tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72385507128347125132012-02-06T11:06:52.170-04:00Commentary on Politics, Society & Culture from DISRAELI-MACDONALD INSTITUTES.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-47952361467094166272012-02-06T11:00:00.002-04:002012-02-06T11:06:52.179-04:00

Last week a Cato Institute report caught my eye, about a French commercial court awarding damages to a map-maker for losses incurred through potential customers’ use of Google Maps.Serendipitously, at the time I was reading Richard Epstein’s Free Markets Under Siege, where he examines ‘competitive markets and compensation for competitive harms’. In the free market system, sellers compete for

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-16652818451092213662011-11-14T08:30:00.003-04:002011-11-14T10:04:34.417-04:00

Students of public choice theory will recognise the rationale behind the Canadian government’s recent effort to cut waste.In response to an access-to-information request, the Treasury Board released a ‘Statement of Work’ announcing that a private consulting firm was hired to recommend ways to eliminate the federal deficit by 2014-15 (currently between CAN $32-36 billion); specifically to ‘advise

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-72710806974475956712011-07-26T14:00:00.003-03:002011-07-27T08:12:55.303-03:00

For many watching the ongoing debate in American politics about raising the level of the debt ceiling, the experience has been sublime — to use Edmund Burke’s definition to describe ‘whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror’.At the heart of the debate are fundamental questions of politics: How much government do

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-45223995669633946612011-07-01T15:00:00.002-03:002011-07-01T15:03:02.585-03:00

To-day, the anniversary of 144 years of Confederation, is to be a day of national celebration and joyous good cheer. Far be it for me to introduce a note of gloom into the Canadian visit by their royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Yet for those who steadfastly persist in marking the occasion as Dominion Day, there is an underlying sombre message for Canada’s monarchical

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-69130453134659694592011-06-29T12:00:00.002-03:002011-06-29T12:08:39.740-03:00

While preparing my partial study, Reform of the Senate of Canada: A Progressive Conservative Perspective, it struck me how amenable public choice theory is for Anglo-Canadian proponents of appointed upper chambers. This appeared to be an unexplored avenue well-worth following up, and the result is House of Lords reform: lessons from public choice theory.Public choice — the application of

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-67350533162363575382011-06-05T16:30:00.010-03:002011-06-07T17:19:28.692-03:00

With the May election of a majority Conservative government in Ottawa, I knew that the question of Senate reform — particularly, if the past is any guide, of introducing elected senators and term limits — would once more be on the political agenda, this time with more force than in the previous minority parliaments.The Canadian Government has asked the provinces to weigh-in, notably with respect

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-38829727697434128832011-05-04T16:00:00.001-03:002011-05-04T16:00:05.657-03:00

The Royal Wedding last week between Prince William and Kate Middleton has led to renewed interest in the line of succession, which has hitherto followed the example of primogeniture, with the Crown passed onto the eldest son. This practice has been criticised as antiquated and sexist; reforms have been proposed whereby the first-born becomes first-in-line, whether the child is male or female.Yet

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-30014420953610479412011-04-26T10:00:00.003-03:002011-04-26T14:44:13.133-03:00

The sleeper issue in this federal election? Why, reform of the Senate of Canada, of course!I jest, although it does tell you something about its constitutional importance that, when fabricating a wedge issue, the Harper Conservatives harp on the Red Chamber’s supposed institutional failure. Yet, during an election campaign, when pressing national issues are discussed and debated, the relative

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-37548132790605113472011-04-14T11:30:00.005-03:002011-04-14T14:09:50.491-03:00

Life in mediaeval universities has been an abiding interest, and so it was serendipity itself that a recent column by The Telegraph’s Simon Heffer extolled the virtues of a BBC Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’. Its host is the Labour peer Melvin Bragg who, along with a guest panel each week, discusses a variety of that would normally be categorised as ‘high culture’; in Heffer’s words, ‘it

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-712911481417847152011-04-07T08:30:00.001-03:002011-04-07T08:31:54.484-03:00

A long time ago, when I entertained thoughts of pursuing a doctoral programme in political philosophy, my aim was to examine the roots of a species of British Toryism that were exemplified by Benjamin Disraeli and his Young England colleagues, and that were echoed, to a significant degree, by Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.Many of the tenets of this Toryism — known in some

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-64429442231890713052011-03-30T18:15:00.000-03:002011-03-30T18:16:37.678-03:00

As the first full week of the Canadian election campaign unfolds, one interesting controversy — apart from what constitutes ‘a coalition’ — concerns the yet-to-be finalised leaders’ debate. Already, though, we have been told by the media consortium that runs this staple of prime time info-tainment that Elizabeth May, leader of the Green party, will not be invited.May’s exclusion has elicited the

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-20755023798208799332011-01-11T09:00:00.005-04:002011-01-11T16:13:01.208-04:00

