A Canadian Tory is for family, faith, fraternity, and free markets. With these principles, we can stand firm against the entrenched criminal elements of Canadian society. That is, the demagogue politicians, the self-serving bureaucrats and union heads, extremist professors, morally ambiguous medical professionals, and propagandists in the media and public schools who – directly or indirectly – all contribute to Canada's de-civilizing effects.
We can sum up the essence of Tory anarchism as "liberty and property." A Canadian has a right to bodily autonomy, which implies free choice, agency, and dignity. Private property is a Canadian's ownership of things and land. To deny one's right to property is to reject biology – our extended phenotype. Of course, it's typical for neo-liberals and leftists to deny sexual biology, so one should not be surprised that they ignore this more nuanced argument for private property.
But can everything be summed up as "liberty and property?" As discussed in a previous part, all social conflict arises from scarcity. There's not enough of everything to go around for everyone. Consider the debates surrounding vaccine passports in 2021-22. I critiqued a law professor's belief that the State demanding your papers somehow constitutes "freedom." And that a reduction of this authoritarian control results in a loss of his "freedom."
The issue was, of course, scarcity. This professor wanted access to private and public property that was virus-free, which he believed could only be guaranteed by a proof-of-vaccine certificate. Since he did not want to occupy this space at the same time as unvaccinated individuals, he felt he had less freedom.
The proper conflict resolution was to make private owners the final arbitrators of the decision to ask for proof of vaccine. Instead of splitting the philosophy of liberty into "positive" and "negative" camps, as the law professor suggested and is the modern custom, all things should be privately owned. Private ownership solves the "tragedy of the commons" problem, whereas, in the above example, what are we to do with public property regarding vaccine passports?
Is requiring a proof-of-vaccine limiting one's right, or is sharing space with unvaccinated individuals restricting one's freedom? What about drinking alcohol at the beach? Are your rights violated by the rules concerning drinking alcohol in public?
Only when the core tenets of liberty and property are respected can we resolve these issues. Only when all “common” property is privately owned by its users will we find reasonable solutions.
We can establish private property rights through original appropriation and trade. As discussed before, private property belongs to the biological realm of the extended phenotype, where a gene has an effect outside the physical body. Birds have nests, beavers have dams, humans have property. We can connect all just property directly or indirectly to the original appropriator or mutually beneficial property title transfers.
So now the question is: how do we relate to each other using these core concepts of liberty and property?
The Wrong 20th Century
You could say that the 20th century began one June morning in 1914, when a 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip murdered Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Of course, you could say that was the end of the 19th and place the start of the 20th century in 1917 with the Russian Revolution.
When future historians come to this period, what will they write? If we can summarize the 20th century as the rise of the modern authoritarian State, have we reached a moment that signifies the end of this bureaucratic Leviathan experiment?
The Tory lesson of the 20th century is that the bigger the State, the greater the concentration of wealth and power. If we can sum up the Tory ideology as family, faith, fraternity, and free markets – then it's clear we should have no sympathy with the neo-liberal corporate State. Despite paying lip services to "capitalism," or "freedom," it is as far from liberty and property as Stalin was from the priesthood.
Worse, many Tories succumb to "democracy" instead of responsible government. Responsible government is the Canadian tradition of balancing executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government. The modern emphasis on "democracy" is cult-like. It ignores nuance in favour of mob mentality and mass opinion. It is literally the "tyranny of the majority" that Canada's founders expressed distress over.
The 20th-century lesson Tories must understand is that democratic legislation is a perversion of law. It leads to conflicts rather than peace. The old English common law is natural law in practice. Common law is the realm of social order we should be appealing to – not the democratic state apparatus. The English common law is the foundation of our free commonwealth societies. But the democratic state has perverted and distorted it over the last 150+ years.
Consider the differences between top-down State-created law and bottom-up judge-discovered law. There is no scenario where laws don't exist. Even the tiniest human societies require social norms to keep the group functioning. Laws, or rules, or "regulations," if you prefer, happen naturally and without the need for an omnipresent State directing affairs like a God.
Entrepreneurs regulate each other by competing for consumers. Judges, freed from the taxpayer monopoly, do the same thing. When people are free to patronize competitors, the producers of the goods or services step up. So long as culture remains Tory, then the free market in justice and protection will serve peaceful - not material - ends. A culture steeped in neo-liberalism will fail to maintain a free society.
Still, when the only way to profit is by exchanging goods and services, the incentive to produce quality and maintain a good reputation. Yet, not everyone is honest. And sometimes mistakes get made. Disputes inevitably arise, and since violence is unpredictable, costly, and harmful to business – we create social norms. We "discover" the laws that incentivize social cooperation and just resolutions.
We started figuring this out centuries ago. That's what English common law is. It's a "free market" system of law that originates from actual cases and settlements. It's a set of laws (or norms) that arose and evolved from actual disputes throughout the centuries.
In the Western legal tradition, laws were procedural. Politicians didn't preemptively create new rules and then empower expensive bureaucracies to enforce them. The beliefs that only the State can make laws and that a State can't do something criminal because it defines the Criminal Code are entirely unhistorical.
The evidence is all around us.
