Thursday, May 12, 2011

Welcome Blogging Tories

When I first started blogging 5 years or so ago, it was on the same premise as Kate at Small Dead Animals - that the media doesn't necessarily speak for me and this is my way to shout back at them and correct what they're saying.  When I started, I didn't consider myself a "Tory", I considered myself a libertarian, and I still do.  For that reason, I specifically made a decision not to join any of the partisan aggregators in order to ensure that my audience encompasses the largest tent possible.  In the ensuing 5 or 6 years, however, I've grown to understand that the Conservative party - the party (now) of classic liberalism - is the one party that can get closest of all the mainstream parties to those ideals.  It's not perfect, what in life truly is?  If a true libertarian option became mainstream, I have no doubt that I would likely support that party, but until that time, I'm comfortably in the Big Blue Tent.

That isn't to say that I'm necessarily happy with the size of the federal government and the surplus/deficit, but I'm willing to give Mssrs Harper and Flaherty a shot at erasing the mistakes of Tory governments past and proving to the phantom 60% that conservatives DO have compassion, they just manifest it in a tough love sort of way rather than throwing money at ineffectual solutions to problems.  I also understand that sometimes solutions DO require money, however I also know that the longer the Conservatives have the reins in Ottawa, the more often the solution to a problem will be more than about the money thrown at it, it'll be about the results that are actually achieved on the other end.  In short, I trust Mr. Harper in particular to remember that governments are much more inefficient than the private sector in solving many problems that will come our way, and his actions - despite the spending on gobs of money on "stimulus" - have been to steadily gloss over the conservative answers - tax cuts as stimulus, trust in the citizen to exercise their own set of values, reliance on independance - with diminishing continuance of solutions that haven't worked in the past.

So having said all this, I welcome my new readers and look forward to your feedback and knowledge as I have enjoyed yours over the past few years.  I will be reviewing some of my posts over the past couple years on Blogger and updating and reposting some of my favourites over the coming days, just to give a taste of what's to come.

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