Ezra Levant, Ron Paul , Jason Kenney and the eternal conflict of the ideological mind

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Ezra Levant, the carnival barker of the conservative movement in Canada and the foremost heel to Canadian progressives, was trying to explain the problem with environmentalism.

I have no problem with treating the environment on an issue by issue basis: weve got to fix this or solve that, he said. But environmentalism is a philosophy, like most words ending with ism. Socialism, communism hinduism, its a faith. And so the question is if your true ideology is conservatism or libertarianism, and you also think you can be an environmentalism person, you may have a conflict there.

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Mr. Levant and Mr. Solberg were one of three short debates that preceded the arrival of the star attraction of this weekends Manning Networking Conference. After a short introduction from Preston Manning, the would-be grandfather of Canadian conservatism, Ron Paul arrived on stage to warm applause and what sounded like the theme from Star Wars.

The American libertarian, a whimsical little old man, is an icon of ideological purity. His answer to most any issue of social order and well-being is liberty. In a world of compromise and contradiction, he is a model of consistency. And consistency of thought has its appeal. Up and until the point you realize it means opposing the Civil Rights Act.

The spirit of liberty seems like its alive and well in Canada, he ventured upon taking the lectern, winning whoops from the crowd.

After explaining that he thought the world was undergoing profound change in the direction of liberty, Mr. Paul took a moment to discuss labels.

This is a conservative group and Im seen as a conservative, but even the term conservative has relative terms. You know, if you were in the Soviet Union, when it was starting to come apart, the conservatives were the ones who wanted to conserve Marxism and the Liberals were the ones who wanted to believe in liberty, he explained. The founders of the United States called themselves liberals and that term was in many ways destroyed and undermined. Today, you know, one of the terms that I used to always have sympathy for because it sounds goodshouldnt we all be progressives, shouldnt we want to look in the future and see new things. But progressives, I dont know how the word is used up here, but in the States its a bad term, if youre a conservative. But maybe thats true here too. But then the term libertarian comes up and that has a controversial connotation. So you have moderates and libertarians and conservatives and liberals and progressives and socialists. And terminology is very tricky. So Ive simplified my terminology for what I believe in to a simple term and that is interventionism. If you believe in interventionism across the board, that means you want the government to tell us what to do with our personal lives, you want the government to tell us what to do with our economic activity and you allow the government to tell other people around the world what to do. So guess what? Ive come down on the side of saying, I am a non-interventionist.

This pronouncement won more applause and more whoops.

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Ezra Levant, Ron Paul , Jason Kenney and the eternal conflict of the ideological mind