Many Canadians don't know very much about our national history.

Tories have a passion for the commonweal and the commons. The good of the people and the nation, with each finding their place in an organic whole for the common good, is an essential part of Tory politics

Canadian businesspeople and writers such as Peter Munk, Gordon Nixon, Dominic D’Alessandro, Donald Macdonald, Roger Martin, Dick Haskayne, Gerald Schwartz, Ian Tefler, Thomas Caldwell and Scott Hand have all expressed worries about how much of Canada’s economy is owned by foreigners.

It’s common these days to hear the claim that Red Toryism is dead in Canadian politics. Many observers believe that the demise of the older version of Canadian conservatism, popularized by the likes of John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker and Robert Stanfield, is gone for good. Canadian conservatism has supposed shifted to more closely mimic its American counterpart.

That is, as you point out, the common claim (as expressed by those who lament the development), but I would express it differently. The long dominant strain of Canadian conservatism, centred in Southern Ontario and based around social elitism (offset with noblesse oblige) and centralized authority, has been displaced by a second, equally legitimate conservative tradition centred in Western Canada and more oriented towards individual autonomy and private enterprise. The former is more aristocratic (in that it serves to protect established social class structures, even while evening them out economically) while the second is more meritocratic (the faster runner should win the race). One is more associated with inherited wealth while the other is more directed towards the "nouveau riche". I object to the implicit characterization of the latter as a foreign import or case of "mimicry" rather than an alternative Canadian philosophy.

Britain long ago moved away from Disraeli "one-nation" conservatism. It is not a sin against British (or Canadian) history to do so. Red Toryism is but one approach to conservatism. The fact that Dart considers it sacrosanct means little to me. Your defense of Western Canadian conservatism (as appreciated as it is) is based largely on the idea that Red Tories and Reformers are closer to each other ideologically than either is to Tea Party Republicanism. I agree that the "Tea Party" slur has become a facile and obnoxious tactic grossly overused by the Laurentian centre-left and its media organs. But your line of argument inadvertently plays into their meme that right-wing = American.

Surely a Canadian can make an argument against single-payer healthcare (of which, for the record, I'm a strong supporter) without having to be labelled a "closet American". Canadian nationality isn't dependent on one's place on the political spectrum. Being right-wing doesn't make a Canadian citizen any more an American than being left-wing in the Cold War era made one a Soviet. Certainly someone claiming that a Red Tory isn't a real conservative is less outrageous than saying that a right-wing citizen isn't a real Canadian, even if both statements are equally false. The latter statement is a form of reverse McCarthyism.

I agree that Western Canadian populist conservatism does contain elements more traditionally associated with European liberalism, such as the concern for individual rights and liberty. Red Tories, as Dart points out, don't have the passion for these things that they do for the "commonweal". But this is the where the labels become less important for me than the fundamental ideas. If Red Tories are essentially a force of reaction against the Enlightenment, then that's not a conservatism I want any part of, however correct and appropriate their use of the term would be in this instance.

The Liberals under Pearson and Trudeau essentially stopped being liberal, particularly in economic matters. So you had the Liberals, whose concern for individual liberty was limited to sexual freedom and liberalized drug use, and the Red Tories, who shared the Liberals' belief in government intervention as the solution to all problems. Add to that an NDP that had shaved off its CCF rough edges and purged most of its radicals and you had what Ibbitson calls the Laurentian Consensus (and what I had called the Morningside Consensus). Excluded and marginalized in this ideological homogenization were the radical socialist Americaphobes like Robin Mathews and his Waffle comrades and the Western populist conservatives. Although Pierre Trudeau kept enough anti-Americanism in his Liberal brand to keep at least some of the former at least somewhat placated.

The differences between the two branches of conservatism are significant, and not merely a case of Freud's narcissism of small differences. That is not to say that the two cannot productively co-exist with the same country or even party. But in order for that to happen, each must accept and respect the legitimacy of the other tradition. However, the Red Tories are still too full of snobbish contempt, and the Western conservatives still too resentful and angry, for that to happen in the immediate future. The wounds must heal first.

However, I stick by my belief that the two strands of conservatism are not as different as they are often made out to be, or at least that they overlap considerably. After all, we here in Alberta offer generous subsidies and rebates to the oilpatch, even as Central Canada is capable of building up business giants like Research In Motion and Quebecor. Even if RIM may be in trouble now, how could it ever get so big in the first place if Central Canada didn't have an entrepreneurial, meritocratic spirit of its own?

I don't believe that right-wing automatically equals American so much as I believe that Canadian conservatives, including Western Canadian conservatives, tend more towards the political centre than do many of their American counterparts, at least if one is to judge by the American right's most prominent political voices. You voice your support of single-payer healthcare, while Preston Manning decries the idea of the state imposing socially conservative faith-based solutions on people who don't want them. I can't imagine you or Manning getting a warm welcome from the most prominent Republican advocates if you said those things to them.

And I should point out that these are *tendencies*. We have our Terrence Corcorans and Ezra Levants, just as the U.S. has its Meghan McCains. However, from everything I've seen they are less prominent in their own countries than conservatives who are more willing to things like environmental regulations and single-payer health care (in Canada) and conservatives who strongly advocate for faith-based solutions (in the United States).

One thing I wish more progressives and others who are concerned with the commonweal would do is offer a clearer definition of where and when people would be left to solve their own problems, to succeed as individuals, to succeed or fail in the market, where government intervention stops, and so forth. That lack of clarity (and its conservative counterpart in more clearly defining where state action, public ownership, government programs, etc. would be beneficial) is part of what's contributed to the polarization in this country, even when I find that we have more common ground on many issues than we realize.

As I've addressed elsewhere, my concern about the shift from what you call the Morningside Consensus to what I call the "Market" Consensus is that we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater in some cases.

The former is more aristocratic (in that it serves to protect established social class structures, even while evening them out economically) while the second is more meritocratic (the faster runner should win the race). One is more associated with inherited wealth while the other is more directed towards the "nouveau riche". I object to the implicit characterization of the latter as a foreign import or case of "mimicry" rather than an alternative Canadian philosophy.