Our not-so-benign Dictatorship: A Response to Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan on the Vote Subsidy

As Stephen Harper eliminates the voter subsidy, what goes next ... the ballot box? A government notorious for its abuse of power continues on its merry way, unchallenged, and there is not one iota of consideration (despite generous attestations to the contrary on election night - when Harper actually smiled) for the 60% of Canadians who voted distinctly otherwise on May 2nd.  One reason given for Harper’s elimination of the voter subsidy is that he was “tired” of so many elections in such a short period of time.  Is four years from now really not enough time to rest up for an election?

So it looks like we will not have competitive politics for quite a spell because Harper actually likes tampering with how we individual citizens support the parties for which we vote.  The Conservatives call it, according to their marketplace model (and soma-induced mantra) “freedom of choice” - a ruse, as if democracy were based on some form of consumerism, you get what you pay for.  I call it the stepping stones to a not-so-benign dictatorship because the party playing fields are nowhere near level without the subsidies.  Instead of four or five federal parties, we may now (possibly) have only two, at best – how is that for “choice”? What masquerades as “individualism” manifests as illiberalism.  And this was not necessarily a “public” subsidy (and by the way what’s wrong with the word “public”?).  This was not a “tax” on my vote, and Harper really is fiddling with nickels and dimes here – remember the cuts to GST? (Quite the big thinker, he is!)  No, this was “my” subsidy, a toonie from “my” taxes to support “our” democracy (what’s left of it), and it was conceived in the interest of electoral fairness, to minimize the undue influence of big corporations and unions, nothing otherwise.

In taking away the subsidy Harper is subtracting from the dignity of my vote, your vote and everyone else’s vote – and he is at his partisan, malfeasant worst. Two dollars per voter is mere pocket change, but multiply that several election times over I am sure we will come close to another billion dollars, or so, just enough to hold another G20 Summit with possible occasion to bludgeon ordinary Canadian urbanites ... again.  Shall we all rest easy, now?  My guess is that Harper will eventually become tired of pesky and annoying elections altogether (far too much chatter, to which his Cabinet is surely unaccustomed), so in the end he will appoint himself Governor General and then usurp the powers of the Prime Minister – something akin to Putin.

Just because Harper “won” (read: spent far more money on) the election (with the last-minute help of bin Laden’s sudden demise) does not justify the proceedings of his “government,” regardless of so-called party pronouncements prior to the vote.  Not everyone who supported the Conservatives will sit comfortably with the move to eliminate the vote subsidy. Oliver Cromwell and the experiment with Republicanism is an important episode in British constitutional history (with which we should all be familiar, for King Charles I did lose his head), but it does not necessarily deserve our respect.  There are certain parallels with today (though not quite in the same sequence): for example, the truly unprecedented accumulation of unrivalled power (outside of Parliament), the air of “Puritanism,” the emphasis on the army, and the promotion of “religious liberty” at the expense of political liberty.

There are other precedents for Harper – mostly in third-world countries.  And as the Prime Minister is busy ensuring that the likes of Gadhafi not get overthrown by his very own people, he continues with intense bombing missions, as if Edmund Burke can double as a fighter pilot.  He confuses his affections for Marie Antoinette with the dark figure behind Lockerbie.  As well, I am reminded of the right-wing figure from turn-of-the-century France, Charles Maurras, who opposed freedom for Jewish Captain Dreyfus (falsely accused of treason), thinking he should remain on Devil’s Island even if innocent, because releasing him would be a stain on the French State (and Army).  Similarly, the (once teenaged) – and only Canadian - Muslim Omar Khadr languished in Guantanamo, implicated by his father’s apparent relationship with bin Laden (and former Prime Minister Chrétien), a hand grenade, and a U.S. military court that cried bloody murder in war.  True to his Machiavellianism, Harper calculated that he would get more votes (and money, let’s face it) from his evangelical base (otherwise known as the PM’s “conscience”) if he kept Khadr in Guantanamo’s gulag than if the boy received due process in Canada. 

A century ago the Dreyfus Affair split France in two, and the French government apologized to the family only in 1998, on the anniversary of Zola’s J’Accuse, but the truth was that Dreyfus was innocent.  The truth in Harper’s Canada is that Khadr’s rights as a human were grossly violated, but then again, the evidence shows that we cannot get habeas corpus right in downtown Toronto (another development in the Britain’s early pre-Civil War period). I see at least one apology generations in waiting (for “policing errors”), assuming we still have our sovereignty as a nation.

