Joerge Dyrkton

Puritanism on Culture and the CBC: Max Weber decodes James Moore and Stephen Harper in 1904

2012-01-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

Its attitude[Puritanism] was thus suspicious andoften hostile to the aspects of culture without any religious value. …

Although we cannothere enter upon a discussion of the influence of Puritanism in all …directions, we should call attention to the fact that the toleration ofpleasure in cultural goods, which contributed to purely aesthetic or athleticenjoyment, certainly ran up against one characteristic limitation: they mustnot cost anything.[1]

[1]Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner,1958), pp. 168, 170. This work firstappeared in German in 1904-05.

A Defence of Liberty against Tyrants, or "Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos" (1579): Sixteenth-Century Calvinist Resistance Theory

2012-01-17T23:35:00.000-08:00

Vindiciae, ContraTyrannos was an infamous French Calvinist (or Huguenot) work of resistancetheory published in 1579 during the period of that nation’s Wars ofReligion. It was printed pseudonymously(supposedly in Edinburgh, but truly in Basel) and the authorship is somethingof a mystery, though it was likely the collaborative work of Hubert Languet(1518-1581) and Philippe de Mornay (1549-1623), thus putting it in the sameleague as the Catholic resistance text OnVoluntary Servitude (see my blog entry), as they each attempt to make adefence of society.

Vindiciae, ContraTyrannos is significant for presenting an argument against the secularizedtheory of politics espoused by Machiavelli (1469-1527), who likens the idealprince to “the fox and the lion,” and it speaks instead of the “firm bond ofhuman society” and of “an alliance or covenant between the King and the People”.[1] Essentially put, there exists a contractbetween the king and his subjects (each of whom were beholden to God), withmutual obligations, and if the king breaks his promises, the people arereleased from their promises of obligation to the king.[2]

The work was translated by William Walker from the originalLatin and French in 1648 a year before King Charles I of England lost his head.It reappeared again in 1689 on the occasion of the “Glorious Revolution”, whenthe Catholic (and French-supported) Stuart Monarchies finally came to an end,ushering in William of Orange from Protestant Holland who conquered England,albeit peacefully (starting on Guy Fawkes Day) and who shared the Crown withhis wife Mary, or perhaps vice-versa.

The Revolution of 1688-89 has typically been seen as a“conservative revolution” where quintessential English exceptionalism found itsday, satisfying everyone (except James II, who fled the country) thuspreserving “ancient liberties”. TheAmerican academic Steve Pinkus has produced a very recent work arguing againstthis 300-year consensus, suggestinginstead that it was the “first modern revolution.”[3]The fact that Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannosflourished - and was, on occasion, burned - in seventeen-century Englandindicates that there were significant popular elements to the political events. We need look no further than JohnLocke’s Two Treatise of Government, whichmakes a case for popular sovereignty - mixed with “property” rights - and was writtenat least half a decade before theRevolution, to help substantiate this claim, but that is another topic fordiscussion.

The modern-day English translation of Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos by George Garnett of Oxford Universityis recommended reading for those interested in the history of political thought,but to whet the appetite here is the text as it would have appeared in 1648,and as it did appear - reprinted - in 1689, with only with some minor changesin spelling and expression for the sake of today’s audience. The early-modern English is retained for itsflavour, and I invite the reader to sift through the writing, for there are variouscommonalities with Canada today. Assuredly, looking abroad, there are resonances with the ArabSpring. And the current pressingquestion is: whither Syria?

Parenthetically-speaking, there are some worthy historicalnuggets in the excerpts, too, for the devoted antiquarian. For example, it helps explain why the DeathWarrant of King Charles I stipulated a “severing of his head from his body”.[4] Clearly the executioners were not contentwith any ordinary hanging: the selection below suggests that the headrepresented the soul (which the King’s People followed via the law), so the soul must be severed from the body. And as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) points out (perhapsa little presumptuously) in The Essays: “the most vital parts are notthe quickest of sense”.[5] In other words, the advances of sciencerevealed other important organs in the body, lending itself to a far lesshierarchical (and possibly more headless, yet oftentimes individualistic)development in modern history.

And there are plums here for those interested in linkingStephen Harper to notions of tyranny. TheLondon School of Economics political thinker Harold Laski, who late in hiscareer taught Pierre Trudeau, published a reprint of Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos in 1924 – and both these once-towering intellectswould likely see much need for “reform” today. The section below “Who may be called Tyrants?” is especially fruitful,and reference to the Pharaohs is suggestive of a connection between tyranny andnational monument building on grandiose scales. The Egyptian Pyramids, the German Autobahn,and the Great Wall of China can all be compared to another huge construction(or, rather, destruction) project: the Alberta Tar Sands, which are comparablein size to the state of Florida, if you can ignore the massive pipeline plans, aswell, spreading south and west, and possibly east.

For further credence to the idea that Canada is promotingconstruction on the scale of the pyramids, let us consider the Song of theHarper (or “Harper’s Song” as it is also known): actual poetry found in Ancient Egyptian tombs by that name, usuallydepicted by a blind man playing a harp for the dead. In other words, there may be something of anancient Egyptian in Harper’s blood, which explains why he tended to side againstthe people of Cairo and with autocracy at the time of its Tahrir moment.

Vindiciae, ContraTyrannos was divided into four chapter questions listed below, the mostinteresting of which was Question 3, discussed here.

Questions discussed in this Treatise

Whether Subjects arebound and ought to obey Princes, if they command that which is against the Lawof God.

Whether it be lawfulto resist a Prince which doth infringe the Law of God, or ruin the Church, bywhom, how, and how far it is lawful.

Whether it be lawfulto resist a Prince which doth oppress or ruin a public state, and how far suchresistance may be extended, by whom, how, and by what Right, or Law it ispermitted.

Whether neighbourPrinces or States may be, or bound by Law, to give succours to the Subjects ofother Princes, afflicted for the Cause of true Religion, or oppressed bymanifest Tyranny.

THE THIRD QUESTION

Whether it is lawful to resist a Prince whichdoth oppress or ruin a public state, and how far such resistance may beextended, by whom, how, and by what Right, or Law it is permitted.

The whole Body of the People is above the King.

No truly, but it is said in regard of all the People, whom the businessprincipally concerns, who lend to the King for the good of the Common-wealth,their Eyes, their Ears, their Means, their Faculties. Let the People forsake the King, he presentlyfalls to the Ground, although before his Hearing and Sight seemed mostexcellent, and that he was strong and in the best Disposition that might be;yea, that he seemed to triumph in all significance, yet in an instant he willbecome most vile and contemptible, to be brief, instead of the Divine Honourswherewith all men adore him, he shall be compelled to be a Pedant and whipchildren in the school at Corinth. Take away but the Basis to this Giant, andlike the Rhodian Colossus, he presently tumbles on the ground and falls intopieces. Seeing then that the King isestablished in this degree by the People, and for their Sake, and that hecannot subsist without them, who can think it strange then for us to conclude,that the People are above the King?[6]

Wherefore Kings were created.

Therefore then togovern is nothing else but to provide for; These proper ends of commanding,being for the peoples Commodity; the only Duty of Kings and Emperors is toprovide for the peoples’ Good. TheKingly Dignity to speak properly is not a Title of Honour but a weighty andburdensome Office; It is not a discharge or vacation from affairs, to run alicentious course of liberty, but a charge and vocation to all industriousEmployments, for the service of the Common-wealth; the which has some glimpseof honour in it, because in those first and Golden Ages, no man would havetasted of such continual troubles, if they had not been sweetened with somerelish of honour; insomuch, as there was nothing more true, then that which wascommonly said in those times. If everyman knew with what turmoil and troubles the Royal Wreath was wrapped withal, noman would vouchsafe to take it up, although it lay at his feet.

When therefore thatthese Words of mine and thine entered in the World, and that differences fellamong fellow Citizens, touching the propriety of Goods, and Wars amongstNeighbouring People about the right of their Confines, the People bethoughtthemselves to have recourse to someone, who both could and should take orderthat the Poor were not oppressed by the Rich, nor the Patriots wronged byStrangers.[7]

Whether Kings be above the Law

… wherefore there is nothing which exempts theKing from obedience which he owes to the Law, which he ought to acknowledge ashis Lady and Mistress.[8]

…the law is the soulof a good king, it gives him motion, sense and life. The King is the Organ and as it were the bodyby which the law displays her forces, exercises her function, and expresses herconceptions; now it is a thing much more reasonable to obey the soul, than the body; the law isthe wisdom of diverse sages, recollected in a few words, but many see moreclear and further than one alone: it is much better to follow the Law thanany one man’s opinion be he never so acute, the law is reason and wisdomitself, free from all perturbation, not subject to be moved with Choler,Ambition, Hate, or acceptances of Persons; Entreaties nor threats cannot maketo bow or bend; on the contrary, a man though endowed with reason suffershimself to be lead and transported with anger, desire of revenge, and otherPassions which perplex him in such sort, that he looses his understanding, becausebeing composed of reason and disordered affections, he cannot so containhimself, but sometimes his passions become his Master[9]

If the Prince may make new Laws?

What then? Shall itnot be lawful for a Prince to make new Laws and abrogate the old? Seeing it belongs to the King, not only toadvise that nothing be done against, nor to defraud the Laws but also thatnothing be wanting in them, nor anything too much in them; briefly that neitherAge nor Lapse of time do abolish or entomb them; if there be anything toabridge, to be added or taken away from them, it is his Duty to assemble theEstates, and to demand their Advice and Resolution, without presuming topublish anything before the whole have been, first, duly examined and approvedby them, after the Law is once enacted and published, there is no more disputeto be made about it, all men owe obedience to it, and the Prince in the firstplace, to teach other men their Duty, and for that all men are easier led byExample than by Precepts, the Prince must necessarily express his Willingnessto observe the Laws, or else by what equity can he require Obedience in hisSubjects, to that which he himself contemns. …

For, if the Welfare ofthe Kingdom depends on the observation of the Laws, and the Laws are enthralledto the pleasure of one man; is it not most certain that there can be nopermanent stability in that Government? Must it not then necessarily come to pass, that the King (as some havebeen) be infected with Lunacy, either continually or by intervals, that thewhole State fall inevitably to ruin? Butif the Laws be superior to the King, as we have already proved, and that theKing be tied to the same respect of obedience to the Laws, as a Servant is tohis Master, who will be so senseless, that will not rather obey the Law thanthe King? Or will not readily yield his best assistance against those that seekto violate or infringe them? Now seeingthat the King is not Lord over the Laws, let us examine how his Power may be justlyextended in other things.[10]

Whether the King be the proper owner of the Kingdom?

For what if a Manfor the Flocks sake have made thee Shepherd, does it follow that thou hasliberty to slay, pill, sell, and transport the Sheep at thy pleasure? Although the People have established theeJudge, or Governor of a City, or of some Province, have thou therefore power toalienate, sell, or play away that City or Province? And seeing that in alienating or passing awaya Province, the People also are told, have they raised thee to that Authorityto the end thou should separate them from the rest, or that thou shouldprostitute and make them slaves to whom thou pleased. Furthermore I demand if the Royal dignity bea Patrimony, or an Officer? If it be anOffice, what Community has it with any propriety? If it be a Patrimony, is it not such a onethat the Paramount property remains still in the People who were theDonors? Briefly if the revenue of theExchequer, or the Demeans of the Kingdom, be called the Dowry of the Common-wealth,and by good right, and such a Dowry whose dismembering or wasting brings withit the ruin of the public State, the Kingdom and the King, by what Law shall itbe lawful to alienate this Dowry? …[11]

… a true King as he isa careful manager of the public Affairs, so he is a ready Protector of theCommon welfare, and not a Lord in Propriety of the Commonwealth, having aslittle Authority to alienate or dissipate the demeans or public Revenue, as theKingdom itself. And if he misgovernsthe State, seeing it imports the Commonwealth that everyone make use of his ownTalent, it is much more requisite for the public Good, that he which has themanaging of it, carry himself as he ought.

And therefore if aprodigal Lord by the Authority of Justice, be committed to the Tuition of hisKinsmen and Friends, and compelled to suffer his Revenues and Means to beordered, and disposed of by others; by much more reason than those which haveinterest in the Affairs of State, and whose Duty obliges them to, take allthe Administration and Government of the State out of the hands of he whoeither negligently executes his place, Ruins the Commonwealth, if afteradmonition he endeavours not to perform his Duty. And for so much as it is easily to be proved,the King cannot be held Lord in Propriety of the demean. [12]

An Alliance or Covenant between the King and People

It is certain then, that the People by way of stipulation, require aperformance of Covenant, the King promises it. Now the condition of a Stipulator is in terms of Law more worthy than ofa Promiser. The People ask the King,whether he will govern justly and according to the Laws? He promises he will. Then the People answer, and not before, thatwhile he governs uprightly, they will obey faithfully. The King therefore promises simply andabsolutely, the People upon condition: the which failing to be accomplished,the People rest according to Equity and Reason, quit from their Promise.

In the first Covenant or Contract, there is only an obligation to piety;in the second, to Justice. In that theKing promises to serve God religiously: in this, to rule the Peoplejustly. By the one he is obliged withthe utmost of his Endeavours to Procure the Glory of God: by the other, theprofit of the People. In the first thereis a Condition expressed, If thou keep my Commandments: in the second, If thoudistribute Justice equally to every man. God is the proper avenger of deficiency in the former, and the wholePeople the lawful punisher of the delinquency of the latter, or the Estates,the representative Body thereof, who have assumed to themselves the Protectionof the People. This has been alwayspracticed in all well-governed Estates.[13]

Who may truly be called Tyrants?

Hitherto we have treated of a King, it now rests somewhat more fullydescribe a Tyrant. We have shown that heis a King, which lawfully governs a Kingdom, either derived to him by succession,or committed to him by Election. Itfollows therefore that he is reputed a Tyrant, which is opposite to a King,either gains a Kingdom by violence, or indirect means, or being investedtherewith by lawful election, or succession, governs it not according to lawand equity, or neglects those contracts and agreements, to the observationwhere he was strictly obliged at his reception. All which may very well occur in one and the same person. The first is commonly called a Tyrant withoutTitle; the second a Tyrant by Practice. Now it may well come to pass, that he who possesses a Kingdom by force,to govern justly, and he on whom it descends a lawful Title, rule unjustly. Butfor so much as a Kingdom is rather a right than an inheritance, and an officethan a possession: he seems rather worthy the name of a Tyrant, whichunworthily acquits himself of his charge, than he who entered in his place by awrong door. .. [14]

A Tyrant lops off those Ears which grow higher than the rest of theCorn, especially where Virtue makes them most conspicuously eminent, oppressedby calumnies and fraudulent practices, the principal Officers of the Stategives out reports of intended conspiracies against himself, that he might havesome colourful pretext to cut them off, witness, Tiberius, Maximinus, andothers …. [15]

A Tyrant as much as in him lies, prohibits or avoids all publicAssemblies, fears Parliaments … and meetings of the general Estates, flies thelight, affecting (like the Bat) to converse only in darkness, yea, he isjealous of the very gesture, countenance and discourse of his Subjects. …[16]

If a tyrant wantscivil broils to exercise his cruel disposition, he makes Wars abroad; erectsidle and needless Trophees and continually employ his tributaries, that theymight want leisure to think on other things; as Pharaoh did the Jews, and Polycratesthe Samians; therefore he always prepares for, or threatens War, or at leastseems so to do, and so still rather draws mischief on, than puts it further off. A King, never makes war, but compelled untoit, and for the preservation of the public; he never desires to purchaseadvantage by treason, he never enters into any war that exposes theCommonwealth that it affords probable hope of commodity.

A Tyrant leaves nodesign unattempted by which he may fleece his Subjects of their subsistence andturn it to his proper benefit, that being continually troubled in gaining meansto live, they may have no leisure no hope how to regain their liberty: On thecontrary, the King knows that every good Subject’s purse will be ready tosupply the Commonwealth’s occasion, and therefore believes he possess no smalltreasure, while through his good Government his Subjects flow in all abundance.

A tyrant extortsunjustly from many to cast prodigally upon two or three Minions, and thoseunworthy; he imposes on all: and exacts from all to furnish their superfluousand riotous expenses: he builds his own, and followers fortunes on the ruins ofthe public: he draws out the people’s blood, by the Veins of their means, andgives it presently to carouse to his Court-leeches. But a King cuts off from his ordinaryexpenses, to ease the people’s necessities, neglects his private state, andfurnishes with all magnificence the public occasions; briefly is prodigal ofhis own blood, to defend and maintain the people committed to his care. …[17]

And therefore asthe holy Scripture compares one to a Shepherd, so does it also resemble theother to a roaring Lion, to whom notwithstanding the Fox is often coupled. For a Tyrant as says Cicero, is culpable ineffect of the greatest injustice that may be imagined, that when he mostdeceives, it is when he carries it so appearance to deal sincerely. And therefore he artificially counterfeitsReligion and devotion, wherein faith Aristotle, he expresses one of the most absolutesubtleties that tyrants can possibly practice: he composes his countenance topiety, by that means to terrify the people from conspiring against him; whothey may well imagine to be especially favoured of God, expressing in allappearance so reverently to serve him. Hefains also to be exceedingly affected to the public good; not so much forthe love of it, as for the fear of his own safety.[18]

What may lawfully be done against Tyrants by practice.

Finally, that we may come to some period of this third question: Princes are chosen by God, and established by the People; as all particulars considered one by one are inferior to the Prince; so the whole body of the People and Officers of State, which represent that Body, are the Prince's Superiors. In the receiving and inauguration of a Prince, there are Covenants and Contracts passed between him and the People, which are tacit and expressed;to wit, obey him faithfully while he commands justly, that he serving the Common-wealth, all men shall serve him, that while he governs according to Law, all shall be submitted to his Government, etc. The Officers of the Kingdom are the guardians and Protectors of these Covenants and Contracts. And therefore the Officers of the State may judge him according to the Laws: And if he support his Tyranny by strong hands, their duty binds them, when no other man can be effected, by Force of Arms to suppress him.[19]

[1]Stephanus Junius Brutus, the Celt, Vindiciae,Contra Tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over thepeople and of the people over a prince, ed and tr. George Garnett(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003), p. 11.

[2] RobertM. Kindon, “Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, ed. J.H.Burns with Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 212, 213.

[3]Steve Pincus, 1688: The First ModernRevolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

[4] RogerLockyer, ed. The Trial of Charles I (London:The Folio Society, 1959), p.158.

[5] FrancisBacon, The Essays, ed. John Pitcher(Markhan, Ontario: Penguin, 1985), p. 64.

[6] WilliamWalker, tr. Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos, adefence of liberty against tyrants, or, Of the lawful power of the prince overthe people, and of the people over the prince. Early English Books Online(EEBO) Editions. (London: Printed for Richard Baldwin, 1689), p. 66.

[7] Ibid., pp. 82-83.

[8] Ibid., p. 86.

[9] Ibid., pp. 86,87.

[10]Ibid., pp. 89-90.

[11] Ibid., pp. 99-100.

[12]Ibid. pp. 103,104. For a modern-English translation, see my blog entry: “Reasons to protect the CBC – the case as putin 1579.”

[13] Ibid., p. 113.

[14] Ibid., p. 119.

[15] Ibid., p. 122.

[16] Ibid., p. 123.

[17] Ibid., pp. 124,125.

[18] Ibid. p. 125.

