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Burke vs. the Left

These two quotes by Edmund Burke (1970) remind me of a large, but particular group of people. When one simply replaces “They” with “The Liberals and the NDP” or “The American Democrats”, it suddenly becomes a paragraph that could have been written by a number of conservative bloggers – provided they have a thing for 18th century english.

They see no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or any political principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change: they therefore take up, one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.

This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart. They have perverted in themselves, and in those that attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human breast.

One has to wonder if his words will ever die out against the test of time.

This is part one of a series of photographs taken by me of the obscure, overlooked parts of my city. Like all cities, when you look closely at aspects of urban life there is often beauty in things normally considered ugly: graffiti, street art, urban decay, etc. A lot of the time these things are not even pretty, but rather interesting or weird. This series focuses on the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. I hope you enjoy and I welcome comments!

Poem

Sign

Robin

Blue House

Yard Sale

Building

Wait till Pamela Anderson and Perez Hilton find out about this…

A Colchester County councillor believes Nova Scotia should completely “exterminate” its coyote population.

“Bounties don’t work,” Coun. Mike Cooper said during a council session last week. “You might as well get rid of them. They’re hunting in packs now.”

Cooper initiated discussion on the issue following the death last Tuesday of 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell, a Toronto singer killed by coyotes while walking alone in the Skyline Trail of the Cape Breton Highlands.

As of Friday, Armed Parks Canada officials were continuing to search for the coyotes responsible for the attack, but an official said a widespread kill of the animals wouldn’t occur.

Oh, darn it!

In the latest issue of Saint Mary’s University student newspaper The Journal, the age old feel-good issue of sending aid to Africa appears to be alive and well:

So what should Canada be doing to keep its promise? … to increase and provide more effective aid to developing countries, implement debt relief, and fairer trade rules in advance of 2015… In order for Canada to do its part and provide effective foreign aid, the government must reach the UN target of giving 0.7% of the national income (GNI) to foreign aid, and enact BillC-293 to make ending poverty the exclusive goal of Canadian foreign aid.

The issue normally brought up is whether or not this aid will actually work. According to some, aid sent to Africa will not only fail to work, but will actually make things worse:

[E]vidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment.

Government corruption and the existence of totalitarian regimes in Africa are the root cause:

The most obvious criticism of aid is its links to rampant corruption. Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations.

The article lists many disturbing examples of corruption and failure, and I urge everybody to read them all. Unfortunately there are too many to list without copy-and-pasting the entire article.

On a side note, does anyone remember the One Laptop Per Child campaign? Yuck. The Dalhousie University student newspaper The Gazette recently had an opinion editorial on the campaign and its failure:

I imagine that brightly coloured laptops sit in a small closet in rural Africa and slowly collect dust as the days pass. The school that owns them cannot secure power to recharge their batteries, the broken dreams of a grand philanthropist idea that was supposed to revolutionize the world.

Recently I was browsing through the Halifax Metro newspaper, and was disappointed to read this short little article:

Article

What’s beyond belief is that this is a news story to begin with. For one, it’s sad that a B.C. chief is picking on a blogger. What’s more sad is that his words are considered “inflammatory and discriminatory” to aboriginal people.

Apparently it’s a “slap in the face of First Nations people” to list off some of the many things the Europeans brought to Canada. Let me be the first to support Rachel Marsden – for free speech, and for being right.

So the star of one of my guilty pleasures is creating a hubbub about the seal hunt. Barf. Fortunately someone isn’t so naive:

Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea called Anderson’s remarks disappointing and suggested she spend time with East Coast sealers to understand the hunt’s importance.

“Hollywood celebrities are not going to dictate policy in Canada because we make decisions that are based on science and consultation with Canadians,” Shea said in a telephone interview.

One of the biggest arguments I hear from hippies that vehemently oppose the seal hunt is that they are cute and that they kill baby seals. In the world of make-believe, even facts don’t take the hysteria out of their argument.

Anderson said baby seals are bludgeoned in front of their mothers before they have their first swim, but Shea said the killing of baby seals hasn’t been practised in Canada since the early ’80s. Activists focus on it because it tugs at the heart strings, Shea said.

I love you Pam, but you’re not exactly the sharpest Crayon in the box.

All I can say is, welcome back Mr. Bernier!

“Maxime is a great friend and great member of my team,” the prime minister told a news conference.

“We all know that Max made a mistake a couple of years ago, which he owned up to, and stepped down. He is extremely valued by myself and all of his colleagues in Ottawa. So it’s great to have him on the team.”

