Geoff Russ 🍁

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Geoff Russ 🍁

Geoff Russ 🍁

@GeoffRuss3

Editor-at-Large for @WDiminishment Contributor to the @nationalpost, the @MLInstitute and many others.

The North Shore Katılım Şubat 2021
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
Many curious minds, especially young poli sci students and earnest patriots, fall for 'Red Toryism' because it sounds attractive on the surface, like discovering a vintage coat at an estate sale. When worn, however, it is an ideology riddled with stains and holes. It remains a crude, subversive trick to insist that Canada's classic Tory conservatism and socialism belong to the same family simply because they share a dislike of the same liberal party crashers. Canada's founding principles have nothing to do with the twisting of Macdonald, Borden, and others. Gad Horowitz, who coined the term, was not shy about his Marxist-inspired vision of Canada that he tried tying to 1867. It would be nice to retire the 'Red Tory' label, but it keeps popping up like a mosquito, demanding another swatting, as if thrashings at the ballot box were not enough. My latest in @WDiminishment. withoutdiminishment.com/p/geoff-russ-m…
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
At a certain point, a premier is going to have an Andrew Jackson moment and just do things, and dare the judiciary to try and stop them.
Ben Woodfinden@BenWoodfinden

Another day, another insane judicial ruling, and a good response from Premier Ford. An Ontario court has ruled that the Region of Waterloo cannot clear a 30-person tent encampment from a parking lot it owns to build a major transit hub. Buried in the decision is that the court declared homelessness an analogous ground under s.15 of the Charter. A "constructively immutable characteristic." A "discrete and insular minority." This argument has been tried before and failed, including in this very case, three years ago. If this holds, every municipal bylaw that differentially affects homeless people faces Charter equality scrutiny. The court went further, ruling the region cannot use its own land unless it first provides an alternative legal encampment or "tenting protocol" with equivalent services. Elected officials passed a bylaw, amended it, dropped fines and offered housing plans. None of it mattered. A single judge overrode all of it and made himself the region's chief housing policy-maker. The Charter has become not a shield against state overreach but a sword by which courts dictate municipal governance on questions that belong to elected governments.

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Peter Copeland
Peter Copeland@CopelanPeter·
@GeoffRuss3's critique of what Red Toryism has become is sound. Progressive conservatism, better thought of as regressive convertibleism, is simply socially liberal beliefs and a smothering state with attempts at sound fiscal management that ends up in practice as crude cuts that are reversed the next political cycle. In practice, this is what the Canadian liberal and conservative parties - federal and provincial - have practiced with minor variation, for decades. But as @BenWoodfinden recently noted, this is not what red toryism originally meant. It is socially conservative, communitarian, and economically redistributive. It understood that markets, individual freedom, and the state must all be ordered to higher goods of family, community, stability, virtue, and the common good. Look at the most small state, socially conservative places out there - they only exist in the United States. They are places marked by far higher levels of crime, family breakdown, social disorder, staggering inequality, and worse health outcomes, by a long shot. The United States is the great engine of liberty, dynamism, innovation, and opportunity. But it is also a revolutionary liberal regime, founded through rupture and animated by a kind of freedom fundamentalism. Its dominant cultural export has not been ordered liberty but expressive individualism, which we see in the sexual devolution, therapeutic autonomy, elite university progressivism, Hollywood libertinism, and the “me, myself, and I” culture of self-creation. Because America is so powerful, it sets the cultural tone for the rest of the West. More communitarian societies, including Canada, often end up downstream of American progressivism, even when their own constitutional and cultural inheritance is less individualistic. It's a shame conservative parties around the western world still espouse this completely incoherent double emphasis on unrestrained freedom, and a pathetic claim to higher ideals of virtue. The overemphasis on the former negates the latter. They don't go together in practice, as the evidence shows. Until virtue takes precedence over freedom, conservatives will continue to be liberals 10 years behind.
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3