[19] Ibid., p. 150.

New Year's 2012 Blog Vital Statistics

2012-01-10T13:58:00.000-08:00

Here are my New Year’s Blog Vital Statistics from May 2010to 10 January 2012 (12 noon PST)

Pageview all-time history (to date): 8040

Pageviews by Posts:

"On Voluntary Servitude" ... 1700 (estimated)
A Fair Country 745

The Rights Revolution 497
Harperland 378
A Secular Age 201
Two Cheers for Minority Government 135
Northern Spirits 131
Harper and Orwell ... 122

The Truth About Canada 104

Ethical Oil 83
Fearful Symmetry 59

Pageview by country:

Canada   4130
USA   2314
Japan                           164
Russia   141
Germany   119
Malaysia   111
Netherlands 91
United Kingdom 81
Ukraine         67
India 63
Iran 57

Pageviews from other Interesting countries: Moldova, UnitedArab Emirates, Vietnam, Latvia, South Africa, Greece

Favourite Search Keywords:
Who intervened to release Montaigne from the Bastille
Port Coquitlam candy

Please note that some figures are approximate.
Thank you.

Five Different Philosophers and their Response to Stephen Harper's Omnibus Crime Bill

2011-12-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

1) Paul Ricouer, “State and Violence” in History and Truth, 1957:

In its most elementary and at the same time most indomitable form, the violence of the State is the violence of a penal character. The State punishes; in the last analysis it is the Sate which has the monopoly over physical restraint. It has taken from individuals the right to do justice themselves; it has taken upon all the diversified forms of violence inherited from the primitive battle of man against man. For all violence, the individual may call upon the State, but the State is the last court of appeal beyond which there is no recourse. By approaching the violence of the State by way of its punitive, penal side, we have directed ourselves to the central problem; for the multiple functions of the State, its power to legislate, its power to make rulings and to execute them, its administrative function, its economic function, or its educational function, all these functions are ultimately sanctioned by the power of constraining as the final authority. To say that the State is a power and that it is a power of constraining is one and the same thing.[1]

2) Gianni Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth, 2011:

Today the defense of creationism, even in the face of the (adequately) proven Darwinian theory of evolution, acts as a barrier, a pietra di scandalo or “pebble of scandal,” as we say in Italian, to the acceptance of Christianity. But it’s the same pebble on which many believers stumble when they find themselves rationally unable to accept the sexual and family ethics preached by the pope, just as they found totally unacceptable John Paul II’s repeated prohibition of the use of condoms, in disdain of the potentially lethal effects such a ban might have, and may indeed have had, on a world ravaged by AIDS. What keeps on recurring is the “scandal,” in one form or another, of Christian preaching claiming to dictate the “truth” about how matters “really stand” with nature, mankind, society, and the family …[2]

3) Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 1764:

There is no liberty whenever a law in some cases permits a man to cease to be a person and to become a thing. Then you will see the efforts of the powerful man directed entirely to drawing whatever may legally to his own advantage from every possible social arrangement. This discovery is the magic secret that transforms citizens into beasts of burden; in the hands of the strong, it is the chain with which he binds the actions of the unwary and the weak. This is why, in some regimes that have all the appearance of liberty, tyranny lies hidden, or insinuates itself into some corner neglected by the legislator, where it subtly gathers strength and grows. For the most part, men erect the most solid dikes against overt tyranny, but they do not see the imperceptible insect that gnaws those dikes and opens a path for the invading flood, a path that is all the more secure because it is concealed.[3]

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 1748:

Severity in penalties suits despotic government, whose principle is terror, better than monarchies and republics, which have honor and virtue for their spring.
     In moderate states, love of the homeland, shame, and fear are motives that serve as restraints and so can check many crimes. The greatest penalty for a bad action is to be convicted of it. Therefore in moderate states civil laws will make corrections more easily and will not need as much force.
     In these states a good legislator will insist less on punishing crimes than on preventing them; he will apply himself more to giving mores than to inflicting punishments.
     Chinese writers have perpetually observed that, in their empire, the more severe the punishments, the nearer the revolution. This is because punishments increased in severity to the extent that mores were lost.
     It would be easy to prove that in all or nearly all of the states of Europe penalties have decreased or increased in proportion as one approached or departed from liberty.[4]

5) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651:

A PUNISHMENT is an evil inflicted by public authority on him that hath done or omitted that which is judged by the same authority to be a transgression of the law, to the end that the will of men may thereby be better disposed to obedience.[5]

It belongeth also to the office of the sovereign to make a right application of punishments and rewards. And seeing the end of punishing is not revenge and discharge of choler [anger], but correction either of the offender or of others by his example, the severest punishments are to be inflicted for those crimes that are of most danger to the public; such as those which proceed malice to the government established; those that spring from contempt of justice; those that provoke indignation in the multitude and those which, unpunished, seem authorized, or when they are committed by sons servants, or favourites of men in authority …. The punishment of the leaders and teachers in a commotion, not poor seduced people, when they are punished, can profit the commonwealth by their example. To be severe to people is to punish ignorance which may in great part be imputed to the sovereign, whose fault it was they were no better instructed.[6]

[1] Paul Ricoueur, History and Truth, tr. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2007), pp. 234,235. The chapter “State and Violence” was first published in Geneva in 1957.

[2] Gianni Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth, tr. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 51.

[3] Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, tr. David Young (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1986), p. 38.

[4] Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, trs.and eds. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 82 (Part 1, Book 6, Chapter 9). Cf. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, p. 8 (chapter 2): “Every punishment which does not derive from absolute necessity, says the great Montesquieu, is tyrannical.”

[5] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002), p. 230 (Chapter 38.1). Original in italics.

[6] Ibid., p. 260 (Chapter 30.23). Original without italics.

Hobbes and an inside tweet on Harper

2011-12-06T21:16:00.000-08:00

So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire for power after power that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight that he has already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651

Source: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002), p. 75 (Ch. XI.2).

William Shakespeare tweets on Stephen Harper

2011-11-30T21:03:00.000-08:00

These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men,
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.[1]

~ Shakespeare, Juilus Caesar, 1599

[1] William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, eds. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (New York: The Modern Library, 2011), p. 6 (Act 1, Scene1).

Reasons to protect the CBC - the case as put in 1579

2011-11-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a look at the text of Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos, a French Calvinist work written in 1579 during the period of that nation’s Wars of Religion. It was published pseudonymously, and the authorship is still something of a mystery. The work was translated fully into English from the original Latin and French in 1648 a year before King Charles I lost his head, and it reappeared again in 1689 on the occasion of the Glorious Revolution, when absolutism apparently ended. Generally it can be considered a work of “reform”. The following section asks whether the “king” is the “proprietary lord ... of the public domain”, and it explains why we should keep the modern-day CBC:

So what? Just because someone has made you a shepherd for the sake of the flock, did he hand over that flock to be skinned, sold off piecemeal, driven, and plundered at your pleasure? And because the people has constituted you as duke or judge of some city or region, has it empowered you to alienate, sell, or ruin that city or region? Since the people would be alienated together with the region, did it therefore give you authority in order for you to pull it apart, prostitute it, and to dispose of it to whomsoever you wished? Then again, is the royal dignity a possession, or is it rather a function? If it is a function, what does it have in common with property? But if it is a possession, is it not at least of the type whereby the people – by whom it is handed over – retains the property to itself in perpetuity. And finally, if the patrimony of the fisc – that is, the domain – is truly called the dowry of the commonwealth, and, indeed, a dowry at the piecemeal dismantling and ruination of which the commonwealth itself, the kingdom, and eventually the king himself perish, then by what law will it be licit to alienate that dowry?[1] ...

Consequently, if an owner who is squandering his own resources is consigned to agnates or other relatives by public authority and forced to keep his hands off his own things, it is clearly much more equitable that a curator of the commonwealth who diverts public resources to the public ruin, or who completely overturns them, could be deprived of all administration by those whose concern and office this is, if he failed to desist after a reproof.

It is easily shown that in all legitimate realms the king is not the proprietary lord of the royal patrimony.[2]

[1]Stephanus Junius Brutus, the Celt, Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over a prince, ed. and tr. George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 113,114.

[2] Ibid., p. 119.

School Act 82 and the B.C. Ministry of Education Attention: George Abbott

2011-11-12T23:35:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email message from my son’s middle school requesting that I provide “missing” documentation in order that the school get provincial funding for teaching him. The school system now needs to have documented evidence of the parent’s status in Canada, residency and guardianship. In short, I was born in Canada, I have lived at my current address for about 12 years, which is about the length of time I have been raising my son. I have always known the school system to be rather egocentric, but the politicians and Ministry of Education behind School Act 82 are way over the top here in terms of legalistic invasiveness and lack of common sense.

My son is in 7^th grade. I already provided citizenship evidence about 8 years ago. Now I have to do it again, but with far more documentation. Why? Is the original information suspicious? Are we all under suspicion? Does trust play any role any more in British Columbia? Are we still citizens? Or is the B.C. government more concerned with population control? Is the Tri-Cities area (where my son has gone to school) no longer in the same country? Is it possible that my son’s teachers were not teaching my son? Is it possible that I don’t really have a son at all? Is it possible that somebody else’s boy is posing as my son? Have I been forging the “parent’s signature” all along? Is it possible that I have been pretending to cut the grass at someone else’s home for the last dozen years? Am I an imposter? Are other parents natural-born imposters? Are the children learning “bad-imposter” habits from their parents? Does it mean that my “son” gets and “F” on all his “Picture Book Projects” because his “father” has not yet proven to the province that the photos are those of “family”, “home” and “country”?

Well, instead of birth and death certificates I would like to propose “life” certificates – an all-in-one panoptical package, perhaps formatted in an iPod, complete with the necessary documentation that proves who you claim you are and where you live: in short, that you exist, along with a “family” tree – and of course, pictures. In order to prevent identity theft (or loss), it is best that children get the iPod implanted somewhere discreet, and the good thing is that these devices are getting smaller all the time. Each year kids can go to school for scanning to prove that they have a life, and if they don’t show up – it will be proof that their parents did not pay their taxes, or that they are imposters. Quick, get me the Minister of Education ...

On Canada's "Royal" Forces

2011-10-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Over the summer, after the official visit (their first) by newlyweds Kate and William, Stephen Harper re-introduced the term “royal” to the Canadian military. He also ordered that a portrait of the Queen be placed in a prominent location in each and every Canadian Embassy around the world. The Queen is our Head of State, but Etienne de la Boétie discerns other motives:

... it has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility towards themselves, but also in adoration.

In other words, Harper is trying to enhance his own position by association.

Source: Etienne de la Boetie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, tr. John Lothrop Motley (Kessinger Rare Reprints), p. 21.

"On Voluntary Servitude" - Catholic Resistance Theory from 16th-century France

2011-10-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

Although it would appear as a product of of the French Wars of Religion (1561-1598), On Voluntary Servitude was allegedly written prior to this period by Etienne de la Boétie, Montaigne’s greatest friend who is mentioned in his own famous Essays in the chapter “On Affectionate Relationships”. The significance of On Voluntary Servitude is both that it is too little known and that it offers a pro-republican and Catholic theory of resistance predating the first Huguenot (that is, French Calvinist) theories of resistance, which originate clearly from the French Wars of Religion.[1] Perhaps the problem is that too many English-speaking historians of thought are Protestant, and not enough are Catholic, which is why On Voluntary Servitude goes largely unappreciated, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world.[2]

At any rate, La Boétie died at age 32 of the plague in 1563, with Montaigne (about 3 years younger, born in 1533) at his bedside, yet he left behind no original copy of his text. We do not know the precise circumstances as to why the text was written in the first place, but there is a certain youthful ardour to the work, and according to Montaigne it was written when La Boétie was a student, about 16 years of age (in other words, perhaps too neatly, halfway though his life).[3] It is also interesting to point out that Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596), the intellectual architect of the French absolutist state (who helped pave an early way for the likes of Louis XIV), was about the same age as La Boétie – and perhaps the latter was writing against the former, or at least in spirit. [4] Montaigne’s significance (from among many) was that he helped transmit On Voluntary Servitude via his own Essays (but note that he declined to reproduce the text itself), and in their professed friendship, a common theme to both authors (see below), we see the “liberal” tendencies of Montaigne, yet some might still think of La Boétie as a subversive “anarchist”.[5]

One received estimation of Montaigne as some sort of Burkean conservative (as presented by Quentin Skinner) [6] is questionable, and my argument contrary to Skinner is supported by Montaigne`s relationship with La Boétie and by Montaigne’s deep interest in the idea of the “middle”, a very Ciceronian theme – much neglected. Not unlike the Latin poet Horace, Cicero espoused the classical notion of the “golden mean” and held to “the middle ground between the weakness of a single person and the rashness of many.”[7] Montaigne quoted Cicero 312 times, and both authors are clearly “middle-of-the-road” thinkers.[8] Each espoused scepticism, endorsed moderation from extremes and - consequently - saw the world as an imperfection, learned from the entrance to the Delphic Oracle which announced: “Know thyself”. In Montaigne’s time Catholics were slaughtering Protestants in France, and the other way around, too – “massacre” being a neologism following the St. Bartholomew’s Day carnage in 1572. “Middle-way” thinking not only aspires towards notions of “balance” and “compromise” (ideas which are presumed by its critics on the ‘outside’ to be effete and politically unprincipled), it anticipates a model of human cooperation, and without it there can be no conception of a “common ground”.

When Montaigne writes that “Reason is a two-handled pot you can grab it from the right or the left,” he is expressing a quintessential idea that a person of the “middle” applies both the left and the right, though not necessarily at the same time, hence the easy inclusion of La Boétie.[9] In order to prevent the reader from being over-exposed to too many textual examples of Montaigne’s “middle-way” thinking let us point to a lovely quotation from the Essays, which is also the title of a recent book, published in 2011: When I am playing with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me?[10] Not knowing if I am playing with my cat or if my cat is playing with me is suggestive of connectivity – a reflexive or reciprocal bond - between pets and their “owners” – not a master-slave dichotomy, and, again, this can be found in Montaigne’s relationship with his closest friend, La Boétie. Another such example might be in the “serve and return” exchange one finds in the game of tennis, a sport Montaigne encouraged among youth (especially over reading and academic studies), despite the fact his own brother died from a tennis accident. (The tennis balls were heavier then and not so kind when in contact with the human skull).

In the Essays Montaigne writes of La Boétie: “I was already so used and accustomed to being, in everything, one of two, that now I feel I am no more than half.”[11] Elsewhere Montaigne writes how “La Boétie and I made a brotherhood of our alliance.”[12] Compare this to the late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze who writes (in his Dialogues with Claire Parnet): “We do not work together, we work between the two... We don’t work, we negotiate.”[13] It is this notion of something existing “in between” or “between the two” (in other words, that there is something “in common”, which one finds in affectionate relationships) that is significant here. An appreciation for the idea of the “middle” and the notion of having something “in common” are both conceptually and personally linked throughout history. Cicero had his friend and confidant Atticus, Montaigne was close to La Boétie, and Deleuze wrote most famously with Guattari (with apologies to Parnet) – and they all espoused notions of the “middle”. It should also not go without mention that that Deleuze and Guattari refer to “Voluntary Servitude” in their classic work A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.[14]

Why present readers with On Voluntary Servitude? It is interesting because it is a non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Calvinist, non-violent (almost Gandhian) theory of resistance that emphasizes Christian inner freedom taken in the collective sense as a path to liberty.[15] It presumes a model of human cooperation, the middle as veto, the non-silent and non-acquiescing majority, certainly predating 19^thcentury “individualism” – and so it rebuffs Margaret Thatcher’s bold empirical claim that “there is no such thing a society,” for the bond existing between individuals is also real, just less measurable. In other words, the “community” is considered to be a cohesive expression of possible contradiction against tyranny, distinct from our “modern” conceptions of liberty which is in turn much more “atomized” (and thus vulnerable to different types of domination, as well as some of the same).

As theories of resistance go, On Voluntary Servitude resonates with the Arab Spring, sharing a certain “early-modern” tone that characterizes La Boétie’s world and the apparent political development of the Middle East (that is, something not “modern” and distinct from Western “individualism” but still a unique expression of opposition: “a people enslaves itself”). It also resonates in Canada against our ideologues. One such “individual” - Stephen Harper - excludes “the middle” and hence has little appreciation for what we have “in common” – aside from legislated reverence for the Canadian “flag”, a notion picked up from Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.[16] (Again, parenthetically-speaking, the more Canada’s constitution decentralizes under Harper’s rule, the less we can conceive of Canada itself as a single “space” – and the less we find “common ground,” a “middle”, thus issues become localized, in the end micromanaged). And finally On Voluntary Servitude resonates with the “Occupy Wall Street” movements that reject the apparent tyranny of our economic systems, and the disparity of wealth (characteristic of American “society”, assuredly, now polarized by extremes and the waning of the middle classes) which works towards the subversion of democracy (here and there).

Here are a number of excerpts from On Voluntary Servitude (circa 1547, again, only if we can believe Montaigne):

For the present I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no power other than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation.[17]

... but when a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth, any more than valor can be termed the effort of one individual to scale a fortress, to attack an army, or to conquer a kingdom. What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough, which nature herself disavows and our tongues refuse to name?[18]

Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it. If it costs the people anything to recover its freedom, I should not urge action to this end, although there is nothing a human should hold more dear than the restoration of his own natural right, to change himself from a beast of burden back to a man, so to speak. I do not demand of him so much boldness; let him prefer the doubtful security of living wretchedly to the uncertain hope of living as he pleases. What then? If in order to have liberty nothing more is needed than to long for it, if only a simple act of will is necessary, is there any nation in the world that considers a single wish too high a price to pay in order to recover rights ...[19]

Everyone knows that the fire from a little spark will increase and blaze ever higher as long as it finds wood to burn; yet without being quenched by water, but merely by finding no more fuel to feed on, it consumes itself, dies down, and is no longer a flame. Similarly, the more tyrants pillage, the more they crave, the more they ruin and destroy; the more one yields to them, and obeys them, by that much do they become mightier and more formidable, the readier to annihilate and destroy. But if not one thing is yielded to them, if, without any violence they are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone as nothing, just as, when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.[20]

He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you? How would he dare assail you if he has no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if they were not traitors to yourselves? ...[21]

... From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, by not taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces? ...[22]

It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement....[23]

Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Similarly men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way. ...[24]

The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love. Friendship is a sacred word, a holy thing; it is never developed except between persons of character, and never takes root except through mutual respect; it flourishes not so much by kindness as by sincerity. What makes one friend sure of another is the knowledge of his integrity: as guarantees he has friend’s fine nature, his honor, and his constancy. There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. And in places where the wicked gather there is conspiracy only, not companionship: these have no affection for one another; fear alone holds them together; they are not friends, they are mere accomplices. ...[25]

[1] The classic Huguenot text Vindiciae contra Tyrannos appeared in 1579. See Martin van Gelderen “So merely humane: theories of resistance in early-modern Europe” in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, ed. Annable Brett, James Tully and Holly Hamilton-Bleakley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 151

[2] See also Warren Boutcher, “Unoriginal Authors: how to do things with texts in the Renaissance” in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, pp. 73-92.

[3] Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 218.

[4] See website by Saul Newman, Voluntary Servitude Reconsidered: Radical Politics and the Problem of Self Domination as of 29 October 2011. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Saul_Newman__Voluntary_Servitude_Reconsidered__Radical_Politics_and_the_Problem_of_Self-Domination.html

[5] Ibid.

