Remember when Bush was president of the US? Remember how people would make fun at him and basically call him a monkey? That wasn’t good or right; I think we can all agree on that. I personally disliked the man’s policies, actions, and his Texas cowboy impersonation annoyed me. It seemed–and in retrospect is almost certainly–a façade put on to endear him to the common man, whoever that is. I think he did a lot of evil during his time as president. I don’t think he was a good president at all, and I’m pretty sure in retrospect however many years from now his time in office will be viewed as dimly as it is now.

That said, I have a right to disagree with the man. I have a right to talk about him and what he does. I don’t have to agree with George W. because I’m a Christian and he claimed to be a Christian, or because I’m supposed to be a conservative, or because he’s a world leader, or because I know a bunch of people who just seemed to like the guy through thick and thin.

They would tell me, “Dan, I know he’s got his issues, but you still have to respect him for who he is.” This is borne out in scripture as well as just making good sense. The office deserves honour even when the man filling the office doesn’t exactly engender respect. They would point to a bunch of people saying some pretty stupid things and dumping on the guy and his party and his intelligence and whatever. And they would tell me these people are doing something wrong.

I agree. So where’s that respect and tolerance now?

Where’s the spirit of respecting the office and not going around calling the president stupid, or saying he’s just a media icon, or attacking him because he’s on the wrong team? Where did that go? Or does extending the sort of grace and love to the president of the US only apply when you’re talking about the other guys? That’s the sort of double standard designed to shut other people up. I can’t really think of a better way not to have to hear bad things about a guy you like.

Having a president from the other team is really a crisis of morality for conservatives, seeing how closely the evangelical establishment is tied the conservative Republican party. It’s a crisis of, How do I act when I’m on the losing side? And from what I’ve seen, the character of Evangelical America is pretty ugly. If anything its uglier than the unwashed, unchurched masses that voted for Obama.

Which is sad. It’s another reason the church shouldn’t be involved in political brinkmanship. There’s nothing like politics to bring out the bad in some people. I know I’m like that. I said some of the same stupid things about Bush and made some pretty unkind remarks about him. I’m sorry I said those things. I should be better than that, especially as a Christian.

But I’ll repeat the question: Where’s that spirit of grace and love? If the president wins a pretty meaningless award–just as a for instance–where a lot of people agree it could have gone to someone more deserving, do you use the opportunity to make snide remarks about the man and pretty much dump a bunch of crap on him? And if so, what does that say about your character?

When the Conservative government came to power, I was excited. Finally, the Liberals were gone! Even a minority government, I though, was better than nothing.

Two years later, I’m having major doubts. Some recent developments — especially restarting the Chalk River reactor against the advice of the CNSC — are beginning to cast the Prime Minister and his government in a very unflattering light. Coupled with the government’s delegation to the latest environmental summit including oil company representatives (WTF, Mr Harper?), this year’s closed-doors meeting with the US and industry regarding water supplies, and the recently tabled copyright bill (an absolute disgrace to every Canadian ideal, a shameful travesty that essentially looks written by media executives themselves, and something Mr Prentice should be embarrassed to have even proposed), it seems my government is shackling itself to the very industries it is supposed to regulate and govern.

I’m quite certain that elected officials in the States are essentially bought and paid for by big oil, big media, big guns, and the like. But here? That’s not the kind of government I want.

I’m strongly thinking of voting Green in the next election. I have no faith in the Liberals (who have essentially handed Mr Harper a shadow majority with their political ineptitude). I’m just glad the Conservatives don’t have a majority: imagine the damage he could do to this country if Mr Harper were unfettered from consensus!

I’m 26, which is pretty old in the grand scheme of things. I used to look up at 26 year old people when I was maybe 10 and think how old and mature they seemed. Of course, I was 10, and when you’re 10 you don’t exactly have an accurate outlook on the world. I was probably mistaking the confidence that generally comes with age for maturity or something.

All I know is that some revelations come disappointingly late in life. For instance, I’ve looked at the world as it were somehow binary for the longest time. It isn’t, of course, though sometimes it is. There isn’t this one great liberal political issue, and this one great conservative issue, around which entire countries revolve. The categories “liberal” and “conservative” are almost meaningless in Canada anyway. There’s no particularly sound reason a conservative can’t care about the environment and social justice, and there’s no reason a liberal can’t want sane financial management.

