Warren Kinsella

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Ideologues

“Wither thou goest, America, in that shiny black car in the night?”

It is a glimmering bit of poetry, that line, found at the heart of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road.’ Kerouac’s book, it seemed to me twenty years ago (and now), meandered as much as its protagonists. But that line always stuck with me, memorable for its pithiness and prescience - anticipating Viet Nam and the civil rights battles, among other things.

It is a line that can be appropriated - to the chagrin of Kerouac’s estate, no doubt - to query something other than the dark mystery of America’s hereafter. I suggest this: “Wither thou goest, conservatives, in thine shiny Black limo?”

To me, the salience of that question is more apparent now than it has been for a long time. For a long time, of course, you and I have been bombarded with po-faced journalism about the perilous state of Canadian conservatives - whether they be progressive, reformist or inclined towards alliances. No national issue has been accorded as much ink.

Being one who periodically relishes poking a stick through the bars at Canada’s conservatives (you can decide for yourself who is within the cage, and who is without), I have been labelled a “smear doctor” and a “Liberal toady” - even by rightist and leftist columnists at the very newspaper you hold in your hands. That’s fine; that’s politics. If my political adversaries are calling me a statesman, I know that I am doing something wrong.

But it was not until this week that the inability of conservatives to form a national political party - much less a national government - was considered for what it is. And what it is not a failure of opportunity, nor a failure of organization. It is a failure of ideology.

Being a Liberal, and being a liberal, I am suspicious of ideology. Ideologues - and their non-secular variants, visionaries - start wars and religions. They are prepared to trample upon people, and communities, to achieve distinction in some unwritten history text. I have always believed that Canadians, too, are wary of ideology, making electoral choices on the basis of practicalities, not polemics. That goes as much for the left as it does for the right.

But then, in the wake of the much delayed (and long overdue) departure of Lord Black, there were two opinion pieces published from opposing ends of the ideological continuum. One, by Neil Seeman, a former editorialist at the National Post; the other, by Richard Gwyn, a long-time columnist at the Toronto Star. Both of them essentially said the same thing, albeit from radically different perspectives.

Seeman’s parroted an aphorism of the departed Lord, and asserted that Canada is “a sinkhole of weedy liberalism.” He went on to regurgitate the usual neo-con blather - that welfare programs cause “despair,” but do not help to alleviate it; that only privatized health care can eliminate “needless death;” that pay equity is “racist and sexist;” and so on. Smart young neo-con fellows like Mr. Seeman typically blame the failure of Canadian conservatism on a stew of conspiracy theories, in which the CBC, Medicare and the Liberal Party play leading roles. But Neil Seeman’s piece was refreshing because it allowed for a new possibility: Canadians don’t support conservatism because, well, they don’t like it. Said Mr. Seeman: “Neo-conservatism is unpopular in Canada.”

Mr. Gwyn agreed, and he pulled no punches. “There’s no other way to say it,” he wrote. “At some basic level, Canadian neo-cons aren’t really Canadians.” Going for the figurative jugular, Mr. Gwyn called neo-cons “temporary Canadians, or American wannabes.” And, he declared, “Canadians sense this.”

Indeed they do, indeed they do. The failure of the Progressive Conservative party over the past decade - as well as the failure of the Reform Party and its successor corporation, the Canadian Alliance - is largely attributable, I believe, to conservative ideas. Canadians have examined them, at election time and other times, and found them profoundly lacking. For example, deficit cutting, as every Liberal knows, was done to preserve health care. To a conservative, deficit cutting is done simply because they like to cut. It gets them off, as it were.

As they contemplate all of this, cruising about in their shiny, dark metaphorical limousine, Canada’s conservatives might well consider a change of course. Personally, I suggest pointing your vehicle south, where you belong. Permanently.

All contents copyright 2006 warrenkinsella.com.
No reproduction whatsoever, in any form, without permission.