Thanks Geoff for doing the hard work of arguing through this important issue. I love that serious thinkers now have to engage (and name) Without Diminishment. As the rigged straw man tumbles down the rocky slope he must ponder how nice it is to defend an idea that has never produced a single functioning polity to be judged at all. Thanks for leading us into the messy and fraught real world that we have abandoned for too long. How costly this has proven to be for our country...
This back-and-forth between Kline and Russ is exactly the kind of tension we need right now. I, along with likely many who read these posts, had always assumed the free-market libertarian view was the only conservative view. I knew there were debates on nuances of social policy (should ___ be legal?), but broadly I tended to favour minimal state involvement. I’ll admit that the warning in my mind was: “If the state becomes involved, surely we’ll end up like Putin’s Russia.” I’m now realizing it isn’t black-and-white, and that I simply don’t know much about the history of conservatism before 1979.
Kline's article was a rather poor framing of the conversation that is occurring within the big tent of Canadian conservatives. A united right would surely be useful for an election cycle, but focussing his article on the tenets of libertarianism as the best form of liberalism that simply focusses on scale of government. In other words, he's all for liberalism, which all major conservative parties have been part of. We've adopted the approach of the US, but we just won't ever do it like them, either in population numbers or disposition (I'd argue the end point of liberalism looks like the individualistic world view untethered from nature, familial and historical bonds, and state enforcement of those rights leading to an ever expanding state- Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed as source)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the New Right suggests conservatism as a conserving force. A belief in the telos of the state to enforce the culture's survival. And Canada has a very instructive past in regards to this relationship with its state. When threatened, which many of us believe now is the case, this rediscovery of Canadian conservatism hopefully be a countervailing force on the pendulum.
British and French colonies recognised an existential threat in revolutionary America; however the Loyalists of Upper Canada were not imperialists in thought but in recognising they must preserve the British North America they created and hope the embers for French revolution couldn't survive the journey by boat. Loyalists deferred to the state, and so would the Red Toryism that reflected this order and good governance as a bulwark against incredible forces such as the Manifest Destiny, world wars, American neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
Diefenbaker's rejection of continentalism that led to his electoral loss- well that began the decision making well outside of national interests and influence from abroad, which takes its form as globalism today, and the source of much of today's troubles, in my opinion. Post national states, whatever that means, other than licence to destroy the pasts in revolutionary zeal processed through a focus group. Borders as constraints but especially markers of influence and recognition of nature had served us well, and then they were gone, in spirit.
I don't harken back to Mulroney or the Reform Party or really anything within my lifetime. It feels ancestral and it follows the notion of family being the social unit verses the individual. There is hierarchy in this order, there is deference to higher powers and it respects nature. It quiets the mind to think its possible as opposed to suffocating.
Canadians could be proud of its heritage if we'd welcome true conservativism that was developed in house but tragically forgotten about for far too long; writing a 60 year final chapter of George Grant's Lament for a Nation.
Thanks Geoff for doing the hard work of arguing through this important issue. I love that serious thinkers now have to engage (and name) Without Diminishment. As the rigged straw man tumbles down the rocky slope he must ponder how nice it is to defend an idea that has never produced a single functioning polity to be judged at all. Thanks for leading us into the messy and fraught real world that we have abandoned for too long. How costly this has proven to be for our country...
This back-and-forth between Kline and Russ is exactly the kind of tension we need right now. I, along with likely many who read these posts, had always assumed the free-market libertarian view was the only conservative view. I knew there were debates on nuances of social policy (should ___ be legal?), but broadly I tended to favour minimal state involvement. I’ll admit that the warning in my mind was: “If the state becomes involved, surely we’ll end up like Putin’s Russia.” I’m now realizing it isn’t black-and-white, and that I simply don’t know much about the history of conservatism before 1979.
Kline's article was a rather poor framing of the conversation that is occurring within the big tent of Canadian conservatives. A united right would surely be useful for an election cycle, but focussing his article on the tenets of libertarianism as the best form of liberalism that simply focusses on scale of government. In other words, he's all for liberalism, which all major conservative parties have been part of. We've adopted the approach of the US, but we just won't ever do it like them, either in population numbers or disposition (I'd argue the end point of liberalism looks like the individualistic world view untethered from nature, familial and historical bonds, and state enforcement of those rights leading to an ever expanding state- Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed as source)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the New Right suggests conservatism as a conserving force. A belief in the telos of the state to enforce the culture's survival. And Canada has a very instructive past in regards to this relationship with its state. When threatened, which many of us believe now is the case, this rediscovery of Canadian conservatism hopefully be a countervailing force on the pendulum.
British and French colonies recognised an existential threat in revolutionary America; however the Loyalists of Upper Canada were not imperialists in thought but in recognising they must preserve the British North America they created and hope the embers for French revolution couldn't survive the journey by boat. Loyalists deferred to the state, and so would the Red Toryism that reflected this order and good governance as a bulwark against incredible forces such as the Manifest Destiny, world wars, American neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
Diefenbaker's rejection of continentalism that led to his electoral loss- well that began the decision making well outside of national interests and influence from abroad, which takes its form as globalism today, and the source of much of today's troubles, in my opinion. Post national states, whatever that means, other than licence to destroy the pasts in revolutionary zeal processed through a focus group. Borders as constraints but especially markers of influence and recognition of nature had served us well, and then they were gone, in spirit.
I don't harken back to Mulroney or the Reform Party or really anything within my lifetime. It feels ancestral and it follows the notion of family being the social unit verses the individual. There is hierarchy in this order, there is deference to higher powers and it respects nature. It quiets the mind to think its possible as opposed to suffocating.
Canadians could be proud of its heritage if we'd welcome true conservativism that was developed in house but tragically forgotten about for far too long; writing a 60 year final chapter of George Grant's Lament for a Nation.