The Tipping Part Deux

Alan at Occam's Carbuncle has achieved some sort of zen-like resignation ever since he saw the resistance as futile. Where once there was hope, there is now only bitterness. Witty bitterness, mind you. His Friday post was a link to Walsingham's (is it too early to say seminal?) Tipping Point.

I can empathize with these guys. To quote Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy, "dumb it down, 'cause freedom's wasted on the free". If there is a silver lining in how low politics has sunk in Canada and how ignorant the electorate is (and there is causality at work here), it is that turnarounds and great leaders emerge from train-wrecks. Look at New Zealand's rebound into fiscal sanity after it broke the bank. Churchill followed Chamberlain to save the world from the Nazis, Thatcher after years of Labour's well-meaning efforts that nearly destroyed Britain, Reagan after Carter's four years of wilderness, Harris after Ontario's experiment Rae's socialism.

Paul Martin is a bitter disappointment for me. I expected more after a decade of Chretien's corruption, but Martin has shown that power means more to the Liberals than principle. I don't consider myself a Conservative in the partisan sense, but my social libertarian/fiscal conservative leanings should be more in line with the Conservative Party of Canada. With that in mind, the new Conservatives have also been disappointing, since their attempts at being Liberal-lite have seen them retaining small-C social conservatism (which I can tolerate, but would prefer not to have to) and staking outrageous defences of health care monopolies and promises to honour Martin's bribes to the provinces.

What next? My hope is that if there is a province to separate, it will be Quebec. That way the damage would be localized and minimized, though, as Mark Steyn says, why would they leave since Canada has been made in Quebec's image ever since Trudeau came on the scene? Just leave us the Trans-Canada highway from Ontario to New Brunswick. In the meantime, I hope that Harper's barbecue tour will lead him back to his principles and a Conservative party made more in his image than whatever playbook his spin-doctors are reading from. If that doesn't mean a majority, then it would at least move the centre rightward and the Liberals would have to adjust.