Eventually Mr. Harper will lose, and his luck will fail.   Even the voters will tire of their captivity.  Maybe there will be one too many wars.  In the future, there will be no earthquake in Haiti to save him, no late-night, James Bond- type assassinations of the world’s most-wanted criminal mastermind, and possibly (recalling Mr. Dion’s failed interview) fewer unethical decisions by our news networks to stir the public imagination ...  all again, last-minute.  No, as I am fond of saying: Oliver Cromwell was followed by his son Tumble-down Dick.

Because of Harper, we have already fallen far.  Now the view looks precipitous: it is not so much the dearth of Liberals as the apparent death of liberalism (originally formed as opposition to the abuse of power – epitomized by the “voter subsidy”) ...  that is what worries me most.  Canada will, however, “Rise Again” (following Stan Rogers' song "The Mary Ellen Carter").  And then will begin the job of undoing Harper’s nefarious consequences, if possible.  The first order of business will be to restore the “Harper Government” to its original nomenclature (“Government of Canada”); then, to pull down the statues of he-who-shall-not-be-named.

Montaigne on Torture: Renaissance Thoughts on Guantanamo (plus Osama bin Laden's death)

Montaigne’s thoughts against torture would put a number of North American public figures to shame, including Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff (that latter being a little fuzzy around the edges).  Montaigne’s thinking  demonstrate how far current public discourse has shifted uncritically in favour of torture (and violence), since 9/11 and Guantanamo Bay, and “Prime Minister” Stephen Harper would find himself in the same company as perhaps Montaigne’s contemporary, Jean Bodin, who favoured the torture of children accused of witchcraft.  Incidentally, Bodin is also considered the intellectual father of French absolutism, which brings us to recall the value of classical wisdom as expressed by Isocrates: “imperfection has a greater interest in moderation than excess does.”[i]

Let us begin with a short summary of Montaigne's life and significance as an independent thinker, followed by extensive quotations of remarks against torture and cruelty.  This is followed by what could be considered sound criticism of bin Laden's death. 

Montaigne mostly lived on his eponymous estate near Bordeaux, France, from 1533 to 1592 and, like his father, suffered from kidney stones late in life, a topic about which he wrote much.  A wealthy man, his father was determined to educate his son in the best manner possible – and so Michel de Montaigne’s first language was Latin.

A man with a Renaissance spirit, Montaigne’s expertise was himself, or so he said, and he coined the written “Essay” (or “attempt”) thus becoming one of the first in a line of ‘modern-era’ thinkers striving for moderation with a healthy dose of scepticism, epitomized by his most famous expression, “Que sais-je?” (What do I know?), which can be found in his best-known (and longest) essay, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond.”

One of his most interesting chapters, “On the uncertainty of our judgement” begins with a quotation of Homer’s Iliad: “there is every possibility of speaking for and against anything.”[ii]  And it concludes with a line from Plato’s Timaeus: “We argue rashly and unadvisedly, because in our reasoning as in ourselves, a great part is played by chance.”[iii]  Elsewhere (in his “Apology”) he explains: “Reason is a two-handled pot: you can grab it from the right or the left.”[iv] Again, using a different metaphor, he continues: “Human reason is a two-edged sword.”[v]  And in a philosophical chapter (“That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them”) he reflects on the significance of perception and belief: “men are tormented not by things themselves but by what we think about them.”[vi]

Montaigne was an outstanding man of his times and possibly one of the most insightful writers the world has ever known, with an influence even on Shakespeare.[vii]  In his career he studied law, served as counsellor to the Parlement at Bordeaux, and was twice chosen Mayor of Bordeaux – once (at the invitation of Henri III) when he was travelling outside the country.  When he fell out of political favour he even spent a stint in the Bastille (not unlike Voltaire, centuries later), only to be released following the efforts of wily Catherine de Medici.

Being a moderate was not easy in Montaigne’s day and age, as Europe was torn apart by the Religious Wars, the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, which was particularly nasty and inclined to violence, including widespread torture, which he abhorred and proclaimed against.  In this case he borrowed significantly from St. Augustine’s City of God, but throughout the Essays his many classical sources included Plutarch, Cicero, Horace and Seneca whom he plunders and credits with wild abandon.

Here is what Montaigne says about torture:

Torture is a dangerous innovation; it would appear that it is an assay not of the truth but of man’s endurance.  The man who endures it hides the truth: so does he who cannot.  For why should pain make me confess what is true rather than force me to say what is not true?  And on the contrary if a man who has not done what he is accused of is able to support such torment, why should a man who has done it be unable to support it, when so beautiful a reward as life itself is offered him?

