When North Western Winds passed 1,000 hits back in the fall (NWW has been around only since August of last year), I did a short little post thanking regular readers and thinking aloud about the blog as I saw it evolving. On the weekend, NWW passed 5,000 hits and I feel another such reflection is due. The weekend also saw the closing of the Canadian Blog Awards, in which NWW was nominated for "Best Conservative blog." I don't know who nominated me, but a big hearty thanks for that. Mike Brock, at Brock: on the Attack won that category and I freely acknowledge that he has a fine blog over there.
It was instructive to see the list of blogs that were nominated for the CBA. I have tried to carve out a niche for NWW, to position it so that it might fill a purpose that, to the best of my knowledge, is wide open in the Canadian blogosphere. NWW is undoubtedly and very intentionally a Conservative blog. What is different is that NWW is unapologetically Conservative on both the economic and social axes. There are plenty of Canadian blogs that are Conservative in a Libertarian vein, of which Brock: On the Attack might be one of the best. And there are Canadian blogs that are more conventionally conservative, but who do not focus much on the subject of religion. Perhaps because I am a recent convert, and perhaps because I'm too dumb to know any better, NWW has not been shy about discussing religion. Despite not backing away from the 'R' word, and despite its thoroughgoing Conservatism, it is not my intent on this blog to be radical or extreme.
I am not a Conservative radical, not a reactionary, and I am not a theocrat. The aim here is to connect common modern conservative political aims with their roots in the culture that birthed them, i.e. in the traditional, mainstream religion of the West - in Christianity. In doing so I hope in some small way to put a robust and muscular flesh on the bones of Canadian Conservatism - not "small c" Conservatism, or "compassionate" Conservatism, but Conservatism, free of adjectives and qualifiers - because there is nothing wrong with the ideas behind it, and a great deal that is right.
Conservatism as I see it
English and American Conservatism is rich and strong, with many fine thinkers and writers to draw on, but Canadians, for the most part, seem to be unaware of them. When we are aware of them we wrongly convince ourselves that their ideas cannot possibly be of any use in a country that is so thinly spread out and so divided. Reading Edmund Burke would help us to understand the strengths of our parliamentary tradition, so that we might stop looking longingly at the unstable coalitions of the Fifth (eighteenth?) Republic of France or the new European Union. F. A. Hayek would tell us much about the folly of planning and of socialism, Roger Scruton would tell us about the deeply human face of Conservatism, and Russell Kirk would give us its historical underpinnings. Because it speaks deeply to the experience of what it is to be human, Conservatism ought to be able to reach out to anyone in this country who is not in thrall to a modern mechanical ideology of some sort.
Since at least the post war years, Conservatives in Canada have bought into the Liberal definition of the separation of church and state. As a result, Conservative culture lives quietly in people's homes and in the churches, while Liberalism is found in those places and everywhere else too - especially in the schools and in the media. As a result of ceding the culture, Canadian Conservatives are always on the defensive. We have unwittingly swallowed the idea that even speaking our ideas in public spaces means we are overstepping the boundaries of political decorum in Canada. We apologize too much and we defend too meekly. We must act such that we are the defacto defenders of the people, and of the best of their traditions. We might start with the separation of church and state, which does not mean the establishment of secular Liberalism as a replacement for Anglicanism. It means that a person or a party that is too zealous in applying its religious underpinnings risks being thrown out by the people on election day.
Canadian Conservatives of recent times lack conviction and definition. Given its organic and piecemeal nature, there is something inherently indefinite about Conservatism, but not so much so that we can call Joe Clark a Conservative and seriously mean it. We have lost touch with our heritage in ways that other Anglo countries have not - the English, the Americans, and the Australians have done a better job of rejecting the idea that Christianity cannot accommodate and respectfully rule a country that is no longer as heterogeneous as it once was. We have lost the connection between Christianity and freedom. When Conservativism presents only its Libertarian face, we are perceived by those in the centre as destroyers of culture and tradition, rather than it's protectors. Showing one face also gives the appearance of hiding something.
Conservatives offer libertarianism to the country as an compromise or an olive branch of sorts, but it is is viewed by many as a club that would endanger people's defenses against the strong, and risk placing them in a more Darwinian state. It's not such a mystery that all but the strongest recoil from that image. What is a mystery is that so many for so long have embraced the slow burning acid of Liberalism. Christianity, presented properly, can give Conservatives the warm, open face they need. It is the glue that binds a nation such that Liberty is embraced and Liberalism is rejected.
That is the point of view that I write from.
As I have thought about this blog and what I want to do with it, it has become more and more obvious that this might be a niche that I can fill in the Canadian blogosphere. If there are others doing it already, that's great! I simply haven't found you yet... Given my chosen subject and the depth I hope to bring to it, I'll probably continue to post essays of various sizes. I will try my best to keep them bite sized so that normal human beings can read it over coffee and then get on with their lives. I also plan to continue posting collections of links from time to time.
Freedom is miraculous
G.K. Chesterton dealt with the irrepressible freedom and dignity of man in the Western tradition brilliantly in his book, The Everlasting Man. I enjoy Chesterton's prose so much that I hope you will allow me to indulge in it:
There will be no end to weary debates about liberalizing theology, until people face the fact that the only liberal part of it is the dogmatic part. If dogma is incredible, it is because it is incredibly liberal. If it is irrational, it can only be in giving us more assurance of freedom than is is justified by reason. The obvious example is that essential freedom which we call free will. It is absurd to say that a man shows his liberality in denying his liberty. But it is tenable that he has to affirm a transcendental doctrine in order to affirm his liberty. There is a sense in which we may reasonably say that if a man has a primary power of choice, he has in that fact a supernatural power of creation, as if he could raise the dead or give birth to the unbegotten. Possibly in that case a man must be miracle; and certainly in that case he must be a miracle in order to be a man; and most certainly in order to be free man. But it is absurd to forbid him to be free man and do it in the name of a more free religion. ... Anybody who believes in God must believe in the absolute supremacy of God. But in so far as that supremacy does allow any of any degrees that can be called liberal or illiberal, it is self evident that the illiberal power is the deity of the rationalists and the liberal power is the deity of the dogmatists. Exactly in proportion as you turn monotheism into monism you turn it into despotism. It is precisely the unknown God of the scientist, with his impenetrable purpose and unalterable law, that reminds us of a Prussian autocrat making rigid plans in a remote tent and moving mankind like machinery. It is precisely the God of miracles and of answered prayers who reminds us of a liberal and popular prince, listening to parliaments and considering the cases of the whole people... What the denouncer of dogma means is not that dogma is bad; but rather that it is too good to be true... Dogma gives man too much freedom when he falls... That is what the intelligent skeptics ought to say... We say, not lightly but very literally, that the truth has made us free. They say that it makes us so free that it cannot be the truth... I decline to show any respect for those who... rivet the chains and refuse the freedom... [who] tell us that our emancipation is a dream and our dungeon a necessity; and then calmly turn around and tell us they have a freer thought and a more liberal theology.
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