Torify it slow

A very very special mention for my friend Tim Mak, who wrote a striking comment in the McGill Tribune outlining the case for incrementalist conservatism over the radical folk who want torification, want it all and want it now. He said it so well I barely have anything to add on the topic. :)

But let me drift off and ramble: incrementalism IS conservatism, provided we accept the inevitability of change.

Whatever the color of your Tory inner self (corollary: there's a bit of Tory in everyone) conservatism has always been an ideology without a utopia, for we do not idealize human charity, human reason or human selflessness. Tories treasure people's right to do as they please within the limits of the law, fully recognizing that individual self-interest is not a deterministic quantity. Since we can't quantify the interest of a whole nation (but merely gauge it through elections) a government cannot impose courses of action or aims but merely steer the system in the direction of greater freedom and smaller government when the opportunity arises or the people want it. Many governments run out of steam because they fulfil all their promises by making sweeping reforms and then lounge around asking themselves "Now what?". Incrementalist conservatism yields governments that can be eternal, because they act wisely when the time is ripe, not when the election and propaganda schedule imposes it.

We have all seen how bad revolutionary conservatism can be when it is applied in a country that depended on centralization and dish-outs completely: Russia. Torify now and you torify a country. Torify one mind and one bit at a time and you'll torify a nation.