Thoughts on BC Politics and More

I remain deeply committed to the principles I believed once defined the progressive Left — reason, empiricism, tolerance, and the defence of human dignity. Yet the movement that once championed open inquiry, free speech, and honest debate has hardened into an unforgiving orthodoxy, driven less by ideas than by attitude. The Left I admired for its skepticism and intellectual courage has shifted into a culture of moral certitude and censoriousness. Like many, I find myself repeating the familiar refrain: I didn’t leave the Left; the Left left me. What happened? Well, many things, but one of the most frustrating aspects of modern progressivism is its insatiable appetite for moral self-congratulation and theatre. As Hannah Arendt warned, when politics shifts from persuasion to moral showmanship, it ceases to be politics altogether ... CLICK HERE for the full story 

When I took my first course in political science at the University of Calgary over forty years ago, the reigning orthodoxy on Canada’s ideological landscape seemed alien to my Alberta way of thinking.  I was taught that Canada had no genuine free enterprise or limited government political tradition. Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism all had a presence in this country, it was said, but there was little to distinguish one from the other in terms of their preference for Big Government solutions ... CLICK HERE for the full story 

Today in the National Post, I saw a story written by Colby Cosh, entitled, “ Is conservatism on the way out? ” In part the writer stated: Perhaps the secret of recent history in the provinces is that conservatives are not addressing psycho-semantic problems with the term “conservative.” How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m a social liberal but a conservative on economics”? This is the default political position of most adults now, is it not? Liberalism, which is to say pluralism, has won the argument in the “social” realm of government. What once was liberalism in economics, the dirigisme that my generation was taught to think of as the “mixed economy,” has largely lost; but the people who call themselves Liberals have succeeded at extricating themselves from the reputational burden …   I thought the story raised some interesting points on ‘conservatism’ as a whole, Michael Beauclair which is why I posted it to my Facebook page .   It got a...