necessary -- Colbert's parodic conservatism would never dream of such an act.

Buckley's conservatism was very close to the "nation and enterprise" conservatism advocated by Canadian conservative patriarch Hugh Segal, wherein the role of the government is to maintain society's institutions at a level that ensures a maximum level of freedom for a country's citizens, and allows the market to function unimpeded enough that it can meet society's needs.

At what many people consider to be a historic low for the GOP, the American conservative movement is said by many to be effectively wandering in the desert. Those intent on rebuilding both the Republican party and American conservatism are in desperate need of an influential new intellectual and spiritual leader -- someone prepared to pull the strands of intellectual and populist conservatism together again to find a new balance for American conservatism.

This exercise remains at the heart of the activities of the National Committee for a New America -- an organization that, if allowed to function as intended, should manage to re-constitute American conservatism just as the Reform party eventually managed to re-constitute Canadian conservatism.

But so long as many American conservatives are unable to tell Stephen Colbert from the genuine article of American conservatives -- Colbert's character seems to implicitly reject any efforts to re-organize American conservatism -- it will be extremely difficult for any genuine intellectual or spiritual leader to emerge.

Then again, one remembers that Preston Manning's efforts to re-constitute Canadian conservatism took sixteen years to come to fruition, and eighteen years to bear political fruit.

The efforts to re-constitute American conservatism may take a long time to culminate, but with any luck, will be successful enough that American conservatives could look back on the Colbert Report and laugh, understanding the joke.


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