[6] Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 2: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 275-284.

[7] Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. James E.G. Zetzel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 23.

[8] Cicero, Selected Works, tr. and intro. Michael Grant (Toronto: Penguin, 1979), p. 29.

[9] Montaigne, Essays, p. 656.

[10] 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. In a translated version of the Essays, the line reads : “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her.” Montaigne, The Complete Essays, p. 505. The cat quotation appears early in Montaigne’s largest chapter, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond.”

[11] Montaigne. Essays, p.217.

[12] Montaigne, Essays, p. 208.

[13] Gilles Deleuze and Claire Paret, Dialogues, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 17.

[14] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateau’s: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p. 460.

[15] Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (London: Vintage, 2011), p. 99.

[16] Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 20.

[17] Etienne De La Boetie, The Politics of Obedience : The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, tr. John Lothrop Motley (Kessinger Rare Reprints), p. 2.

[18] Ibid., p. 4.

[19] Ibid., p. 5.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid., p., 6.

[22] Ibid., p. 7.

[23] Ibid., p. 11.

[24] Ibid., p. 14.

[25] Ibid., p. 26.

Cicero tweets on the death of Gadhafi

2011-10-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

... there is no “people” unless it is bound by agreement in law, and that mob is as much a tyrant as if it were one person.

~ Cicero, On the Commonwealth, circa 54-51 BC

Source: Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. James E.G. Zetzel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p.76.

Montaigne on Libya circa 1580.

2011-10-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

Here are Montaigne’s thoughts on Libya before The West grew too dependent on valuable oil and prior to NATO’s invasion, when Gadhafi became the tyrant of choice:

What a stupid nation we are. We are not content with letting the world know of our vices and follies by repute, we go to foreign nations in order to show them by our presence! Put three Frenchmen in the Libyan deserts and they will not be together for a month without provoking and clawing each other: you would say that one of the aims of these journeys is expressly to make spectacles of ourselves before foreigners – especially those who take delight in our misfortunes and laugh at them.

Source : Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech (Toronto : Penguin, 2003), p. 790.

"New" British Columbia Eschews: The Fate of B.C.'s Riverview Hospital

2011-10-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it can take years for politicians to come to their senses on issues - for example if we look to the Evergreen Line, and the long delays in linking Coquitlam to Vancouver. The fate of Riverview Hospital is yet another prime example of lasting political folly. So it is about to close. And then what? Generations from now some local residents might remember this rare public space, with its 244 acres of land, the stream, the arboretum, the historic architecture, and, most importantly, the fact that there once was a central hospital that served people’s critical needs from across the province.

As I gather, James Moore, our local area MP and Minister of Canadian Heritage, is on target here when it comes to Riverview at least– something can be done to preserve its integrity. Mind you, in the recent electoral past, Moore has demonstrated little compassion on the topic of autism. Years ago, as a former area MLA, Christy Clark gave over to feckless bureaucrats and was simply not forthcoming in any way of her own when responding to enquiries on the fate of Riverview. Despite the passage of time, and the fact that she is in a position to make a remarkable contribution to the life of B.C.’s schizophrenics, among other neglected groups, she has done and learned nothing in this respect as Premier.

Clark is, in fact, following the position on Riverview of her predecessor Gordon Campbell, who placated the public with his own personal story, as if to say he held the ill close to his heart, while they clustered and festered in the Downtown East Side, only to have their situation eased somewhat by an Olympic-sized embarrassment as the international media glared at our homeless population. Provincial leadership in B.C., such as it is, cannot comprehend the notion of preserving spaces and facilities for the mentally ill, the least represented sector of the population on the planet, because the prospect of making a fast buck on real estate here looms as simply too great.

If Riverview Hospital gets torn down, allow me to predict two more diseases: medical and historical amnesia. First, some people in B.C. will begin to think that our political elite have actually solved the problem of mental illness. Secondly, the Coquitlam area will become ever more a cultural wasteland. A third consequence is that there will be even less appreciation than there is now for things “public”. A society without meaningful landmarks is just that: meaningless, with the result that B.C.’s ill will feel further marginalized, trumped by greed, fear and misunderstanding. It is not too late to enlighten the Premier before Riverview Hospital drifts from our collective memory. Perhaps some therapy would help.

"The Culture of Fear" and Related Thoughts: Excerpts, Questions and Answers

2011-09-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

QUESTION: How bad is crime in Canada?

“Half of Toronto’s population now consists of those born outside of Canada; notably, the city’s crime rate has dropped by 50 percent since 1991, and is significantly lower than that of the country as a whole.”[1]

QUESTION: Given that newspapers offer "scarelines" instead of "headlines", are newscasts also to blame for our “culture of fear”?

“... between 1990 and 1998, when the nation’s murder rate [U.S.A.] declined by 20 percent, the number of murder stories on network newscasts increased 600 percent (not counting stories about O.J. Simpson).”[2]

“... people who watch a lot of TV are more likely than others to believe their neighbourhood are unsafe, to assume that crime rates are rising, and to overestimate their own odds of becoming a victim. They also buy more locks, alarms, and – you guessed it – guns, in hopes of protecting themselves.”[3]

According to George Gerbner, Dean-emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, “They [people who watch a lot of TV] may accept and even welcome repressive measures such as more jails, capital punishment, harsher sentences – measures that have never reduced crime but never fail to get votes – if that promises to relieve their anxieties. That is the deeper dilemma of violence-laden television.”[4]

“In the nation’s largest cities, murder accounted for only.2 percent of all crimes, and in the suburbs of those cities, murder accounted for just .01 percent. Yet not only are murder stories a staple of the coverage in those cities, accounting for 36 percent of the crimes reported on the TV news, the newscasts warned suburban viewers that crime was moving to their areas.[5]

QUESTION: What is the relationship between broadcasting competition and the “culture of fear”?

“Crime stories are a cost-effective way to capture an audience. The more vulnerable the viewing public is made to feel, the more essential the role of the local newscaster as a neighbour who ‘sounds the alarm for collective defense.’”[6]

QUESTION: If the Harper Government hacks away at public funding for the CBC, will that mean we have even more crime stories in the news, more public anxieties and less public reasoning (even though actual crime continues to decrease) ... and more jails again?

QUESTIONS : Does not the increase in the number of jails, punishments and “crime bills“ represent an increase in the violence of the State? Is this not comparable to the violence of the State during the G20 Summit in Toronto?

“In its most elementary and at the same time indomitable form, the violence of the State is the violence of a penal character.”[7]

QUESTION: Have we as a society returned to nineteenth-century, Darwinian notions of “survival of the fittest”?

“War is and must remain for us a cataclysm, the outbreak of chaos, the return, in the external relations between States, to the struggle for life.”[8]

QUESTION: Since 9/11 do we have repeated ‘failures of the sovereign’ as Michael Ignatieff recently suggested in a Globe and Mail article?[9]

We have seen the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and now War in Libya. In all of these instances men (and women) surrendered themselves to a leader, a sovereign. We have also seen gross incompetence, but they were not failures of the sovereign; rather, we see how violent the sovereign can get, especially when aided by public intellectuals.

QUESTION (and another corrective to Michael Ignatieff): Is Texas Governor and Tea Party presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who wants to see “Washington irrelevant,” not a Marxist dictator of the proletariat who actually wants the “withering away of the State”?

QUESTION: As an Economist, Mr. Harper’s training is supra-national in perspective (economics is considered a human science): Does Mr. Harper really have Canada’s interests at heart? Is Mr. Harper a prime minister without a country?

ANSWER: Look to Mr. Harper’s Australian ghost writers (sending our lads to war), and a rotten case of indigestion.

ANSWER: Look to the newly-minted “Royal” Canadian Forces. Is the Queen not head of many Commonwealth Countries?

ANSWER: Look to the “Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA), where negotiations are held outside of the purview of the public. Does not democracy involve open discussion, Mr Harper?

ANSWER: Look to British prime minister David Cameron addressing Canada’s Parliament, fresh from the war in Libya – the only coalition leader ever to be honoured by Stephen Harper.

QUESTION: What is Canada’s problem?

ANSWER: “...the central problem of politics is freedom: whether the State founds freedom by means of its rationality, or whether freedom limits the passions of power through its resistance.”[10]

QUESTION: How are Canadians best able to express freedom and resistance to excessive “State” power?

ANSWER: “I am free in so far as I am political.”[11]

[1] Rachel Giese, “Arrival of the Fittest: Canada’s crime rate is dropping as immigration increases. Is there a connection?” The Walrus, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 2011), p. 30.

[2] Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. xxix..

[3] Glassner, Culture of Fear, pp. 44,45

[4] Glassner, Culture of Fear, p. 45

[5] Glassner, Culture of Fear, p. 230

[6] Glassner, Culture of Fear, pp. 230,231.

[7] Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, tr. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2007), p. 234.

[8] Ricoeur, History and Truth, 243. Emphasis added.

[9] Michael Ignatieff, “The Wrong Lessons,” The Globe and Mail, Focus Section, Saturday September 10, 2011, pp.1,2.

[10] Ricoeur, History and Truth, p. 270. Emphasis added.

[11] Ricoeur, History and Truth, p. 258.

David Hume - and the Right of Resistance: Canadian Implications of the Arab Spring

2011-07-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

David Hume (1711-1769) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, quite possibly the most distinguished political and moral thinker Britain has ever produced. Not unlike Montaigne, he was a moderate and a skeptic, opposed to dogmatism; and in one of his essays he explains, “the middle station of life is more favourable to happiness, as well as to virtue and wisdom: but as the arguments that prove this seem pretty obvious, I shall here forbear insisting on them.”[i]

Of particular interest here is the lengthy quotation below derived from Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, published when the author was only 26. It speaks to the “right of resistance” of any number of today’s Arab nations – not just oil-laden Libya.

However, Hume also raises the possibility that a magistrate can at times be “beneficial to the public” - and at other times he can also be “pernicious and tyrannical.” The clearest case of recent tyranny in Canada was during the G20 Summit in Toronto, when over 1000 citizens were locked up in makeshift pens over two nights - and many others were brutalized, including journalists. Perhaps “prudence” should tell me to keep silent, but Toronto in the summer of 2010 was not the Canada where I grew up. (See my A Response to the Prime Minister's Christmas Message.)

Under Harper’s government, Canadians have moved from adhering to principles articulated by the United Nations to kow-towing instead before the G20 and, along with it, obeying a particular theory of economics that thrives during (or is the cause of) great recessions, if we look to Naomi Klein’s argument in The Shock Doctrine. Absent today is any notion of “public fairness”, if we consider Harper’s elimination of the voter subsidy; missing, as well, is any sense of a “public process” when we look at Harper’s lack of respect for the “collective bargaining” of postal workers. “Freedom of association” is under threat in Canada because the Harper government eyes “freedom” only in terms of the “individual,” misguided by a notion of “the survival of the fittest”.

While Stephen Harper thinks in terms of “neo”- economics, he hides its relationship with the Evolutionary Theory (and Game Theory). But he is no constitutional expert (as we know from his prorogued parliaments). It would appear that the prime minister has skimmed a Reader’s Digest version of Canadian constitutional law (while probably skipping its history), which is why he thinks a majority government has the legitimacy to change unilaterally our Constitution (that is, via the Senate, and hence: everything else). In his mind, attempting to alter fundamentally the Constitution is no different from lowering corporate taxes; so long as he has the much-vaunted majority, he can do anything, and besides, it has been part of the Reform agenda for years; nothing “hidden” here. Anything can be justified so long as it is posted somewhere in the Conservative playbook.

But if we return to Hume and the “small-l” liberal question regarding the limits to any one government’s powers we are reminded that “every part or member of the constitution must have a right of self-defence, and of maintaining its ancient bounds against the encroachment of every other authority.” In other words Canada’s Senators (even the ones now appointed by Harper) likely have a collective right, if not a duty, to defend the Constitution, regardless of what Pamela Wallin or Marjory LeBreton say, as their experiences are far from having been deepened by constitutional law (which is very unBurkean of these Conservatives). Similarly Quebec and Ontario, among other provinces, have a right to resist, or does Harper no longer think of Canada as belonging to a Confederation?

For the textual details of Hume, please read the following, and remember that the “right of resistance” is not confined to the Arab Spring alone; it has Canadian implications too:

But here an English reader will be apt to enquire concerning that famous revolution, which has had such a happy influence on our constitution, and has been attended with such mighty consequences. We have already remark’d, that in the case of enormous tyranny and oppression, ‘’tis lawful to take arms even against supreme power; and that as government is a mere human intervention for mutual advantage and security, it no longer imposes any obligation, either natural or moral, when it ceases to have that tendency. But tho’ this general principle be authoriz’d by common sense, and the practice of all ages, ‘tis certainly impossible for the laws, or even for philosophy, to establish any particular rules, by which we may know when resistance is lawful; and decide all controversies, which may arise on that subject. This may not only happen with regard to supreme power; but ‘tis possible, even in some constitutions, where the legislative assembly is not log’d in one person, that there may be a magistrate so eminent and powerful, as to oblige the laws to keep silence in this particular. Nor wou’d this silence be an effect only of their respect, but also of their prudence; since ‘tis certain, that in the vast variety of circumstances, which occur in all governments, an exercise of power, in so great a magistrate, may at one time be beneficial to the public, when at another time wou’d be pernicious and tyrannical. But not withstanding this silence of the laws in limited monarchies, ‘tis certain, that people still retain the right of resistance; since ‘tis impossible, even in the most despotic governments, to deprive them of it. The same necessity of self-preservation, and the same motive of public good, give them the same liberty in the one case as in the other. And we may farther observe, that in such mix’d governments, the cases, wherein resistance is lawful, much occur much oftener, and greater indulgence be given to the subjects to defend themselves by force of arms, than in arbitrary governments. Not only where the chief magistrate enters into measures, in themselves, extremely pernicious to the public, but even when he wou’d encroach on the other parts of the constitution, and extend his powers beyond the legal bounds, it is allowable to resist and dethrone him; tho’ such resistance and violence may, in the general tenor of the laws, be deemed unlawful and rebellious. For besides that nothing is more essential to the public interest, than the preservation of public liberty; ‘tis evident, that if such a mix’d government be once suppos’d to be established, every part or member of the constitution must have a right of self-defence, and of maintaining its ancient bounds against the encroachment of every other authority. As matter wou’d have been created in vain, were it depriv’d of a power of resistance, without which no part of it cou’d preserve a distinct existence, and the whole might be crowded up into a single point: So ‘tis a gross absurdity to suppose, in any government, a right without a remedy, or allow, that the supreme power is share’d with the people, without allowing, ‘that tis lawful for them to defend their share against every invader. Those, therefore, who wou’d seem to respect our free government, and yet deny the right of resistance, have renounc’d all pretensions to common sense, and do not merit a serious answer.[ii]

[i] David Hume, Selected Essays. (World Classics), ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 9.

[ii] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest Mossner (Toronto: Penguin, 1985), pp. 614,615.

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

2011-05-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-05-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

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 furtherst 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]

[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

2011-05-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

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.

[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

2011-05-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

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

Pageview all-time history: 4001

Posts:
A Fair Country: 592
The Rights Revolution: 312
Harperland: 232
A Secular Age: 124
"How Stephen Harper met George Orwell in High School": 99
Two Cheers for Minority Government: 96

Pageviews by country:
Canada: 2809
United States: 578
Netherlands: 57
United Kingdom: 45
Russia: 37
Malaysia: 33
Germany: 32
Singapore: 28
Australia: 26
Ireland: 25

Favourite search keywords:
"stephen harper in st. augustine fine arts school"

Please note that some figures are approximate.
Thank you.

Brian Lee Crowley's "Fearful Symmetry" - A Commentary

2011-04-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

One can tell there is something wrong with a book when individuals favoured by the Fraser Institute line up in droves to praise it. The title is far from original, and I recall two such titles appearing in the Globe and Mail review pages (one was an advertisement) simultaneous with Crowley’s original publication in 2009. The prose is also not the most engaging; and the book took ages to finish, interrupted as it was by frequent tosses to the floor (and by far more interesting readings). Not all economists need be so rigid, and as an anti-dote to dogmatism (Canadian-born) John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society (1958) is refreshingly brisk and intellectually lively by comparison.

In the Forward of Fearful Symmetry Andrew Coyne explains that Crowley went to the London School of Economics in the 1980’s in order to debunk Professor Friedrich Hayek, who was teaching there. What followed was something of a conversion experience, apparently, which in my mind throws doubt on the value of certain postgraduate university educations, as Crowley ends up nothing more than a disciple of the marketplace.

Let us begin by examining some of Crowley’s arguments and sources. Consider his so-called “insight that the state becomes a temptation to immorality and a character-corrupting institution when it is permitted to engage in excessive redistribution.”[i] This apparent “insight” is attributed to a long forgotten French political economist, Frédéric Bastiat. Crowley goes on (with his own added emphasis) to quote Bastiat who defines the state (or, rather - more properly - the government) as “the great fiction through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else.”[ii]

Bastiat’s true significance is revealed in a London Review of Books article (2 December 2010) by Cambridge academic Christopher Prendergast. Apparently the interest in Bastiat has long been American: it is neither British nor French. Bastiat was resurrected from the tombs of French history in the era of Cold War American anti-Communism, and later fans included Reagan and Thatcher, as guided by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, with the blessings of his fellow national Friedrich Hayek.

Today Bastiat is known (in Prendergast’s words) as “a major source of Tea Party ideological fervour.”[iii] He depicts taxation as “state sanctioned ‘plunder’”.[iv] And he goes on to describe the idea of levying taxes in order to assist the poor as “taking from some persons that which belongs to them to give to others that which does not belong to them.”[v] In other words, we find in Fearful Symmetry ideas that clearly belong to the Tea Party – to the far right of the Republican Party. What are they doing in Canada? Does the Tea Party represent (borrowing from half of Crowley’s subtitle) the “rise of Canada’s founding values”?

As an economist (of the right-wing persuasion) Crowley is keen on work – or on getting people to work. Families are not what we might think of them (as the sentimental bonds of parents to children, perhaps); rather they a conceived as socio-economic and productive units, the training ground for work, and the key to national fortune. This is why Crowley can quote his own father-in-law on work (p. 113) in almost the same breath that he discusses Aristotle on the same topic (p. 106), a striking combination of intellectual anti-intellectualism (or vice–versa), made all the more peculiar by the fact that the Greeks (and assuredly Aristotle) had slaves doing the daily drudgery, a choice many of us do not have today. Montaigne tells us in the title of one of his Essays, following Plutarch, that the ancient Greeks had a proverb: “Work can wait till tomorrow”, so it seems Crowley is rather unsuccessful in finding antecedents to our modern-day obsession with work.

