Canada's identity crisis

The recent elections in Canada serve as an excellent bellwether for how to read ideological differences -- and polarities -- in today's world.

We're ALL undergoing change, and Canada serves as an excellent model. In just about every case, it's history being forced at gunpoint by current (and fast-changing) events to re-examine itself. Here's truepeers, at Covenant Zone:

"Part of the reason this was such an uninspiring election with no party having a great vision is because we continue to have trouble articulating the reality of Canada. We can say that Harper failed to win a majority in part because he failed to articulate and defend a clear conservative vision. He played to the centre in a wishy-washy liberal nation.

"And when you don't take risks, you don't create new possibilities. But I think this is really a way of saying we are still in part an imperial culture, often more interested in what a distant government promises to do for us than what we can do with our governments." (emphasis mine)

George Santayana, and all that. ("Those who fail to learn the lessons of history, are doomed to failure")

Here in the Good Ol', we've become so completely disconnected from history -- because we're forward-thinking, 24/7, easy, cheap, convenient, I want it now! -- that those who believe in Common Sense, namely conservatives, now doubt their own allegiance to Real Reality. Why? For whatever reason, we've ALL become seduced by the idea of comfort at ALL COSTS.

Well, there ARE costs. And we are being challenged to decide not only what those are, but how we will pay them.

I think we'll be up to the job. But we're in the turbulence of having to re-think some fundamental things, and that, like Rome, doesn't happen in a day.