Demanding a Difference

I’m mad as many of you are — mad at the present state of American conservatism.   That is the purpose of this blog.  Simply put, I no longer believe that conservatism — at least, as it’s currently constituted and understood by the ordinary man and women on the street — is relevant to the American political scene.   

Why?  Well, I could go on and on about this, but in a nutshell, it is because America is a center-right rather than a right-wing nation.  Yes, I’m the first to concede that most of us, including your humble servant, mistrust big government.  Compared with our western European cousins, we like our government comparatively small, lean and manageable.  Even so, we’re not hostile to government in principle. We have gladly accepted, and, in many cases, genuinely revered some government programs.  Need I even mention the GI Bill — or land grant universities, or Interstate highways?  I only scratch the surface. So why did I choose such a quirky term as “red tory” to describe myself and to title this blog?   For that matter, why did I choose a heretofore exclusively Canadian term?  Because it is high time sane conservatives began drawing radical distinctions between what I consider to be real conservatism and the narrow, rigid, theocratically-tinged ideology that passes for conservatism today.   

I consider myself something of an expert on the subject.  Roughly a decade ago, I labored in the ideological vineyards of the far right.  Sometime, oh, in my early adulthood, I abandoned the hardy, practical, Eisenhower conservatism of my
North Alabama upbringing for the booby-hatch variety of the hard right.  For a time, this involvement became rather exotic.  For several years, I regrettably was involved not only in the League of the South but the ill-fated Southern party, one of the League’s unfortunate spin-offs.  (More about that later.)

It was one of the great mistakes of my life, but like most unfortunate experiences, it forced a radical reappraisal of my worldview.  I have become in mid-life a realist with a unique hatred of isms — isms of every description.  That is why I’m drawn to the Canadian term red tory.  First and foremost, conservatism is about realism — understanding the human condition and trying to come to terms with it.   By and large, Canadian red tories have come to terms with that fact far better than most of us.