Crowley’s most interesting chapter is “Nationalism and Welfarism in Quebec and the Consequences for Canada.” Unfortunately the chapter does not in itself deal with Quebec nationalism, and it is in fact prefaced by disturbing words disparaging the “sacred language” (p. 88). Elsewhere he speaks pejoratively of the “chosen people of Quebec” (p. 92), and he dismissed their “mission civilisatrice” (p. 71), which is truly a twist on the history of France, not that of Quebec. Again, like many liberal individualists – or libertarians – he worries for the ‘oppressed’ French minority in that province who are not learning English at school.[vi]

Crowley seems to confuse Quebec’s “welfare state” with the apparent ‘enemy’ of socialism, and his thinking suggests that developments in that province are in some ways pathological, a term he employs. According to statistics, which Crowley treats uncritically, about one fifth of the residents of Quebec live by means of social assistance. (p. 152). In 2006 44.4% of Canadian common-law relationships were in Quebec (p. 202). In 2000 CBC called Quebec the “abortion capital of North America” (p. 206). Crowley goes on to argue in package format that “Quebec has ... low levels of marriage, high levels of divorce, high levels of lone parenthood and child poverty, and low levels of fertility” (p. 204) A number of these correlations need to be better substantiated and analyzed in a more comparative fashion, throughout the provinces. For example, British Columbia (not a welfare state by any stretch of the imagination) has the highest child poverty rate in Canada, by far, and yet this does not figure in Crowley’s eyes, because he insists that the welfare state “has been a principal motor of child poverty.” (p. 276). Relative to B.C., Quebec’s child poverty rate must be lower – so Quebec (or the Québecois) must be doing something right.

The one statistic that is particularly worth noting is the rate of suicide in Quebec, apparently the highest in Canada, a figure that presumably excludes our indigenous communities (p. 205). Towards an explanation, Crowley quotes former PQ premier Bernard Landry’s notion that the Quiet Revolution’s “break with Catholic morality,” (beginning in the 1960’s) and the inability to establish a successful secular moral code is, nonetheless, apt here (p. 206). However, the phenomenon of suicide is logically distinct from Quebec’s so-called existence as a welfare state: correlation does not mean causation – first year university stuff.

Crowley writes as if Keynesian economics were the dysfunctional child of Quebec – and Quebec alone, revealing a kind of myopia: “Without Quebec and the profound changes unleashed there by the Quiet Revolution and the Boomer generation, I am convinced that Canada would not have trod the path of massive state expansion we did.” (p. 282) Has he forgotten about the massive expansion of the state during and following World War II - and because of the war itself? Was not the growth of the state an almost global phenomenon throughout most of the twentieth century? And who was John Maynard Keynes anyway – a closet Québecois?

But Crowley also asks a valid question about the affordability of the so-called status quo, as Quebec and other deficits loom. Here he is informative: “Equalization is financed solely out of federal tax revenues, chiefly the GST and personal and corporate income tax and these come disproportionately from Ontario.” (p. 238) Will Quebec be able to continue with its level of public services if Ontario is an equalization recipient, and here he predicts “the mother of all federal-provincial battles.” But, alas, recent discoveries of massive natural gas deposits and shale gas in Quebec have boosted its energy potential considerably – and revenue from natural resources fall under provincial jurisdiction.[vii] So, Crowley’s argument is now outdated. He need not fear monger and demonize Quebec any further; indeed, he may even live to regret it.

Where else does Crowley go wrong? Look to family planning. Because divorce is difficult, time-consuming, and takes away from our GDP (and possibly fertility) he wants from those couples who plan to have children “a deeper form of marriage commitment ... in which both parties agree that the marriage would be indissoluble by unilateral action by either of the spouses until their youngest child reaches the age of, say, sixteen.” (p. 273) In this instance, Crowley would have been better off deferring to the classics: Montaigne described marriage as “the most useful activity of human society,” and both Plato and Aristotle also appreciated the institution for its utility.[viii]

The whole point of Crowley’s book is to outline “the fall and rise of Canada’s founding values.” No doubt, ever since the fall of Soviet Communism, much of the globe – and not just Canada - has resorted to some variant of "small-l" liberalism, which was typical of much of the nineteenth century, especially in Britain, when the middle class was dominant, or at least emerging as a political force. Postmodernism in other words can be argued as a return to nineteenth century liberalism. And if it were not for such liberalism, Canada’s Parliament would not be neo-gothic in form. But to presume we are returning precisely to the “founding values” of 1867 is a bit much, given that we have been betrayed by two prorogued parliaments – and one contempt of parliament verdict, the first in Canada’s history.[ix]

If one sifts through the nineteenth century, we see ourselves still wrestling with Charles Darwin’s theories of “natural selection” and his Origin of the Species, published in 1859, popularly interpreted as “the survival of the fittest” by Herbert Spencer’s coinage in 1864. In other words, we are returning to the values of social Darwinism of 1864, found in Crowley’s “Canadian” revival of the Republican Tea Party hidden in his use of Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat, who prefigured Darwinism along with a host of many others. As well, Crowley is indoctrinated by a kind of Darwinian “struggle” (“the mother of all ... battles”) in the Canadian political arena, which lends itself to an acute antiparliamentarianism (a certain distaste for speaking), the likes of which we have never seen before – at least not domestically. My advice: avoid Crowley and find another book to read.

[i] Brian Lee Crowley, Fearful Summetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values (Toronto: Key Porter, 2009), p. 62.

[ii] Ibid., p, 62.

[iii]Christopher Prendergast, “Short Cuts”, London Review of Books (2 December 2010), p. 21

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Fearful Symmetry, p. 93. See my review of Robert Sibley’s Northern Spirits.

[vii] See Neil Reynolds, “Fleur-de-lis and wild rose – together at last?” Globe and Mail, April 11, 2011.

[viii] Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 906.

[ix] Fearful Symmetry, p. 299.

"How the worst gets on top" - or How Harper inverts Hayek

2011-04-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Harper's marketplace Bible is The Road to Serfdom a polemical work in classical liberal economics by Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), first published in 1944. As a student of economics, Harper would have considered this a “must read,” a book that was also greatly popularized in the United States by Reader’s Digest condensed versions.

Of particular interest is the Chapter “Why the worst get on top,” prefaced by Lord Acton's famous dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It would appear that Harper not only read Hayek, he also inverts his thinking (or he did not read him closely enough). In other words, Harper sees in Hayek a guide to "strong man" demagoguery – or a manual for so-called electioneering - where Hayek only saw the danger signals of authoritarianism, or worse.

We must return for a moment to the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime. In this stage it is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which make’s action for action’s sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems resolute enough “to get things done” who exercises the greatest appeal. “Strong” in this sense means not merely a numerical majority – it is the ineffectiveness of parliamentary majorities with which people are dissatisfied. What they will seek is somebody with solid support as to inspire confidence that he can carry out whatever he wants. It is here that a new type of party, organized on military lines, comes in. ...

There are three main reasons why such a numerous and strong group with fairly homogenous views is not likely to be formed by the best but rather by the worst elements of society. By our standards the principles on which such a group would be selected will be almost entirely negative.

In the first instance .... It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest group of people. If a numerous group is needed, strong enough to impose their views on the values of life on all the rest, it will never be those with highly differentiated and developed tastes – it will be those who form the “mass” in the derogatory sense of the term, the least original and independent, who will be able to put their numbers behind their particular ideals. ...

Here comes in the second negative principle of selection: he will be able to obtain the support of the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the totalitarian party.

It is in connection with the deliberate effort of the skillful demagogue to weld together a closely coherent and homogenous body of supporters that the third and perhaps most important negative element of selection enters. It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of the enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task.

Source: F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Texts and Documents. The Definitive Edition, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), pp.159-161.

"I Love CBC" Petition - Let's Keep Our Public Broadcaster Public (Please Sign Below)

2011-03-30T17:53:00.001-07:00

On November 23, 2010, Dean Del Mastro, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, publicly mused about cutting all funding to the CBC. His exact words were: "Maybe it's time we get out of the broadcasting business ... The $1.1 billion, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that we're investing into the public broadcaster, should we look at reorganizing that in some fashion?"

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting provides this petition with help from The Walrus, Canada's pre-eminent magazine.

Thank you for your attention.

The Case Against Canada: Easier Said Than Done (2010)

2011-03-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

Easier Said Than Done (2010) is the latest Report on Canada (and 11 other Commonwealth countries) concerning commitments and performances at the United Nations Human Rights Council. The other Commonwealth countries at the Council are: Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ghana, India, Malasia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Zambia.

This the 3rd such Report in the Easier Said Than Done series as conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Here is the verbatim overall assessment regarding Canada in italics. Emphasis is marked by underscoring.

The report compares pre-election pledges made to the United Nations Human Rights Council by Canada and eleven other Commonwealth countries, with each country’s performance at the domestic and UN levels.

According to the report, from mid-2008 until mid-2010, Canada did not measure up to the high standard of human rights promotion and protection to which it committed itself in its pre-election pledge to the Council in 2006.

At the domestic level:

In its pledge, for example, Canada committed to actively pursue the implementation of human rights domestically, including with respect to indigenous peoples, and noted that the promotion and protection of human rights was an integral part of its foreign policy. Despite these pledges, the report’s findings indicate that aspects of Canada’s foreign policy seemed to be void of human rights considerations, and that the human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Canada remained poor.

At the UN level:

Canada further pledged to strengthen and support UNHRC mechanisms, including the special procedures. Despite generally adhering to this pledge, the report’s findings show that on a couple of occasions Canada attempted to limit the scope of certain special procedures. Canada’s pledge to submit its future treaty bodies on time was not fulfilled.

Easier Said Than Done (2010) calls on Canada to adhere to the voluntary pledges it made prior to Council elections and to promote the fundamental values of the Commonwealth by taking positive stances at international human rights fora, such as the Council.

For the chapter on Canada, click here:
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/ESTD_2010/Canada_Chapter.pdf

For the full report, click here:
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/ESTD_2010/Full_report_without_Annexure_III.pdf

For a table which summarizes the voting records of the Commonwealth countries at the UN Human Rights Council, click here:
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/ESTD/Annexure_II_Voting_table.pdf

To view pre-election pledges made by the 12 countries, click here:
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/ESTD_2010/Annexure_III_Pledges_made.pdf

To view the 2007 report, click here:
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/easier_said_tha_done.pdf

To view the 2008 report, click here:
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/easier_said_than_done_2008.pdf

For information on the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and its work at the United Nations Human Rights Council, please visit:
http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/

The Harare Principles and the "Harper Government"

2011-03-09T23:24:00.000-08:00

The Harare Principles were signed on 20 October 1991 in Harare, Zimbabwe, when Brian Mulroney was Canada’s Prime Minister and Joe Clark our Minister of Foreign Affairs. They were written in the light of the collapse of Communism in the West, after significant decolonization, and following the end of Apartheid in South Africa. They were signed by all Commonwealth Heads of Government. The Declaration provides a constructive guide to proper governance, and when a country violates these principles they are suspended from membership in the Commonwealth. There are currently 54 Commonwealth countries.

The following is a selection from the Harare Principles, and below them is a list of how these principles have been violated in Canada.

Article 4.

- We believe in the liberty of the individual under the law. (Except in the case of G20 police violence in Toronto, when over 1000 individuals were incarcerated over two nights.)

- ... equal rights for all citizens regardless of gender, race, colour, creed or political belief. (Unless you are Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, charged with bringing in the ethnic vote.)

- ... individual’s right to participate by means of free and democratic processes. (If you can forget about two prorogued Parliaments.)

Article 6.

Totalitarianism is giving way to democracy and justice in many parts of the world. (Except in Canada, where “Government of Canada” nomenclature is now known as the “Harper Government,” never mind the rest of us. I kid you not. Canadians now abide by the cult of personality, officially. Canadian taxes are paying for Harper's own advertising, let alone that of the so-called Conservative Party.)

Article 8.

Development facilitates the task of tackling a range of problems which [sic] affect the whole global community such as environmental degradation, the problems of migrants and refugees, the fight against communicable diseases, and drug production and trafficking. (Except for our “Ethical Oil” and 500 Tamil boat refugees greeted with detention - Sri Lanka being a member of the Commonwealth, as well as Harper’s compassionate stand on AIDS.)

Article 9.

Having reaffirmed the principles to which the Commonwealth is committed ... concentrating especially in the following areas ...

- Democracy, democratic processes and institutions which reflect national circumstances, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, just and honest government. (Except for two prorogued Parliaments, three contempt of Parliament rulings by the Speaker of the House - two of which are presently prima fascie - including one Minister of International Co-operation Minister, Bev Oda, who does not speak when questioned in Parliament.)

- Fundamental human rights, including equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, colour, creed or political belief. (Except for G20 police violence and Jason Kenney.)

- Support of the United Nations and other international institutions in the world’s search for peace, disarmament and effective arms control; and in the promotion of international consensus on major political, economic and social issues. (Ever wonder why Canada lost its bid – to Portugal – for a seat at the UN Security Council?)

Article 10.

To give weight and effectiveness to our commitments we intend to focus and improve Commonwealth co-operation in these areas. This would include strengthening the capacity of the Commonwealth to requests from members for assistance in entrenching the practices of democracy, accountable administration and the rule of law. (In Canada, 4 Conservative party figures (two of them Senators) have been charged with the illegal “in and out” election financing scheme that brought them to power. Our Senators have not stepped aside. Upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal, Elections Canada charges the Conservative Party with not playing with a level field in the 2006 elections.

Moreover, during that same 2006 election, former RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardeli initiated a criminal probe into alleged insider-trading by Ralph Goodale, Liberal Finance Minister at the time. Although Goodale was eventually cleared, the public's perception of Harper's Party was elevated on misled grounds (by functionaries of the state), and in fact it was the RCMP who had interfered with the election, willingly or not. In other words, the election can on two counts be considered illegitimate.

Fiji is currently suspended from the Commonwealth for not having "free and fair" elections. Should Canada be suspended from the Commonwealth – just like Fiji?)

Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor - Appropriations of Hegelian Political Thought. By Robert C. Sibley. A Review.

2011-02-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Published in 2008, Northern Spirits by Robert Sibley is an ambitious work that is unlikely to reach a broad audience – for good reasons, political philosophy aside. The book deals with three Canadian thinkers John Watson (1847-1939), George Grant (1918-1988) and Charles Taylor (b. 1931) who all share a common inheritance in Hegel. Sibley is not alone in suggesting that Canadians are “unconscious Hegelians,” and to add weight to his argument he points to the numerous Canadians who live in Hegel’s intellectual shadow.

Since beginning at the beginning can be a good idea, we find that one of the problems with Sibley’s book is that he fails at the start to contextualize the work of Hegel. Frederick Beiser (once a student of Charles Taylor) has written an excellent introduction in Hegel (2005), and he clarifies a central issue: “contemporary Hegel scholars, especially those in the Anglophone tradition, have failed to individuate Hegel. They assume that certain ideas are characteristic of Hegel that were really commonplace of an entire generation.” In other words, one reason why Hegel might possibly have had a deep impact on Canadian intellectual culture is because we share a common debt to early German Romanticism. And when referring to Hegel’s thought, Sibley identifies household names like Allen Wood, Ken Foldes, Robert Wallace, Vasanthi Srinivasan and, of course, Alexandre Kojève ... but no Hegel. There are few, if any, textual references to any of Hegel’s writings, and Sibley seems to rely on English sources when interpreting Hegel’s thought himself.

This derivative nature of the book is especially notable in the section on John Watson. A number of these early chapters summarize, with a minimum of interpretation and imagination, Watson’s work The State in Peace and War (1919). It is important to acknowledge that Watson was a student of the British Idealists (who were inspired by Hegel), in particular T.H. Green, but it is also important to elaborate how “religion plays a central role in Watson’s work.” (p. 43) Watson founded the United Church of Canada, but there is no discussion of how Idealism might have worked together with Christianity, except to say that Watson debated the topic with Josiah Royce at the University of California at Berkeley in 1897.

The section on George Grant is more interesting, possibly because he is more contemplative, or maybe simply because his Lament for a Nation created a national sensation when it was published in 1965. Or maybe it’s because Grant is Michael Ignatieff’s uncle. In any event, Grant had no free will, and he was an “unconscious Hegelian even before he encountered Hegel.” (p. 121) George Grant’s grandfather was George Munro Grant, principal of Queen’s University at Kingston from 1877 to 1902. It was the latter Grant’s close friendship with John Watson which filtered down over the generations, making George Grant a Hegelian, before anyone in Canada had ever heard of Alexandre Kojève, the dominant interpreter of Hegel in the twentieth century and early proponent of the European Union. According to Sibley, George Grant was still a Hegelian, even though he later recanted, only to identify with Leo Strauss.

In a similar vein Trudeau is “arguably” considered Hegelian because he admired T.H. Green’s thinking and his defence of the individual (which one also finds in J.S. Mill), giving him intellectual fodder for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But Sibley does not offer much analysis here. Do we have the Charter because of Trudeau’s rationalism, because of the Americanization of Canada’s political culture, because Trudeau came to admire the ideals of the French Revolution, or because of British variations on Idealism? These issues need to be resolved – or better yet, Trudeau’s supposed Hegelianism could better be dropped. Even Grant admits, and Sibley seems to forget this point, though he documents it, that Kojève is considered closer to Hegel’s originality than the British Idealists. (p. 172) In other words, Trudeau’s British “Hegelianism” (that he read a book) is inferior to that of Charles Taylor, who studied and wrote books on Hegel, at length.

The section on Charles Taylor deals with the interrelationship between the individual and the community; it is a tug of war denoted by political scientists as the struggle between liberalism and communitarianism. Frederick Beiser explains that the attempt to synthesize liberalism and communitarianism is not uniquely Hegelian - it is also Romantic. Moreover, the central reason for Hegel’s alleged popularity in Canada is his “principle of reconciliation”, yet Sibley fails to articulate this aspect of thought in any detail. Sibley has written a book on Hegel’s so-called influence, but his conclusions lead him far from Hegelianism.

In my view, the one Canadian thinker who best reconciles liberalism and communitarianism, in Hegelian terms, is Charles Taylor, this nation’s leading expert on Hegel and author of a major study in 1975, but Sibely attacks him as “illiberal”. In essence, Sibley attacks Quebec’s language laws (Bill 101), the fact that French is the official language of the province and, of course, the failed Meech Lake Accord. In other words, Sibley prefers the supposed “Hegelianism” of Trudeau’s Charter to the Hegelianism of Taylor’s early “two-nation” approach for Canada. According to Sibley: “English-speaking Canada is supposed to sacrifice English-speaking culture in order to accommodate Quebec?” (p. 203) Because Charles Taylor supports the distinctiveness of Quebec, Sibley sees a “downgrading of personal choice” (p. 265) and “results that can oppress the individual” (p. 283). And Sibley writes “when push comes to shove, Taylor is unable to defend liberalism” (p. 249), but what he means by “liberalism” is really liberal individualism. Sibley even goes so far as to question the validity of the Quebec “we”, and here he resonates with Margaret Thatcher, who once declared famously “there is no such thing as society.”

Neither France nor Germany had a John Locke; hence liberal traditions outside of the Anglophone world appear in different guises (as less individualistic), and this is a point Sibley misses, who muses about its “civilisational foundations.” (p. 247) French liberalism is known to be paradoxically anti-individualistic, certainly in the nineteenth century, if one considers the work of Lucien Jaume.[1] This peculiarity might also help to explain the difference between Anglo Canada’s “procedural liberalism” (difference-blind liberalism) and French Canada’s “substantive liberalism” (culturally-specific liberalism). Moreover, liberalism, especially liberal individualism is not without its flaws, again something Sibley does not entertain. Colin Bird concludes his work The Myth of Liberal Individualism (1999) in a fashion that is well in tune with Charles Taylor’s position on Quebec: “the problem with liberalism is that by emphasizing the importance of choice, it condemns citizens to a perpetual restlessness about their social identity, and so undermines the stability of genuine community on which authentic self-discovery depends.” (pp. 206,207) Even Hegel seems to criticize notions of “freedom of choice” in liberalism when he explains in Philosophy of Right (1821): “When we hear it said that freedom in general consists in being able to do as one pleases, such an idea can only be taken to indicate a complete lack of intellectual culture.” In other words, Sibley’s free-choice theorizing drifts far from Hegel’s project of reconciliation.

