Every once and awhile I allow a peak behind the curtain and reveal a little more as to why it is that I blog. I would make it more coherent if I could but the reasons are non-obvious. One key reason can be found in David Frum's column today in the National Post.
...I can understand why numerous Liberals are attracted to the hope of an Ignatieff candidacy. Michael Ignatieff is a man of ideas - a commodity of which today's Liberal party is utterly bereft.
...In the 1960s and 1970s, Liberals had a coherent vision of the kind of society they wanted to build: a united, bilingual society with a powerful central government leading the economy and redistributing wealth - all in hope of building a nation strongly distinct from the United States.
The trouble is that the vision didn't work - as the Liberals themselves had to acknowledge. Bilingialism did not weaken Quebec separatism. The powerful central government horribly mismanaged the economy. The redistribution of wealth laid crushing taxes on the Canadian middle class. Nationalist economic policies invited American protectionist response.
...The inescapable fact is that modern liberalism is an intellectual mess. It is not and cannot be a politics of ideas. It is a politics of the reactionary defence of things as they are - spiced up be random give-aways to powerful interest groups. This is why it expresses itself so vaguely: It knows it cannot stand up to close scrutiny.
But this is my blog so back to me. I have spent my fair share of time with the faux-intellectual left (by the way, I love that term faux; in English it is just fake - perfectly descriptive, but in French it just seems so nuanced. Who would want a fake finish on anything, but faux - doesn't that look nice) and in a large degree that is what inspired me to start blogging. There is an assumption by the faux-intellectual that conservatives are morons and that if they just looked at things better they would realize the leftist truth of the world. I actually believe the opposite is true. I think it is leftists who are the new conservatives. Neo-conservatives is an incorrect term as these people who be correctly described as paleo-liberal or as many of them prefer classical liberal. The neo-conservatives are the Trudeau Liberals trying to blind you into believing in the mythical Canada they tried to create while using the ad hominem attack to get you to ignore the plain facts so they can "conserve" the myth. I believe in the expression, that facts of life are conservative. This blog is my meagre attempt to engage in the battle of ideas.
...At the Liberal convention in Ottawa, Mr. Ignatieff endorsed "deep and passionate" debate. In recent years, the Liberal party has owed its survival to its success in dodging that very thing - and to a canny reliance instead in insincere promises and the cynical stoking of fear. Would an Igantieff candidancy alter that sorry record? I'd be happy to meet him in any public forum to put that proposition to the test.
I would love to be in attendance for that! And I think that Canada would be better off if Micheal Ignatieff and David Frum presented a battle of ideas.
