Context

A commentator from this ridiculous Globe & Mail Editorial. I’d have just linked the comment, but for some inexplicable reason, G&M’s comment section doesn’t provide links to comments.

Celtthedog 18 hours ago
Sigh. This is written with a sense of correcting a lot of nonsense.
I’m a Briton who lived in Canada for eight years. That doesn’t make me an expert in Canada, but it does mean I know a lot more about Canada than the writer of this editorial knows about the UK. So, here goes:
Back in the 1980s, Canada fought a general election on the basis of free trade with the United States. It was a heated debate, with issues like national sovereignty and national identity raised, along with those of economics.
The free-trading Conservatives won; the deal was done.
That’s the history. Now imagine if, on the basis of this result, subsequent Canadian governments, without putting it their party platforms, slowly but surely ceded more and more political and not economic, sovereignty to the United States. All the while denying they were doing so. As the process went on, it accelerated, and soon Canadians found their Supreme Court overruled by the US Supreme Court and that certain laws passed by the US Congress, lacking support in Canada, nonetheless became applicable to Canada. Pretty soon you’d start to question what the end destiny of this process was, only to be told by your elected representatives not to worry, political union with the United States was not on the cards.
The analogy is imperfect, but the fact is in 1975 the UK held a referendum on remaining in a “common market” (to quote from the actual ballot paper). Since then, successive parliaments have surrendered more and more of our sovereignty to the European Union — mostly in a series of treaties which polls repeatedly showed were overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of Britons (for the past 30 years polls have consistently shown that only around 20% of the British people support political union with Europe).
It’s fine for you to say the British are wrong to hold these views, just as it would be fine for me to tell you that Canada should form a political union with the United States. It’s not fine to deny people their democratic right to reject such union — or to lie about it.
I won’t waste too much time correcting the misconceptions in here about Scotland. I’ll only note that if a leave vote was so beneficial to the Scottish Nationalist Party, you may want to ask why the SNP’s chief ventriloquist, Alexander Salmon, and his dummy, Nicola Sturgeon, campaigned so aggressively for the “remain” side. Trust me, it wasn’t out of any love for Britain.
Frankly, the view of the English towards the Scots Nats is beginning to resemble that of English-speaking Canadians to the Quebec Nationalists — political blackmailers whose bluff needs to be called.
This newspaper has called for Canada to become a republic when Queen Elizabeth II dies. I understand why. Canada wants to cut the final colonial tie and become a completely sovereign nation. I respect that. But how about dropping he hypocrisy? We want to return to being a completely sovereign nation, too.

Christophobia

So, we have a paradox. Considered both historically and in terms of its contemporary manifestations, Islam would appear to be the least liberal of religions. Nor is it easy to see why any devout Muslim would want to accommodate his religion to liberalism — especially when he sees how liberals have come to treat Christianity after having tamed it. Yet liberals by and large seem to think such an accommodation is not only possible but highly likely. Why? Is there something in Islam that liberals have seen that others have not? Or are liberal hopes delusional?

Grab a coffee.

Who Killed Conservativism?

Fundamentally, conservatism is a cultural perspective. It’s a philosophical outlook rooted in ones traditions and heritage. Managerialism is the obliteration of culture and tradition, in favor of sterile technocratic governance. Once the Official Right surrendered to this it ceased to be conservative. No conservative ends can ever be achieved at gun point. Political liberty, after all, is the minimization of the use of coercion by the state in its essential role of preventing one person’s freedom from intruding upon another’s.
That’s why Buckley Conservatism is dying. The challenges of this age are all cultural. Globalism marshals the monopoly of force of each state against the local communities trying to hold onto their traditional way of life. Mass migration disrupts the demographic balance that makes for social stability. You can’t address these forces, much less oppose them, with programs that promise to expand the role of the state in the affairs of the citizens.
The Contract with America promised to eliminate 95 specific government programs. None of those programs were eliminated. Welfare reform was passed and offered the first substantive alterations of these programs in a generation. Even so, the budget for these 95 programs during Gingrich’s time as Speaker grew by 13%. That’s the story of post-Cold War conservatism. Lots of Five Year Plans and artfully labeled agendas, but the result has been a 25 year run of expanding government and retreating liberty.

h/t Me No Dhimmi

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