What I’m describing sounds a bit like a middle-of-the-road thing, but truth be told, I’m not sure that politics or life or marriage or anything can be defined in terms of roads. I used to have discussions with friends where we’d say “okay, we’ve fallen into this ditch, but we have to make sure we don’t fall in the other ditch”, as if somehow the safest thing was to stay in the middle of the road.

That’s so limiting. As if somehow everything falls into one spectrum and can be described as a point on a line. People thought this sort of thing about genetics before Mendel opened that particular door with his (apocryphal?) bean plants; you mix two things and you get a combination of two things. Yet, this isn’t true. You mix two things and you get something different, something recessive or dominant.

Biology seems aware that everything would simply fall to the median if pre-Mendelian genetics were true: diversity is good, it contributes in a large way to the health of the biosphere. In the same way when you mix liberal and conservative you don’t get some weak-kneed hybrid. You get something new, something above liberal and conservative, something that critique both and praise both and take the good from both.

Isn’t the alternative less like a position and more like a cage? As a conservative American (or even worse, a conservative American Christian), you can feel as if you positions are written for you. But are they really? Do you have to believe in trickle-down economics? Individualism? The “war on terror”? Do you have to support a neo-conservative president like Mr Bush, even when his worst excesses tower over his strengths? Are you somehow required to believe that your nation is the culmination of history, the focal point of Christianity, and the beacon for freedom the world over?

Maybe. I mean, if those things are good, by all means. I happen to think they’re not. I certainly don’t like what a lot of liberals espouse. But I don’t want to be trapped in this one mode of thinking that says “this philosophy is good” and “this philosophy is bad”.

I’ve been socially liberal (at least in contrast to my surroundings) for a while, but I can’t remember ever tracing that philosophical shift to its roots before. I certainly didn’t get it from my parents, or from my communities at the time. I didn’t get it from the books I was reading. You couldn’t squeeze a drop of liberal out of the Contemporary Christian Music^[1] I was listening to even if you had industrial equipment.

Well, for the most part, anyways. There’s one line in one song that really poked me in the head when I was about 18: Caedmon’s Call singing This World. The part that says, “And the least of these look like criminals to me, so I leave Christ on the street.”

That might be it. I can’t be sure; my memory is a terribly threadbare fabric. But that’s the first thing I can honestly point to. Maybe it woke me up a little bit, I don’t know. Can’t you see why “this world has held my hand and has led me into intolerance” might do that?

To the south, Americans seem more socially conservative than they have been in fifty years. Although social liberals in the United States most certainly exist en masse, it seems axiomatic that the States’ social policy is drifting right-of-centre. Partly driving this shift is the disproportionate power of the evangelical political arm, which is to the social conservatives as the gay lobby is to the social liberals. The shift is also driven by the hopelessly broken American electoral system, in which the only two parties of any consequence, the Democrats and Republicans, are essentially cut from the same cloth and advocate policies differing from eachother in (what looks like to the rest of the world) minor details.

Yet, the United States has the largest military force in the history of mankind. The country is a cultural hub for the entire world. It’s the consumer power that drives entire economies. It’s a geopolitical superpower unlike any other before or likely to arise anytime soon.

What’s a simple Canadian to do? I am not an American, yet I am affected by the actions of that powerhouse on my doorstep. I am affected in countless ways. Some of these ways are too subtle to quantify. Others are so obvious they’re not worth talking about.

I come from a long tradition of Canadian social liberalism, in that I’m Canadian. I also come from a short tradition of social conservatism, in that I’m third-generation immigrant stock. Depending on who you choose to believe, the influence of the United States in Canadian politics and social life is a terrible intrusion or conversely a long-needed correction.

I’m not going to spell out some long argument in favour of social liberalism, nor am I going to cast (too many) aspersions on our neighbours to the south. I will, however, point to results as a guide for my own cast of mind.

