The Last Best West

Liberalism then and now:

Actually, Calgary does have a personality, one that favours and rewards both entrepreneurs and philanthropists. But, knowing the oil business doesn't make somebody a Conservative. Some of the top guys in the patch are, strange but true, devoted Liberals. So, much as some might be entertained by the idea of a city culture that just makes you a Conservative, it simply isn't so. Calgary attracts conservatives-- self-selection is part of what keeps fiscal conservatism strong here --but Calgary radicalism as a force destroying a person's natural Liberalism?

Only in Ignatieff's comfortable world view, in which people vote Liberal because that's what nice people do. That is also the only place where the values Harper claims for himself would be considered radical.

After all, what's radical about free enterprise, free trade or free speech? They're classic liberalism: Campaigning in 1896, Liberal icon Sir Wilfrid Laurier praised, "The good Saxon word, freedom; freedom in every sense of the term, freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom in religious life, and civil life and last but not least, freedom in commercial life."