Calgary Grit was the first to bring my attention to this document, released by Alberta Liberal Party Leadership hopeful Dave Taylor. Grit says that some of the arguments are "puzzling." With respect to whoever wrote it, I think that's Grit being polite. Daveberta has also read the document, and his comments are here. Dave thinks it's not feasible. Grit thinks it's the best course of action "if the dramatic options are rejected." Not exactly ringing endorsements. My thoughts are of the same sort.I don't actually know that Dave Taylor wrote this thing, but for the sake of not referring to some anonymous "they" for the rest of the post, I'm going to pretend he did.[Update: While the document has the support of Dave Taylor, it was written by three young, and relatively new members of the ALP. Details are here.]By way of summary, Dave is basically saying, "Just because there's something wrong with the Alberta Liberal Party doesn't mean there's anything wrong with liberalism. The Alberta Liberal Party can be fixed, and here's how."That's all true. But it's confusing liberalism with a party that bears its name. The "Liberal" party is not the only way to promote liberalism.Dave starts out by discounting the two "radical" options of a party name change, and a merger with other parties. Let me just say briefly that I generally agree with those arguments as far as they go on the merger, anyway. I would also point out that they are as much arguments in favour of creating a new party from scratch as they are arguments against attempting to merge the existing parties.On the name change, he says "Albertans will see through it." He's right. They would. Then he says if it was more than a name change, it wouldn't be "liberal" anymore. "Our name is our compass," he says. Then he suggests that an alternative means of changing the name would be to create a new party, but that would leave some people behind who were unwilling to leave the party, further dividing the left.I think this idea that the Liberal Party exists as its own entity, as if in the case all the human beings on the planet disappeared the ALP would continue fighting, is harmful. The name of the party is a tertiary matter. First there's the ideology, then the ideology's name, then the party's name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and individual freedom, responsibility, rule of law, democracy, and using the power of government to promote equality of opportunity would be good things even if they weren't called "liberalism."Throughout the document he criticizes liberals for being arrogant, but what do you call it when you presume that the only reason to create a new party would be to implement a name change for the ALP? Yes, there will be those who refuse to follow if some decide to move to a different party. But saying that some people who now call themselves liberal won't abandon that name is not the same as saying no one else would adopt it.He suggests that the correct path is to follow the example of the Labour Party in the UK. His plan? First wipe our policy slate clean, and come up with liberal policies that Albertans will like. Second, lose the martyr complex. Third, restructure the party to be a more effective campaigning machine. Fourth, and finally, re-brand the party (without actually changing its name) as "New Liberal". For the re-branding, he says drop the colour red, drop the word "Alberta" as an apology for being liberal, and start acting like we're proud of our liberalism.These are good steps. In particular, I am really happy to see someone talking about how the party should be restructured. I have similar thoughts about how the new party should be structured. I think there are some steps missing, though. First, the ALP needs to involve new people. Otherwise, any policy revision is going to end up with what we have now, presumably. If you want different results, you need different people, preferably people who used to vote conservative. He conveniently doesn't explain how that's going to happen. It's convenient, because any possible explanation of how that's going to happen is going to bounce against the current toxicity of the liberal brand in Alberta, despite its vaunted longevity. (Is there anything more illiberal than saying we should continue to do something in a certain way because it has been done that way for a hundred years?)In the absence of an explanation for that, we've got a process by which all of our policies are replaced with the same policies, none of the people are different, so the martyr complex stays where it is, and you've got (if you're extremely lucky) a restructured ALP with a re-branding that is shallow and meaningless, which Albertans will rightly see through.So no, this isn't the kind of renewal I'm looking for. At the very least, it's not enough unless someone can explain to me how we are going to attract new political blood to the ALP. If you can make me believe that's possible without starting from scratch, I'll seriously consider it. This document, despite it's flash and drama, doesn't answer that crucial question.Here's the crux of it. There's nothing wrong with liberalism. There's nothing wrong with liberals. There are simply too few of us that attached to an ideology to form an effective political movement in this province, and we have to have something else to rally around: something that enough other Albertans can rally around to make a real difference for people with liberal values.