Are "Ideals" a Dirty Word for a Conservative?

Well.

My post yesterday elicited some heated response.  Apparently, if Ralph was in power, I'd be drummed out of the Alberta P.C. Party.  Apparently, any ham-fisted "nation building" attempted by the United States where they prop up some despot, leading to violence being returned against them (can you say Sadam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden?) is justified by referring to the Iron Curtain and the excesses of communism.

Here's a hint as to how you can tell when someone has nothing to support their argument:  They offer nothing, other than to point to someone else who is worse.

They hide behind a flag and suggest you are unpatriotic, that you don't love your own country.
I'm very proud to be Canadian.

And in fact, I believe that Canada is so far ahead of the curve relative to the United States that it is almost laughable.

Internationally, we have never sought to nation-build in the American sense of the word, and economically, we already have a health care system that provides reasonable care for all, without having to cripple our economy to do it.  We certainly significant work to attend to the needs of a system in difficulty, however, the point is we have a system in place, and improving that system is hardly going to lead to the ignorant partisan excesses that we're seeing in the U.S. with their "death panels" and whatnot..

Our tax rates are now relatively comparable, and our post-secondary education exceeds most American standards, with the exception of the most elite schools that the vast majority of Americans will never be able to even consider attending anyway.

Our banking system is fundamentally sound, and our judicial system is, with all it's warts, much less interventionist in business, in the sense that Canadian business does not nearly require the attention to tort liability as is the case in the U.S.

Fundamentally, I prefer my own country, Canada, to the United States.

We are a country of the 21st century, while they are slowly realizing that they are a country of the 19th century, not in the sense of their techonological innovation or even their economic power, but in the sense of how they relate to the world around them.  They are the last of the great imperialist nations.  Except they aren't planting their flag on foreign soil, they seek to plant Exxon and Union Carbide. 

I will, however, give the United States credit for one significant advantage.  Where the U.S. has it over Canada, is the notion of a national "ideal".

Americans believe in their country in a way that Canadians do not. Words like "freedom" and "liberty" in the U.S. resonate like a national religion.. and this is the shortcoming of Canadian political reality. We are hungry for something to believe in - an ideal to unite us. 

That was the point, actually, of my blog.. not to tear down the U.S., but to say, "we need something to believe in."

Sadly, so much of Canadian political reality is based upon little but material benefit.  Conservatives see much of their job as retain control of individual financial autonomy, and Liberals and NDP see much of their job as spreading the wealth around.  At it's core, so much of our politics is premised on who gets what tax dollars.

And, as most people, even hardline conservatives know - materialism is a hollow religion.  Attaining material wealth does not fill the soul.  Which we are now seeing.  As women are being admitted to the work force in numbers and attaining levels of income unheard of just two generations ago, they are also finding that the "gold ring" they worked so hard to grasp is plastic.

That's my point.

At my heart, I still feel that part of the picture we need to work to attain is to encourage individual responsibility, to reduce our expectations on the state to deliver our needs in a financial sense, and a respect to individual liberty which we often give lip service to.. but we need something more.  At our core, we need a leader, we need a party, that we can believe in.

That's my point.

You may say that I'm a dreamer..  but I'm betting that I'm not the only one.