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Up here in Canada we definitely feel the neo-right shrinking: last spring Alberta’s 43 year-old Conservative dynasty was thrashed by, of all parties, and of all provinces, the socialist New Democratic Party—talk about mind-blowing! Except, of course, the NDP is now blamed for the drop in oil prices (note the NDP had NEVER BEFORE been government in uber-right Albetar, much less ever having anything to do with world oil prices). And we finally shook off our neo-right federal government last October. I live in British Columbia so naturally I’m looking forward to turfing the last neo-right government in Canada—and easily the most distructive one—the BC Liberals—which brings me to nomenclature: this party used to be what most people would recognize as liberal until it was usurped by the remnants of the defunct, far-right Social Credit party that once formed long-serving governments in BC and Albetar from the 30s to the 70s (and was the arch enemy of socialism, despite the name); the BC Liberals kept the name but turned the party sharply right, much to the confusion of other Canadians outside BC, many of whom are governed by real Liberal parties. The profusion of confusion comes from loosely defined political movements variously called “neo-liberal” or “neo-conservative”—I tired of having to explain these fine points all the time, especially to Americans who are loath to pronounce the word “socialist” (at least up ’til Bernie) and often substitute, at the neo-liberal/conservatives behest, the “L-word”. So I’ve adopted the term “neo-right”. Just as “liberal” and “conservative” were qualified by the prefix “neo-“, my term also distinguishes old from new: the old right-wing, what most would call conservatives, and we up here call “Tory” or even “Red Tory” (please don’t confuse this with the American Revolutionary term for royal loyalists), was always strong on national patriotism whereas neo-rightists are not; they’re into stateless corporatism that generally dislikes sovereign democracies that tax and regulate profiteers. Neo-rightists definitely have a libertarian bent, but it’s this anti-sovereigntist quality that really defines them.

And that brings me to this question: can Americans and Canadians ever agree about the anti-sovereigntist, neo-rightist definition? How it looks from here: Canadian sovereignty is to be diminished by the neo-right to the greatest extent it can manage—just like its agenda for every other sovereign nation, especially democratic ones where voters might elect governments loyal to their respective citizens and not to mammon. But the USA maintains the acknowledged economic and strategic hegemony; does this make its own sovereignty any more or less undesirable to stateless corporatists? Or is the neo-right content to allow American sovereignty—just so long’s it’s the only one? Sort of the neo-right’s lair where it can wallow in rituals of national patriotism it really despises in other nations.

As an aside, I’ve been noticing a lot of absurdity coming from these neo-rightists (no, the Republicans haven’t monopolized absurdity yet, they’re just high-viz, that’s all). Neo-right rationalizations of these secretive trade-deals are quite often absurd, and getting more so all the time. What’s up with the blatant absurdity going on with the neo-rightists?

I’d like to think it’s indicative or prognostic of moribundity, but I must admit neo-rightists still look like they have a strong will to survive. I mean, they seem too greedy to throw in the towel or retreat graciously. Now that we’ve flushed almost all of our neo-right governments here in Canada (just one more to go in May 2017), we note that right-wing (I’d say “neo-right”) think-tanks are still as active as ever, perhaps even more than they were when their proxies were undermining our national, democratic sovereignty.

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