Conservativism's feminine side
Monday, 8 November 2004
David Warren
I am hardly the only Canadian "conservative" who looks with envy upon the United States. What strikes us, when we examine the political culture down there, is the openness with which such topics as abortion, and "gay marriage," are publicly discussed. Up here, you may be allowed to think conservative ideas but only God can help you if you speak them aloud.
The American courts may be as bad as Canadian courts, in uttering rulings that ignore written law and impose instead what is "politically correct." But the U.S. Republican party does not run away from the issues. And, despite the massed parrot chorus of the American mainstream media--as sympathetic to discordant noises as the massed parrot chorus up here, there are plenty of American conservatives willing to face the screeching, and fight the liberals trench by trench.
What is it about Canada that makes conservatives lose their nerve? This is a question I've been puzzling over for a long time, while trying to summon the nerve myself to continue fighting, even in Canada, for God and mom and apple pie. And I've been puzzling over it with greater vexation since watching our newly merged Conservative party wimp out on every major issue in the course of the last federal election. And then lose.
The obvious answer is Christianity. The churches are in much worse shape to the north of the indefensible border than to the south. The proportion of Canadians under direct influence from church teaching is much smaller. So conservatives here are seldom reminded of the eternal verities. The starch gets washed out of them, over time; or to improve the metaphor, they can see the gun of post-modernity at their head, but have forgotten the promise of salvation behind them.
This explanation is so obvious that I am going to ignore it for today, and move on to something more subtle. It is something brought home by the appearance of strong women in the vicinity of President Bush--Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, his wife Laura, his mother Barbara. It's not only their influence, at the pinnacle of Republican power, but also Bush's apparent comfort in the vicinity of strong women that stands out.
To the Canadian male conservative, this seems almost unnatural, unmanly: appealing to women means tacking to the left. In the dark recesses of our northern psyche, strong women are on the other side. The Canadian conservative secretly imagines her as the mouthpiece for hideous liberal causes--and an unfortunate image swims into his head of snorting, lesbo-feminist fury, that can only be assuaged by radical acts of pusillanimity. ("You want an abortion? Sure! . . . Hey, can I pay for it?")
There might seem to be reason for this in history. If you subtract the women's vote from most Canadian election tallies, you change the result. Example: Pierre Trudeau would never have become prime minister; to say nothing of Chr‚tien, Pearson, even Mackenzie King. You could almost describe the long Liberal party hegemony as an artefact of the enfranchisement of Canadian women, which came at the end of the Great War, bringing Prohibition in its wake. Surely, giving the vote to women was an unmitigated disaster. But who would be man enough to take it away?
And yet, when you look south of the border, you see that a large part of President Bush's power base is what they call the "security moms." He has led John Kerry in female support in most of the polls, with his message of "faith, family and freedom."
The traditional male, liberal response to the challenge of women has been to create a politics that is more effeminate--men willingly surrendering to women what they imagine women want. Indeed, the whole point of the welfare state, as delivered by successive Liberal governments, has been to provide women with the husbands and fathers they never had--with a reliable source of unearned income, and help with any accidental kids. Paul Martin's national daycare scheme is the perfect proposal for a society in which men are redundant.
That is one side of the ledger. But on the other side are women whose natural propensities are Tory. They are the ones with whom Bush and his Republicans have forged their broad alliance. They know women are different than men, because they know women. And they know most women want men to be men.
Monday, 8 November 2004
David Warren
I am hardly the only Canadian "conservative" who looks with envy upon the United States. What strikes us, when we examine the political culture down there, is the openness with which such topics as abortion, and "gay marriage," are publicly discussed. Up here, you may be allowed to think conservative ideas but only God can help you if you speak them aloud.
The American courts may be as bad as Canadian courts, in uttering rulings that ignore written law and impose instead what is "politically correct." But the U.S. Republican party does not run away from the issues. And, despite the massed parrot chorus of the American mainstream media--as sympathetic to discordant noises as the massed parrot chorus up here, there are plenty of American conservatives willing to face the screeching, and fight the liberals trench by trench.
What is it about Canada that makes conservatives lose their nerve? This is a question I've been puzzling over for a long time, while trying to summon the nerve myself to continue fighting, even in Canada, for God and mom and apple pie. And I've been puzzling over it with greater vexation since watching our newly merged Conservative party wimp out on every major issue in the course of the last federal election. And then lose.
The obvious answer is Christianity. The churches are in much worse shape to the north of the indefensible border than to the south. The proportion of Canadians under direct influence from church teaching is much smaller. So conservatives here are seldom reminded of the eternal verities. The starch gets washed out of them, over time; or to improve the metaphor, they can see the gun of post-modernity at their head, but have forgotten the promise of salvation behind them.
This explanation is so obvious that I am going to ignore it for today, and move on to something more subtle. It is something brought home by the appearance of strong women in the vicinity of President Bush--Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, his wife Laura, his mother Barbara. It's not only their influence, at the pinnacle of Republican power, but also Bush's apparent comfort in the vicinity of strong women that stands out.
To the Canadian male conservative, this seems almost unnatural, unmanly: appealing to women means tacking to the left. In the dark recesses of our northern psyche, strong women are on the other side. The Canadian conservative secretly imagines her as the mouthpiece for hideous liberal causes--and an unfortunate image swims into his head of snorting, lesbo-feminist fury, that can only be assuaged by radical acts of pusillanimity. ("You want an abortion? Sure! . . . Hey, can I pay for it?")
There might seem to be reason for this in history. If you subtract the women's vote from most Canadian election tallies, you change the result. Example: Pierre Trudeau would never have become prime minister; to say nothing of Chr‚tien, Pearson, even Mackenzie King. You could almost describe the long Liberal party hegemony as an artefact of the enfranchisement of Canadian women, which came at the end of the Great War, bringing Prohibition in its wake. Surely, giving the vote to women was an unmitigated disaster. But who would be man enough to take it away?
And yet, when you look south of the border, you see that a large part of President Bush's power base is what they call the "security moms." He has led John Kerry in female support in most of the polls, with his message of "faith, family and freedom."
The traditional male, liberal response to the challenge of women has been to create a politics that is more effeminate--men willingly surrendering to women what they imagine women want. Indeed, the whole point of the welfare state, as delivered by successive Liberal governments, has been to provide women with the husbands and fathers they never had--with a reliable source of unearned income, and help with any accidental kids. Paul Martin's national daycare scheme is the perfect proposal for a society in which men are redundant.
That is one side of the ledger. But on the other side are women whose natural propensities are Tory. They are the ones with whom Bush and his Republicans have forged their broad alliance. They know women are different than men, because they know women. And they know most women want men to be men.
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