The Iceman agrees:

Despite “cleavage-gate” and “file folder-gate”, Mr. Bernier still crushed his Bloc opponent in The Beauce by nearly 25,000 votes in 2008. The Beauce is one of the coolest riding names in Canada from a phonetic perspective. The people that he represents in parliament love the man.

I forgive Maxime for his error, and I would like to see him in a quality cabinet office. His ex-girlfriend had a screw loose. As a writer I am pissed off that she got a book deal over being good looking and showing cleavage in public. That lowers the standard for book deals. I hope Scott Reid doesn’t get a book deal.

It’s no surprise Stephen Harper thinks libertarians are naive; Brian Gardiner proves this like no other. Besides the horrible writing style and butchery of the english language, the post is riddled with mistakes:

After all, the Conservative Party just put much the same logo (sic) on the Olympic clothing to be worn by our athletes this year.

It doesn’t take much effort to find out that the Conservatives had nothing to do with it:

Gary Lunn, the minister of state for sport, said any resemblance was purely coincidental.

“I can assure you that no one in the Government of Canada was involved in any way, shape or form in the design of any of the Olympic clothing. In fact the first time I saw it was (Wednesday),” Lunn said in the House of Commons. “The clothing was designed by the Hudson’s Bay Company in consultations with the Canadian Olympic Committee and with an athletes’ panel.”

Next!

[The Liberal Party] is known as “Canada’s natural governing party,” and have branded themselves so well that Canada’s flag is Liberal red.

This was debunked by a simple comment by a reader:

Small correction: The Liberals never “branded themselves so well that Canada’s flag is Liberal red”.

During the Great Flag Debate, Mike Pearson’s proposed flag was a branch with three maple leaves (representing the English, French and Aboriginal founding nations) and bordered by two blue banners representing the two oceans. It was referred to as the Pearson Pennent.

In committee, the NDP, the Liberals, the Social Credit member of the committee and all of the Progressive Conservatives voted in favour of Gordon Stanley’s proposed flag, the one we have today (the maple leaf itself and the dimensions have changed somewhat).

Moreover, Stanley’s proposed flag had nothing to do with the Liberals. He got the idea from the flag of the Royal Military College of Canada.

Perhaps libertarians can gain more respect if they take more time to make their posts accurate rather than using a dead issue as ammunition to attack the Prime Minister (both sides of the political spectrum are against using partisan logos on government cheques). Though it should be obvious this wasn’t a federal move and was not approved by Harper, measures have been taken by our leader to ensure fairness in the future:

Speaking in Edmonton at an unrelated announcement, Harper, criticized recently by his political opponents for mixing government and partisan advertising, said Keddy’s move was a “mistake that is not going to be repeated.”

To ensure the message got through to Conservative troops, a memo was emailed Wednesday to Conservative caucus members urging them, their staff and constituency workers not to cross the line.

[Gerald Keddy] has apologized for plastering a Conservative Party logo on a giant “prop cheque,” admitting it was “inappropriate” to highlight a partisan connection to the expenditure of taxpayer funds.

Finally, I want to mention that Coca Cola is a corporation while the government is not. To compare the two (which Brian does twice in his post) doesn’t make much of anything other than a pretty simile. Try comparing our government with, you know, an existing or former government – it may strengthen your case better than a pop company can.

In the latest issue of the Saint Mary’s University student newspaper The Journal, professor Mark Mercer writes about the current censorship issue in Canada; in particular, section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The article outlines recent happenings surrounding the unpopular section, and the problems that come with reforming or revising section 13. Mr. Mercer instead suggests repealing it, as many are advocating:

Improved censorship is still censorship; improved censorship will no more serve the interests of society’s marginal or vulnerable than the old censorship did; improved censorship will still be the enemy of discussion, candour, and autonomy; improved censorship will still be the friend of identity politics and the cult of victimization.

Article

Similar to the call by Blazing Cat Fur, Mr. Mercer prescribes the most effective way to win the battle of free speech in Canada:

Canadians must present to their elected representatives the case for making Canada a free and open society, The justice committee of the House of Commons began meetings on [October 5] to consider section 13. The wicked are eager to embrace revisions and reforms. In response, we must press our members of parliament to delete the section entirely and put the censors out of business for good.

It’s also worth mentioning the amazing speeches by Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, located here. Watch or listen to a very well crafted argument and be prepared to be either reassured or converted into a soldier of free speech!

