Reading fellow member Mili's blog made me realize that the Politics and Religion ban doesn't extend to my personal blog. So I'm going to vent!

For the most part, I'm a fairly left-leaning guy who doesn't like the fact that both the United States and Canada are drifting steadily further to the right. Part of the problem for me is that the political right doesn't even stand for the things it was conceived to stand for historically. If you've taken any Political Science courses at school, you know that on paper, principles of the classical right should include smaller government. So what does that mean exactly? It means that the government keeps its hands off as many things as possible. This policy of non-interference can be broken down into two broad categories: economic non-interference and social non-interference.

Economically, a classical conservative believes in a free market, with as little government regulation as possible. Businesses are allowed to create a natural environment of competition, where in theory they will compete to offer the best products and services to the customer at the best prices. Some people believe this philosophy works, and some don't; that's not where I'm picking a fight.

So far it might sound like contemporary conservatives are sticking to their guns; after all, vehement Republican opposition to things like universal health care and government takeovers of bankrupt corporations and financial institutions rings true to the principles of the free market, right? The problem, however, is that conservatives don't just support the freedom of the corporations; they support the corporations themselves. As in, financially.

In both Canada and the United States, conservatives are in the pockets of corporations. Tax break after tax break for oil companies, banks, multiconglomerates and the super-rich are a continuing conservative mandate, even during an economic recession where those tax dollars should be allocated to the relief of struggling working-and-middle-class families. In states like Wisconsin and Ohio, the scale has been tipped in favor of corporations over employees with the stripping away of collective bargaining rights and the crippling of unions. Big corporations get richer while small ones and individuals suffer. Markets are no longer truly free when the biggest businesses have the political and financial backing of the government, at the expense of small businesses which either go belly-up or are bought out by the big guns.

The principles of small government also extend to the social sphere. A small government keeps out of your home, out of your place of worship, and out of your bedroom. Modern conservatives, quite obviously, do none of these things.

Both American Republicans and Canadian Conservatives support practices like wiretapping, arrest without a warrant, and legislature that discriminates sexual preferences. Information is collected and used against you when they don't approve of your behavior. Two weeks ago, two girls were thrown out of a Conservative Party rally in Canada by the RCMP solely because a Conservative employee had screened their Facebook profiles and found photographs of them with the rival party's leader. At the same time, while conservatives want all of your information, they do not want you to have any of theirs. This is why Julian Assange and Wikileaks, who have tried to expose the international crimes of governments and businesses, has been vilified by both the American and Canadian governments, and slandered with false charges to tarnish his name.

Both of our constitutions promise freedom of religion and equal rights to all peoples regardless of background or belief. But some beliefs, as you know, are more equal than others. Evangelical Christian denominations exert a disproportionate amount of influence, while minority groups like Muslims are continuously demonized and discriminated against. If I am to judge all Muslims by the actions of Osama bin Laden, shouldn't I judge all Christians by the actions of Ted Jones, or Fred Phelps? Furthermore, guess what American leader is responsible for hundreds of times more civilian deaths than Bin Laden? I'm not going to give you the oft-repeated contemporary answers; try Harry S. Truman.

Ultimately Evangelical churches are the wealthiest religious presence in North America, and so in this regard, conservatives are in their pockets just as they are in the pockets of corporations. As such, they attempt to dictate the social values of everyone.

Additional points of complaint: conservatives by-and-large don't believe in the perils of climate change, or at least profess not to because they are in the pockets of oil companies. I don't even have to prove climate change to demonstrate the dangers of this sort of ignorance. One side believes that human influence will ultimately damage our climate and environment to the point where even basic survival is not guaranteed. The other side believes that human impact on the environment is negligible. If we listen to the first side and make the necessary changes to our society and infrastructure to make it more sustainable, and that side later turns out to be wrong, are we really that much worse off? Either way, we are still alive. On the other hand, let's follow the naysayers and make no changes whatsoever to our sustainability. What happens if they are wrong? Simple: we die. Climate change thus becomes a better-safe-than-sorry issue.

Speaking of ignorance, I am terrified by the intelligence and qualifications of up-and-coming conservative politicians such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. These people know about as much about political science as Avril Lavigne does about punk rock.

In closing, then, conservatism in its classical sense no longer exists. Conservatives no longer care about small government, free markets, and the rights of the individual. They support corporate theocracy.

Why my sudden frustrations? Canada is having an election, and for the first time, I am worried. The Conservative Party of Canada as it exists today is an amalgamation of the older Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance Parties. The Canadian Alliance was a re-branding of the Reform Party, which sprang up in Western Canada in the late 80's as a response to growing sentiments that Western Canadian interests and values were under-represented at the federal level. Throughout the Reform party's existence, they support and attracted the support of racists, homophobes, sexists, religious fundamentalists, and oil companies. That same party now occupies most of the positions of power in the modern Conservative Party; the old Progressive Conservatives were the last true "Classical Conservatives" insofar as they support market de-regulation, social non-interference, and small government. Most of those "Red Tories" quit when the corporate Evangelicals moved in.

Stephen Harper, the leader of this Conservative Party, is now asking Canadians for a majority government. He supports stripping the funding from other political parties, the de-regulation of banks to mirror the US model that collapsed in 2008 and took much of the economy with it, he has rolled back Canada's commitments to international environmental pacts, he won't let the same-sex debate die, he has slashed funding to liberal arts programs, he has ignored both Aboriginal and Francophone issues, he turned Toronto into a police state for the G20 summit and arrested 900 people without charges, and he tries to keep media coverage out of parliament. His party supports wiretapping and has left a Canadian who was arrested as a child solder in Afghanistan at age 14 to rot in Guantanamo Bay, where he faces torture, terror, and hopelessness. He downplays the environmental disaster that is the Alberta Oil Sands, he wastes money on bleeding-edge military jets, and avoids direct questions. Four members of his party are facing charges of election fraud, and his government was found to be in contempt of parliament. He is continuously voted in by the zealous, the wealthy, and the ignorant.

If he wins a majority, I can no longer be proud of my country. Canada will just be another corporate theocracy.