A Dime a Dozen Blog

This is the audio from a speech Stephen Harper gave last night.  The audio is from David Akin’s site, I’ve chopped it up to get to two important parts.

Part One – Stephen Harper on Libertarians

Part Two – Stephen Harper defines Conservative as “Faith, Family, Freedom”

I, like many people I’ve met, signed up for the Tories, and did countless hours of work for them because I believed in their published principles – the very Libertarian principles which you can see here on their website.

If I wanted ‘faith’ I’d join the Green Party.

Look again at the bit of Harper’s speech on the three ‘F’s:

Freedom must be tempered by faith – or more broadly, what faith in all its forms teaches … it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself.  That how freedom is exercised, matters as much as freedom.  Freedom must be used well, and freedom can only be sustained if it is used well … the libertarian says let individuals exercise full freedom and take full responsibility for their actions … Conservatism cannot just be about freedom, it must be about policies which ensure freedom will lead to good choices, to responsible choices … with wider benefits to all of us.

It makes sense.  Or rather, it makes Harper’s actions over the last 6 months make sense.  If faith means anything, it means ’sacrifice’ – sacrifice of our free speech, our hopes for a democratic senate, sacrifice of western producers to eastern corporate welfare queens …

I’m inclined to get really pissed off and say that if I as an atheist am not welcome in the party, fine, I’ll go through my lot in with the Libertarians.

But then there’s another part of me that says ’screw Harper’, he can read the party principles the same as any of us, he definitely heard the party militants speak at the last convention – libertarian Tories and all their cash and effort were well represented.

The problem is not the libertarians or the neo-liberals in the party membership – the problem is the leader.