[T.O.Fanatic]

Of course, there is nothing ideologically stopping conservatives from supporting urbanism, especially as the suburban culture is unsustainable. (This has been touched on). The problem is that in North America the party systems have worked out so that the 'progressive' spectrum is heavily centred on urban cores and the right dominates big box land. We all seem to forget that the NDP got their start as a rural movement. (CCF). Hopefully we can see a political realignment in the aftermath of the recent election. Let's hope MP's like Joe Oliver remember they are from the city, not northern Vaughan.

 

[insertrealname]

One tendency in small-c conservatism is the preservation of continuities, rather than opportunistic changes in direction subject to changing political fashion.

I think this fits in very well with the necessities and practise of city development, which need to be focused on the long term, since nothing urban is achieved in short time-scales. It also sets limits to the politicizing of urban development debate on ideological fault-lines--in many other cities whose planning procedures seem to get better results than Toronto's, it's the professional planning commissions that set a long-term direction for the City Council's debates and decisions on urban development.

 

[brockm]

There's nothing libertarian about Ford. At all. Not even a dash.

I'm a free market libertarian, with Georgist tendencies. And I see nothing redeeming in Rob Ford, to be honest. Left-wing people have too easily fallen for the idea that libertarianism = right-wing, and therefore libertarianism is a constituency of conservatism.

The only reason people believe this today is because of the Cold War, and how libertarians uncharacteristically got into bed with conservatives in the face of the "red menace". Since the Iraq War and the attack on basic rights like habeas corpus, and escalations in the war on drugs, I don't know any real ideological libertarian who is any real way trucks with conservatism.

In Canada, the Liberal Party is the natural home of libertarians. However, the LPC took a significant departure from it's classical liberal roots in the last half of the last century. But any cursory examination of say, the ideology of Wilfred Laurier, would make him a libertarian by any measure in today's political sphere.

It would probably come as a surprise to those on the left who stereotype libertarians all as Ayn Rand fanatics, that most libertarians are not Objectivist or Randians. In fact, most libertarian philosophers find Rand's epistemology to be nonsense.

Anyways, end of rant.

 

[GraphicMatt]

I find the notion of a libertarian that hasn't been co-opted into the Objectivist Ayn Rand thing to be fascinating. Are there examples of modern politicians in the United States or Canada you identify with? Surely not Ron Paul.

Rob Ford isn't a libertarian, but rather an example of a high school/internet libertarian that never grew out of it. His political philosophy doesn't go beyond "government is bad; private sector is good."

 

[King of Kensington]

Don't forget, the urban rennaissance of the last 20 years really been about mass gentrification, with the moneyed classes moving to the core and bidding up real estate values. A bourgeois city is going to be a conservative city.

I don't think gentrification explains the increase in the Conservative vote. Where gentrification has mostly occurred (i.e. Toronto-Danforth, Parkdale-High Park, etc.) saw big increases in the NDP vote and are just about the most Tory-phobic ridings in Canada. And of course Rob Ford got creamed in these ridings as well.

 

[brockm]

As far as I know Ron Paul is not an Ayn Rand Objectivist. He is a Walter Block libertarian, with the heart of his influences in Ludwig von Mises.

There's Patri Friedman, who's Milton Friedman's son, and like his father is also a non-Objectivist libertarian whose ideology is principally influenced by Hayek.

Then there's Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, who's libertarianism appears to be strongly influenced by Hayek and John Rawls.

In fact, I really have to strain myself to think of any major thought leading libertarians who are Objectivists. Only Alan Greenspan comes to mind, but even Greenspan more or less recanted his Objectivism in the 1980s.

It's strange that people think most libertarians are Objectivists. In fact, many Objectivists -- including Rand herself -- don't even consider themselves to libertarian, but a distinct ideology.

Some libertarians even advocate for some degree of welfare. Hayek was surprisingly okay with the idea, and Milton Friedman proposed the Negative Income Tax. Geolibertarians, too advocate for a form of welfare, in the form of a citizen's dividend.

It's quite hilarious to me, that people constantly deride libertarianism in general, as if it's dominated by Rand heads.

Libertarianism is also often derided as an "extreme" ideology. Of course, libertarianism is a word that describes a fairly wide set of ideologies. Most political philosophers would agree that the people who wrote the US Constitution were libertarians. One of the framers of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Alan Borovoy, is a self-professed libertarian.

A lot of people think free market libertarians are defenders/supporters of big business. Once again, not true: http://www.thevolunteer.ca/2011/03/libertarians-hate-big-business/

If you think this, you ought read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, or even Hayek's Road to Serfdom.

When you look at these things from a political philosophy standpoint, libertarian influences have been pervasive throughout North American history. From the founding of the United States, to the framing of the Canadian Charter. Libertarian thought was at the heart of the Upper Canada Rebellion -- right here in Toronto -- which ultimately culminated in the Responsible Government movement in Canada.

Luis Reil's rebellions where rooted in classical liberal ideas. And classical liberalism and libertarianism can be used fairly interchangeably.

To dismiss libertarianism as a crackpot ideology is quite honestly, to impugn a fairly significant influence on the development of our country and it's history.

Atheism, and therefore fairly liberal social views are fairly prominent in libertarian thinking, as well. In fact, one of GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson's political slogans is "Where LGBT isn't a four letter world." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUEa7V3TgGQ). Frederich Hayek was an atheist. Milton Friedman was an atheist.

This one point alone represents a fairly humongous divide between libertarians and conservatives, in general.