English Common Law vs. Democratic Legislation
Consider how companies ensure products are safe and accurately labelled. It isn't the heavy hand of government. They want to avoid product liability claims from their buying customers. Democratic governments have distorted tort law with lobbyist influenced legislation.
And what of the Criminal Code? Can only the State protect against theft or property damage? Is this not a contradiction in terms? The State must first violate your liberty and property (compulsory funding) to preserve your liberty and property.
To enforce criminal law, the State needs to reject contract law. Contract law provides a framework so people can establish agreements with each other, including in our roles as businesses, vendors, employees, customers, and – after the Tory Revolution – protection and justice providers.
We can trace contract law to merchants in the (so-called) Middle Ages in Europe. This legal framework largely developed independent of the monarchy. Contracts were (and still are) essential to merchants as they specify the delivery of goods, services, payment terms, warranties, and other essential details that reduce the risk of misunderstandings and disputes.
Contract law provides a mechanism for enforcing agreements if one party fails to fulfill their obligations. In no way is a centralized democratic State needed to enforce contract law. And history shows it.
But we ignore contract law regarding the State. There's the false belief that the State has a "social contract" with its citizens. This idea originates with Rousseau, who could not have imagined these modern mass democracies with millions of people under the guise of a single "national community."
Governance is a set of goods and services that don't require a democratic State. We already have the framework in place to govern society. The laws are already on the books. The judiciary is, after all, supposed to be independent of the State.
Therefore, a Tory federal Parliament takes a hands-off approach to how Canadians want to govern themselves. Tort and criminal law provide security, while contract, property, and commercial law facilitate cooperation and exchange. In future posts, we’ll explore this concept deeper.
For now, politics doesn't need to enter the picture. Eastern religious philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.” And that's certainly true in Canada, where the people who lie, cheat, and steal also profit from a legal regime they write the rules to.
What's needed is a complete free market in protection and justice. Impartial third-party judges should dispense justice in liberty and property disputes. There's simply no need for politically appointed judges financed by taxpayers. The tax-funded egalitarian system allows the rich and powerful to buy justice through influence. The free market punishes corruption and dishonesty.
Laws that restrict human activity only need to arise when they are required. English common law and a free legal services market promote rules for peace with minimal infringement on civil and economic liberties. Regulatory laws consciously created by the State allow specific individuals in society to exercise political power.
And political power is violence; the State is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. Its role in society is to facilitate what we can't do without it. Not surprisingly, "experts" keep adding to an ever-increasing list of goods and services we can no longer supply to each other through free trade and contracts. They must, therefore, be designated to the State or, at the very least, heavily "regulated" by it.
But State-generated laws are created by whoever controls the political apparatus. These types of laws restrict the freedom of some to advance the interests of others. Common law produces rules that facilitate peace and cooperation. Democratic legislation makes possible the exploitative actions of a politically dominant class. Common law fosters order; democracy causes conflict.
Not only is the State unnecessary to create a legal order, but it is precisely the State's actions that will undermine the peaceful cooperation and conflict resolution that a legal system is supposed to produce. In other words, the State will provoke conflict and settle it according to its self-interests as an independent institution separate from that of civil society.
In contrast, the legal social order arising from civil society and non-state protection and justice is a natural order with non-political cheques and balances.
A private law society, or a constitution of liberty and property, is preferable in every sense of the term. Democratic legislation has deformed natural law (and the common law) to empower some at the expense of all. An increased monopolization in the 19th century, including the introduction of "legal science," precedents, and the State's greater control over society and the economy, have led to a decline in the quality of law and justice.
But none of this should be surprising, even to the classical liberal. Monopolies lead to higher prices and lower quality of goods and services. There is no reason to exempt the State from this fundamental truth. It is a fact of reality.
Democracy's Cult of Personality
Leftists are wrong. Private property is biological. You can't wish it away; any attempt to build a society without it will fail. But neo-liberals are wrong as well. The State is not a protector of private property. The State is an expropriator.
The results of a State-led system are injustices in the market, in which neo-liberals (and many leftists) demand further State actions to correct. They believe these unjust effects stem from free markets. But so long as the State controls property and money, we don't have a free market.
What the neo-liberal world has done is unforgivable. Neoliberalism has transformed a country of private property into fiat property. Of real money (gold and silver) into fiat money ("legal tender" debt instruments).
Neoliberalism has undermined local, voluntarily-funded civil societies for a top-down legislative approach that places us all in one big "national community." Instead of free, independent people finding morals and ethics through family and social bonds, State intellectuals in the universities, media, and, oddly enough, corporations push a one-size-fits-all societal ethics.
The State creates a de-civilizing process which erodes private property rights and expands its legislative, regulatory, and administrative powers at our expense. The fact is democratic States are worse than monarchs. The Founders had an inkling of this but, in 1867, could not foresee the bloodshed of the 20th century.
