One More Epicycle

From Jonathan Kay, on the collapse of Ezra Levant’s Western Standard, like its predecessor the Alberta Report:

All this bloodless market analysis notwithstanding, I was still upset to hear last week’s news – and not just because I felt bad for Ezra, whom I am now happy to call a friend. In many ways, Ezra and his magazine serve as metaphors for red-meat conservatism itself in this country: feisty, iconoclastic, resourceful and clever, but ultimately marginalized by an eastern Canadian intellectual establishment still beholden to the left-wing dogmas and anti-Western antipathies of Trudeau era.

To be fair, the standard-bearer of American conservatism in the U.S. is the National Review, and despite an illustrious history and enormous influence I don’t think they’ve ever turned a profit. Could an offbeat Canadian Western-focused conservative-libertarian magazine with limited audience and no large donor base really survive? It was, to quote one of my favourite Python skits, “an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.”

And of course now there’s one fewer destination for Colby Cosh’s writing, and that’s a tragedy: albeit not an uncommon one for freelance writers in general, and for him in particular. (Now less “lance”, as a friend of mine might put it.)

To take this in a different direction, Michael Novak has done his best to rehabilitate the idea of business in Catholic moral philosophy. Among other things, he emphasizes that the man who employs others in good and lawful tasks is doing an excellent and praiseworthy thing, not merely by achieving a good end (providing service to his customers) but giving his employees the opportunity to do the same and legitimately earn a living. Doing good to make it possible for others to do good is itself a good.

Honourable failure in such a task — whether it’s related to the always quixotic missions of Canadian conservatism or not — isn’t reason to celebrate, obviously.. but there’s no shame in it either.

Cheers to Levant and company for holding the banner.

Steve Janke lays it down in a fascinating post entitled “Canada needs the NDP” (no, but seriously):

For a conservative, a liberal serves the purpose of contrasting his views and highlighting to the voter the potential futures at stake. The same goes for the liberal. An honest liberal or conservative would admit that, once in a while, the other side has a better take on an issue, or at the very least, is offering up something worth considering. But for the Liberal Party of Canada, other parties serve no purpose, because as a party without vision, the Liberal Party doesn’t require contrast. How can the other parties have a better take on the issue of the acquisition of power and money by the Liberal Party? It makes no sense when those are the only issues that matter. The Liberal Party doesn’t need opinions, all the Liberal Party needs is votes when an election happens. Best if these other parties were gone altogether in order to make the elections simple. The choice to voters: confirm the Liberal Party’s position of power or…well, nothing else, really.

I find myself agreeing with him. My Dipper friends have an almost endearing lack of connection with reality, but on their good days they can be touchingly earnest. I think his argument that Canada will be better off for having the NDP as the alternative to the Conservatives is correct.

There’s another excellent reason for conservatives to prefer having the NDP in opposition: as Janke notes, they will inevitably become more centrist, which should allow the misnamed “Conservative” party to move to the right.

My insistence on the point may be tiresome, but it’s still true for all that. The CPC made a deliberate decision to abandon many historic principles of Canadian conservatism on the grounds that more centrist goals were the only ones achievable. I disagreed with the choice at the time, and complained about it loudly at the pub.. although the narrowness of the last election suggests they may have had a point tactically. I’m still not convinced it was the right decision strategically.

Anyway, Janke offers much food for thought for observers of the Canadian political scene.