I think that this innovation is founded on the importance of the power of conscience.  It would seem that in the case of the guilty man it would weaken him and assist the torture in making him confess his fault, whereas it strengthens the innocent man against the torture.  But to speak the truth, it is a method full of danger and uncertainty.  What would you not say, what would you not do to avoid such grievous pain? ...

Pain compels even the innocent to lie.

This results in a man whom the judge has put to the torture lest he die innocent being condemned to die both innocent and tortured. [viii]...

All the same it is, so they say, the least bad method that human frailty has been able to discover.  Very inhumanely, however, and very ineffectually in my opinion.  Many peoples less barbarous in this respect than the Greeks and the Romans who call them the Barbarians reckon it horrifying and cruel to smash a man of whose crime you are still in doubt.  The ignorant doubt is yours: what has it to do with him?  You are the unjust one, are you not? Who do worse than kill a man so as to not to kill him without due cause! You can prove that by seeing how frequently a man prefers to die for no reason at all rather than to pass through such a questioning which is more painful than the death-penalty itself and which by its harshness often anticipates that penalty by carrying it out.[ix]

Here is Montaigne on cruelty:

I live in a season when unbelievable examples of this vice of cruelty flourish because of the licence of our civil wars; you can find nothing in ancient history more extreme than what we witness every day.  But this has by no means broken me in.  If I had not seen it I could hardly have made myself believe that you could find souls so monstrous that they would commit murder for the sheer fun of it; would hack at another man’s limbs and lop them off and would cudgel their brains to invent unusual tortures and new forms of murder, not from hatred or for gain but for the sole purpose of enjoying the pleasant spectacle of the pitiful gestures and twitching of a man dying in agony, while hearing the screams and groans.  For there you have the farthest point that cruelty can reach ... That man should kill not in anger or in fear but merely for the spectacle.[x] ...

... I fear that Nature herself has attached to Man something which goads him on towards inhumanity.[xi]

Here is Montaigne in his chapter “On cowardice, the mother of cruelty” (and this offers a perspective on Osama bin Laden’s death):

Everyone knows that there is more bravery in beating an enemy than in finishing him off; more contempt in making him bow his head than in making him die; that, moreover, the thirst for vengeance is better slaked and satisfied by doing so, since the only intention is to make it felt. ... To kill a man is to shield him from our attack. ...

‘He’ll be sorry for it,’ we say.  Do you really think he will be sorry for it once we shot him through the head? Quite the contrary: if we look closely we will find him cocking a snook as he falls: he does not even hold it against us.  That is a long way from feeling sorry!  And we do him one of the kindest offices of this life, which is to let him die painlessly.  He is at rest while the rest of us have to scuttle off like rabbits .... It is a deed more of fear than of bravery; it is an act of caution rather than of courage, of defence rather than attack.  It is clear that by acting thus we give up both the true end of vengeance and all care for our reputation: we show we are afraid that if we let the man live he will do it again.  By getting rid of him you act not against him but against yourself.[xii]

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[i] Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. and ed., M.A. Screech (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 136.

[ii] Ibid., p. 314.

[iii] Ibid., p. 320.

[iv] Ibid., p. 656.

[v] Ibid., p. 743.

[vi] Ibid., p. 52.

[vii] Saul Frampton, When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing with Me?  Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011), 251-254.

[viii] See the early Christian arguments against torture by St. Augustine, City of God, XIX, vi

[ix] Montaigne, Essays, pp. 414,415

[x] Ibid., p. 484.

[xi] Ibid., p. 485.

[xii] Ibid., pp. 787,788

Why Harper won - and Canada's Parliament Lost: A Letter to the Globe and Mail

First of all, let us remember that we are at war – and have been for ten years, the longest in Canada’s history.   While Canada’s contribution to the effort in Afghanistan is being phased out, we joined (and now lead) another war over Libya – and this with the unanimous consent of the House; the only dissent coming from the Green Party, at the time unrepresented in Parliament.  There should have been – and there should be - debate over involvement in Libya, and the fact that there was none (with agreement even coming from the Bloc) shows a greater tolerance for war.  Canada, once a colonial country, now apes the imperial pasts of appropriating countries:  Britain, France and the United States.[i]  Besides, all parties wanted to get on with the Canadian election, which goes to show that former Prime Minister Kim Campbell’s infamous parting line has actually been proven right:  an election is “no time to discuss serious issues.”  Canada is now engaged in two separate wars – unprecedented in our history – both with a minimum of debate and public scrutiny.

