But I can’t. I just… can’t.

When I was a teenager in the 1980’s, developing my first tentative notions of the world of politics, democracy and ideology, I fancied myself a conservative. Conservatism sounded like what I wanted. And the realization that the conservatism that exists today (and has existed all my life) is nothing like the conservatism I imagined as a teenager was the first big brutal disillusionment of my young life, and its scars formed the foundation of all the political thinking that came after it.

What I wanted was a group of sober, rational, cautious, careful people who took the job of government seriously and wanted it carried out efficiently and effectively for the security and safety and well being of all. People who pushed for well thought out and practical government policies designed to insure that citizens had a solid foundation of peace, prosperity, and order upon which to build their hopes, their dreams, their families, and their daily lives. People who believed in law and order in the service of the public good and government in the service of the governed. People who carefully combed through the froth of new ideas that washed ashore from society’s innovators in order to pick only the best to keep, and who always, ALWAYS checked the bathwater very carefully for babies before throwing any of it out. People who were willing to change things for the betterment of society but unwilling to change things just to change them, or just to reap a temporary and/or illusory benefit at the cost of great future liabilities. People with a sharp eye and a shrewd mind who are not easily fooled into thinking whatever feels good must be okay, or thinking that whatever is frightening or disturbing or unpleasant must be bad. People who can remain tough and fair while bargaining with corporations, unions, special interest groups, industry representative, lobbyists, and other nations as well. People capable of shouldering the responsibilities of government without becoming either ideologically naive or cynically corrupt.

In a word, adults. Grownups. Good, solid citizens.

Sadly, that is not what I found when I really looked around at the people who had the nerve to call themselves conservatives, and in a way, I am still looking for those people.

Instead, what I found was a collection of the reprehensible, the repulsive, and the frankly retarded. At the time of my political awakening and disillusionment, the people calling themselves conservatives here in Canada were the Progressive Conservative Party as headed by the now nearly universally reviled Brian Mulroney. For my non Canadian readers, Mulroney was like a cross between Reagan and Thatcher, with a cheap actor’s dramatic rambling rumbling diction and a smarmy contempt for anyone who thought Canada was there for any other reason than to make businessmen rich…. provided they voted Conservative, of course.

Under his leadership, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, one of the two founding parties of the nation (in fact, at one point, in colonial days, identical to the British Tories), became a party of smug corporate apologists and blatant worshipers of the USA, willing to sell out Canadian interests for a song if it got them a pat on the head from their rich and powerful masters, especially if those masters were Americans.

And it was their blatant eagerness to fellate American interests that, thank goodness, led to their downfall. Being too friendly with the Americans is the kiss of death in Canadian politics. We are the mouse in bed with the USA’s elephant, and we are all, deep down, keenly aware of how easily that elephant could roll over and crush us and not even wake up. So we mice are very sensitive to anyone seeming a little too pro-elephant.

So he took the Progressive Conservatives from being one of the two major parties in Canada to losing every single seat except for two belonging to MP too beloved to dislodge without dynamite.

That was what I saw when I looked around for looking for conservatives. And if anything, it has only gotten worse. Now, when I look at the people calling themselves conservatives, I see people who are anything but. I see petty ideologues running on nothing but outrage and blinkered pigheadedness, reactionary cowards without the character or courage to face the future, shortsighted business anarchists who think that somehow, the most important aspect of society (business) requires no cops, no laws, and no enforcement at all and will just magically make everything Rousseau perfect if mean ol government just gets out of the way, spoiled children posing as grown adults who think everything in society should be free and are willing to tear down the very structures of society if it might mean a few extra bucks in their pocket… and so forth and so on. Nowhere have I found the people I was looking for, the conservatives, it must be said, of my dreams.

And so while I consider myself a liberal, it is something that I feel I have been left with rather than chosen. The only people who seem to grasp anything like the full picture seem to be center-left people, people who know that capitalism has a role and government has a role, who know that taxes are not evil and that society has a significant operating costs that is neither optional nor unjust, and that regulation is simply law and order under another name, are center-left liberals these days.

That, and the fact that I am fairly socially liberal, leaves me no choice but to be a liberal.

But part of me will always be looking, wistfully and sadly, for the conservatives I never found.