Canada is not a conservative country. This is nowhere more clearly is this reflected than in the state of its conservative media. The Western Standard, long considered the voice of western conservatism, cancelled its print operations in October as famed columnist and publisher Ezra Levant jumped ship. Similarly, the National Post struggled financially in 2007 and was forced to drop all print subscribers in Atlantic Canada and later limited the distribution of their print edition to newsstands in Halifax.
Ironically, conservative media in Canada has been abandoned and rebuked by the very free-market principles that they purport to promote. The market has spoken and conservative media outlets simply cannot compete. Interestingly, the fact that the Conservative Party is governing a liberal country leads to the appearance of a divide in the conservative movement.
The largest problem for the Canadian conservative movement is how to make a liberal country into a more conservative one. And herein lies the paradox of Canadian conservatism. This country is not conservative and as a result the Conservative Party cannot afford to be conservative lest they lose the reins of power. Unlike the Liberals under Trudeau, the Conservative Party does not spend billions funding advocacy groups and organizations that will perpetuate its rule. That would be contrary to small-government
conservative principles.
There are two schools of thought that revolve around solving this problem-the 'revolutionary' school and the 'incrementalist' school. Each school of thought even has its own well-known advocates. Former National Citizens Coalition President Gerry Nicholls is a prominent revolutionary conservative, while Tom Flanagan can be described as a notable incrementalist conservative. With so many of its members in power, this divide in the conservative movement has become the most noticeable. No longer is the most visible squabble between Red Tories and Blue Tories or social conservatives and libertarians, but rather between those who are willing to wait for Canada to become more conservative and those who demand that efforts be immediately made by the party to change the political climate.
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Rob
posted 1/08/08 @ 9:40 AM EST
Right! The only problem is that the "incremental conservatism" of Tom Flanagan and Stephen Harper seems to be the converse of any conservatism that most conservatives know (smaller government, laissez faire economics, reduced spending, etc. (Continued…)
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