To-day, 11th January, conservatives in Canada celebrate the birthday of Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1815): principal author of the British North America Act, first Dominion prime minister, and enduring role model of Anglo-Canadian Toryism.Yet while the general outlines of Macdonald’s legacy is clear, specific beliefs are less certain in the popular mind, particularly when it comes to charting

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-56540689056555332082010-08-04T00:15:00.007-03:002011-04-03T08:23:02.929-03:00

Whitehall’s renewed interest in once-mighty British think tanks is the focus of a column in a recent edition of The Economist. In these uncertain times, when politicians seek to avert financial meltdown and the risks of sovereign debt, what are the implications for One Nation Toryism?After years of creeping irrelevance and funding difficulty, political, economic, and social organisations

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-23664140839226959362010-07-01T10:26:00.002-03:002011-04-03T08:22:23.614-03:00

This week, the Queen began a week-long homecoming to Canada. On the 1st of July, she and the Duke of Edinburgh will be in the nation’s capital to celebrate Dominion Day, marking 143 years since the enactment of the British North America Act and Canadian Confederation.Yet the United Kingdom and Canada have more in common than Queen Elizabeth II and constitutional monarchy: the rule of law,

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-3876194798869371792010-05-25T08:43:00.004-03:002011-04-03T08:21:47.104-03:00

At noon to-day, the Centre for the Study of Democracy (Queen’s University) will hold a debate on Senate reform.The principal question: ‘What, if anything, is wrong with the Senate of Canada, whether it should be reformed and, if so, by what means.’The debaters are Senator Hugh Segal (Conservative party); Senator James S. Cowan (Liberal party); David Christopherson, MP (NDP); and Richard Nadeau,

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-17623523675728568172010-05-16T12:15:00.003-03:002011-04-03T08:21:19.384-03:00

Respect for parliamentary traditions is at the core of an organic Tory philosophy. A reverence for the past embodies what it means to be a ‘Tory’, while providing the evolutionary foundation—the ‘tradition’—for organic development.In light of recent events in British politics, where ‘non-partisan’ conservative political practices are threatened with renewed calls for change, a new project—in

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-50464850842768187672010-05-06T14:07:00.005-03:002011-04-03T08:20:39.151-03:00

To-day’s the sixth of May, so it must be election day in the United Kingdom!Platform 10, an internet site devoted to the idea of liberal conservatism—where ‘progressive ends are best achieved by conservative means’, fulfilled by ‘a modern, liberal Conservative government’—very kindly posted, over the course of the campaign, my thoughts on comparing a liberal conservative programme with Organic

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-26374227565955547312010-04-27T19:16:00.004-03:002011-04-03T08:20:06.678-03:00

Imagine my surprise when I received an email notice from David Cameron, announcing my invitation to join the government of Britain. How wonderful! As a firm supporter of the Commonwealth and as a Canadian who shares Sir John A. Macdonald’s belief in our golden ties to Great Britain, this was an incredible offer.However, in place of an opportunity to swear oaths of fealty to the Queen, was a

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-29709901777666366392010-04-19T10:24:00.006-03:002011-04-03T08:19:37.100-03:00

To-day is Primrose Day, a date singled out by British Conservatives in the late-nineteen-century to honour the achievements of Benjamin Disraeli and to inspire the party by his example. It is named for the flower that figured prominently in one of his novels, which later became his floral emblem.19th April is, incidentally, the day Disraeli died in 1881: His monarch sent a wreath of primroses—‘

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-82144815128213027762010-02-24T14:52:00.006-04:002011-04-03T08:19:07.883-03:00

While conservative in my politics, I don’t consider myself a libertarian—being rather more in tune with the Tory values that exemplify the career of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Yet when thinking a bit about the fate of the Senate of Canada, and particularly about its method of composition, I begin to see the outline of a libertarian defence for appointing

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-27544414616104941732009-11-27T13:29:00.012-04:002011-04-03T08:18:37.117-03:00

Yesterday morning witnessed the launch of another conservative think-tank, yet with a welcomed twist: instead of an addition to the number of laisser-faire organisations, Phillip Blond’s ResPublica has an ambitious aim: ‘the project of radical transformative conservatism is nothing less than the restoration and creation of human association, and the elevation of society and the people who form

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-30737178269297052362009-11-13T02:00:00.016-04:002011-04-03T08:17:57.548-03:00

‘Whither conservatism in the 21st century?’ asks Neil Reynolds in an intriguing column for The Globe and Mail, ‘It takes a conservative to revive a community’. He focuses on one recent development from the right which takes as its exemplar mediaeval society, which Phillip Blond, director of the British think-tank ResPublica, calls ‘Red Toryism’ (which shares few characteristics with its Canadian

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-91204018708491382422009-11-05T17:10:00.002-04:002011-04-03T08:17:04.063-03:00

