But of course the issue isn't what's happened to the Conservative party, though it would be nice to have one party on the political spectrum that promised something slightly different from the others. It's what's happened to us: to Canadians, to our political culture....

Like the Conservatives, we have become utterly corrupted. Our politics now revolves entirely around trying to pry money out of each other, region by region, interest by interest, household by household. We know all the tricks: screaming, pouting, whining, threatening. And we hire people who are especially good at it to do it for us.

That's what we expect our political leaders to do. That's what the chief executives of our largest corporations mostly do. Union leaders, farm reps, lobbyists, strategists, consultants of all kind -- it's a vast industry of special pleading, a money-go-round in which we attempt the mathematically impossible -- to redistribute income from everyone to everyone -- each thinking he can make the other pay for his subsidies and never noticing that he's paying, in his turn, for someone else's.

All we want to know about our members of parliament is: have they brought home the bacon? All we want to know about our province's place in the federation is: is it profitable? We are a country that is entirely without shame.

I blame the Liberals for creating this culture. But I blame the Tories even more for capitulating to it.