Today I spent several hours with a young woman who was radicalized by a variety of far right factions while living in Alberta. It really shook me up. My mother is in a state of ... something I can't identify.

It strikes me that the sound of someone like me railing on against conservatism as I've been doing today could seem indistinguishable from the crazy talk I heard from her.

A person sufficiently concerned about a genuinely concerning thing can sound as nuts as someone concerned about a genuinely crazy thing.

I think we're not sufficiently concerned about the the far right, the nutjobs. I think we think they're just out there on the fringe, not affecting anything.

That's wrong and dangerous.

I think they're inside our conservative party in exactly the same way they were hidden in the GOP. They're MPs and MLAs, they're party operatives and journalist helpers. They're strategists and hangers on.

And I think the idea that the good conservatives have (and there are plenty of those) that they can control this faction while still using the same old playbook is Liberal level arrogant.

It's the playbook, you guys. It's the methods you use. It's the dirty politics and the lies and the misrepresentations that created this, so thinking you can fix it with the same strategies is Liberal level arrogant.

You can have your conservatism. But you can't build a functional, appealing party based on conservative principles by using the same strategies that gave us what we have today.

I'm sure you're all very smart. But no one is that smart.

The only way to fix this broken thing is to knock it to the ground, chase out the vermin, and build a new house. Let the PPC take those folks. Take your one or two cycle lumps and build something that isn't toxic.

Kk? Thanks.