Posted on 12/15/2005 4:17:14 PM PST by NZerFromHK
Our new Prime Minister, Paul Martin, has finally ascended the throne he has so long desired for many a year. Jean Chretien is now gone, and the Liberal party, guided by Martin, will take Canada further to the political right than the centrist or soft left liberals would say amen to at this stage in the Canadian journey. Is it wise and prudential, the thoughtful might ask, at a point in Canadian history when the Liberal party will swing further to the right, to create a party that is further right than Paul Martin and the Liberal party? Is such a party ever likely to defeat the Liberals? This, we must assume, was the purpose of the merging and coming together of the PC party and the Alliance party.
We might further ask this rather simple question: does such a ‘conservative’ merger truly represent the historic High Tory Tradition within Canadian politics or is such a merger not just another form of Canadians being colonized by the American imperial way? I think the answer is rather obvious and clear for those who have some grounding in the Canadian High Tory Tradition.
The recent decision by some in the PC party and most in the Alliance party to merge and create a right of centre republican party of Canada is both a historic move and a short sighted manoeuvre.
The PC party, in Canada, has often been sent to the desert to think about its misdeeds and errors of practical judgement. The Laurier, King, Trudeau and Chretien years are etched in the memory of most.
The Liberals do demand their due when the Conservatives have faltered and failed. But, the reverse and converse are true, also. When the Liberals tripped and tumbled the Conservatives have been there to step into the political fray. The Conservatives have stepped in by being true to the Canadian High Tory Tradition, though. The recent decision by the PC party to ignore, deny and reject its historic vision will neither take them to the victory seat nor endear them to most Canadians. Canadians are not a people who are fond of right of centre political parties, and if Martin is going to tow the Liberal party further right than Chretien then it is not likely Canadians will smile fondly (nor vote for) a national party that is more republican than the Liberal party in Canada seems keen to be.
The last two decades plus have seen, certainly since Mulroney, the language of Canadian conservatism come to be defined, shaped and moulded by the meaning of American republicanism. What is American republicanism? It places high value on a lighter state, less taxes, regionalism, the role of society (often in opposition to the state) and an emphasis on larger military and police to deal with crime and punishment in a swift and lethal manner. The close alliance of Bush and the Alliance party must be duly noted; it is no accident that Harper genuflected so dutifully to Bush and his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It does not take much perception to note and notice the way the Alliance party salutes and doffs the cap to such an agenda. The USA is the great, good place and the embodiment of all that is noble and liberty loving in this runaway world.
The Canadian High Tory Tradition has, from the beginning, been wary and suspicious of both American republican principles and American imperialistic ambitions. Canadian Tories, unlike the Liberals, have never been as keen to bow the knee to Uncle Sam to the south of us. The Canadian High Tory Tradition has had an abiding passion for the common good of this nation and the role of the federal government in protecting such a good. Citizenship within such a perspective means being concerned with the good of one and all both within Canada and on the much larger international political stage.
Stephen Leacock, in his much loved Canadian classic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), said ‘In Canada I belong to the Conservative party’. When Leacock thought conservative, what did he think? Leacock finished his doctoral thesis in 1903, and the topic of the thesis was ‘The Doctrine of Laissez Faire: A Critical Essay on The Evolution of Theory and Practice in Reference to the Economic Functions of the Modern State’. The title, of course, is rather long winded and rather Victorian, but Leacock was no fan of ‘laissez faire’. How would Leacock view the Alliance party and their support of free trsde? He would certainly not see them as conservative.
In fact, in the 1911 election, Leacock worked overtime to oppose the Liberal Prime Minister, Wilfred Laurier (who held high the notion of free trade and annexation with the USA). Is this the sort of conservative that would support the merger of the PC party and the Alliance party? I don’t think so!
Leacock walked the extra mile to assist and support most of the founders of the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) in Montreal in the 1930s when McGill University attempted to banish such folk.
The LSR and CCF were forerunners of the NDP. What kind of conservative was this? It is important to note that the High Tory Tradition in Canada has often had much affinity with important aspects of the political Left. Leacock was not an exception to this rule. He was at the centre and core of it.
Leacock’s My Discovery of the West (1937) was written as a frontal assault on the Social Credit party. The Social Credit party was the forerunner to the Alliance party. It does not take too many connecting of the dots to realize that Stephen Leacock would have little or no interest in a merger of the PC party and the Alliance party.
Canadian High Tories (or Conservatives) are not the same as American republicans, and, when such a merger occurs, either the Tory or the republican must go. The recent merger has banished the Canadian High Tory. Most Canadian Tories would rather vote Liberal or NDP than Alliance. The Canadian PC party could have been rebuilt by saying a firm NO to the Alliance party, then recreating and rebuilding the PC party to the left of Martin. Such a rebuilding would have drawn social liberals in the Liberal party and social democrats in the NDP. Leacock, I suspect, would be pleased with such alliances.
