I mentioned this in my very first post, and I'm going to elaborate on it now. Conservatism is a dying ideology, getting choked to death by the very people who purport to defend it.

In America, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Sarah Palin, and Michael Steele are making the Republicans look like a joke. While in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Minister John Baird, are single handedly destroying a once proud party.

In both cases, the root cause is the same: a failure to adapt conservative philosophies and ideas for the 21st century. In both cases, both parties are slipping into obscurity and potentially into irrelevancy.

So here are the 5 ways conservatives in both nations can become relevant again. And in doing so, help us all have far more intelligent, meaningful, and insightful political discussions and solutions.

The first two first steps are crucial. They will help conservatives gain badly needed credibility in the minds of millions of people that see the movement as a bunch of wingnuts and haters.


1. Admit that you lost the culture war. In both America and Canada, it is clear that the vast majority of the citizens have migrated to the left on most social issues. To most people, gay marriage, abortion, universal health care, and sexual education are non issues. They have come to accept them and embrace them as part of their democratic values. Stop making issues of them. They are doing you no good and bring no value to the nation as a debate. Drop them as wedge issues, and move on. In doing so, you will attract a lot more social moderates into your parties in the long run, including those that view 'social conservatism' as what it is: bigotry.

2. Embrace science once again. Conservatives have gone off the deep end with their near hatred for science. Evolution, global warming, stem cell research, are all rejected by many conservatives that are currently running the movement. Ditch these clowns and get with it. Science is important. By embracing it once again, you will attract many more eggheads to your parties and with it be taken seriously on a host of issues.

3. Get back to talking about the SCOPEof government. While still keeping step number 1 in mind, there is still plenty conservatives can say about the scope of government. Does it really need to fund the arts? Do it really need to give money to the CBC? Should it be taxing food that we think is unhealthy? How about this one: how far can a government go in determining what can of treatments a doctor can perscribe to a patient under universal health care? (What a modern twist on an old conservative theme of 'big government'.) These are all classic conservative arguments -and good ones- that we need to hear again.

4. Get back to talking about the SIZE of government. Different than scope, size is literally the 'BIGNESS' of government. Both in head count, and departments. Even as a liberal the one thing I will acknowledge is that there is a lot of cronyism in government. There are quite frankly a lot of people that get paid to do nothing, and because of liberal fears of unions, nothing is done of it. Well this is another classic conservative argument. Certainly there are departments than can be folded into each other, redundancies that can be eliminated, automation that can take place. Let's hear those ideas, and save a bunch of money to boot.

4. Remind people of the responsibility that government has with taxpayer dollars. Even though this is really a bi-partisan issue, conservatives have always argued it better. No one likes paying any more taxes than they have to, yet governments continue to waste taxpayer dollars. Governments have a responsibility to tax payers to use money wisely and to be completely transparent with what they do with it. Just because we all want universal health care doesn't mean that we can't do it better for less. Just because we all agree that we need a stimulus package, doesn't mean that we can't allow for more local decision making on how that money is spent. And more importantly, just because the government has access to our tax dollars, doesn't mean they can unilaterally spend it without consulting with tax payers first.

Conservatism is in desperate need for a revival. We need a strong conservative voice again in politics. But what we don't need are the far right lunatics that have no respect for reason or principle.

If you have any ideas on how to revive the right, I would love to hear it.


MoonBat