Western European worldviews: Conservatism vs Liberalism
Is it really only one Canadian political party that needs to cool it with the 1) lying and 2) legitimizing of weird foreign ideologies?
What do I think about all this?
I think that there has been a genuine change in the Overton Window of Canadian politics.
Canada’s Overton Window
For much of Canada’s existence (since the passage of the British North America Act 1867. Let’s not conflate other institutions that had the name “Canada” in them) it has operated consistent with the Western European Liberalism of the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Yes, I am saying that the Liberal-Conservative party of John A Macdonald, Progressive Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney, and even the New Democratic Party governments at the provincial level, all followed what is considered Liberalism of the day.
While many point to John A. Macdonald as a horrible person but claim that P.E. Trudeau was progressive, I consider P.E. Trudeau to be more overtly racist for his time period. It is also important to remember that “Liberalism” doesn’t mean “not racist”, it is merely one of the two most common responses to the actual diversity of the human experience that came out of Western European worldviews.
If you look at the history of Canadian political parties, you can see quite a bit of name changes, but if you look closely and put into the context of the time period, they all fell within the context of Western European Liberalism.
The beginnings of the change.
If you examine the formation of the Reform Party in 1987, you will notice the rally call of “The West Wants In”. The problem is, in the context of Canadian politics, the actual political divisions have been south-vs-north.
Nearly 70% of Canada’s population is south of the 49’th parallel, while 80% of the geography is north of the 49’th parallel. The political differences have always been north-vs-south, with southern settler governments wanting to control northern resources. The drawing of provinces to be “taller” (north-south) rather than “wider” (east-west) was clearly intentional gerrymandering.
As one example, the southern government of Alberta’s (Edmonton, Calgary settlers) primary grievances relate to their desire to exploit the northern resources of what was known as the District of Athabasca prior to the passage of Alberta Act 1905. An alternative that avoided this gerrymandering would have been to make the southern District of Alberta into a Province of Alberta, allowing the District of Athabasca to be self-governing.
Fundamentally, the grievances that were used in the formation of the Reform Party is one distant capital of a southern government complaining that a different distant capital of a southern government is limiting the speed at which they exploit northern lands (and ignore the very lives of northern peoples).
The Reform Party took aim at the Progressive Conservative party, which it branded as a foreign “Eastern” party, and after a few decades successfully took it over in 2003.
Over the next few decades the party went through a few leaders that remained within the Overton Window of Western European Liberalism, but the movement was never really satisfied with what the party was doing.
This is when Reform activists elevated someone who grew up within the Reform movement, and appointed Pierre Poilievre as leader. While some think of Poilievre as a person from Ottawa, he had only moved to Ottawa from Calgary in 2000 to work for “Canadian Alliance” (Rebranded Reform) party leader Stockwell Day. Pierre Poilievre is a career politician within the Reform movement.
While previous Reform leadership, and early post-2003 takeover Conservative leadership tried to fit within Liberalism (whether marketing or reality, we will never know), under Pierre Poilievre what is starting to resemble more of Western European Conservatism has been overtly welcomed and brought to the foreground.
Foreign Western European Liberalism vs Conservatism
I expressed the difference between Western European Liberalism and Western European Conservatism in an earlier post.
One of the confusions many Western worldview loyalists have is around the difference between Western Conservatism and Western Liberalism when it comes to diversity (including diversity in conceptualizations of sovereignty).
For Western Conservatives they recognize the existence of diversity, and want to eradicate it within their domain of influence (strict immigration/extradition policies, etc).
For Western Liberals they want to discount the relevance of diversity, and want all diversity to assimilate into Western “Age of Enlightenment” ideology – which allows land and life to be more easily manageable by the centralized hierarchical administrative state.
In both cases, diversity isn’t intended to remain within their exclusive control over land and life within imaginary lines (Westphalian borders), but one appears more “polite” than the other.
I know that those who align with Western European Liberalism will see Western European Conservatism as a huge change, but when it comes to questions such as genocidal policies against Indigenous nationalities (domestic relational sovereignty vs Western European Westphalian sovereignty) they will be very similar.
Adherence to Liberalism will just as easily locate these genocidal policies in the past, or will conflate the term “genocide” with the term “homicide”.
The extremely common Canadian pastime of genocide denialism (past and present) isn’t so much a debate about whether policies happened (or are ongoing). The policies are well documented, and the debate seems to be about the meaning of the words themselves within the silos of Western European worldviews.
In my recent experience, since my recent deep-dives into anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and worldviews, I see considerable similarity in views about domestic (Indigenous) peoples whether the person is a devotee of the NDP, Liberal, Conservative, or Bloc parties.