Canada is a secular government. This is, of course, ridiculous, as no-one can be truly secular. Everyone has a religious bias of some kind. Yet, secular government is the best thing we’ve found yet to protect disparate people from the ravages of raw religious power. We insulate everyone against that possibility by forcing those in power to separate church and state, to keep religion out of politics, to keep religion out of schools, and to keep religion in the churches and mosques. Impossible? Yes. But it works. It works most of the time. The balance sometimes sways too far in favour of anti-religious sentiment, but secular government works.

This secular government has resulted in acceptance in the form of multiculturalism, rights for minorities, gay rights, voting for women, abolition of slavery, tolerance, and that sort of thing. Some of these values are strongly antithetical to my beliefs as a Christian. Yet I accept that in a secular state, I cannot legislate lifestyle. If I could legislate lifestyle, I would be doing damage to my reputation as a Christian, and to the reputation of Christians as a group, and to the liberty of other consciences than my own. Thus I accept — and seek to protect — the secular state, and accept that this secular society will by definition accept and mandate things I find reprehensible.

What does this have to do with the USA? In the US, there’s a grand tradition of social liberalism as well. Yet there’s an even stronger current of social conservatism — the country was founded by religious fundamentalist extremists, after all — that stretches back to the USA’s very beginnings. Also, while Canada was founded by agreement, confederation, and negotiation, America was founded in the crucible of violence, civil disobedience leading ultimately to war, a war prompted almost purely by economic considerations.

The founders of the USA were, despite their origins, quite interesting people. They envisioned a secular state. They referenced a God that seems, in retrospect, to simply be some sort of elemental force. They separated church and state. They had seen what religion and political power does when mixed and didn’t want it repeated.

What happened?

Why is it now that some amorphous political arm of a bunch of squabbling evangelicals can command policy shifts in the world’s only remaining superpower? What happened to that secular state? Why does Canada embrace diversity while America embraces homogeneity? Why does America look like, to the rest of the world, verging on fascism?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. Part of it may be that the static political system in the US has existed so long that every participant instinctively knows how to game it. Part of it may be the almost comical fear that seems to pervade the US experience. Part of it may be the fierce nationalism that seems to periodically seize the national mindsphere.

As far as I can tell, it’s not a good direction to travel in. Isolationism? Bad. Fierce nationalism? Bad. Lack of tolerance? Bad. Religion dipping its censor into the inferno of politics? Superbad.

• It turns out that I’m liberal. Like, really liberal. Shocking, though, as I’d become used to the word “liberal” as a pejorative, thanks to most of the people I know. On the other hand, I absolutely am not a Liberal Party supporter, especially now that Stéphane Dion is leading that motley pack. But who does that leave me to vote for? Certainly never the NDP: I may be liberal, but I’m not a union shill, and I’m not a communist. The Tories are alright, if you like the West, which I mostly do not. The Libertarian party is weak to the point of comic relief. The Green party is a viable candidate, as always, but it’s also weak. As for the Christian parties, the day I vote for a Christian political party will be the day I hand in my membership card in the, you know, Kingdom of God (the one that isn’t organised around political solutions to moral problems, and certainly doesn’t go for an official mix of church and state).
• I had a strange dream last night. Laura had been kidnapped, and I had been given a series of clues to her whereabouts: I remember driving frantically around the city, trying to find her, when the van (yes, the van) I had commandeered was hijacked by a tiny thug wearing a ski mask, holding an Uzi. Normally, I might have drawn some relevant size-related conclusions, but this was, after all, a dream. Turns out that Laura was the one in the ski mask, and it was all a huge joke. Heh. Good one. After that, it got even weirder, but I’ll save that narrative for a more appropriate place (like my extremely porous memory).
• Steve and Jo just had a baby boy. They have named him Isaac, because Sarah laughed at God, and that’s a great thing to memorialise. I agree.
• I’m sick of a society that breeds women to be uptight, moralistic feministas. What ever happened to women being pirate wenches? Who told us men that the woman should be the one controlling the remote (in my vernacular a much better variation on “wearing the pants”)? That’s right: when I want a tankard of ale, I’ll have me a tankard of ale, and she’ll be wearing saucy pantaloons and a corset possibly made out of the bones of my victims. I’m not really sure of that one. But let us men raise the battle cry: bring back the wenches!
• I’m going to spray some Axe in my office. Lisa will soon be over to flog me with a cat-o-nines for giving her a headache.