It could be argued that one of the central reasons for the continuing failure of the Canadian Right since the 1960s is the ongoing establishment of vast, liberal-leaning governmental, juridical, media, academic, educational, and corporate structures - a nexus of interests some have called “the managerial-therapeutic regime” - which could be characterized as socially liberal and economically conservative. There is also the fact that “North American” pop-culture is the primary “lived cultural reality” for most people in Canada, which tends to reinforce socially liberal, consumerist/consumptionist, and antinomian attitudes, especially among the young. Unlike in most other Western countries, where various countervailing factors of various kinds exist to the hegemony of the managerial-therapeutic regime, current-day Canada is probably an example of such a managerial-therapeutic system in its “purest” form…
Some of these countervailing factors in the United States include such things as the far greater saliency of the military, the far greater presence of organized religion (both in regard to fundamentalist Protestants and traditionalist Catholics), homeschooling as a major social trend, the existence of probably hundreds of more traditional-leaning private colleges, and a large network of right-leaning think-tanks and publications - which together are part of what some have called the “Right Nation.” At the same time, the United States has a more robust tradition of independent-minded, left-wing, anti-corporate, ecological, or agrarian dissent, such as that typified by Ralph Nader, Christopher Lasch, Rachel Carson, Helen and Scott Nearing, and Wendell Berry…
It could be argued that social, political, cultural, and economic life in Canada – lacking, in fact, either an authentic Right or Left – has therefore become the least subject to popular will and democratic (name removed by moderator)ut, indeed, it could be called “post-democratic.” The lack of robust democratic participation and (name removed by moderator)ut in Canada should be of concern to theorists across the political spectrum. Insofar as the system maintains itself through massive “prior constraint” against a very broad array of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, its pretense to be upholding democracy is questionable. Such a profound lack of equilibrium is profoundly harmful to a more “ideal-typical” form and exercise of democracy. Trying to continue to exist in such a context, the Canadian Right may well be on the fast track to extinction…
Given the direction of development of historical, social, cultural, and economic processes in Canada over the last four decades, and the various factors mentioned above – the incoherence of the articulation of a “counter-ethic,” the hardening of a once-robust parliamentary democracy into a “managerial-therapeutic regime,” the very low profile of any possibly competing countervalent power-centres such as the military and churches, the increasing centralization of the polity in the federal government, the prevalence of “North American” pop-culture with its amplification of socially-liberal, consumerist, and antinomian attitudes, and the various structural and cultural political problems for the Canadian Right – notably their lack of appeal to Quebec and “white ethnics”, and the fewness of “minority conservatives” in Canada – it could be argued that the Canadian Right is approaching extinction in Canada. The future of Canadian politics is therefore very likely to move in the direction of a “post-democratic” and *de facto *“one-party” system - which will be overwhelmingly socially liberal and economically conservative.
You’re going to make the back yard into a hockey rink, right?
