Some new blogs that have had some great posts about the renewal of the Liberal Party of Canada:
And some of my long time favorites:
~BT
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Turning Talk into Action on Liberal Party Renewal
There has been a considerable amount of discussion and interest in reform and renewal of the Liberal Party of Canada after the historic loss in the election last Monday.
All my conversations with friends and what I've been reading online has re-energized me in the face of the brutal election results. I am convinced that we as young progressive and liberal Canadians have a huge opportunity to make our mark on the Liberal Party and contribute in building a better Canada.
To start, I wanted to react to a number of things that have been already written on-line. To be honest, there have been so much activity online it has been hard to keep track of it all, but here is my first take:
Rob Silver seemed to start it all off on the right foot with a number of great blog posts at the Globe that scope out what's next for the Liberal Party. Of the four camps that Rob references, I am firmly with Rob in the 2nd group:
I very much agree with Vincent St. Pierre who argues on his blog Calgaryliberal.com that centrism is an electoral strategy, not a political philosophy, and that the Liberals should now start listening more closely to Preston Manning. Manning uses an iceberg metaphor to describe politics — parties in themselves represent the 10 per cent above the surface, while ideas, movements and activism form the 90 per cent you don’t see. St. Pierre writes:
Conservatives here in Canada get it. They have adopted the Republican strategy and developed right wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute, the Canada West Foundation and others. They recently founded the Manning Centre to help train and build the next generation of conservative activists and now have their very own version of Fox News with Sun TV News.
Given all this, I think we need to move beyond just talking and take some action. LiberalThinking is a modest start and I encourage you to check it out and consider contributing something yourself.
In recent days, I've been part of a number of discussions about what we as young liberals and those outside of the existing Liberal Party power structure can do to reform and rebuild the Party. If you are interested in getting involved please let me know.
All my conversations with friends and what I've been reading online has re-energized me in the face of the brutal election results. I am convinced that we as young progressive and liberal Canadians have a huge opportunity to make our mark on the Liberal Party and contribute in building a better Canada.
To start, I wanted to react to a number of things that have been already written on-line. To be honest, there have been so much activity online it has been hard to keep track of it all, but here is my first take:
Rob Silver seemed to start it all off on the right foot with a number of great blog posts at the Globe that scope out what's next for the Liberal Party. Of the four camps that Rob references, I am firmly with Rob in the 2nd group:
2. Reform everything about the Liberal Party. Top-to-bottom. New blood, new voting coalition – there’s not much that stays the same in this new Liberal Party. This is obviously my preferred option and I will discuss it in more detail in the days and weeks to come.Susan Delacourt provides a decent summary in this weekend's Toronto Star, despite the headline, where she surveys much of the discussion in the media about the future of the LiberalParty. Unfortunately, most of it is about leadership and merger, both topics that I have no interest in talking about right now. I don't think it is the time to be talking about leadership. The Liberals continually get caught up in these leadership battles at the expense of focusing time and energy on building grassroots organizations and institutions both within and outside the official Party who would, similar to organizations on the right, help to support and ultimately get a Liberal leader elected Prime Minister.
I very much agree with Vincent St. Pierre who argues on his blog Calgaryliberal.com that centrism is an electoral strategy, not a political philosophy, and that the Liberals should now start listening more closely to Preston Manning. Manning uses an iceberg metaphor to describe politics — parties in themselves represent the 10 per cent above the surface, while ideas, movements and activism form the 90 per cent you don’t see. St. Pierre writes:
I fear the Liberals have become ice cubes — a party for a party’s sake, and an accumulation of people interested in being in a party and implementing a party’s vision. A party without a base of support, that is. Being solely ‘centrist’ will not get the Liberals anywhere.I couldn't agree more and on the "centrism" point specifically, Jesse Rosenberg nails it with the ending to his recent blog post:
That’s why our plan has to be to rebuild, and re-learn what it means to be really liberal, so we can start the mission of convincing Canadians to join a project, not a partyThe other point from Manning about parties being only 10% rings very true to me, especially given my experience while I was in the U.S. during the Bush years. I saw first hand and participated in the development of progressive institutions and organizations that emerged to foster progressive activism and support for the Democratic Party. Canadian Liberals should look at the example down south, with the emergence of groups like Moveon.org, the Center for American Progress, the Campaign for America's Future, Media Matters and progressive blogging communities like DailyKos, OpenLeft and others.
Conservatives here in Canada get it. They have adopted the Republican strategy and developed right wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute, the Canada West Foundation and others. They recently founded the Manning Centre to help train and build the next generation of conservative activists and now have their very own version of Fox News with Sun TV News.
Given all this, I think we need to move beyond just talking and take some action. LiberalThinking is a modest start and I encourage you to check it out and consider contributing something yourself.
In recent days, I've been part of a number of discussions about what we as young liberals and those outside of the existing Liberal Party power structure can do to reform and rebuild the Party. If you are interested in getting involved please let me know.
~BT
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