Some Thoughts at Mid-Year ...It has been three weeks since my last posting; of course, I have been traveling on business for most of the last three weeks, so I do have an excuse. Nevertheless, I do feel somewhat guilty for not keeping a more regular commitment to my few regular readers. So I apologise. I just wish I had the time to be as prolific as the "other"
Red ToryHaving wrote all that, let's review why I even created this Blog in the first place ...
I have seen many changes occur in my beloved Canada during the span of my lifetime. I am only 43, but I was an unusual child in that (1) I was very observant and highly interested in the "News", and (2) I was fundamentally conservative in a fundamentally Canadian way.
I was always a Tory. NOT a liberal. NOT an American-style Republican. NOT a "Market First" thinker. I am and always have been a Tory - but NOT as the sobriquet is used by many between the advent of Brian Mulroney and the rise of Stephen Harper. I instinctively and habitually cleaved to the older tradition, which placed a decided emphasis on the collective and on a national unity powered by adherence to our tradtional civic values, such as the Monarchy and POGG.
This does in no way indicate that I did not participate in the habits, customs, vernacular, and trends of my generation, which is strangely enough, that of
Generation X. Those of us born between 1961 and 1971 were both cursed by, and benefited from, the radical social changes of the 1960's. By the 1970's we were the inheritors of an unparalleled amount of individual freedom. As most of Canada was still a relatively safe place then, this meant that we alone had the freedom and security to explore things that maybe we shouldn't have able to test at such a young age. But it was what it was, and it would come to a screeching halt by the late 1980's and mid 1990's - around the time the "Scarborough Rapist" and the "Downtown Eastside" abductions began.
My house was fairly typical for the 1960's. My parent were instinctively conservative. My Father's lineage was decidedly Tory. But they voted solidly for the NDP after Diefenbaker was ousted by what they considered the Bay Street "cabal." Mum and Dad would start to vote for the Progressive Conservatives again in 1974.
The Liberal party was a "swear word" in our house, and for many reasons - most of them dating back to the Second Great War, when Mackenzie King refused to increase Troop levels via Conscription. In my family this was seen as disloyal, cowardly, and unprincipled - which it was. The Liberals were seen as the "continental party" that was seeking to break Canada's ties with the Commonwealth and drive us into closer integration with the USA. This was
heresy in our House. They were also the party of radical market economics, which again was seen as anathema to Macdonald's vision for our Dominion. We were not opposed to business in our family, but we were opposed to business at the expense of the Country and the Commonwealth.
We were part of an older tradition. That does not mean we were hostile to social innovation at all, but that such change should fit within a broad set of traditions and customs found in this Country. My parents accepted the necessity of liberalised divorce law, not because they would ever use them, but because they saw the misery inflicted on people who did not have access to such recourse. This is just one of many examples.
The point is, that "real" conservatism is not bound by ideology. It is driven by principles, custom, convention, and tradition in a
broad sense. It is not hostile to reform and change, as long as such innovations fit within the political and cultural disposition of the nation. It seeks first the good of the nation. It tends toward the common good. It seeks peace
and order. It is not driven by love of lucre, but rather a love of Queen and Country.
It does not seek to amalgamate our Nation with another State, in, and for, the interests of mere economics. The nation does not exist just as a unit of production. It is a collection of like-minded people, first and foremost.
Well, there you have it. A kind of rambling, stream-of-consciousness post - with a point. Draw your own conclusions, as you will. My intent is clear enough. There will be more posts soon enough, and more refined they will be.
