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It's about a Cultural-Conservative Movement, Not the Conservative Party
Friday, May 4, 2007
Someone once told me that Canada will never have a conservative movement like the one in the United States because Canadians aren't willing to think beyond the world of party politics. Based on the feedback to my recent column, "A Conservative Movement: It is About Time," there may be merit to this claim.
My column dealt with the theoretical and foundational issue of how we can shift the cultural centre to give more influence to conservative ideas. I suggested that rather then rail about the real or perceived failures of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada, the best thing to do was to work at a conservative movement.
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Yet much of the criticism I received demonstrated that some Canadians just don't get it: its not about the party, its about a movement.
First let me just say that I understand that uniting the "right" was no small feat. Furthermore, I appreciate the challenge of managing a "minority government" - this is undoubtedly a difficult task. And, moreover, I accept that given the present realities of politics today, victory belongs to the party that can capture the political centre - which means that politicians will have to focus on economic policy and not "ideology".
I get all that.
Really!
But that's not what I was talking about. And the fact that so many didn't understand what I was talking about actually reinforces what I am saying. I'm saying that besides all this talk about the best political strategy and understanding the realities of politics - all valid points but ultimately all procedural and strategic concerns - we need to talk about the importance of an ideological movement.
For one thing, I'm not particularly interested in pelting Prime Minister Stephen Harper or the Conservative Party of Canada. There is no real point to it. At times I've come to their defense when they've helped to advance a conservative agenda. But I'm also not interested in being their blind partisan cheerleader, simply because they're better then the Liberals.
I'm interested in conservatism.
And that means I'm interested in an ideological movement that will promote conservative values and principles. At times this will make me an ally of the "Party", and at other times it will make me a critic, because my job, in movement building, goes beyond "Party" loyalty.
As I said, as important as politics is, politics isn't everything.
What we need today is a cultural-conservative movement; and that means we've got to think outside of the party apparatus, and think beyond election strategy, and above all we've got to stop reducing everything to the political question of how such-and-such a statement will affect the Conservative Party's chances in the next federal election.
Frankly, that is both juvenile and exasperating.
Rather, what we need to be talking about is how what we are doing today affects the viability of conservatism tomorrow.
For a cultural-conservative movement to be viable it must not be consumed with short-term political solutions (i.e. strategy) all in the name of getting a "Party" elected; it needs to promote an ideology and build institutions that will sustain that ideology in order to maintain cultural viability down the road. And for that to happen we need conservatives to talk principles and promote ideology, and work beyond the "Party," even if it means that from time to time the "Party" gets criticized.
But neither of these aims needs to be mutually exclusive. They can be complementary. We can build a "Party" and a movement because in principle they deal with very different concerns: One deals with strategy and how to govern from the political centre; the other deals with movement and how to shift the political centre from where it is today, to where it needs to be tomorrow.
That's why movement building is so important - because a conservative movement tackles the question of how to go about shifting the political centre from where it is presently to where it should be.
To do that we need to change the culture - no small task indeed. And the way to change the culture is to build a grassroots conservative movement, a movement that promotes conservative values and principles; and the best way to do that is to create infrastructure: institutions that will support the promotion of conservative values.
What is this infrastructure I'm talking about? Well to start with, we need alternative media, talk-radio and conservative news sources. Of course with the leftwing bias of the CRTC, that becomes a very difficult task, so we're going to have to fund powerful web radio stations, with good programs, powerful websites, and possibly satellite news and radio; coupled with that we need our own conservative personalities, authors, pundits and commentators. We also need several conservative publishing houses and we need lots of think-tanks.
Once we've got this kind of infrastructure in place, established and well funded, then and only then, will be able to fight against the liberal media juggernaut from a position of strength - then, the movement will get under way.
So ultimately my previous column was directed at all those disgruntled conservatives who aren't exactly happy with Harper right now. And what I was saying was that if they aren't happy, the only way to solve that is to get busy building a movement - a cultural-conservative movement.
| Yours for our culture, |
Tristan Emmanuel |
| ECP Centre President |
Hardcover
$39.95 cdn, $28.95 us
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Softcover
$23.95 cdn, $18.95 us
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WARNED
Canada's Revolution Against Faith, Family and Freedom Threatens America by Tristan Emmanuel
This book is essential reading for both Americans and Canadians even though it is more particularly directed to our American friends. Both countries face a serious challenge to their cultures. This book exposes the radical exploitation of Canada at the hands of extremist activists, leftwing politicians and a plethora of crusading activist judges, who are using their status in Canada to get at America. Their aim is marriage. But the prize is America. They want to use marriage as a weapon to systematically destroy the Judeo-Christian civilization of North America, but to do that they need America to "go gay". Gay "marriage" will open up America to the rest of the demands of the homosexual political movement. Everything from school curriculum to parental rights, adoption, the age of consent and religious freedoms will be up for grabs once gay "marriage" is made legal in America. Unless socons in both countries unite and work to resist these political opponents, we can kiss our continent good-bye.
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