Sibley offers a curious book which pays lip service to Hegel’s “principle of reconciliation” but ends up a doctrinaire text on liberal individualism. He also seems to suggest that Hegel’s principle is “not clearly detected by any previous thinker” (p. 89), but Sibley is not familiar enough with the thought of Augustine. He refers to Augustine by way of Grant (p. 143) and Taylor (pp. 193,194), but apparently has not read City of God or the Confessions on his own. As I have indicated in my earlier review of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, Augustine plays a major role in Hegel’s thought, as well as on Calvin and Descartes. Augustine thinks of man (over and over again) as an “intermediate being ... intermediate between beasts and angels” and he describes Christ as the “Mediator between God and man ... we must look for a mediator who is not only human but also divine.” Augustine also offers a form of personal reflexivity which is at one root of Western society’s critical culture. We can find his ‘middle path’ sentiments expressed in the twentieth century when looking at the thought of Simone Weil, who writes in Waiting for God (1951): “The Incarnation of Christianity implies harmonious solution of the problem of the relations between the individual and collective. Harmony in the Pythagorean sense; the just balance of contraries.” In other words, Christianity offers the “intersection” of both arms of the Cross, a point Weil notes.

If we look to the moral philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre (who also wrote on Hegel) and his penetrating Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (2003), we see a history of an Augustinian tradition lasting well into the Scottish Enlightenment, which is possibly how early notions of reconciliation (and Augustine’s other ideas, notably the notion of “will”) made their way into North America – via religion. In other words, there exist old moral traditions, “voices of tradition outside liberalism”, that are not readily considered by secular university institutions (and maybe their students) aspiring (in Macintyre’s words) to “fictitious objectivity.”

This brings us to the fundamental problem with Sibley’s book. It looks at Hegel’s political thought yet ignores dimensions of Hegel’s religious thinking and that (as I repeat myself) of John Watson. In his Philosophy of History (delivered as lectures first in 1822-23) Hegel the Lutheran literally transcends the Christian religion but makes a very specific point about its ongoing importance to civilization despite academic disciplines: “I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis - the Reason governs and has governed the World – and the question of the possibility of a knowledge of God, chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the imputation against Philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths, or of having occasion to be so.” The reason why religion is so important to Hegel is that the figure of Christ represents, in his view, a “world historical” first – “consciousness of freedom” among all believers in God, a notion to which at least some post-religious disciplines in university academies might at some levels seem impervious, their dawn being the Enlightenment. Put another way: are Canadians “unconscious Hegelians” – or have we really just masked our Christianity in the name of secularism? Do Canadians have an early spirit of reconciliation because of assumed, historic religious traditions, English and French, each with varying Augustinian strains? Have some Canadian intellectuals flocked to Hegel thinking he provides a political “dialectic” when, in fact, as Frederick Beiser suggests, he may have offered “a new religion”?

Unfortunately Northern Spirits does not consider these questions, but it covers just about everything else. The book tries to be a comprehensive overview but it fails to distinguish some salient points succinctly and originally (regarding Hegel). The topic is an excuse to write much about what people wrote in Canada – and nothing very meaningful on Hegel – or his so-called “influence”. It mentions Hegel’s principle of reconciliation but does not express it in any structured way, possibly because (if we look to his difference- blind liberal individualism) Sibley does not want (or no longer know how) to reconcile, given also his own unusually intense concerns over the future of the English language, apparently swamped by mass migrations, globalism and multiculturalism.

To conclude parenthetically, we note that up until the advent of Stephen Harper Canadians admired reconciliation, because they recognized the need to compromise. Like Hegel’s Germany, divided into many principalities, Canadians are fraught with divisions over space and cultural time. A point Sibley misses is that Hegel’s Germany is a lot like Machiavelli’s Italy which explains Hegel’s interest in realpolitik. Perhaps we can make an intuitive leap from Florentine Italy to the true potentialities of today’s Canada ... just witness our present-day Cesare Borgia, otherwise known (by some) as Mr. Prime Minister, also a Hegelian (if you recall the realpolitik of Hegel). In other words, everyone can be considered a Hegelian in Canada - even the ones who are not.

[1] Lucien Jaume, L’individu efface, ou le paradoxe du libéralisme française (Fayard, 1997).

Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor - Appropriations of Hegelian Political Thought

The G20 Summit in Toronto ... and Hegel (and Harper)

2011-02-01T22:30:00.000-08:00

Here is some insight in Realpolitik by the German philosopher Hegel (1770-1831), one of the most formidable thinkers of the nineteenth century. The following quotation is from his Philosophy of Right (1821) and has bearing on Toronto's G20 Summit:

In times of war, for example, various things which are otherwise harmless must be regarded as harmful. Because of these aspects of contingency and arbitrary personality, the police take on a certain character of maliciousness. When reflection is highly developed, the police may tend to draw everything it can into its sphere of influence, for it is possible to discover some potentially harmful aspect in everything. On such occasions, the police may procede very pedantically and disrupt the ordinary life of individuals.

Source: G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. Allen W. Wood, tr. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 261 (Section 234).

For other comments on the G20 Summit, please see my "Response to the Prime Minister's Christmas Message," Jan. 2011)

"Ethical Oil" (2010) by Ezra Levant. A Book Review

2011-01-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

As today's prostitutes are remodelled as sex-trade workers, so Ezra Levant and the Conservative Party try to sell the Alberta Tar Sands (which are the size of Florida) as "ethical oil". Personally I prefer the term Dinosoil. How about you?

A Response to the Prime Minister's Christmas Message

2011-01-04T16:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

According to your Christmas message “Canada shone” in 2010; “We did ourselves proud.” First, there were the Olympics, and all those shiny gold medals awarded while Parliament was on hold, just so the right politicians could get best seats at the Leni Riefenstahl show. Then there was the “historic” G20 summit on June 26, 27, and all those shiny police badges – otherwise known as the “Canadian approach” or “Canada’s plan,” as you put it in your message, where innocent protestors (assembled peaceably, some singing “O Canada”) were rounded up, beaten and herded in cells, crammed like sardines, arms shackled, and abused or assaulted in countless other ways. Did I forget to mention the rubber bullets?

The Toronto police were apparently in training for the Afghan mission, where it is alleged some shiny young Canadian men (so “generous” with their lives, as you put it in a previous Christmas message) inadvertently “helped” Afghan detainees – and knew about it, yet no one seems to know anything about anything right now. If you can improperly “detain” in Afghanistan and violate various Geneva Conventions, why not try it in Canada’s largest city and with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms– where police seem encouraged to break the law, and where federal Conservative votes have been strangely scarce.

Mr. Prime Minister, you speak of Canada having a “deep tradition of freedom, tolerance and generosity.” Not when you can prorogue Parliament twice in a row (and get away with it), and not when you can let the incompetent Toronto police, high on testosterone and power, wreak havoc on taxpaying citizens. Have you not had enough with Guantanamo Bay?

Mr. Prime Minister, do I not detect a national tendency towards a sliding disregard for traditional responsibilities, the rule of law and individual rights? Have you not set the tone for more forked tongues, or is it uniquely Harperlitarianism - "the politics of control"? Should I be amused that one rare police officer (shinier than all the rest) compared the bursting Toronto holding pens on those fateful June days to Auschwitz?

Mr. Prime Minister, if you don’t understand what I am talking about, please give yourself about 2 hours, and bring along some popcorn, and your kids (but blindfold them and cover their ears), while you watch this riveting movie about Toronto’s G20 “meeting” last summer. It makes me really proud to be Canadian!

Here’s the link: http://underoccupation.com/g20/

And when you have finished viewing, consider this excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s classic “On Liberty” (1859):

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interference with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil in someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign.*

And why not consider the words of Rick Mercer, who might have gotten something wrong in "I'm so scared," January 17, 2006:

I'm talking about the ads that accuse Stephen Harper of wanting to put soldiers with guns in Canadian cities. Which is true. Harper has promised to station four hundred soldiers in Vancouver, Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg, to deal with natural disasters. And the Liberals made it sound as though Harper had some freaky plan to enact martial law. **

Perhaps, Mr. Prime Minister, next time, during future summits, you might want to include considering the sovereign rights of individuals on Canadian soil. I look forward to your future Christmas omissions.

Yours truly,

Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.

*Source: J.S. Mill, On Liberty and other writings. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge UP, 1991), p.13.

**Source: Rick Mercer, Rick Mercer Report: The (Paperback) Book (Toronto: Anchor, 2008), pp. 110,111.

Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age" - A Review

2010-12-19T22:32:00.001-08:00

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2007), hereafter noted as SA, with almost 800 pages of written text, is an ambitious undertaking for any intrepid reviewer, or author, but my task here is not only to convey some understanding to a broader audience, but also to contextualize the author and argument – and to offer possible critique where some may be missing. Anyone wanting to read Taylor in the original, without attempting his magnum opus should consider purchasing (at about the same cost, mind you) Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard, 2010), hereafter referred to as VSSA, a series of articles edited by Warner, Vanantwerpen and Calhoun. With a titular turning on William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, VSSA critiques and expands on dimensions of A Secular Age and concludes with Taylor’s own significantly succinct Afterword “Apologia pro Libro Suo,” a worthwhile summary and the best around, counting at about 21 pages.

While A Secular Age has a strong philosophical and historical bent, it is largely written in colloquial English, but the numerous and widespread intellectual references and ideas could make the work a difficult read for a general audience, plus the book is not as concise as it could be. This loquaciousness puts sometimes him the same league as fellow Canadians John Ralston Saul and Donald Savoie, only Taylor almost always has something stimulating to say, and for this reader, at least, there were many pleasant cranial explosions along the way, all gratefully received.

Taylor outlines his thesis in A Secular Age on page 3: “the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even among the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others.” Taylor slowly travels through each century, beginning around 1500, explaining the development of secularism as an historical phase, and this composes the first half of the book, amounting to a fascinating intellectual history of growing European “disenchantment”, a central theme and term borrowed from the German sociologist, Max Weber.

According to Jon Butler in VSSA this section attracted little attention from early reviewers: “A Secular Age glosses so many different and possible explanations for secularity so discursively that it would be nearly impossible to say that Taylor has missed something important, though his reader may have.” [VSSA, 197] Butler goes on to say, and here I agree, “Taylor is at enormous pains to dissect the complicated nature of both belief and unbelief before and after 1500.” [VSSA, 199] Indeed, this very early section of A Secular Age is extremely laboured, even painful, especially when Taylor goes to great lengths to discuss changing conceptions of death [SA 61-84, approximately], but there is clearly no mention of anything like the Bubonic Plague, or Black Death, which ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351. Estimates vary, but up to 20 million people, approximately one third of Europe’s population, perished. Given that no one knew why so many were dying en masse, and that even priests were running away from admitting last rites, there is no wonder we see an early weakening of religion. So we see the dangers of philosophy literally glossing over history, but otherwise Taylor (true to his Oxford mentor, Sir Isaiah Berlin) does succeed in the “historicity of our contemporary options, about the sedimentation of the past in the present.” [SA 268]

Taylor’s omission of the Black Death helps explain his use and development of the concept of the “buffered self” as “the agent who no longer fears demons, spirits, magic forces.” [SA 135] It is a “disengaged, disciplined stance to self and society” which one finds in the development of manners, for example, and it is central to modernity and secularity. [SA 136] In turn it has the reverse effect of allowing for “the greater intensity of intimate relations” within for example the family.[SA 140] “But in general, we relate to the world as more disembodied beings than our ancestors” [SA 141] Briefly speaking, it contributes to the “great disembedding” ( to coin a term, perhaps) of us from the “social sacred” – especially by Christianity, for “God so loved the world.” (John 3.16) [SA 157,158] This can be found in our “social imaginaries” which speak of freedom and mutual benefit (Locke, especially), and the rise of "humanism” which can be considered rather typical of Enlightenment thinkers, bordering on paganism (Diderot and Kant, perhaps, and before them Bayle and Spinoza). Christianity is sanitized “but it doesn’t quite know what to do with suffering”; aristocratic heroism wanes, and all (referring to not just a few, but “all”) we may do is wrestle with the tattered remains of a (secular) honour code. In any event Taylor reveals a sense of Romanticism, resonating with Herder’s central notion of “humanity as the orchestra.” [SA 318; VSSA 320]

The second half of A Secular Age is less historical, more analytical. Of particular interest is his treatment of the “Age of Authenticity”: I mean the understanding of life which emerges with the Romantic expressivism of the late-eighteenth century, that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that it is important to find and live out one’s own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority. [SA 475] Taylor makes an interesting connection between this expressivism, the rise of “choice” and the growth of consumer culture where “commodities become vehicles of individual expression, even the self-definition of identity.” [SA 483] Not because of the scientific "facts" themselves, but because of autonomous and geometric reason (starting with Hobbes and Descartes) pushed by science, our materialism has united with a moral perspective that results in "exclusive humanism" which is atheistic. [SA 569]

In his Chapter “Religion Today” Taylor writes with delicious irony: “Some great realizations of collective life are lost, but other facets of our predicament in our relation to God come to the fore; for instance what Isaiah meant when he talked of a “hidden God”. In the seventeenth century you had to be Pascal to appreciate that. Now we live it daily.” [SA 531,532] Here we also see that A Secular Age is primarily concerned with (as one reviewer called it) "elite discourse" (when I thought it was philosophy). [VSSA 187] Nonetheless, there are only a few nods to social historians, notably Natalie Zemon Davis, probably the only female writer mentioned in the book, author of The Return of Martin Guerre.

But Taylor is not alone in arguing that secularism belongs to a general period of “modern” history, that we now belong in a post-secular age. The eminent German thinker Habermas, long the exponent of Enlightenment rationalism, has recently given up on “methodological atheism” [VSSA 50]. Taylor also offers sacrificial crumbs for George Bush (the lesser) and his “crusade” in Afghanistan, along with identifying with Obama’s message of “Hope” [VSSA 84]. More importantly, Taylor resembles a modern-day St. Augustine whose own classic City of God was written after the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in AD 410 - a shock to the Roman Empire and its classical consciousness. It is worth pointing out that Taylor makes explicit references to Augustine and what he calls “the hyper-Augustinian juridical-penal framework,” in other words the Christian notions of original sin and atonement [SA 651]. Broadly speaking A Secular Age can be seen as a cathartic and “spirited” response following the attack on New York’s World Trade Towers on 11 September 2001, or even as an answer to the relative decline of the West. Today Augustine, too, is very much in fashion, especially as the world’s economy shifts toward the engine of China, where (the Jewish thinker) Spinoza’s groundbreaking “atheism” and secularism go well with so-called neo-Confucianism, a topic Taylor ignores or does not anticipate.

Nonetheless Taylor is well prepared. His own doctoral research was on Hegel (fixed as he was on the “world historical” figure of Napoleon) who in turn had strong affiliations with Augustine’s thinking. Both Hegel and Augustine rely on theories of mediation. (See also Religion, Politics and Law (Brill, 2008), 71-96 – or just read City of God). For Augustine, the Church mediates between “the city of man” and “the city of God,” and so knowledge of God brings mediation, as Augustine “Christianizes” Cicero and the classical tradition of the middle and the balanced sense of virtue, or Horace’s “golden mean.” (John Ralston Saul please take note). [cf. VSSA 275]

Moreover, Augustine talks of the value of “the opposition of contraries” and the “antithesis” which feed well into Hegel’s own Trinitarian doctrine of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Augustine begins this Trinitarianism (with Hebraic antecedents) where God is considered the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we find it reproduced throughout history in the West: for example, Montesquieu’s tri-fold division of government as the legislative, executive and judicial in The Spirit of the Laws (1748); the American “life, liberty, and happiness”; the French Revolution’s “liberty, equality, fraternity” (mindful of the constitution of 1789 which was more conservative and liberal than that of 1793); and Canada’s “peace, order and good government.” We also find it in Auguste Comte’s positivism and his “law of three stages,” his spiritual calling on Industrialists, perhaps a French complement to Hegel in the mid-nineteenth century.

Trinitarianism lends itself to ”middle way” thinking – and is at the root of much Western self-reflective, or even self-critical, culture, also expressed by Augustine’s Confessions, a work which in turn was anticipated by Greek classical thinking and Socrates’ dictum: “Know thyself”. In other words, there are reasons for the appearance of democracy first in the Judeo-Christian West, and we can find it expressed in Canada (“a country nourished on self-doubt,” according to Al Purdy) but it is also in Augustine, who made his way into our secular political culture with the Constitution Act of 1867. So while our culture is either secular or post-secular, it could be argued that (Judeo) Christianity’s greatest offspring is democracy, and Taylor himself raises the point when he identifies the “welfare state” as implicitly Christian. The question is, however, as we move away from the welfare state ... whither Christianity? And whither our democracy?

But there is another reason why Taylor refers to Augustine. He asks the profound question in his Confessions: “What, then, is time?” (Book XI, 14) It is actually the French (Protestant) philosopher Paul Ricoeur, in Volume One of his magisterial three-part series Time and Narrative (Chicago, 1984), who dissects Augustine’s notions of time. Ricoeur translates Augustine as: “How can time exist if the past is no longer, if the future is not yet, and if the present is not always?” (Time and Narrative, 7) Ricoeur’s thesis is that Augustine holds to a “threefold present” – the trinity of the past, present and future live in the present. Perhaps I digress, and here it is best to consult Augustine directly in order to gain an understanding of Taylor’s own thinking:

Nevertheless, O Lord, we are aware of periods of time. We compare them one with another and say that some are longer and others shorter, and the result of our calculations tells us that it is twice or three times the length of the one which we take as the unit of measurement, or that two are of equal duration. If we measure them by our own awareness of time, we must do so while it is passing, for no one can measure it when it is past and no longer exists, or when it is future and does not yet exist – that is, unless he is bold enough to claim that what does not exist can be measured. The conclusion is that we can be aware of time and measure it only while it is passing. Once it has passed it no longer is, and therefore cannot be measured. (Confessions XI,16)

Augustine’s conclusion is: ”we can only be aware of time and measure it only while it is passing,” and it is this deep sense of something passing that seems to have moved Taylor to write A Secular Age. In other words, time is not homogenous. It cannot be secularized (despite the best attempts of the French Revolutionaries, who resorted to Terror). At the end of the nineteenth century three figures – Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson and Marcel Proust (a little later) – all tried to come to terms with the passage of time, its “inner” and “outer” duration (and here I simplify for the sake of brevity). Things are “never still.” Ever since Huysmans “decadent” novel A Rebours [Against Nature] (1884) the general public’s reading of Cicero (who had a significant influence on Augustine) went into steep decline, putting an end to the classical tradition of moderation, paving the way for twentieth-century extremism(and the revenge of Caesars, so-to-speak). By invoking Augustine at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Taylor is not only reliving an apparent loss of hegemony, but summoning the rather athletic memory of the Christian tradition, along with it an exceptional conversion experience and its great soul seeking – and the Trinitarian legacy of mediation. The past is no guarantee for the future, but in promoting the memory of Augustine’s thought Taylor offers us some continuity - and perhaps guidance.