Many curious minds, especially young poli sci students and earnest patriots, fall for 'Red Toryism' because it sounds attractive on the surface, like discovering a vintage coat at an estate sale. When worn, however, it is an ideology riddled with stains and holes. It remains a crude, subversive trick to insist that Canada's classic Tory conservatism and socialism belong to the same family simply because they share a dislike of the same liberal party crashers. Canada's founding principles have nothing to do with the twisting of Macdonald, Borden, and others. Gad Horowitz, who coined the term, was not shy about his Marxist-inspired vision of Canada that he tried tying to 1867. It would be nice to retire the 'Red Tory' label, but it keeps popping up like a mosquito, demanding another swatting, as if thrashings at the ballot box were not enough. My latest in @WDiminishment. withoutdiminishment.com/p/geoff-russ-m…

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Alexander Brown
Alexander Brown@alexbrown17·
I have no earthly idea what’s going on in B.C. at the moment, but clear and timely comms should be a necessity from each campaign, as well as the party. Hope to see more of these in short order. No matter the potential monkey business that’s under investigation, voter trust, once broken, isn’t so easily returned (especially with so many ginning up conspiracies on zero information). I hope this situation is communicated to the fullest, and that they play to the whistle.
Caroline Elliott@NVanCaroline

I have been knocking on doors and volunteering for conservative candidates my entire adult life. I know what it means to participate meaningfully as an active party member who wants a say in the future of the province. I do not support disqualifying a candidate the day before voting begins. If we want to earn the trust of British Columbians, the Conservative Party of BC must hold itself to a higher standard than the NDP. David Eby may choose to have his political opponents removed from the process, but conservatives should not take that approach. With voting set to begin tomorrow, I have serious concerns about rumors suggesting that a leadership candidate may be disqualified. I think that's the wrong approach. Members must not be deprived of their say without a clear explanation and evidence of wrongdoing. Members are capable of weighing the facts before them and reaching an informed decision for themselves. They must be allowed the deciding vote.

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Katie DeRosa
Katie DeRosa@katiederosayyj·
NEW - The BC Conservative leadership committee has decided NOT to disqualify @KerryLynneFindl . This comes following a two hour meeting this morning about the allegations of campaign finance irregularities from the 2025 federal election as reported by @RobShaw_BC. #bcpoli
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
@EvanOakle I'm just joshing our Antipodean cousins. I think Melbourne and old Victoria before the dark times (Labor), would have been glorious.
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
@CrimCartier If you have paid attention to the previous content at WD, our thoughts on "Blue Toryism" (if that is what you want to call it), are evident.
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Crim of Cleves, the Half-Elf 🖤🍁
Crim of Cleves, the Half-Elf 🖤🍁@CrimCartier·
@GeoffRuss3 You make the point that the PC party had limited success, but then what does that say about the active Conservatives, or so-called 'Blue Toryism,' who have been thoroughly dominated by their liberal opponents? This is ammunition for populists, continentalists, and Thatcherites.
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
Many curious minds, especially young poli sci students and earnest patriots, fall for 'Red Toryism' because it sounds attractive on the surface, like discovering a vintage coat at an estate sale. When worn, however, it is an ideology riddled with stains and holes. It remains a crude, subversive trick to insist that Canada's classic Tory conservatism and socialism belong to the same family simply because they share a dislike of the same liberal party crashers. Canada's founding principles have nothing to do with the twisting of Macdonald, Borden, and others. Gad Horowitz, who coined the term, was not shy about his Marxist-inspired vision of Canada that he tried tying to 1867. It would be nice to retire the 'Red Tory' label, but it keeps popping up like a mosquito, demanding another swatting, as if thrashings at the ballot box were not enough. My latest in @WDiminishment. withoutdiminishment.com/p/geoff-russ-m…
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
The divide between paying and non-paying subscribers in the comments and QTs is very stark with this one.
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3

