The Fall Of Stockwell Day

And What It Means For Conservatives

July 1st, 2020 | JH

I met Stockwell Day in Regina back in 2002 when he was running for the second time to reclaim his leadership position of the Canadian Alliance. I trekked out to one of his fundraisers in a church basement surrounded by seniors in order to listen to his pitch. When he was introduced, I expected him to walk out on stage, but he surprised us by entering from the back of the room. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and he shook my hand as he made his way through the crowd and up to the podium. It’s funny how little interactions like that can have a big impact on people at a personal level. Suddenly, he wasn’t just a guy on TV, he was a real person that I met face-to-face. I was a fan before, and I’ve liked him ever since.

Unfortunately, Stockwell Day has become the latest victim of cancel culture. His appearance on CBC’s Power & Politics defending Canada from accusations of systemic racism seems to have been the bait that finally tripped the trap. Stockwell misread the current mainstream zeitgeist and thought that tarring Canada as being systemically racist was the realm of far-left, critical theory SJW activists. Instead, he learned the hard way that the needle at the centre of the Overton Window has yet again moved left and that not recognizing Canada as inherently racist makes you an apologist for bigotry and, as a result, racist yourself.

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Stockwell Day’s very reasonable, boomer-era assumption that hating Canada for being systemically racist is the wheelhouse of the far-left was sadly and embarrassingly corrected with him being cancelled.

Since then, Stockwell Day has resigned from the boards of both Telus and theCanadian law firm McMillan LLP. He will also not be featured on CBC’s Power & Politics anymore since his taboo-breaking has made him a pariah. Stockwell briefly made a public tweet stating, “By feedback from many in the Black and other communities, I realize my comments in debate on Power and Politics were insensitive and hurtful. I ask forgiveness for wrongly equating my experiences to theirs. I commit to them my unending efforts to fight racism in all its forms.”

This refers to Stockwell using his experience being bullied as a kid with glasses to the experiences of black people experiencing bullying due to their race. It’s a ham-fisted analogy, but the point was correct. People will always find reasons to divide us and, if race isn’t available, then some other difference can be substituted. It’s just the mean-spirited aspect of human nature to try to “other” people based on inherited characteristics. It creates in-groups and out-groups. These dynamics will never change, but the goal of minimizing bullying should always remain a goal.

But it’s not enough for the mob.

There was blood in the water and they pounced. The thing is, though, I don’t blame the SJW mobs for doing what they did. At this point we should know better. The blame lies with Stockwell Day and the boomer-era conservatism that brought us to this point in our culture.

What lessons can be learned?

1. Conservatives need to boycott the CBC and all leftist media

Why was Stockwell Day on CBC providing his opinions in the first place? The idea is that he provides balance. When a topic comes up, the CBC would love to just have three talking heads espousing far-left worldviews and trying to one-up each other regarding who’s the most progressive. This is too much obvious bias for a supposedly “centrist” program to allow, so they bring in a conservative voice to function as the foil.

These conservatives are then expected to provide a conservative perspective to a non-conservative group of commentators and a non-conservative host. All of this is then presented to a non-conservative audience.

Eventually after a certain amount of time passes, the conservative foil oversteps the liberal framing and says something that progressives consider to be “beyond the pale” and they are then cancelled. Tom Flanagan was another former conservative commentator that comes to mind.

Why do conservatives even bother? We all know that the CBC is a bastion of both Liberal propaganda and a more general progressive purveyor of far-left worldviews. Why don’t they just boycott this activist organ?

Two reasons.

a). The idea is that by appearing on these programs you can get the message out to people who might never hear or consider conservative points of view. That’s valid, but does it work? Does it really? Being a token diversity hire to play the bad guy to an audience of progressives isn’t really changing hearts and minds like people think it might. These commentators are always surrounded by other commentators who mock and rebut them and the whole thing always plays out within a solid liberal frame. You must be extremely savvy as a conservative to both battle your opponents logically and get your message out coherently.

Why not skip it all together and sell to people who are buying? Playing the bad guy on CBC doesn’t do anything for conservatism and it doesn’t do anything for the player themselves. Beyond that, why provide content of any kind for the CBC? They hate conservatives. Why work for an institution that hates you?

b). There is a desire amongst many conservatives to seek the approval of the liberal establishment. If only we can show them that we’re not all bad and we simply have a different perspective, then surely, they will respect us and befriend us!

Don’t fall for it. They see you as an enemy to their agenda and are using you as a rube. This is a weakness of conservatives and always has been. Since our culture is centre-left (and increasingly far-left) the mainstream culture is moving further away from where conservatives used to live. It’s not pleasant to be on the outside looking in, so many formerly mainstream conservatives try to appease progressives by being the moderate conservative that good-thinking progressives allow to exist in good company.

“Why was Stockwell Day on CBC providing his opinions in the first place?”

The trappings of power and prestige are all inside the progressive realm. You must subscribe to the “Cathedral” of progressivism in order to be seen as a good person. Appearing on CBC alongside progressives and getting their reluctant approval is gratifying for many conservatives because it allows them to be viewed as “in good standing” amongst the mainstream.

The problem in the long run is that these conservatives are functioning as house slaves and are the epitome of cuckservatism. Don’t be the useful idiot of the left. They will chew you up and spit you out and the house you think you’re living in will be revealed to be built on sand.

2. Boomer-era conservatives need to update their operating system

When Stockwell Day ran for Prime Minister in 2000, the liberal media went berserk. They took all the smears and strategies learned from attacking Preston Manning and threw it at Stockwell Day ten-fold. The idea at the time was that Stockwell Day had more charisma and presence as a leader. He was more photogenic and athletic. His visuals were easier to sell to low-info voters and this would make him a much better contender than Preston Manning’s nebbish style.