Inside Harper's Mind: A hyper critique of liberalism (or why the Prime Minister likes expensive military toys)

2010-10-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt, appearing in its original form in 1927, and expanded upon and published again in 1932.

In a very systematic fashion liberal thought evades or ignores state and politics and moves instead in a typical always recurring polarity of two heterogenous spheres, namely ethics and economics, intellect and trade, education and property. The critical distrust of state and politics is easily explained by the principles of a system whereby the individual must remain terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. In case of need, the political entity must demand the sacrifice of life. Such a demand is no way justifiable by the individualism of liberal thought. No consistent individualism can entrust to someone other than to the individual himself the right to dispose of the physical life of the individual. An individualism in which anyone other than the free individual himself were to decide upon the substance and dimension of his freedom would be only an empty phrase. For the individual as such there is no enemy with whom he must enter into a life and death struggle if he personally does not want to. To compel him to fight against his will is, from the viewpoint of the private individual, lack of freedom and expression. All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom. Every encroachment, every threat to individual freedom and private property and free competition is called repression and is eo ipso something evil. What this liberalism still admits of state, government, and politics is confined to securing the conditions for liberty and eliminating infringements on freedom.

We thus arrive at an entire system of demilitarized and depoliticized concepts. ...

Carl Schmitt critiqued the liberal assumptions of Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933), and joined the Nazi Party in March 1933, hoping to direct it along authoritarian lines.

Source: Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. Tr. George Schwab. Comments by Leo Strauss. (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 70,71.

Lawrence Martin's "Harperland" -- A Review

2010-10-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

It takes about a day to read Harperland, and so Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin serves Canadians well chronicling the abuses of power, connecting the dots, building the narrative with momentum to Harper’s second prorogued Parliament, and beyond. Written in straightforward English, this reader yearned for a subordinate clause or two but delights in the many rich quotations of sources, from those once inside government, along those outside of it.

Harper is described as a man who viscerally hates Liberals (too prone to moral ambivalence), proud to be a “movement conservative,” and – in his ever-strategizing mind – one who loves to resort to wedge politics in order to divide and win. Acknowledging William Johnson’s earlier biography (Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, 2005), Lawrence Martin selects from the latter three succinct sentences to nail down the Prime Minister’s flaws, which resonate: “He constantly displays an excess of partisanship. From the time he was elected to the Commons, his attacks on Chrétien, and now Martin, have been over the top. There is harshness, a lack of humour, humanity and moderation that disregards the traditions of Parliament where all members have a right to be treated as honourable.”

Everyone knows Harper is a control freak, and it is amusing to read how, in the early years of his government, some Conservative MPs fretted over what colour tie to wear to work. Compare this to the era when Pierre Trudeau liked to wiggle his toes freely in sandals without socks. But there is a serious side to this development, apart from secret government handbooks. Judge John Gomery, who presided over the Sponsorship Scandal (about which Lawrence Martin had much to say as a journalist) explains, rightly so: “there’s more concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office than we’ve ever had before ....” Moreover, the anonymous members of the PMO “are not subjected to any rules of law ....” In reading Harperland, there was certain pleasure in discovering I was not alone in likening our Prime Minister to Vladimir Putin.

When in Opposition, Harper once wrote in the Montreal Gazette: “Information is the lifeblood of a democracy.” Yet why do we witness a volte face when in government? Why all the censorship with regard to the Afghan detainees, for example? In order to explain Mr. Harper more fully, we need to move from his political mind to his economic training. One weakness in Harperland is that Mr. Martin does not consider Harper’s background as an economist. Similarly Dion makes this mistake by characterizing Harper as a (so-called politically illiberal) “Straussian”, after Leo Strauss, the late German-Jewish political thinker at the University of Chicago. In other words, Mr. Martin should have looked at Dion’s characterization more carefully - and not have accepted this particular idea at face value.

To put it simply, Harper is an economist. Yes, he actually read Friedrich von Hayek, whom Margaret Thatcher admired, keen as she is on things Austrian. He likely read (or followed) Milton Friedman, but the association of Harper and Strauss is a bit thin (and, thus, so is Dion’s assessment of Harper). In other words, I am inclined to agree (and only once in a lifetime) with Harper’s erstwhile mentor, Tom Flanagan: Harper was not a “Straussian” even though he may have mimicked some attributes.

What is missing from our understanding of Harper is his predilection for game theory, something he would definitely encounter as a student of economics. Consider the 1944 classic Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Or consider John Nash, once inspired by Neumann, subject of the book A Beautiful Mind who also made brilliant advances to game theory at Princeton – and is best known for the concept known as “Nash’s Equilibrium.” Neumann taught that Poker (as opposed to chess) was a game where there was never any perfect information: good Poker players are supposed to bluff, and Harper is an optimal bluffer, who in his vast spare time, teaches card games to his children.

Ken Binmore’s book, Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007), explains that it is best that information be restricted: “Better knowledge is only sure to be an unmitigated good to a player if it is secretly acquired.” In other words, Harper is not contradicting himself in the light of all his government secrecy; he was simply deceiving us earlier, performing when in Opposition. Game theory can be found in Harper’s love of sport (namely hockey); it can be seen in his disregard for Parliamentary conventions and procedure; it can be seen in his use of a religious reputation; it can be seen in his implicit socio-biology, as game theory has infiltrated Darwinian evolution. And, again borrowing from Binmore, it can be seen in Harper's hypocrisy (and hysteria) over the Dion-Layton coalition (with Bloc support): “ ... there remains a great deal about coalition formation that we do not yet understand.”

Game theory aside, Harperland is an important work for Canadians still needing a picture of just how bad (and consistently bad) Ottawa's Parliamentary life has become over the last four years. Read it and be critically informed. “Peace order and hood government,” indeed!

On An Historical Sickness

2010-06-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Thus, monumental or exemplary history is not defined in the first instance in terms of excess, but by the usefulness of models to "emulate and improve"; through this history, "great moments ... form links in one single chain." Now, it is precisely greatness that historical sickness levels into insignificance. It is therefore onto utility that the excess is grafted: it consists in the abuse of analogies that result in "entire large parts of [history being] forgotten, scorned, and washed away as if by a gray, unremitting tide, and only a few embellished facts arise as islands above it." This is how the past is damaged. But the present is as well: the unbounded admiration of the great and powerful figures of the past becomes the travesty behind which the hatred of the great and powerful of the present is concealed.

Quoted from: Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (2006), p. 290.

A Candy Campaign, Terry Fox and Port Coquitlam

2010-06-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

Mayor Greg Moore of Port Coquitlam remains steadfast in holding to the idea of letting Rogers put a 50 metre cell tower at the cemetery where Terry Fox rests. In fact there is a circling of the wagons by city officials. City coffers will gain $25,000 annually from Rogers, the equivalent of $1.34 for each ratepayer – or the price of a small candy bar. In an effort to persuade the city officials that this is wrongful disrespect for the dead, and for the memory of hero Terry Fox, a debt and a Canadian inheritance that cannot be calculated, I urge all concerned to help alleviate Port Coquitlam of the financial burden of caring for its dead by sending the Mayor a Candy Bar. A “Snickers” bar would be appropriate, as would a “Bounty”, a “Forever Yours” if not a “Mr. Big,” but these may be far too expensive. Any Halloween candy would do, because the city’s efforts are something of a nightmare for the friends and relatives of the 3,500 deceased, presently resting quietly, but not for long. Thank you.

Another death to Canada: the public cemetery? (From our Generals to the specific)

2010-06-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

Stephen Harper, when in Opposition, thought he was the Australian Prime Minister, leading the country to war. Michael Ignatieff, when in America, thought of himself as of that nation, and helped lead that country to war, not unlike a "cerebral praetorian guard," as it was said. He also wrote of “true patriot love” but for years sounded like Henry James, Sr., who once explained: “I am a good patriot, but my patriotism is even livelier on the other side of the water.” Before the Vancouver Olympics began, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke of undying patriotism before members of the B.C. Legislature but prevented himself from doing so before ALL of Canada, because he had incidentally prorogued Ottawa’s parliament. Canadians revelled in the Olympics but conveniently forgot the fact they had no representation.

Meanwhile, in the current-day backwaters of Port Coquitlam (B.C.), Mayor Greg Moore tells us he is proud to be Canadian, standing aside pictures of Terry Fox, with mother Betty Fox. Yet he wants to let Rogers put a 50 metre cell tower at the very cemetery where Terry Fox is buried. The city ratepayers will each save $1.34 per year, forgetting their debt to Terry Fox, and our Canadian inheritance, which cannot be calculated. The act of selling out on Terry is somewhat akin to letting the Hudson’s Bay Company go out of Canadian hands, which no other country except Canada would allow. The dead in the cemetery are now considered by city officials to be mere deposits in the ground, apparently leaving no memories of significance, individual, collective, public, national – or even international. The city feels free to do as it pleases, without public debate, because predecessors have simply left the scene – they are considered gone, no longer existing - as if there are no traces left. (See also Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 2006). The city forgets that memories live and some are even larger than life. May I ask: what part of the word “disrespect” do they not understand?

What is a city that pollutes public space for the commemoration of the past? The answer is that it is not a city but an aesthetic junkyard. The result is that we feel rootless, lost, without tradition - we don’t know where we belong, and this is a big problem for all Canadians, as I suggest. Port Coquitlam is fracturing the collective memory of its incredible past, and the people who visit cemeteries (I might add) are already fractured, which is how feckless faces from Rogers prey. Likely, it is the result of the “free-market” mantra: we must now allow “competition” for space in cemeteries as individuals bow to corporate interests. At any rate the impending death of the municipal cemetery in Canada borders on the ethically criminal, and in Port Coquitlam’s case: the completely insane.

No Rest For Terry Fox

2010-05-13T10:36:00.001-07:00

Did you know that Port Coquitlam City Council may likely set a national precedent by letting Rogers build a 50 metre cell tower, starting at the very cemetery where Terry Fox rests?

For City Council, the past seems a foreign country, and for all Canadians this would be an offence to the memory of one of our greatest heroes, whose name recognition exceeds almost all others. He is known around the world.

To add insult to injury, Rogers began the process in March, coinciding with the Paralympic Games, not long after the Opening Ceremonies in February when Mother Betty Fox was a flag bearer. Does no one in City Council remember that Betty Fox was also considered a leading candidate throughout British Columbia (and across Canada) for the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron?

In Canada there are 32 roads and streets named after Terry, 14 schools, 7 statues, 9 fitness trails, even a mountain in the Canadian Rockies, aside from the annual Terry Fox Run in virtually every school and community across the nation – and even internationally. But he rests in only one cemetery. And it could be the first cemetery in Canada to host a cell tower.

What kind of precedent does Port Coquitlam want to set for other cemeteries and forgotten heroes across our nation? Does cash from Rogers come before heritage? Would this not represent a terrible stain on our national prestige? Just because others have “passed” does not mean you can throw away the past – or treat it with disrespect. Ask those in the “know” why we have cemeteries.

If you want to help keep Terry’s memory, and that of many, many others, from being sullied (now and in the future), please state your opposition to the mayor, Greg Moore, and council at: mayorcouncillors@portcoquitlam.ca – and to Rogers PR person: sara.holland@rci.rogers.com

Thank you.

A Land without Liberty: Canada, Prorogation and the Olympics

2010-03-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

Who cannot agree that Canada’s prorogued parliaments are our most recent and glaring examples of arbitrary government? Abuse of power damages political morality because it makes people afraid to challenge authority (witness Michael Ignatieff), and Canadians demonstrated ultimate servility with their Olympic ‘civic’ madness, ironically imagining “community” (to borrow from Benedict Anderson) in its highest at a time when there was no representation, decidedly so. In single-minded fashion, we - the modest people – and members of the Cabinet focussed on the face-offs outside of Parliament, putting aside the fact of our democracy denied. Canadians subsumed their liberty, handed it over to the spectre of bread and games, deferring to a prime minister boasting economic plans and administrative skills, one who “recalibrates” but offers no higher elevation (and lucky to have Whistler on his side), ever retreating to the polls after he “thinks” and “leads.” Oh, Canada!

The spirit of the Olympics favoured this nation, but we were (and are) a land without Liberty. Considered a once in a lifetime opportunity, we were taken in - and took in the Olympic moments as amused subjects not engaged citizens, and in this way we condoned the Conservative “government” as would good-mannered sheep. How can we possibly say (as does Maclean’s Magazine) they were “the best games ever”? This is true only because readership and circulation is considered a priority - not critical thinking in journalism, as editors join in the flag waving. Perhaps it is also indicative of our general lack of culture, as our inner lives give in to physical musculature and extremes, typical of Reality TV. Let us turn from popular optics to other works in an effort to decipher what has been going on.

In his Odes the Roman poet Horace says that “laws are useless without virtue.” Yet our government ignores the findings of our Supreme Court, and Omar Khadr remains in Guantanamo Bay. Does the prime minister and his government assume it is above our Laws? Has power distorted judgement, as it is prone to do? There appears no high virtue to the Harper government, no greatness to its political character, no aspiration worthy of emulation –only relentless opportunism - and, consequently, no high freedoms in the Land as the machinery of the administration and party grind away at opposition, stacking here, sacking there.

In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu says that the guiding principle of a monarchy is honour; the principle of a republic is virtue, or patriotism; and, the principle of despotism is fear. There is not much “honour” in the way the Harper government conducts itself (witness the pre-prorogued phone call to the Governor General), and we are presently moving away from the underpinnings of a monarchical system. Harper’s evangelical Protestantism adds to this spirit of independence from the British Crown, a marked difference from our previous Catholic prime ministers (Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin, among others), prone as they seem to be before symbols of Crown authority.

There is something quasi-republican about the present administration, but, selfless, pre-modern, community-oriented “virtue” is not Harper’s strong point, and it is terribly hard to inculcate in a country the breadth of Canada – so far from the Greek polis or Roman city state. Even the word “patriotism” does not suffice, if we are to consider the boisterous, almost mindless “nationalism” associated with the Olympic events: “own the podium” and the unceasing flurry of flags. Canadians (sometimes unrestrained) praised themselves as well as the disciplined Olympian bodies on view (in search of heroism), but we conveniently forgot the fact that we had no sitting government in Ottawa. Where is Leni Riefenstahl when you need her?

There is something rather despotic about Harper’s Ottawa. One element of change in Canada is the climate of fear brought about in no small part by negative advertising. Horace counters this sort of thinking in his Odes:

Virtue knows nothing of humiliation at the polls
but shines with honours unsullied. She does not take up
the axes or lay them down at the breath
of the wind of popular opinion.

The Harper government caters to popular opinion (often rootless rootedness), united by puck alone (the other common denominator being fear), pitting region against region, when it serves him: it is nothing short of “authoritarian populism” – the people themselves resist democracy, particularly in the West. Note the frequent critical (small “l” liberal) references to England’s Charles I and thoughts on Cromwell: fear of uncivil division, West versus East (for no one thinks of themselves as ‘Easterners’) - the redefined solitudes which permeate Canada’s current political discourse, and our landscape is pitted with unconstitutionalities.

Slavoj Zizek explains in his In Defense of Lost Causes (an interesting work which re-examines Heidegger’s Nazi dalliance, among other things) that “power is, by definition, in excess, or else it is not power.” Government is about power, be it Conservative, Liberal, NDP (or other), so government is always “in excess.” Under the previous federal Liberal governments, secular, statist and so-called multicultural democracy was considered “in excess”; and under the current Conservative government, a Western (Albertan) sense of a timeless moral authority derived from outside of the state (after many decades of “white” Tory rule) is considered “in excess.”

Every government is about power, but for the Harper Conservatives power is also about realpolitik. The point of Harper’s power is more (military) power – and for a government that crusaded against the limits of the state we have its unflinching defence, so-to-speak. Harper’s revival of our military forces are reminiscent of Cromwell’s army (again hints of republicanism), and one wonders how much this recent development in Canada is associated with any notion of (monarchical) “honour” and our highest freedoms in the name of the Crown, which the prime minister sullies by means of prorogation. Perhaps Wilhelm von Humboldt expresses it best in his The Limits of State Action:

"Now, a warlike spirit is only honourable in conjunction with the highest peaceful virtues, and military discipline, only when allied with the highest feeling of freedom; if these are severed – and how this separation is promoted by the existence of marshalled armies in the midst of peace – the former rapidly degenerates into wild and lawless ferocity, and the latter into slavery."

In other words, although we are a nation at war, ostensibly to preserve our freedoms (one could argue), we have not at all maintained our highest freedoms within the home front – or more particularly in the Houses of Parliament. We cannot celebrate our freedoms without security, but our prorogued losses of freedom are vastly disproportionate (and in excess) to the war that is being fought. Canadians too easily conformed to the fact they had no federal government during the Olympics, and the “freedom” they displayed during the Games bordered on the profane. Let’s hope this was all just once in a lifetime.

Cicero on Prisoners and Fair Dealing in War: Words of advice for Stephen Harper

2010-02-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

Early in Book 1 of his On Obligations, written late in 44BC, (following the death of Julius Caesar) Cicero offers a guide to honourable conduct, and he explains that “Fair dealing casts its own clear light ....” (By the way, Cicero was somewhere to the Right on the political spectrum). More importantly, the Romans had an obligation for fair dealing in war: “What must always be kept in mind when honouring a pledge is the intention, not the form of words.” Put another way, the Geneva Conventions are deeply rooted, with very strong antecedents in the Roman past, and even Stephen Harper might show some humility, if he were to allow history to be his guide (and the Prime Minister certainly seems to prefer the Roman stuff):

Consideration should also be shown to those who have been subdued by force, and men who lay down their arms and seek the sanctuary of our generals’ discretion should be granted access to them, even if a battering ram has shattered their city wall. In this respect justice has been observed so scrupulously by fellow Romans that those very men who conquered cities or nations in war and then admitted them to their protective discretion, subsequently became their patrons in accordance with ancestral custom.

The procedure for fair dealing in war has been most scrupulously committed to paper in the fetial code of the Roman people. This code can help us understand that no war is just unless it is preceded by a demand for satisfaction, or unless due warning is given first, and war is formally declared. ...

.... War with the Celtiberi and with the Cimbri was the equivalent of conflict with personal enemies, and thus was fought not for supremacy but for survival, whereas we fought with Latins, Sabines, Samnites, Carthaginians and Pyrrhus for extension of empire. True, Carthaginians broke treaties, and Hannibal was cruel, but others behaved more justly. So there is that celebrated speech of Pyrrhus about the restoration of prisoners:

No gold I ask for, no reward are you to give.
Let each of us as warriors, not traffickers
In war, with steel, not gold, determine life or death.
Which one of us Dame Fortune destines for the crown,
And what the end she brings, let us by valour seek.
Here too this word: those brave men whom war’s fate has spared
I too am minded both to spare and liberate.
Take them; I give you them. The great gods will it so.

Excerpted from Cicero, On Obligations, Tr. P. G. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2008), 14-15.

How Stephen Harper met George Orwell in High School

2010-02-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

"‘There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it; duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’" (George Orwell, 1984)

Stephen Harper is fond of Orwellian duckspeak, because he is always speaking to his group (which is quite like a gaggle – and often not high in flight). Prorogation is massive duckspeak, because it avoids having to do anything with lips, and it prevents any public feeding; there is just a lot of waddling, here and there. Conservative television ads are full of duckspeak, as they squawk a lot, and they leave droppings on their opponents almost to the point of no return: remember the unfortunate Mr. Dion, and to a lesser extent there is Mr. Ignatieff who flies too high (according to his imagination).

