Getting Lost in the Fluffy Sweater

He leaned over, his hands clasped.  The warm dark blue sweater covered his light blue shirt.  His hair looked hockey-helmet fresh.  He was talking about veterans, about family, about love and all the time we would spend together.  Then I realized, Stephen Harper really wants me to vote for him.  That was fine.  I understood.  I was going to vote for him anyway.  Honestly, if the Tories were running the corpse of Arthur Meighen in my riding, I'd vote Conservative.  I know they'll break my heart, these politicians always do.  They tell me how much they agree and value my opinion.  They say nasty things about big government - love that anti-statist rhetoric - and promise cuts.  Cut this, cut that, cut everything really.  We right-wingers loved Mike Harris so much, we called him Mike the Knife.  OK, it was the Left that came up with that title, but we took it as our own.  Cut quick, cut deep and cut now.  It was fun while it lasted.  I fall in love too easily.  Alone again, naturally.  The java and Carly Simon will get me through the night.

As one of Canada's largest invisible minorities, conservatives (by which I mean so-cons, fiscal conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals), have little to vote for in this election.  Marginalized by society at large as too pro-American (i.e individualistic), too hard hearted (too fiscally sensible) and old fashioned (believing that history did not begin some time in the spring of 1968), we struggle with the stigma of being Right.  One of the pitfalls of a highly urbanized society with a very sophisticated division of labour, is that the parts never see the whole.  Certainly the cocktail party circuit has plenty of chatter about globalization and the environment, but these are floating abstractions.  How many urbanites understand the process, and the men and women who make it possible, that literally puts food on their tables? 

There's plenty of empathy for the Somali clad in a burka, rather less for the fourth generation farmer who feeds us.  The immigrant fits into the mythology of modern Canada - which is convenient given our poor collective grasp of even recent history.  The farmer doesn't fit into the Trudeaupian vision. Pierre, himself, is suppose to have looked out of a plane window at night once, and wondered what people do in the vastness between Toronto and Vancouver.  The farmer, and by extension the rural world that revolves around him, is insular, traditional, pragmatic and comprehensive.  In North America he is a freeholder, not a tenant or landless labourer (like by maternal grandfather).  He is an independent businessman who relies on family and friends, yet is ultimately responsible for success or failure in a way the urbanite can't grasp.  The rural Canadian is an eminently Burkean stalwart.  The urban center is an artificial bubble, a place that is deliberately cut-off from the rest of the world.  Man-made islands.  That's how they work and need to work.  Concentration allows for specialization, which in turns allow for tremendous productivity and innovation.  This is why cities are such remarkably efficient generators of wealth. 

The downside is that we become not simply specialized in our work but in our outlook as well.  Adam Smith feared this possibility at the birth of the industrial revolution, and the problem has only gotten worse.  One of the purposes of education is taking us out of ourselves, showing us what we cannot see or understand with only our limited experiences.  Modern education does precisely the opposite; it often alternates between statist-collectivist indoctrination and technical training.  A system designed to turn out political activists and technicians.  The rural dwellers, especially the farmer, is by necessity more well-rounded in his knowledge and experience.  The world of the welfare state, carbon taxes and cultural relativism is possible only in a highly specialized economy and society.  It plain lacks horse sense.  The conservative is, in fact, a throwback.  The well rounded man.  Something to keep in mind as Stephen Harper tries to seduce us with his fluffy dark blue sweater, industrial subsidies and incrementalism.