I cannot understand why Canadian academics insist on importing political models from the US to frame our political debate here in Canada.
When it comes to the question of liberal versus conservative, I definitely fall into the camp of Libertarian. I am neither of the others.
Marco, what is it about political scientist that they can only think in a single dimension? From the time you spent in the academic world, why can the analysts not think beyond an either-or model?
To me, political science has to evolve to understand social, cultural and political beliefs are multi-dimensional. A good first step would be to acknowledge that political beliefs are at least two if not three or 4 dimensions in nature.
For example, I believe in strong communities, local accountability, self reliance, small government, personal responsibility, open social mobility, and personal freedom. Where the heck do those values fit into either a modern Conservative or Liberal model where both movements believe it is the role of the state to offend those values time and time again through bloated centralized administrations (including our current federal and provincial governments).
I equally detest both the old, aristocracy foundations of the Conservative movement and the statist tendencies of the modern social democratic / liberal movements. I do not believe in class nor to I believe in big government. I think if academic researchers dig a bit beyond media spin, they might find the underlying values of a lot of the population lie outside their simplistic models.