Stockwell was given a full-scale media attack regarding abortion, his religion and the privatization of healthcare…and it worked. He picked up only 6 seats and the unity of the party quickly fell apart. As we know now, Stephen Harper took over the party and minimized the social conservatism and more ambitious and robust aspects of the party platforms. After merging with the PC Party, the modern CPC became a managerial party centred mostly around money. By the time Harper lost, the party was considered too right-wing by many…simply too unfriendly by some. Scheer replaced Harper with an identical platform…but with a smile. By this time, the country had moved so far left that the CPC was now considered far-right, and Scheer’s milquetoast social conservatism was viewed as “beyond the pale”.

Now we’re looking at a Peter MacKay leadership in which he is ardently pro-choice and eager to march in Pride parades. Climate change is a high priority for the guy, and he wants to end the coal industry as a result. He’s okay with euthanizing old people so long as the government isn’t forcing doctors to do it against the doctor’s will. And of course… systemic racism is obviously a part of Canada’s identity.

This is the front-runner to lead the Conservative Party of Canada.

Ten years from now, Svend Robinson may as well run for leadership. It just keeps getting worse.

Why is this?

Boomer-era conservatism is really just slow-motion liberalism. Boomer-era conservatives like Stockwell Day are always behind the curve, while switched on, forward looking conservatives like Michael Chong are ahead of the curve. What they have in common is that they are simply at different points on the liberal spectrum. Boomer-era conservatism follows liberalism along like a shadow, adopting yesterday’s zany progressive idea as tomorrow’s long-held conservative principle.

Most conservatives in Canada are on the slow end of the spectrum. When this happens, they are left baffled and destroyed by the culture they no longer recognize. Conservatives need to upgrade their awareness so they can accurately understand their place in society, or they need to give up their ideological proclivities and follow the herd.

What happened to Stockwell Day is the same thing that happened to Don Cherry and then Wendy Mesley (of all people!? Not even liberals are safe) and will likely happen to Rex Murphy and then Conrad Black and then… and then …and then…

All the professional Canadian Conservatives have operating systems that are ten or twenty or thirty years behind the curve. Jason Kenney is running the Ralph Klein playbook and it’s not working out so well for him. Why? Because it’s not the 90’s anymore. Stephen Harper ran a 2006 campaign in 2015 and he lost badly. Andrew Scheer ran a 2015 campaign in 2019 and he lost badly.

Severely normal Canadians holding what they believe to be severely normal views are risking having their lives destroyed simply because they’re not up to speed on our current cultural zeitgeist. We are living in a cultural revolution right now and if you want to avoid the Red Guard you need to act accordingly, be smarter and get up to speed.

3. We are in this position because official conservatism has failed

Imagine being Stockwell Day on Power and Politics and thinking how ridiculous it is to condemn all of Canada as being systemically racist. This “inherently racist Canada” point of view was held only by the most radical of far-left activists up until, oh I don’t know, five minutes ago? Being a patriot is a natural part of what normal people think being a conservative should be. The fact that it is now mainstream to view our whole system as racist should be a wake-up call to conservatives. The fact that Stockwell Day has been cancelled because he had the audacity to be a patriot on CBC should be a wake-up call. Many events that have occurred repeatedly in the past should have been wake-up calls.

Conservatism has failed to conserve anything of value. One civilizational plank after another has been marginalized, ridiculed, degraded and attacked for decades now. We’re at a point where the government has willfully shut down the economy over a virus that is marginally more devastating than the regular flu and asserted a level of totalitarian control like we’ve never seen before. In order to mitigate the effects of shutting everything down, the federal government decided to run a $300 billion deficit, consisting mostly of handing people free money.

People love the free money so much that if an election were held today, Justin Trudeau would win in a landslide. The fact that he broke his quarantine in order to display his supplication by kneeling to mobs of woke protestors has only won him more respect from Canada’s progressive mainstream.

Where are the conservative principles in all this?

We’re living in total madness and conservatism has nothing to say for itself. If conservative principles worked, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. Completely dominated by madness. The conclusion to this situation is not going to be “conservatism”. Something new and much more assertive needs to arise.

My journey away from mainstream conservative to something more fringe has mostly been forced upon me. I used to be what I thought was a “right of ‘centre-right’ conservative”, but as the madness builds, I now find myself as a dissident extremist inside my own country. Combined with taking the Benedict Option, I have carved out a savvy right-wing position that I hope will allow me the camouflage and subterfuge to thrive inside our current zeitgeist.

Conservative-minded people in Canada need to do the same, because we’re not going to vote our way out of this. The politics of our age is just meaningless window dressing. Our late-stage democracy is collapsing in on itself. We won’t be able to paper over our problems with borrowed/printed money forever. Our system itself is degrading quickly and our culture is leading the way.

As of this article being published, Stockwell Day has disappeared from public life. His once active Twitter account has stopped, and he has made no public appearances of note. I wish Stockwell Day all the best. I hope he’s made enough money to live comfortably in retirement and I hope he drains his golden federal pension dry. I respect the guy and can sympathize that a worldview developed during formative years in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s can innocently lead to the woke guillotine of cancel culture today. He shouldn’t have had to apologize, because we shouldn’t be at a point where an apology is demanded.

We shouldn’t have to live like this.

Something (many things) have gone horribly wrong with this country and if ever there was a time for Stockwell to bow out and go fishing, now would be that time. As for everyone else, update your operating system, get red-pilled and act accordingly. This is no longer the Canada you think it is.