Parliament is about duckspeak (and it can sound that way), but Harper and the Conservative Party have honed it to a fine art. Early in January I wrote my MP James Moore with complaints about prorogation (see my blog entry). I did receive a reply, within a few weeks, but there was no mention of a prorogued Parliament, and quite frankly the letter did not say anything much ... until I came across the word duckspeak. Mr. Moore was sticking to script, according to his group, even though a Minister, and avoiding any accountability to his constituents: duckspeak. I do wonder who actually wrote the letter. If it were Rick Mercer’s guess, the office plants had a say.

Another word comes to mind when considering Stephen Harper: “egological” (a deceased friend of the late Pope John Paul II came up with the term). Forget the environment, save for the office plants, Mr. Harper also puts new meaning the notion of ‘head count.’ I thought we had surpassed the ‘Me’ generation, but can the Prime Minister be a holdover from the age of bellbottoms? No, that would be an Orwellian thought-crime. Think way back, I mean, way back, to the age of the Saints, of never doing any wrong, you know, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Paul, and so on.

“Saint” is an ostentatious title for most of us, if not all. It can suggest incompatible thinking, or Orwellian doublespeak, as if there were nothing better, supposedly (and everybody else is considered a "sinner"), but that is how Stephen Harper was indoctrinated at Richview Collegiate Institute in Toronto. In other words, Mr. Harper still thinks he is one of the “Saints,” the nickname for his High School (where Church and State unite), and he persists in believing he is the head boy. (Incidentally, Margaret Atwood went to the Harper family's old area of haunt, the Leaside "Lancers"). So Harper has finally figured out a way of overriding the Senate (the teachers); in his own day it would have been by old-fashioned student strike. However, prorogation is a pretentious high school kid’s answer to getting one’s own way. Only he has succeeded in closing down the school because initiation rites may have gotten out of hand. Given that Harper is so egological, it really is like water off an Orwellian duck’s back.

Mel Hurtig's "The Truth About Canada" - A Review

2010-02-02T15:57:00.001-08:00

Mel Hurtig’s recent bestseller, The Truth About Canada (2008), is reminiscent of a number of different books, for example Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine (2007) and William Marsden’s Stupid to the Last Drop (2007). All these books are written with a critical and breath-taking edge reminding us of “some truly appalling things” as Hurtig’s subtitle properly puts it. But to my mind the work that resonates most with Hurtig is Paul Tillich’s classic The Courage to Be. While The Truth About Canada is no exquisite theological treatise, and Hurtig’s use of statistics from the OECD (which he never defines) can be a bit mind numbing, Hurtig’s book is in itself the product of a profound act of courage. He rallies against Canada’s ‘think tanks’ (especially the far-right Fraser Institute, as well as the ‘non-partisan’ C.D. Howe Institute and Institute for Research on Public Policy) and almost single-handedly he unites the charge against Prime Ministers (previous and existing), Governments, Health Care, Businesses, Banks, Media, the Military, NAFTA, Globalization, Higher Education, you name it. Most of all, I savour the fact that Hurtig is an Edmontonian by origin.

Yes, Canada has changed mightily since the presumed ‘good old days’ (prior to Mulroney), and the great number of these changes are not promising, particularly if you share concerns over heightened continentalism. Pointing to the absolute decline in the number of doctors as Canada’s population increased between the years from 1993to 2003, he reminds us that American society and its health system is far from ideal. Life expectancy in Harlem is lower than it is in Bangladesh, and Malaysia and the U.S. have similar infant mortality rates. Moreover, the child poverty rate in the U.S. is just ahead of Mexico. Not to be smug, he reveals that the child poverty rate in British Columbia, the highest in Canada, is 23.5%. Borrowing from Lars Osberg, an Economist at Dalhousie University, he explains the number of “monster homes” now increases with the number of homeless, and (again) the rich-poor income gap is highest in B.C.

Turning to other economic indicators, we see that productivity is in decline in Canada. In 1970 we were 5th (out of 24 nations); by 2007 we were 47th (out of 50 nations). More significantly, our manufacturing industries are increasingly under foreign control, up to just over 50% in 2004, higher than any other OECD nation (and increasing). Meanwhile we continue to cut (‘foreign’) corporate taxes. Quoting Globe and Mail business columnist Eric Reguly, he explains that “the relative tax burden on the individual has doubled” between the years 1961 and 2006. We are, as Hurtig’s apt phrase goes, a “hollowed-out country ... sleepwalking back to colonial status” (assuming we had ever left it), and Reguly blames nothing but “feckless CEO’s,” good ‘managers’ only, who bring shame to Canadians in the light of, say, Vimy.

Hurtig goes further and accuses the Harper government and former Industry Minister Jim Prentice of “intentionally misleading Canadians.” From 1996 to June 2007 the number of Canadian companies taken by foreign companies over was 6,355 – not 1540 as claimed by Prentice’s office. Meanwhile the number of foreign companies acquired by Canadian ones was 3,898. Only Canadians would give up the likes of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its 350 year relationship with the nation’s history. Only Canadians, because of NAFTA, would give up something over 50% of our production of natural gas to the United States. More importantly, “we now have less than nine years of natural gas left” (and the scenario for our oil reserves is almost as bad); in other words, Alberta’s economy (and Canada's future) is built on a house of cards, a situation one anonymous Calgary expert Hurtig quotes as “pretty scary.” (See also the aforementioned Stupid to the Last Drop).

Hurtig’s solution is to “abrogate NAFTA and impose export taxes on all oil and gas exports” – not a bad idea, if you are first a Canadian with no ties to Americans. Our excessive media concentration (which one definitely finds in Vancouver) also prevents the proper dissemination and contest of ideas so essential to a democracy. And in this light our universities are failing us because of chronic underfunding, among other things. According to the most recent United Nations Development Report, Canada is 90th in terms of “public expenditure on education as a percentage of all government spending.” Hurtig’s solution to our many ills is proportional representation and resulting better voter turnout (a consequence, according to studies): we will actually have increased representation, less vote distortion and alienation, and a more meaningful democracy; why, it might even help inculcate a better sense of nationhood among us all, likely one of Hurtig’s aims.

Where do I disagree with Hurtig? First, he far too hastily dismisses the Senate in less than one paragraph without due consideration to the virtues of a bicameral legislature. Secondly, his criticism of our military lacks a little focus. Yes, unfortunately (according to Steve Staples of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs) we have transformed ourselves as a nation from a “peace-keeper to a war-fighter,” and we have done so without public debate, which is cause for concern. Yes, sadly, we are now the “sixth highest military spender among the 26 NATO countries,” outspending the bottom 12 NATO countries combined. Yes, our involvement in Afghanistan is highly questionable and, I believe, doomed to failure. Yes, if we are to accept Michael Byers, Harper and other governments have bungled the matter of the Northwest Passage, which is quickly de-icing. But that is precisely where perhaps some of our military spending should go, if we are to prevent strange underwater bumping from going unchecked. In the interest of territorial sovereignty we should be doing something more about Canada’s North rather than preach democracy (from the barrel of a gun) in Afghanistan.

The Truth About Canada is far more than a statistical rant, and I can see Mel Hurtig speaking to many groups across Canada, as a former publisher, politician and a present-day moralist. It takes real courage to be Hurtig and to take on so many institutions with entrenched interests. He must have armed himself with the First Epistle of St. Peter: “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?” This verse ought to be coupled (in our minds) with the following: “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.”

On "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" by Milton

2010-01-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

Here is an excerpt from Milton on ‘Free Nations’ written in old English (and it might need rereading):

“And surely they that shall boast, as we do, to be a free Nation, and not have in themselves the power to remove, or to abolish any governor supreme, or subordinat, with the government it self upon urgent causes, may please thir fancy with a ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to coz’n babies; but are indeed under tyranny and servitude; as wanting that power, which is the root and source of all liberty, to dispose and economize in the Land which God hath giv’n them, as Maisters of Family in thir own house and free inheritance. Without which natural and essential power of a free Nation, though bearing high thir heads, they can in due esteem be thought no better then slaves and vassals born, in the tenure and occupation of another inheriting Lord. Whose government, though not illegal, or intolerable, hangs over them as a Lordly scourge, not as a free government; and therefore to be abrogated.”

John Milton’s, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, was first published in 1649, less than two weeks after the execution of Charles I. Milton wrote about liberty, the people’s right to resist tyranny and the need for political trust, among other things.

"How to Make the Right Decisions" by Cicero

2010-01-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

“Holding things back does not always amount to concealment, but it does when you want people, for your advantage, not to know something which you know and it would benefit them to know. Anyone can see this sort of concealment that this amounts to – and the sort of person who practices it. Certainly he is not an open, straightforward, fair, honest man; no, he is a shifty, deep, artful, treacherous, malevolent, underhand, sly, habitual rogue. Surely it is inexpedient to get oneself called by all those names and a lot more besides!"

Excerpted from How to Make the Right Decisions written by Cicero, a Roman Senator, not long after the murder of Julius Caesar (44B.C.); he was himself murdered on 7 December 43 B.C.

Letter to Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Leader

2010-01-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

The Honourable Michael Ignatieff
Leader of the Opposition
Liberal Party of Canada - National Office
Suite 400-81 Metcalfe Street
Ottawa
K1P 6M8

12 January 2010

Dear Mr. Ignatieff,

I noted in The Globe and Mail some while ago your review of Machiavelli’s The Prince, but you forgot a lesson: “When trouble is sensed well in advance it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable.” Why did Canadians have to wait a week after Harper’s second prorogued Parliament for your meagre depiction of it as “crazy” when the words illiberal and undemocratic would have been an understatement? Apparently you chose to take a vacation – outside of the country? Why did you not return home sooner? Were you not aware that Canadians suffered a leadership vacuum in the days since Harper’s announcement? Were you not aware that “governments” such as ours regularly like to make full use of strategic timing to announce policies in an effort to minimize scrutiny? Ottawa was rife with rumour of prorogation: why did you not say anything earlier, like pass a warning shot across Harper’s bow?

Your sense of timing is impeccable. In the autumn you announced your candidacy for the prime minister’s job when Liberals were riding high in the polls - and for no other apparent reason. After the polls plunged to near Dion levels, as we know, and when constitutional stakes are critical, you announce to all interested parties that you are not going to make prorogation an election issue. This amounts to a terrible squandering of political capital. Perhaps if you had not gambled so soon, we would not be facing prorogation today. Now you must pose a serious threat to the Harper government while they remain ever dismissive. What will construe an election issue, in your mind? Will it be dictated by high polls? Or by what actually matters? It is high time that parliamentary principle prevail over pathetic party-line politics.

I gather you have been canvassing the country while the Afghan detainee issue made its way into Parliament, so your team has been speaking on behalf of Richard Colvin, et al. This must be terribly convenient. In other words you can avoid the detritus of your own regime change politics – and a nebulous climate of opinion around the issue of torture - made on behalf of the Americans and President Bush not too long ago. (See Ignatieff’s World Updated: Iggy goes to Ottawa by Denis Smith, pp. 140-143). The more you remain out of sight today, the less you appear to contradict yourself. Now you have the daunting task (without a sitting Parliament, as you note) of making alleged torture an issue when you were seemingly making the atmosphere around such matters less clear in the years before returning to Canada.

And I would like to point out that one of the causes behind the Afghan detainee issue is that Canada is at ‘War on Terror’. This is also one of the reasons why the Harper government might just get away with prorogation, because it reflects the general diminishment of liberties already taking place in the West since 9/11. While Harper is the only one to have thought of prorogation, both Britain and the USA have experienced profound legislative setbacks to civil liberties (for example the American Patriot Act, aspects of which, it turned out, infringed on the U.S. Constitution). In Britain the House of Commons recently passed legislation allowing subjects to be held without charge for 42 days (extended from a mere 28 days). At the time of the Magna Carta (1215) one could only be held for 48 hours. (See A.C. Grayling, Liberty in the Age of Terror). The widespread decline of civil liberties (for example, now also at our airports) and the opportunity for prorogation itself could have been minimized, perhaps, if Canada’s Leader of the Opposition (as a previous ‘public intellectual’) had not advocated for war on Iraq but instead helped focus the resources of the West initially on Afghanistan, which has very much remained an unfortunate sideshow. Do I see an irony?

Canadians need fresh air. Parliament has been prorogued twice now since your turn in federal politics. You did nothing previously, being the last Liberal signatory to the “coalition”, and so far you have done nothing this time around except time your criticisms of Harper with The Economist, apparently. You must push for an alternative Parliament, and you need to appeal to all Canadians (there is at least 60% of them) to support it until March 3, when “Harper’s Parliament” reconvenes. It is also time you considered working with the other parties, certainly the NDP, to help bring representation back to Canada and to Canadians. This way you can revisit the detainee issue with some element of atonement and clarity. It is up to you as Leader of the Opposition to carry the torch for Canadian democracy: you will not find it in Harper’s government, because it has sacrificed everything for party discipline, the war (in Afghanistan and against the Opposition) - and for Machiavellian machinations. Let’s put some of that “true patriot love” you speak of in action before we conclude it is nothing else but empty and supercilious rhetoric.

Sincerely,

Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.
cc www.joergedyrkton.blogspot.com
cc joehueglin@bellnet.ca

Letter to the Prime Minister

2010-01-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

The Right Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa

07 January 2010

Dear Mr. Harper,

I am not anxious to win your favour, but I observe upon rereading Machiavelli’s The Prince that you have heeded his lessons in realpolitik. “Men must be either pampered or crushed” – pamper your party, crush the opposition, apparently regardless of cost.

Your mission, I now see, is not to reform Canada’s constitution, but to set a course for a new state, building it along republican lines, an inspiration (it can be argued) you share with Machiavelli. Is this why you snubbed the appointed Governor General while proroguing Parliament for the second time? And is this why you persist (and here I stand corrected) on forcing an elected Senate without the support of the provinces? This is quite some way to “recalibrate,” your favourite word of late. I doubt Machiavelli would have used the term, despite its apparent scientificity. It implies that the government is some sort of (military?) machine, and it gives away your unfortunate managerial tone.

Previously I have portrayed you in Cromwellian (and Orwellian) terms, but it should be noted that when England’s Charles I lost his head in 1649, thinkers turned to Machiavelli (if not The Prince, then his Discourses) to settle reasons of state, work which later inspired the Americans. An important Machiavellian quotation comes to mind here: “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are. And those few dare not gainsay the many who are backed by the majesty of the state.” Yes, reasons of state – even in a minority Parliament - appear to prevail over embarrassing issues of torture of Afghan detainees. Machiavelli was tortured, too, in his time, but as we now know (post modern, post Geneva Convention) there is bad torture, and there is also acceptable torture, preferably among ‘others’, regardless of innocence.

Reasons of state prevailed during the infamous and scandalous Dreyfus Affair, now over a century old, when the unfortunate Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason and imprisoned on Devil’s Island. According to the far-Right at the time, he deserved punishment (even if he was not guilty) because the French Army could not be dishonoured. Similarly whistleblower Richard Colvin can be maligned by a Minister of the Crown for speaking the truth – only to be supported by well over a hundred other diplomat types, all truth-seekers for our nation.

Apparent reasons of state versus the sovereignty of Parliament, and you Mr. Harper have opted for the classical republican state, because you never much admired those Gothic arches in Ottawa, which incidentally never made their way into Machiavelli’s Italy – and into his own preoccupation with Roman history. Moreover, we are a nation committed to war (without much debate, if at all, mind you), and according to Machiavelli (I am sure you have heard this, Mr. Harper): “The first way to lose your state is to neglect the art of war; the first way to win a state is to be skilled in the art of war.”

But what kind of war are we fighting may I ask? It is certainly not a world-type war, thankfully. And how can we teach democracy by proroguing Parliament? More importantly, how can we bring democracy to Afghanistan when tribal culture expects that men marry their first cousins? What kind of society are we defending? Our men and women are sacrificing their lives to change a people by means of guns and weapons? Afghanistan is not “medieval” (as some on the ground commentators have observed): it belongs further in the Dark Ages, or earlier. No wonder Afghanistan foiled Alexander the Great, the British and the Russians before us.

In writing to you Mr. Harper (and here I borrow from Machiavelli) “I have thought it proper to represent things as they are in real truth, rather than as they are imagined.” The first time you prorogued Parliament you brought about a constitutional crisis, pitching one part of Canada against another. The second time you prorogued Parliament you are doing the same. Your fundamental lack of respect for the democratic processes of Parliament is “dissimulated” (a favourite Machiavellian concept) by your efforts to change the Senate – completely, and without the support of the provinces.

Sometimes you like to think of yourself as a “lion” (in a sweater) and many other times you are wily – like a “fox”, but most of your activity involves trying to escape a bad reputation – about which Machiavelli warns. “Escape” is a key word because you do an awful lot of it, partly thanks to the general public now satiated by federal politics these days - and often because of a once reliable media. “For intellectual training” Machiavelli recommends that “the prince must read history” for that is something you cannot escape. But if you only confine yourself to Roman history, as does that other prince of tutors you have (let’s call him Tom), you will be reduced to a rather uninspired – yes, a morally low - picture of democracy (as there was none). The Roman political culture best featured ‘reason’, (international)‘law’, ‘government’ and an eventually despotic empire but no Athenian demos – the people. In its later stages the Romans probably learned something about freedom from the ancient German (Anglo-Saxon type) tribes, if you consider Tacitus.

I am afraid Mr. Prime Minister that history has escaped you. Both you and Machiavelli trash the proverb “he who builds on the people builds on mud” but in going from the issue of Afghan detainees to prorogation to another constitutional rumble in the space of a week you are no longer the “wise prince [who] should rely on what he controls.” I am afraid you have watched too many movies in your youth, and you represent, in my eyes, a kind of constitutional Rambo. “A shrewd prince should adopt a middle way” – and here you not only fail Machiavelli but notably what once was key to the Canadian identity.

Sincerely,

Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.
cc www.joergedyrkton.blogspot.com
cc joehueglin@bellnet.ca

Letter to my MP, James Moore, Minister of Heritage

2010-01-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

The Honourable James Moore, MP
Minister of Heritage
2603 Saint Johns Street
Port Moody, BC
V3H 2B5

03 January 2010

Dear James Moore,

I am writing to express my complete dismay at the decision of your party leader, prime minister Stephen Harper, to prorogue Parliament for the second time in two years. These evasive manoeuvres amount to an open defiance of Parliament and the people of Canada, the voters, and we have now plunged further down the slippery slope of cynical electoral unaccountability. The only members of the public who voted for the prime minister were his Calgary constituents: he is not a President, thankfully, and he has no authority to abuse dusty instruments from the Canadian Constitution and Westminster model, denying us representation.

The Conservative Party has exposed its latent illiberalism, and the caucus (with the cabinet) resembles numerous little Quislings, obedient only to ‘party’ principles and so-called ‘leadership’ at the expense of Canadian democracy and its once respected traditions. May I remind you that your party only received 36% of the popular vote in the last election and that you have effectively closed the doors on the remaining 64%, if not on some of your own supporters who still cherish the democratic way of life.