In one of the best essays of the year, Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative magazine discusses the differences between high church conservatism, a la Edmund Burke, and the low church conservatism of modern United States. McCarthy states:

…[T]he philosophy [Burke] espoused, most famously in Reflections, was a high church conservatism to match his High Church Anglicanism. His understanding of the proper relationship between faith, culture, and politics was very different from that of the radical Protestants, whose anti-establishment views held revolutionary implications for the social order.

High church conservatism is the opposite of low church. It privileges works over faith, being more concerned with prudent policy than with the inner moral character of politicians or what they profess. It is deferential (sometimes to a fault) to hierarchy and suspicious (also sometimes to a fault) of popular movements and enthusiasm. It is leery of eschatological passions. And above all it works to avoid schism—the high church conservative’s objective is to preserve the fabric of society and, so far as possible, elevate its culture. This, he believes, can only be done within the mainstream of national life. For Coleridge and the 19th- century poet and literary critic Matthew Arnold, the function of an established church is less religious than cultural. As Coleridge writes, “Christianity, and a fortiori any particular scheme of Theology derived and supposed (by its partizans) to be deduced from Christianity, [is] no essential part of the Being of the National Church, however conducive or even indispensable it may be to its well-being…” Its being, or essence, is in the preservation of culture.

On the other hand,

Low church conservatism, more familiar, is readily described. It has five common characteristics. First, it values faith over works—what counts is the character of a politician and the intentions behind his actions, not the outcome of his policies. No man, of course, can read another’s soul, thus in practice the low church conservative places great value on professions of ideological purity. Sinning politicians like Newt Gingrich and David Vitter may be forgiven, so long as they say the right things. Disastrous policies—wars gone awry, for example—may be pardoned on account of righteous aims. Conversely, good works count for naught without profession of the right political faith.

Second, low church conservatism retains the anti-clericalism of its religious counterpart. This entails a pervasive anti-elitism. For the low church conservative, a popular broadcaster such as Rush Limbaugh possesses greater authority than a scholar such as Russell Kirk. The former derives his position from (or has it affirmed by) the congregation—his listeners. A Kirk, on the other hand, appears all too priestly. To be right requires no special learning, only acceptance of a basic creed.

A third trait is a tendency toward cultural separatism. The low church conservative prefers building parallel institutions to compromising with existing centers of authority. Sometimes this is commendable. More often, it is not. The proliferation of “conservative” movies, “conservative” dating services, “conservative” universities, and a “conservative” counter-counterculture—complete with “conservative” Che T-shirts—is emblematic. The low church conservative abhors the mainstream; the word itself is a pejorative.

Fourth is a belief that the eschaton is imminent (if not immanent). Every political battle is a clash of titanic principle, a skirmish in the final conflict between light and darkness. Every bellicose dwarf in command of a developing nation is a potential Antichrist, or the geostrategic equivalent, a Hitler. No Saddam or Chavez is merely a tin-pot dictator.

Fifth, and most important, right makes might. Moral truth is easily known, and nothing should stand in the way of its application in policy. The goal of politics is to enact what is right and true. When a Bush administration official told Ron Suskind, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” he was not being cynical. He was naïve: for how could righteous men possessed of great power fail to achieve whatever they set out to do? From this logic, it follows that abortion can be ended and the sexual revolution repealed, if only we elect enough Republicans.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been espousing high church conservative principles along with several others in the right-of-centre blogosphere. Are we the ones that will rediscover this type of conservatism?

High church conservatism remains to be rediscovered. It will not offer the Right an easy road to power, but then that is not what it is meant to do. More important than reclaiming Congress or the White House, or even “winning” on specific issues, is the task of restoring the constitution—not only the written Constitution but also the cultural framework that must undergird it. Without an institutional, national clerisy, high church conservatives are in the awkward position of having to anoint themselves for the task. But after 30 years of low church conservatism, some alternative must be found.

Well, someone has to do it!

As well, McCarthy links Michael Oakeshott with Burke, though through a different context as I did in The Common Ideas of Burke and Oakshott:

For the low church conservative, politics is teleocratic—a purpose-driven activity. In the language of British philosopher Michael Oakeshott (very much a high church type), the low church conservative views the state—and perhaps his church, too—as an “enterprise association.” The high church conservative, on the other hand, considers the state to be a “civil association,” whose enjoyment is its own reward.

And again, similar to my article on social innovation, McCarthy makes sure to state that high church conservatives like Burke, Oakeshott, and myself believe in an organic society by saying that “[t]here is a strong inclination among high church conservatives against interfering in the social order except to preserve its constitutional architectonics.”

Will high church conservatism make a comeback in the right-of-centre world, or is it destined to sink with the other failed philosophies? Like always, I’m curious to know what you think!

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