Happy news! The website for Disraeli-Macdonald Institute is back on-line; you can now find DMI here.At present, only the front page and a few ancillary pages are up-and running; the two original divisions, the Young England Research Unit and the Centre for Confederation Politics, will require more time as I relearn some website basics and experiment with a possible redesign—Yahoo! GeoCities

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-4526283657264554902009-10-26T03:14:00.002-03:002009-10-26T03:20:42.019-03:00

The website for Disraeli-Macdonald Institute will be going off-line—temporarily.Since January 2008, DMI has been hosted, gratis, by the fine folks at Yahoo! GeoCities. This spring, however, Yahoo announced that, as part of its restructuring programme, it would be phasing out its free server sites. All such sites, including DMI, will no longer be available as of 26 October.I have been mulling

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-43949145654898854992009-10-06T00:48:00.008-03:002011-04-03T08:16:35.240-03:00

Several weeks ago in a posting for Front Porch Republic, Mark Mitchell introduced the work of Phillip Blond and asked, ‘Do his ideas translate to the US?’Blond, director of the nascent ResPublica think tank, is a British theologian and political philosopher who became popularly known in mid-2008 for his advocacy of Red Toryism—which shares a common provenance with its Canadian cousin, though

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-62579603022063133322009-09-27T00:50:00.006-03:002011-04-03T08:15:48.872-03:00

It is difficult for an organic Tory not to become glum and despondent while reading newspaper accounts of political events, and assessing partisan commentators who dissect national and international politics. His allegiances are torn, his judgements conflicted. He must feel like the bat in Aesop’s fable of the ‘Battle between the Birds and the Beasts’.From the media the organic Tory learns that

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-31607126676801197482009-05-18T07:27:00.003-03:002011-04-03T08:15:02.976-03:00

Along comes another Victoria Day, with the requisite toasts from supporters of monarchy and calls from its detractors to establish a republic.Yet there is one feature of the Crown-in-Canada so subtle as to go unnoticed by friend and foe alike.In Lament for a Nation, George Grant distinguished between the rise of the Canadian and American nations: Canada, either as a collection of French or

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-29271246467446659092009-05-08T18:23:00.006-03:002011-04-03T08:13:32.162-03:00

A Reply to Chris Bowen’s ‘Neo-liberalism is dead as people realise markets need regulation (The Sunday Morning Herald, 6 May 2009)’:Chris Bowen’s article on Phillip Blond’s progressive conservative philosophy highlights a welcome opportunity to set the market system within the aims of the common good.An implication raised, however — ‘that markets work better with a degree of regulation’ — is that

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-12434542765474818412009-02-27T04:57:00.008-04:002009-02-27T15:55:24.356-04:00

At the conclusion of a joint blog written with fellow New York Times columnist Gail Collins, ‘The Propeller Heads’ Dilemma (17 February)’, David Brooks confessed:The odd thing is very few conservatives consider me conservative any more because I am so pro-government. But the events of the past few weeks have made me sound like a raving libertarian. The administration has taken its faith in

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-65912492471688403192009-02-20T03:48:00.009-04:002009-02-20T17:11:09.775-04:00

In the mistaken dichotomy imposed upon the individual and society, modern liberal politics will often assume a choice exists—a core leitmotif—between the autonomous person free from the obligations imposed by society, and the dependent person who is embedded in a myriad interplay of relationships, beginning with the family and expanding to society's wider associations. Were it necessary to

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-27915390086388880482009-02-13T04:45:00.009-04:002009-02-13T13:20:32.083-04:00

David Cameron’s speech at the World Economic Forum, ‘We need a popular capitalism (30 January)’, has caused quite a stir in certain conservative circles. While arguing against ‘markets without morality’, Mr Cameron stated that ‘We’ve got a lot of capital but not many capitalists, and people rightly think that isn’t fair.’ These remarks—and much else in the speech—caused Daily Telegraph

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-16289167612007763022009-02-05T15:20:00.009-04:002009-02-06T01:20:40.429-04:00

In an article published yesterday on the New Statesman website, Oliver Letwin, chairman of the Conservative Research Department (UK) asks, ‘How liberal is progressive Conservatism?’ If nothing else, it’s very curious that the British have taken up this nomenclature several years after it was dropped—unceremoniously—in Canada.Letwin describes progressive conservatism in glowing terms; as a

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7238550712834712513.post-1961613945537925122009-02-04T14:38:00.003-04:002009-02-04T15:06:38.712-04:00

Welcome to The Organic Tory blog! As a new feature of my research website, Disraeli-Macdonald Institute, periodically I will post comments on matters political, social, and cultural—often in relation to a newspaper article or event of the day—that touch upon Organic Toryism.Some days I may write about a book I am reading, or promote some work or activity that deserves special mention and greater

S.M. MacLeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06855763232686270092noreply@blogger.com0