The essential idea behind democracy is that we rule ourselves. But it's clear; the result is people voting themselves into the public treasury. Democracy invites us to live at each other's expense. In the words of Professor Hoppe, democracy is,
...nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
Or as Sir Francis Bond Head, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada during the 1837 Rebellions, wrote in response to Lord Durham's Report:
The Family Compact of Upper Canada [the Tory elite] is composed of those members of its society who, either by their abilities of character have been honoured by the confidence of the executive government, or who, by their industry and intelligence, have amassed wealth. The party, I own, is comparatively a small one; but to put the multitude at the top and the few at the bottom is a radical version of the pyramid of society which every reflecting man must foresee, can end only by its downfall.
Democratic politics is exploitative and parasitic. Full stop. Politicians appeal to people's primal, basic instincts. But has it always been this way? Lord Durham's Report didn't call for a direct democracy, so Bond Head's warning was a little hyperbolic (but accurate). Eventually, the public would vote themselves into the treasury and demagogue politicians would step up for encouragement.
But we should distinguish a populist politician from a true "statesman" or, "statesperson." That is, a proper parliamentarian. Not a demagogue promising you goods and services for free (or paid by someone else, perhaps "the rich.") A parliamentarian is more than a sitting member of parliament. A parliamentarian is an old class of politician. The kind that doesn't promote laws to expropriate property or force "the rich" to pay their "fair share."
Except for perhaps Scott Reid, MP for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, Canada has no statesperson federally. It isn't Pierre Poilievre, although from the Tory standpoint, he is far less disastrous than Justin Trudeau. But the problem with Poilievre is similar to the problem we had with Justin Trudeau in 2015. Resistance to the democratic State itself is virtually nil.
Many Canadians keep believing that putting new people in charge will solve their issues. They ignore the entrenched interests of big business, bureaucracy, and unions. A significant minority of Canadians have become dependent on the State for income or status (or both). These people are often loud and control narratives in the media and schools.
By contrast, middle-class tax producers lack unity and coherence. The best the middle-class can hope for is a statesperson standing up for their interests. Right now, many are placing their faith in Poilievre.
Canada's De-civilization
In the next part, we'll look more in-depth at the democratic strategy, but it's important to emphasize a few basics for now. Democracy means systematic theft. Democracy de-civilizes society by undermining its core foundations of liberty and property. Professor Hoppe is correct to call it an insidious form of communism. The old Tory tradition was right to be skeptical.
Elections heighten legal uncertainty and encourage short-term thinking in economics, morals, and ethics. Democracy creates an "Us vs. Them" mentality, pushing a divide-and-conquer strategy that benefits the State, the only actual social division.
Through democracy, state elites can split the majority against themselves, so we identify with factions (such as class or race) instead of realizing our common interests. State elites distract us with false divisions and narratives so they can confiscate without scrutiny or even criticism.
Looking at the growth of the State in Canadian history and its de-civilizing effects makes the case clear. The true conservative, the Canadian Tory, must be anti-democratic. We can find inspiration in our own history of Toryism, starting with the United Empire Loyalists and the Family Compact of Upper Canada.
That's not to say these groups were correct in all their actions and beliefs, nor were they anarchistic. But, as we have the hindsight of the "Wrong" 20th century, a Tory is justified in severing the tie between nation and state. A Tory is justified in removing the democratic state from the equation altogether.
A Canadian Tory asks and expects a serious answer: what can bureaucrats do better than entrepreneurs in a free market?
If the answer is national defence, we’ve got you covered. If it is “police” or the “rule of law,” then I suggest further reading. If not this blog, then the works of Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and John Hasnas. (Professor Hasnas, for example, has a great paper, “The Obviousness of Anarchy.”)
A Canadian Tory is for family, faith, fraternity, and free markets. With these principles, we can stand firm against the entrenched criminal elements of Canadian society. That is, the demagogue politicians, the self-serving bureaucrats and union heads, extremist professors, morally ambiguous medical professionals, and propagandists in the media and public schools who – directly or indirectly – all contribute to Canada's de-civilizing effects.
We can square the rise of violent crime and ongoing moral degeneration solely with neo-liberalism ideology backed by the useful idiots on the left and right. This is not a problem a Poilievre Government will be able to fix with legislation. The rot in Canada goes deeper. Like with our brothers and sisters in America, the system needs the equivalent of a Protestant Reformation. Democracy needs discrediting.
Eventually, the Tory Revolution will bring the criminal elements of “progressive” society to justice. Their crimes against natural law and justice have been crimes against humanity.
Politicians who have presented themselves as saints, good Samaritans, saviours of humanity, or who follow the advice of the "experts" are the most egregious. The modern-day democratic politician is right out of 1984. They invent new meanings for words and portray aggression as self-defence (and vice-versa), coercion as freedom, and consumption as saving. They create confusion in public perception (the real lesson of Orwell's doublespeak).
Only a minority of Canadians believe in natural law, viewing the contemporary world as absurd and run by megalomaniacs. We're often called "reactionary," "extremist," or worse, "racist." But consider this Substack a slice of home - a community for Tories who have become disillusioned with the democratic State and see it for what it is.
We will prevent the extinction of Western culture. Even if it means separating from “Turtle Island,” and forming a micro-nation of no more than a few hundred people. We will keep the Canadian Tory tradition alive. There is no State powerful enough to break the bonds of family, faith, fraternity, and free markets.