But then again, for many people, if you don't accept the status quo, you're a crackpot.

 

[adma]

I think a lot of this current "conservative libertarian" hooey is really something seeded by the last two decades of Interwebdom, i.e. "libertarian" being a label pretentiously co-opted by those who want to say "I'm the king of the castle and you're a dirty rascal". Ultimately, they're no better than wife-beaters or likeminded charlatans, but to call themselves "libertarian" is a way of saying "nyah nyah, you can't touch me". But the trouble is that according to their broadest parameters, their form of "libertarianism" can be used against *them*, i.e. shouldn't it be our "libertarian" right to criticize them? Or, attack them? Kill them, even? Such "libertarianism" is so inherently amorphous, it can be used to excuse anything--of course, when you scratch the surface of said "libertarians", they more often than not turn out to be ham-handed, malformed schlubs w/no taste. Lousy lays in the eroticism of everyday existence...

 

[King of Kensington]

Speaking of "conservative urbanism", I saw Joe Oliver and Rocco Rossi on Bloor St. today (i learned later it was for a Fulan Gong rally at Queen's Park).

 

[Hipster Duck]

The original premise of the right (the "ideal right") was actually quite reasonable: entrepreneurs generate the wealth that help maintain a high standard of living for all, so let's make sure that we create the conditions for these small upstarts to flourish. Jane Jacobs was a member of this group: she witnessed the governments of her day ram expressways through thriving, enterprising neighbourhoods, displacing people from private homes and businesses to drab, state-run housing projects. Through a Jacobian lens, the government's interference had clearly resulted in a depreciation of an urban community's quality of life, while celebrating entrepreneurialism and laissez-faire economic and social policies led to upward mobility for many of a former slum's working class people.

This would be all fine and dandy if the right actually practiced this. They pay lip service to helping fledgling entrepreneurs and ensuring that the wheel of the free market is greased by a healthy dose of competition, but their policies actually redistribute power and wealth to large corporations. Large corporations worsen competition because they tend to monopolize the control of markets and rewrite the playbook in their favour, thus making it very difficult for their smaller competitors to, well, compete.

In an urban context, a classic right wing move is to give tax breaks to large corporations and encourage large profit-driven redevelopment schemes. What's inherently wrong with this is that these sorts of breaks rarely pay off the same way that allocating the same amount of resources to the entrepreneurial class might. So, for example, when Bloomberg gave the New York Yankees a 1 billion dollar interest free loan to construct a replacement stadium, one wonders how much wealth and prosperity might have been created if the city would have offered, say, 1 billion dollars in interest free loans to small business entrepreneurs.

That's my beef with this so-called urban conservative revolution (or neoconservatism, in general); it's actually corporate Keynesianism, with a heavy faith in "trickle down" economics, and its effects run counter to the whole idea of a free market in the first place.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I'm not well versed in political philosophy as some here clearly are, but I wanted to introduce the idea of rights and responsibilities. While I believe in progressive policies, both economic and social I feel that our society is skewed too far towards being a rights-based culture versus a responsibilites based culture. I'm not denying the importants of rights. But one of the things that makes me perhaps more conservative is that while I have a bleeding heart, I don't believe people are entitled to their entitlements.

For me this is a rare more ideological position in my otherwise pragmatic thinking. Basically, I feel that we should take care of our selves, our family, our community and our city at large because we all have this responsibility. The welfare of others, ALL others, is OUR responsibility. However, conversely no one is entitiled to receive anything of this world because each of us is also responsible for ourselves, our family, our community and our city. This does not mean that everyone is at a place in their lives that they are able to take responsibility even for themselves, but that is the goal and the goal that society should encourage.

I extend this sense of responsibility to future generations. You are responsible for not only your own well-being and that of your family and community and city. You are also responsible for the well-being of your family, community and city in the future after you are gone. I find this to be an idea hardwired into many immigrant experiences but largely lost in contemporary Canadian thinking. I would for instance prefer we spent less on the welfare of people today, if we could make the future world a better place. We do the opposite now. We borrow from the future to increase the welfare of the people now. So we spend on health and social services and load up on debt, while starving education, infrastructure, environmental causes etc.

 

[King of Kensington]

In other words, Jane Jacobs was basically a Red Tory.

 

[Chuck]

I'm not well versed in political philosophy as some here clearly are, but I wanted to introduce the idea of rights and responsibilities. While I believe in progressive policies, both economic and social I feel that our society is skewed too far towards being a rights-based culture versus a responsibilites based culture. I'm not denying the importants of rights. But one of the things that makes me perhaps more conservative is that while I have a bleeding heart, I don't believe people are entitled to their entitlements.

+1. If one is of healthy mind and body, there is absolutely no excuse not to support themselves and their family without the assistance of welfare and social housing, at least on a long term basis.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Tricky: completely agree. I think that's something that transcends right and left, but it requires a healthy dose of maturity to do so.

In balancing rights with responsibilities, Rob Ford is a politician of the worst sort. He basically got into office whining about how unfair life was to the average voter, promising popular entitlements without thinking about how they would be paid for.

In somewhat related "news", the Onion has an article this week that sums up how I feel.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Once middle and upper class left leaning folks buy property they slowly become conservatives.

 

[GraphicMatt]

The trouble with the talk of 'responsibility' and urbanism is that density by definition makes it difficult to ignore poverty and addiction. So, yes, sure, maybe that guy on the corner outside your condo should take more responsibility for himself and not spend his panhandling money on drugs, but he's not. So what does the anti-entitlement conservative urbanist suggest we do?