Mike Brock thinks about it

Have my politics changed? No, not really. They have solidified. They have become more encompassing and less grounded in the status quo.

The frustration I feel right now is not so much a disenchantment with society and mainstream politics, but an internal struggle; an inability for me to reconcile certain aspects of my ideologies with what are, quite possibly, gut feelings and instincts.

Some or all of these feelings and instincts are socially conditioned. Others may be a result of some higher-level reasoning. Or maybe not …

A major internal conflict is the struggle between trying to hold a personal set of philosophies and morals in absolute while having the “gut feeling” and “instinct” that holding philosophies and morals in absolute is wrong. It leads to dangerous, horrible things.
mike brock

One of the problems which face intelligent people is the fact they can reason their way through to the less attractive implications of their most basic beliefs. Mike Brock is having a hard time with his conservatism. I suspect because he is not, in fact, a conservative in the Canadian sense of that term.

Instead he is a radical well outside the politics as usual CPC mainstream whose only real principle is that it would be better to have a Conservative government than a Liberal one. That is what conservative has come to mean in Canada and it is really rather pathetic. Because to beat the Liberals, as Brian Mulroney proved, you have to become the Liberals unless you are willing to cease playing the old style Canadian poltical game.

My sense is that Mike Brock is a radical in the sense that Margaret Thatcher was a radical. Thatcher’s great insight was that the Conservative Party would get no where being a “me too” version of the right wing of the Labour Party. So she wasn’t. Instead she initiated a revolution which put England on the road to becoming one of the most efficient economies in Europe.

Radicals in Canada have tended to be on the Left. It is difficult to think of a right wing radical in Canadian history - and George Grant does not count, he was essentially statist in outlook. Dief was a populist and he scared the bejesus out of Bay Street; but he was philosophically more an old Tory, for King and Country, man than an out and out radical.

Which is, of course, exactly what is wrong with the Me Too Tories. They have not had a radical thought since Preston Manning left the building.

For the Mike Brocks of the world, cheerleading as the CPC runs on SSM/Adscam/Me Too and is beaten handily by a Liberal Party which will still not form a majority government in unsupportable politically. But, worse, the complete abandonment of principle in pursuit of the electoral Holy Grail is painful for any one with an ounce of political integrity to watch.

Welcome to the libertarian world Mike. Lonely, but able to sleep at night, that’s us.

Written by jay on August 16th, 2005 with 6 comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and blogging.