Canada’s Debate

For once, a post that’s not about Warren Kinsella… although it does stem from a reader comment on his site.

but it suffers rather badly from something I see as a flaw with many Liberal ideas - too much emotion, not enough reason.

Ignoring for a moment the ambiguous use of the capital-L, lets consider this statement for a moment. What are liberal ideas? (The “L”iberal party’s only real idea is “stick to the middle and don’t do anything crazy”) I know how people like to talk about how “liberal” and “conservative” values have been transposed in recent centuries, and so on, but that’s bullshit. Liberalism always has been and always will be achieving the greatest liberty, for the greatest number, while Conservatism always has been, and always will be about having as little government intervention as possible. Sometimes these ideologies agree, but that’s the subject of another post.

What sticks to the roof of my mouth is this idea that “liberal” values are emotional, and “conservative values” are rational. I’ve heard this same sort of argument whenever I’ve challenged the doctrine that the free market is inherently more efficient than mixed-market or public-sector services, and various I’ve advanced similar ideas.

The fact is that all philosophy stems from an intuitive (read ‘emotional’) response, and then is developed through a rational thought process. Edmund Burke and Thomas Hobbes were both rational people who took emotional conceits (liberty can only be provided by the state; the French Revolution is democracy run amok) and developed political treatises which defined the Liberal and Conservative movements (”The Leviathan”, “Reflections on the Revolution in France.”)

Everyone believes their core beliefs to be rational. To a homeless guy wearing a tinfoil hat nothing could be less rational than leaving your brain undefended; our very self-awareness depends on our ability to not only reason, but rationalize. The arguments against Hate-speech laws are no more or less rational than those for them. The difference is the core values that underpin them: the Liberal quest to maximize freedom for all (90% freedom for three people is better than 100% freedom for one), or the Conservative ideal of “creating” freedom by restricting the individual as little as possible.

Personally, I choose the latter… And lets face it, I’m much more rational than your average Conservative.