War eats away at liberalism.  It is no accident that liberalism collapsed in most European nations after World War One.  The mindless enthusiasm for conflict in August 1914, followed by soldiers going “over the top” of trenches, giving of their persons, cementing a bond at the Front (regardless of the enemy) that went beyond any particular individual – only to find meaning in the “community” which in turn contributed to the birth of our nation at Vimy.  No one really has “rights” in times of war – and so liberalism (which is presumed not to understand human nature) comes to a dead end.  Just look at (Britain’s) Siegfried Sassoon and his pacifist activities during WWI outlined in his Memoirs of an Infantry Officer where the author explains: “In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth.”[ii]  Elsewhere he writes (and remember this regards the First World War): “A Jolly fine swindle it would have been for me, if I’d been killed ... for an Oil Well!”[iii]

But there are other factors, working in an opposite direction today (almost a century later, following postindustrialism in the West), and these are consistent with other nations moving towards the Right of the political spectrum.[iv]  A generation of youth and adults are literally amusing themselves to death (by means of video games like “Call of Duty,” inspired by 9/11), aided by a host of other high-tech consumer devices cultivating narcissism and a distancing of themselves from responsibility to both politics and society.  Death is trivialized by electronic games, and we habituate ourselves to quick reflexes, instant “sound bites” and technological violence – perplexed as we are now by the phenomenon of school-yard bullying.

Capitalism feeds on the young (whose survival skills depend on their narcissism) – and we too all want to be young, healthy and happy (especially if we look to the American constitution), consuming one product after another towards this end (hence the desire for low taxes) without any encumbering responsibility for ‘the Other’.  The end result is a cultural hedonism (for example, in places like Whistler) and an anti-intellectualism (is Toronto still our intellectual capital?) which makes it easier to dismiss mindful thought as Canadians shift to the Right.  While thought content decreases, populism and nationalism increase – along with notions of a certain scientific or managerial determinism (as opposed to freedom – let’s recall the Prime Minister’s need for “recalibration” of the economy at second prorogation).  And so we come to accept that war – and Stephen Harper - are considered necessary for Canada.

Never fond of Constitutional nuances, Stephen Harper has been effectively exonerated by 40% of Canadians and given a majority, leaving us with an institutional memory of a Parliament that does not correct abuses; rather, it leaves the government open to perpetuating further abuses.  “Strong” government has actually been government by hook and crook (and more of the latter), but at least Canadians will not have to think about politics for the next 4 years, as if casting a ballot any sooner would be considered too much of a public duty.  Harper governed as a majority even though he had a minority; now that he has a majority, he will govern as if he has no opposition.  Such is the nature of political power (always an excess) – and the man who holds it (obsessed with partisan advantage).

The Liberal Sponsorship Scandal was followed by the Judge Gomery Inquiry (and close-ups of golf balls), but the Harper Majority has now virtually rewritten Hansard and the contempt of Parliament verdict – having, of course, never acknowledged it on the campaign trail.  Here we find reminiscences of Montaigne’s thinking: “A man who is disloyal to truth is disloyal to lies as well.”[v]  And in this respect Conservative Party fortunes were boosted by a print media rather empty of critical conscience (often regarded as a liberal concept) and more concerned with what (commercial) position to take given the likelihood of some political outcomes.  This brings one again back to Montaigne’s concern in 1580: “Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept.”[vi]

When Gutenberg invented his printing press in the 1440’s, it was considered providential – God’s answer to the advance of gun powder and the artillery earlier in the Middle Ages; publishing, in other words, was linked with freedom of thought – and criticism.  Just as the invention of the telegraph preceded Europe’s (ill-fated) Revolutions of 1848, today’s Internet may also be considered providential – the answer to chronic abuses of power – especially when establishment writers and editorialists are perhaps too timid to tread on the toes of a Prime Minister high on his game.

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[i] India (a country familiar with colonialism) opposes Western intervention in Libya.  And one of the main reasons why Canada did not get a seat on the UN Security Council is that Canada did not support India’s bid for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council (so much for our much-vaunted multiculturalism).  Poor Portugal does support India’s bid, which is why it has a seat at the Security Council – and not Canada.  When it comes to Canada’s diminished international stature: it’s not just about the economy.

[ii]  Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London: Faber and Faber, 2000). p. 199.

[iii] Ibid, p. 202.

[iv] Rémi Lefebvre, “Une nouvelle version du fatalisme en politique: L’histoire vire-t-elle à droite?” Le monde diplomatique, Avril 2011, p. 3.

[v] Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech  (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 736.

[vi] Ibid., p. 756.

Blog "Election Results 2011" - A Statistical Review and Thanks

Here are my Election Day blog statistics from May 2010 to 02 May 2011 (1800h PST)

Pageview all-time history: 4001

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Please note that some figures are approximate.
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