Many curious minds, especially young poli sci students and earnest patriots, fall for 'Red Toryism' because it sounds attractive on the surface, like discovering a vintage coat at an estate sale. When worn, however, it is an ideology riddled with stains and holes. It remains a crude, subversive trick to insist that Canada's classic Tory conservatism and socialism belong to the same family simply because they share a dislike of the same liberal party crashers. Canada's founding principles have nothing to do with the twisting of Macdonald, Borden, and others. Gad Horowitz, who coined the term, was not shy about his Marxist-inspired vision of Canada that he tried tying to 1867. It would be nice to retire the 'Red Tory' label, but it keeps popping up like a mosquito, demanding another swatting, as if thrashings at the ballot box were not enough. My latest in @WDiminishment. withoutdiminishment.com/p/geoff-russ-m…

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Cole Hogan
Cole Hogan@colewhogan·
"Furthermore, for all the mythology of the Red Tory golden age, the PC Party won only six elections when it existed between 1942 and 2003, three of them being majorities. Between 1942 and 2003, the Liberal Party of Canada won 12 federal elections. Of these victories, nine resulted in majority governments. Red Toryism was a losing ideology at the federal level through and through. "Compare that to the era between 1867 and 1921, when the Conservatives truly were Canada’s ‘natural governing’ party, holding power for 34 of those 54 years. "The most successful PC prime minister was Brian Mulroney, who used his years leading the government between 1983 and 1993 to battle for free trade with the U.S. and sought to shrink the role of the Canadian state. He also passed laws strengthening official multiculturalism and liberalising immigration inflows. When combined, those two policies only made it easier for future prime ministers like Justin Trudeau to proclaim Canada a postnational state." — @GeoffRuss3
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3

Many curious minds, especially young poli sci students and earnest patriots, fall for 'Red Toryism' because it sounds attractive on the surface, like discovering a vintage coat at an estate sale. When worn, however, it is an ideology riddled with stains and holes. It remains a crude, subversive trick to insist that Canada's classic Tory conservatism and socialism belong to the same family simply because they share a dislike of the same liberal party crashers. Canada's founding principles have nothing to do with the twisting of Macdonald, Borden, and others. Gad Horowitz, who coined the term, was not shy about his Marxist-inspired vision of Canada that he tried tying to 1867. It would be nice to retire the 'Red Tory' label, but it keeps popping up like a mosquito, demanding another swatting, as if thrashings at the ballot box were not enough. My latest in @WDiminishment. withoutdiminishment.com/p/geoff-russ-m…

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Kate Marland
Kate Marland@kateemarland·
On point @GeoffRuss3: "Red Toryism should be mothballed like other outdated, invalid visions of Canadian politics, like Social Credit and the Temperance Movement. In its original form, Red Toryism subverts conservative statecraft by trying to substitute socialism for it. It replaces nationalism with social democracy."
Without Diminishment@WDiminishment

Geoff Russ: Macdonald, the Red Tory? Never heard of him "Red Toryism serves as a gateway for smuggling progressive and left-wing assumptions into the conservative tent, all while pretending to honour the legacy of Confederation." withoutdiminishment.com/p/geoff-russ-m…

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Applied Epistemologist
Applied Epistemologist@ChMark161·
@GeoffRuss3 The fundamental problem with your argument is that real classical liberalism has no way to justify the CPR. Or Canada.
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Shannon Boschy
Shannon Boschy@ShannonBDouglas·
I often hear conservatives say that politics is downstream from culture. The problem is: education is the headwater of culture. Conservatives need to field more school trustees if we ever want to lead in politics.
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
People who complain about kids being kids should touch grass.
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Geoff Russ 🍁
Geoff Russ 🍁@GeoffRuss3·
There's a gang of pre-high schoolers who started playing basketball in the alley. They swear loudly like crazy, and make a ton of other noise. Nonetheless, it's a good thing! The neighbourhood in summer should be full of the sounds of families and kids running around.
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Keşfet

@BenWoodfinden @KerryLynneFindl @RobShaw_BC @EvanOakle @CrimCartier @WDiminishment @ChMark161 @elonmusk