Leacock said, ‘In Canada I belong to the Conservative party’. Leacock, as a good Canadian High Tory and Conservative, understood what these terms meant in a very different way than the language is used today.
The more Canadians are drawn into the orbit and gravitational field of the American empire, the more they will forget their own unique and indigenous traditions. This is what it means to be a colonized people, and there is always a comprador class to facilitate such a transition. The merging of the PC party and the Alliance party, and the equally worrisome leadership of Paul Martin in the Liberal party, is part of the comprador class in Canada furthering the colonization of the True North. I conclude with a quote from Shakespeare: what new hell is this?
--- Ron Dart teaches in the Dept. of Political Science and Philosophy at the University College of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C. He is editor of The Red Tory Review and has published numerous articles and two books of poetry. Dart is also the political science advisor to the Leacock Home/Museum in Orillia.
There may be a large minority of Canadians who support the United States, I wouldn't put the figure higher than 40% at maximum. About 30% of conservatives using the Canadian definition, 90% of leftists, and 65% of politically unaffiliated, are politically hostile to the United States's political stands - the hostility is kneejerk. This explains why about 70% of Canadians plan to vote Left (Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, New Democrats, Greens) and 30% vote Right.
This is life and for the Americans here, reading this article is the best way to learn thy neighbour.
Ping!
What I don't get is why the Bloc Quebecois is so liberal. I thought that their big issue was autonomy if not outright independence for Quebec.
Unfortunately it is due to influence of Euroepan France's leftist works. Quebecois intellectuals acted as if they have seen THE CIVILIZATION and all got intoxicated by the garbage.
The US can deal with Quebec though - privately they are less anti-American than a lot of English Canadians.
Did anyone see a recent report on Fox News? The issue raised was whether the US had an enemy to the north. I note that any suggestion that there is hostility towards the US was not welcomed.
It's a wonderful country full of fantastic, creative and hard-working people. However....
Canada puts even Canadians to sleep.
I did not see it, but I am unconcerned, all the Canadians worth a crap, the Military, the RCMP, all the cowboys in BC and Alberta like the US. The rest, (the ankle biters) would STFU if we just legalized pot and gave them free government stuff.
The old High Tories had a social conservatism that their supposed descendants lack. What's left is surely more or less a watered down secular liberalism.
Also, it's kind of a cheap shot to trace Alliance back to Social Credit. There may be some connection, but surely Reagan's and Thatcher's examples had a lot to do with the creation of Reform or Alliance or the new Conservative Party.
BTW, changing party names every few years is not a good way to build brand loyalty.
They're a single issue group, so they go along with the consensus in the province on everything else. Wikipedia says they support "the Kyoto Accord, gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization, and opposed Canadian participation in the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003."
Quebec used to be very conservative culturally and socially, but that all changed with the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, and things won't go back any time soon. Before that French Canadians thought they had to stick closely together with the Catholic Church for self-protection on a hostile Anglophone Protestant continent. Since Pierre Trudeau the Quebecois have forged a political identity out of being further to the left, especially on social and cultural questions, than most of the rest of the country.
I think your neighbours are the ones who should be concerned.
Susan Thompson
Bio: Founded this site/organization in 2003. Education: BA '99 in Honours English from the University of Calgary (also home to Barry Cooper of the Fraser Institute and other members of the so-called Calgary School, a delicious irony). Freelance writer, activist, mom. Internet addict. Politics geek. Ran for the NDP in 2004, again currently.
Interesting finding, thanks.
Why do the Red Tories, Liberals, NDP, Greens, and Bloc Quebecois seem so entangled together despite their "spats" on the surface? To an uninformed mind this smacks of a vast left wing collusion on the part of Canada's power movers and shakers.
Which shows that true conservativees may need to make a clean break with the Tories in order to become politically viable.
There is a cross-pollination between leftism and Red Toryism. Today's Red Tories will not hesitate to accept gay marriage just to "accommodate with the tides of history", while leftists no doubt accept the monarchy as a state symbol that is un-American.
This produces the weird beast in Canadian political consciousness - "socialist monarchy".
ping for later reading
I was simply pointing out your error in judgment, regarding your source for this thread.
Interesting trackings of Red Toryism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Red_Tory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Tory
Red Tories are a rarity these days in federal politics; most have joined the Liberals or left politics altogether.
There is no American Empire.
Unless the author is referring to Guam or the Marshall Islands or Puerto Rico.
If one believes America is an imperial nation one must also admit that it has a somewhat pitiful list of colonies.
Todays Canadian Liberals and American Democrats are simply very good at dividing and conquering.
But they forget that Americans and Canadians are very often family and these ties run deep.
And conservative values are ingrained in free people who have built their homes and business' with sweat equity and have a vested interest in their families futures.
This author is like so many other intellectuals who IMO spend too much time talking to each other.
Also, the "branding" of Canada by the Liberals has been an intellectual and political exercise that has been at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.
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