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One big issue Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer will have to address sooner or later is his ghost problem.

Now before anyone gets too spooked, let me quickly add when I say "ghost" I actually don't mean it in the sense of a scary supernatural entity.

What I do mean, however, is the Conservative Party of Canada is, in a real way, still haunted by the spirit of one of its key founders Stephen Harper.

In other words, even though Harper departed from the political scene nearly three years ago, his impact on the CPC's political culture continues to live on.

And this really shouldn't be too surprising since, to a large degree, Harper created the Conservative Party; certainly, from its inception he imprinted upon the party his own personal ideological worldview.

In fact, in many ways, the CPC was more of a "Harper Party", than a true conservative party.

And maybe it had to be that way.

People nowadays tend to forget that the CPC is actually a union of two disparate political factions the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance (nee the Reform Party) which for years had been at each other's throats.

Harper realized from the beginning that a party encompassing these two quarreling clans was always in danger of splitting asunder.

So using savage discipline and an iron fist, Harper squashed internal feuding within his Conservative ranks and in the process he managed to forge a formidable political machine.

Yet, this triumph came with a cost.

To make this new Conservative Party work, to make it a united force, Harper gutted it of any ideological notions that might cause friction amongst its component parts.

So he cast aside the Canadian Alliance's populism and fiscal conservatism; he reined in the old PC party's "Red Toryism" and basically all but eliminated the social conservative agenda.

What he was left with was a united party that could contend for power, but which was also lacked a soul.

And soulless it remains to this day.

Indeed, I'd argue Scheer won the CPC's first-ever leadership race precisely because he was the most "Harper-like" of all the candidates.

Unlike Maxime Bernier who offered a strong dose of libertarianism, or Kellie Leitch who pushed populism, or Michael Chong who was the Red Tory champion, or Brad Trost who took up the banner of social conservatism, Scheer represented no ideological faction or tribe; he stood instead as the bland, but unifying choice.

But while Scheer's similarity to Harper helped win him the leadership stakes, it now presents him with a challenge.

After all, Scheer is a fine man and all, but he's also basically "Harper-lite."

That's to say he seems to lack Harper's keen strategic mind and Harper's sense of gravitas and most obviously of all, he lacks Harper's toughness.

My point is, when grassroots conservatives consider Scheer as their leader, he could suffer in comparison to his predecessor.

This is especially true now that nostalgia is kicking in and time has softened the sting of Harper's 2015 electoral disaster.

It's interesting to note, for instance, that some conservatives are circulating social media memes featuring a photo of Harper and the words: "Miss me yet?"

Nor did it help Scheer that Harper seemed to have a tougher response than he did to Trudeau's decision to pay out $10 million to Omar Khadr.

Also Harper's prestige got a bump recently when he was elected chairman of the International Democrat Union, a prominent conservative organization.

At any rate, what it all boils down to is, it's bad for Scheer if conservatives are looking backward instead of forward.

This why he needs to escape from his predecessor's shadow; this is why he needs to create his own identity.

It's the only way, he can truly exorcise Harper's ghost.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


I went on down to the ol' Lindsay Shepherd/Faith Goldy cluster kludge the other day with my hopes pretty low, and left, somehow, still incredibly disappointed.

I was expecting poorly thought out arguments.  I was expecting overt and covert racism.  I was expecting appeals to my wallet, to non-existent conspiracies, and to Kek.  And to be sure, all of these things were present in one form or another.

But when a university advertises a talk by a "controversial" speaker which is reportedly done in the name of free speech, you expect two things at absolute rock bottom minimum actually controversial things and a defence of free speech.  And at this event, there was neither.

With respect to controversy, there is no doubt that the speaker herself was controversial.  But it was clear from the get-go that her opponents were not even prepared to wait for her to say something controversial before they reacted.

And with respect to free speech, when your speaker attempts to use the privilege they are afforded to claim that the Canadian government is trying to, through neglect or malice, bring about the destruction of the white race, or as she actually did once she had been deplatformed attempt some weird deconstruction of the idea that the land on which the University stood once belonged to First Nations, continuing to stick up for her begins to look like sticking up for a toddler who waves his hand in your face and repeatedly says, "I'm not touching you!  I'm not touching you!"

Well meaning takes that try to impose some sort of logic on this debased conga line of humiliations try, nobly, to claim that some high-minded principle has been violated, or offer some rational solution to how to deal with the Faith Goldys of the world.  But I put it to you that the proceedings on Tuesday night were just entirely too ridiculous for any invocation of principles, any more than a bunch of monkeys reenacting the Civil War would invite a discussion of the need to take up arms to combat slavery.

When, precisely, was I supposed to conclude, "Wow!  These people are super principled, y'all?"  Was it when Lindsay Shepherd "realized" that they would have to book a much larger venue for Faith's return?  Was it when they suddenly started selling $10 memberships to prospective viewers?  How about when one of the protestors did a beatbox rap about how uncomfortable it must be to realize that your whole life you didn't know why you have a job, why you have a house, and why you have security?

For basis of comparison, my better half and I attended a WWE live event later in the week, which also took on the atmosphere of a carnival sideshow.  Women shrieked in delight every time one of the male wrestlers took their T-shirts off, a cackling lunatic purporting to be possessed by Seven Deities attempted to perform an intervention for a troubled, dreadlocked hillbilly cult leader, and a large Irish man sporting a colossal red Mohawk hairdo insulted the audience by calling them "Canadian muppets."

However, nobody expects Seth Rollins, Bray Wyatt, or Nia Jax to claim they are defending the Western tradition, or that they are speaking up against white supremacy as they carry on in the ring.  Because they did not hold themselves out to be something more than what they were, they were far less ridiculous than the participants in the Goldy/Shepherd debacle.

So why, then?  Why has it come to this?  When did we lose the capacity to debate ideas without it descending into some Bedlam spectacle?

First, it must be said and understood that the failure of liberalism has become so apparent that society is losing confidence in the entire enterprise.  Post-hoc rationalizations about Cambridge Analytica and Russian bots are all very well, but though we may make scapegoats out of a thousand Mark Zuckerbergs we draw no closer to admitting that the problem goes far, far deeper.

The second and related point is that we must accept that people are behaving this way because they have been badly traumatized, or they have convinced themselves as such.  So desperate for validation from Mommy and Daddy are they that they will happily part with their hard earned cash as soon as they encounter the poorest substitute.

And finally, we might consider that maybe these principles never existed in the first place.  Maybe then, as now, they were always invocations by hustlers and grievance-mongers to get the confidence of unsuspecting marks.

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.