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Rescuing Canada's Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution by Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah
You may have noticed that, in January, Canadians elected a Conservative government instead of the usual Liberal one. This event, though unusual, is not revolutionary—it remains the case that "North of the forty-ninth parallel, the word 'conservative' has become as much of an epithet as 'liberal' has in the United States." No single sentence more effectively captures the political landscape of America's northern neighbor than this one, which opens Rescuing Canada's Right, a patriotic call to arms for Canadian conservatives.
Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah, both journalists, believe the challenge facing Canadian conservatives is to overcome the status quo. They encourage conservatives to reform Canadian culture, so that it no longer "prefers mediocrity to merit and favors opportunists over those who create opportunity."
For decades, Canadian conservatives have waited for someone to rescue them from the political wilderness. In the meantime they have busied themselves by forming new political parties and renaming old ones. The authors recommend, instead, that conservatives build an entirely new policy infrastructure from scratch-in effect, that they construct a conservative movement, to some extent along American lines.
Waiting for others to solve problems is characteristic of liberals; acting with others to solve them is characteristic of conservatives. They conclude that it's high time Canadian conservatives start acting like conservatives.
—Murray S.Y. Bessette
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This article appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the Claremont Review of Books