Given that you will now have more time on your hands, I presume the decency of a reply is in order, for there is far more at issue than your party’s Machiavellian short term political advantage. There is no transparency, only subterfuge – and an unpalatable calculation that assails countless generations of accrued political values. The 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta will be coming up in 5 years, and pretty soon we will have nothing to celebrate, at least not in Canada. Detaining Parliament and its elected representatives is no answer in a modern democracy.

I hope I make myself clear.

Sincerely,

Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.
cc http://www.joergedyrkton.blogspot.com/
cc joe.hueglin@bellnet.ca

Prorogation for the nation. Harper's exercises in selective democracy.

2010-01-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

So Harper has done it again, with one phone call and no public appearance. Happy New Year, Canada! We have Orwell's "1984" in 2010. Parliament is prorogued for the second time in two years. Apparently Harper has nothing to hide, but detains our elected members. Now we can all watch the Olympics in Peace and Harmony, feeding on political pablum, laced with illiberalism and unaccountability.

I am a liberal to the extent that I value our Parliament and its institutional history, or, rather, what remains of it. Harper is so illiberal he makes a mockery of democracy, and for once I agree with Andrew Coyne, who blogs that Parliament should meet somewhere else. (See his "What's at stake.") The last time our Parliament was prorogued I suggested they meet at a Tennis Court, a reference to the beginning of the French Revolution. Ostensibly they should meet in "half" a Tennis Court to show a government in abeyance, if not arbitrary and beyond acceptance.

Harper's New Year's gift to Canadians puts the ill-fated Dion-led coalition in a much better light. It failed because the Canadian public was not willing to accept a coalition that was not "elected" as such, a spurious notion in a minority parliament. The minority government is illegitimate because we did not vote to prorogue (or let's say detain) our national institition, for opportune periods (another "time-out"?). He has no mandate to close down, at his cynical convenience, on our elected representatives, their committees and our conventions - on our Parliament - and we are now on the slippery slope.

As the Olympic torch drives its way across Canada, I am reminded of another modern-day torch relay begun (yes, the first) in 1936, Hitler's Germany - and the Berlin Olympics. That nation was not much bothered by pesky politics and parliament because the Reichstag, too, had been torched. The only time Canada's Parliament went up in flames was in the height of World War One - and we blamed the Germans. If our House of Commons gets destroyed, I think we'll have to blame the Prime Minister: he loves playing with fire. And I can just imagine the Ottawa headlines: "Harper fingers piano as Parliament burns."

"From World Order to Global Disorder" - A Review

2009-10-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

I was lucky to get a new paperback version of this book for a bargain – the going rate for a hardcover is $75.00 which should tell you something about the book’s considered value, despite its title, the focus of which is not quite the “world” (but close enough for our purposes). From World Order to Global Disorder: States, Markets and Dissent (2007) was written by Dorval Brunelle, a Sociology Professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Translated by Richard Howard and published in English by UBC Press, the book addresses the shift in world “order” established more than 50 years ago at the end of the Second World War – Keynesianism, the mixed economy, the welfare state - and compares it with the so-called “disorder” established by the forces of globalization, deregulation and “liberalization”. Property rights and all the legal elements consistent with them have been strengthened, while the legal outlook protecting, say, the unemployed (and the planet itself) has been diminished. Overall, collective rights (and things “public”) have been weakened because neoclassical liberalism and the Chicago school (mentored by Milton Friedman) have difficulty seeing beyond the individual – and, indeed, transnational corporations. Some of this, of course, has been questioned since the Wall Street collapse of 2008.

Despite his penchant for sociological jargon, “horizontals” and “verticals”, Brunelle offers some interesting nuggets of Canadian history (mostly economic and political) and a good summary of the history of liberalism(s) over the past half century. He points out, importantly, that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was “essentially inspired by old-style philosophical liberalism” (the spirit of 1789, if not the letter), and that it was introduced in part to correct the abuses of provincial legislatures, both East and West. However, it spelled doom for parliamentary supremacy in Ottawa, bringing us closer to the U.S. model, where the judiciary reigns. Brunelle’s point is that the Canadian Charter, because it deepened the continental paradigm, made Free Trade all the more easy to advance.

Brunelle also asks an interesting question: why did Canada and the U.S. opt for Free Trade “when they already had the most integrated economies on the planet”? He answers that such closeness in the first place allowed Canada and the U.S. to negotiate an agreement with sweeping implications, keeping in mind the Recession of 1981-82 (considered at that time to be the worst since the Depression era), which affected Canada more than its neighbour to the south. Moreover, Free Trade was the central recommendation of the Macdonald Commission (begun in 1982 and tabled three years later). It aimed at reworking our economy, allegedly “balkanized” (the common bane of Canada, one way or another), and creating instead an “economic union” (minus our vulnerable populations) – following the historic recipe of the world’s first modern economies, nineteenth-century Britain and Germany, combined with the late twentieth-century example of the European Union.

However, the notorious Chapter 11 of the Canada - U.S. Free Trade Agreement (the number “11” being the “symbol of sin” to St. Augustine’s “legal 10”) guarantees investor rights, and allows them to challenge governments in court if nationalization were to be considered, placing government in a secondary position vis-à-vis corporations. In other words Ottawa ceded sovereignty to multinationals (unlike Mexico) under NAFTA; and what was once considered legislative or public power has further shifted out of the House of Commons and into the executive, or Cabinet (which abides by secrecy), the end result being an occasional meeting of heads – governmental and corporate, the latter backed by agreements outside the Canadian judiciary. What was public has been privatized, and our civil society suffers the loss of a responsible and accountable forum – save perhaps (I might add) for our Senate, our churches and our non-governmental organizations. Brunelle also looks for some help from our global social movements.

Keep in mind that this book was originally published in French in 2003. It does not focus much on people or prime ministers (it is in fact sociology) – and what stands for the era of Jean Chrétien is perfectly suited for Stephen Harper, perhaps even more so, given his dominance of the Cabinet and ideological predilections. Brunelle offers a penetrating analysis of our democratic deficit without being doctrinal; his book is a worthy and succinct read, and the fact is our legislatures are now poorly equipped to protect the collective rights of our own people – the public. No wonder I feel a sense of (philosophical) “liberty” (mixed with shame and compassion) each time a church offers up a little space for the homeless. One feels empowered by expressing dissent with the reeling consequences of globalization that knows neither home nor social justice.

Stephen Harper's Senate "reform"

2009-08-31T17:17:00.001-07:00

Harper’s 27 appointees to the Senate in the space of less than one year reminds me of how Stalin, as General Party Secretary, stacked communist bureaucracies with his own appointees, which eventually led him to full control of the Politburo. Is it only in Canada that one man can be responsible for more than one quarter of the Senate members in a matter of mere months? A proud record, for sure. The noted scholar Donald J. Savoie used the term “court government” in early 2008 to describe the tone of government in Canada (and Britain) - but I believe this to be a considerable understatement, as it stands today, in our country. Stephen Harper has garnered unprecedented personal power and allegiances, and there is no one to check the authority of this ‘chess player’ (a favoured term of the uncritical news media), save for some opposing pawns on the Internet. In his will, Lenin expressed concern that Stalin had “concentrated an enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.” Does this not sound familiar to those who remain wary of another constitutional record - the unflattering hiccup known as the prorogued parliament?

Rightfully (but for the wrong reasons), Harper is not going to opt for an elected Senate. He finally realizes, when now in power, that such a body cannot sit subordinate to the House of Commons, not that this worried him too much. If you elect a Senate, how could it be - why should it be - the home of “sober second thought” – or of any thought for that matter? Harper’s solution is to rid himself of any pretensions of non-partisanship in the Senate (in other words, sobriety), offering only his thought – or rather, his one thought: power. How can any man refuse the best of both worlds when seized with such an opportunity – appointing two dozen plus fellow hacks (thereby perpetuating his loyal self without the bother of yet another election), and thereby saving us from the constitutional nightmare of an elected Senate. We now have single-minded (in its truest sense) “reform” of the Senate which borders on a quiet, low-brow and anti-intellectual Revolution of the Upper Chamber which was once considered, for good reason, “Canada’s Think Tank”. Who can call Canada a democracy today?

"A Fair Country"? Just ask John Ralston Saul: A Review

2009-06-18T20:36:00.001-07:00

John Ralston Saul has finally written a thoughtful and interesting book – A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (2008). However, I am not certain he is always telling “truths”, and I have my doubts that Canada is a fair country.

Saul begins with a provocation that sets the tone for the whole book: “We are not a civilization of British or French or European inspiration. We have never been .” Elsewhere he writes, repeating his central theme: “... we are a métis nation ... the underlying currents of this country are more indigenous than imported ...” And towards his conclusion he winds up, rather breathlessly over two jumbled pages:

"... ours is not a civilization that emerged out of the Judeo-Christian line. ... If the central inspiration of our country is Aboriginal, then we are not, and never have been in the European or U.S. sense, a Christian country."

This is postcolonial thinking in full form, and despite his trenchant critique of the Canadian university system, Saul shares this particular vogue, having forgotten that the idea of colonizing a space like Canada probably began with the Crusades. Does he really mean Canada is not (or was not) at all a “Christian” country because “we have never been” English, French or European in inspiration? Apparently he has never been to a shopping mall in December. Or does he mean that Canada’s “Christianity” is just different from that of other Western nations? This appears as an effete compromise to the promise of a striking thesis. Do the Indigenous peoples form a kind of "great code" (if we may put Northrup Frye aside), a native Canadian enchantment that pervades our culture unlike any other?

The Canadian, multicultural ability to imagine the other, according to Saul, comes primarily from our contact with Indiginous peoples, and their understanding of “minimal impairment”, “the ever-enlarging circle” and the “common bowl”, not from our “bipolar” English-French fact. If our “central inspiration” is Aboriginal, this frees us, like the Chinese, from uncomfortable notions of “guilt” and “original sin”. The Aboriginal condition, the métis as proto-multicultural – or, better yet, intercultural - finds common expression in the untainted space of “the Land” where, however, relatively few actually settle, or live, considering the trinity of our metropolitan cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The idea of the North figures highly in Saul’s analysis, and rightly so: the more the Canadian government wants to lay claim to Arctic sovereignty, the more we need to reinvent our sad history with the Aboriginal peoples. As well, the more we attune ourselves to the demands of the changing environment, the more we need to pay heed to Aboriginal culture, overturning Descartes’ classic claim of man as the “masters and possessors of nature.”

But Saul offers a Canadian myth shy of fact. It is a thesis that is only possible in “a secular age” (to borrow from McGill philosopher Charles Taylor), where there is disenchantment, no transcendence and no intrinsic cohesion. Where no common faith prevails, officially-speaking, and where a diverse people are in want of social glue, Saul creates a story of “national” origins, befitting his former vice-regal relationship, making an intuitive leap backwards (to the “state of nature”) and forwards (to civil society), and from the Crown rightly to the first Nations peoples. We were allegedly multicultural before - there exists a métis current – and we appear so today: the link is the act of an intellectual associating ideas, but the focus is too narrow and Voltairean. Oddly, I see shades of that famous anti-clerical cry: “Ecrasez l'infame.” Indigenous practices have substituted for everything else, including religion, as “nation” building prevails over all (something Voltaire would not tolerate), and the “imagined community" is just that: imagined, taking a postmodern leap of faith today, guided by his own spousal example. Is it wise, in this vast and diverse country to dispense summarily with all residual religious notions, as Christian “guilt” has considerable social utility, for what prevents us from habitual jay walking, or worse? Importantly, the Christian notion of “conscience” (and with it the sense of the responsible individual) is linked to the advent of Democracy which arose first from the West, with its successes - and some evident failures (especially with respect to Indigenous populations). Similarly he neglects ancient Judaic notions of “social justice” (to which he owes a debt) and “moral freedom”, again notions that had a powerful influence on the shaping of Western values.

In a political sense the larger problem is that Saul moves us away from the tradition of parliamentary democracy which is in need of proper tending and attention – badly. If we have never been British or French or European in inspiration, then we might have a problem, politically speaking. If “the Indians were our Greeks – our Athenians, our Spartans,” then Saul (the former vice-regal consort) makes it all the more easy in 2008 for prime minister Harper, in an unprecedented move, to ask the current governor general for a prorogation of Parliament with a so-called constitutional “time off”. Parliament can be closed on the fly, representative democracy can be made a mockery of, Western populism can confront Quebec all because parliament has no deep roots in Canada: it is pitched on postcolonial turf. That Adrienne Clarkson has written a forward to Peter Russell and Lorne Sossin’s stimulating collection "Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis" (2009), which deals with the heat and smoke of the late months of 2008, only adds to the irony.

Canada (along with Britain) is increasingly in the hands of a “court government”; we are witnessing “the collapse of accountability” and noted scholar Donald J. Savoie (the author of these apt phrases and a lengthy book published in 2008) suggests that we develop the (higher) civil service as a check on prime ministerial abuses of powers, a notion I find rather wrongheaded (and undemocratic, inclined toward the mandarin classes), too focussed on the history of public administration (for which one finds a corrective in the political science offerings of Russell and Sossin). Saul – long an opponent of rational linearity, bureaucracies and the like, which he makes amply clear in his book - goes very much in the opposite direction and develops the aboriginal culture as “central”, undermining some of the roots of our own – indeed sometimes rather oppressive – Western political traditions.

Saul’s worry is that “we have been irrevocably separated from our foundation” whereas I would suggest in offering only one “foundation” he has lost all texture to Canadian history – and to “the middle way” which he claims is rooted exclusively in our Aboriginal culture. (It might also have something to do with historic religious roots where Christ “mediates” between God and men, if we are to consider St. Augustine). Would not an open-ended and more commonplace “foundation trilogy” – Aboriginal, French and English – serve us better, politically and historically speaking? Britain had its Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings (and Normans) who are in much more favour today after being historically put down by Christianity but that does not mean we (or they) should not nourish the light of Athenian democracy. Dragons, elves and wizards were not just the stuff of J.R. Tolkien (and J.K Rowling): the ‘magic’ of Middle Earth and the Dark Ages is finding a postcolonial revival today, but does that mean we should repress Solon and Pericles? Saul borders on making Canada a non-Western country with his single-minded emphasis on the Aboriginal and on throwing off the colonial yokes – both European and American.

For Saul the aboriginal people are the ultimate “other” which accepted “others”. He explains: “Civilizations are normally judged by that central philosophical tenet - the ability of citizens to imagine the other.” Here he comes across as his own quintessential Canadian, but is ahistorical, and rather out of touch, perhaps because he laments the detours of fact from his thesis, the advent of homelessness and the like. Contrast the above quotation with: “So the natural state of being in an organized society, certainly in the Western, Judeo-Christian, rational tradition, is likely to be one of division and the celebration of disadvantage.” To sum up: Canada represents an intentional “civilization”; Europe (and presumably the U.S.) does not meet the Canadian standard of inclusiveness, yet he is careful to claim that “Canada has no model for the world.” Even more significantly, Saul warns that our Indiginous-induced egalitarianism “is not a natural state of organization” (an important point on which he hardly dwells) but at the same time he trumpets a Canada outside the European tradition.

We are apparently a métis civilization, deeply shaped by the first Nations cultures into which European newcomers (and here we see an expression of postcolonial revisionism – and perhaps some self referencing by Saul) ‘married up’, a dubious claim which considers early white male settlers free from racial taints and sexist bigotry. Not all marital unions, métis or not, can be likened to that of the philosopher Saul and constitutionally privileged Adrienne Clarkson whose intercultural (and – most significantly - childless) relationship, is considered a prime example of “recreating” Canada’s métis foundations. Apparently 4 percent of couples in Canada are mixed race (a dubious statistic), and this is hardly what I would call what Saul refers to as approaching “critical mass”. The apparent fact that some mixed race couples in some professional circles might be approaching 50 percent - another dubious figure - might have something to do with the demographic shifts (immigration) and with it international perspectives, and with the postmodern prevalence of the “hybrid” – more so than with some “unconscious civilization.”

There is much that is “unconscious” in Saul’s work. “Peace, order and good government” was supposed to be “Peace, welfare and good government.” Peacekeeping comes from a First Nations example. Lester Person’s Nobel Peace Prize has its roots in aboriginal culture. The idea the “individualism and group interests must be balanced” – an agreeable notion – somehow comes from an Aboriginal idea, but Saul offers no proof. Even though 40 percent of Canada’s immigrants end up in Toronto, what will matter most in 50 years (according to novelist Joseph Boyden) is “The Land,” an appreciation that is not necessarily exclusive to First Nation’s peoples. The core principle of being Canadian is apparently “fairness” but Saul adds: “How successful we are at embracing that principle is another matter.”

If Canada is considered a fair country, why is it not successful at being fair? Does the self-image of fairness make it a fair country? Do we have a mythology that is really just a myth? Do Indigenous people think Canada has been fair? Do the métis? Could there possibly be other groups – and individuals, new and old in our multicultural matrix–that think Canada is actually fair – or, rather, not fair? Is Canada so fair that it is no longer sociological? Canadians are (or were) internationally known as fair, but are Canadians really fair to others in their own country? We need only travel as far as Vancouver’s Downtown East Side to get a whiff of this “fairness.” The myth of fairness is just that – a myth. It is how Canadians prefer to be identified, for lack of anything else; it is part of our collective imagination, foisted on often underemployed newcomers grateful to have a semblance of democracy (with little sense of history), but it does not necessarily correspond with social fact. Saul deals well with a number of “truths” but his notion of “fairness” brims with misplaced self satisfaction. Overall "A Fair Country" makes for a good read, but the central theme rings too much like an "idée fixe."

'The Rights Revolution' by Michael Ignatieff - A Critique in the Light of Events

2009-02-28T16:43:00.001-08:00

The second time I read Michael Ignatieff’s 'The Rights Revolution' it had occurred to me I had read it a first time – it had made such a lasting impression on me. Pity: thanks to a recent reissue of his book, I now have two copies taking up space in my library.

Ignatieff, if you do not already know, is a political liberal. He argues in his new introduction (already out-of-date, and rather backwards in my opinion, as if politics exists in a vacuum): “The fundamental problem facing humanity is political.” Not climate change (which knows no political borders), not the apparent clash of civilizations (to which he contributed), not the conflict between poor and rich nations (Che Guevara he is not) – and not the economy, the latter which he even fails to mention, demonstrating the paucity of his thought. (Shall we anticipate another revised introduction?) The world, according to Ignatieff, needs “order and freedom,” spoken like a true nineteenth-century conservative liberal, the two most active ingredients for political life, from which all true global solutions will follow.

The apparent need for “order” might explain Ignatieff’s lack of support for Dion’s pre-prorogued coalition of Liberals and New Democratic Party, backed by the Bloc Québécois. The so-called “disorder” represented by possible but temporary unity with the NDP, otherwise known as the Jacobins, runs counter to Ignatieff’s gene pool, which is why Ignatieff was last to sign the agreement. Consider his previous support for Margaret Thatcher against the striking Miner’s union of Britain in the mid-1980s. And as he makes quite plain in 'The Rights Revolution': “I prefer the evils of capitalist individualism to the evils of collectivism.” Absent is any sense of a ‘middle ground’ which so identified Canadian thinking throughout much of the twentieth century: individualism is “just a fact about us as a species,” this coming from an historian. (The French Revolutionaries, too, omitted freedom of assembly from their first Declaration of the Rights in 1789). In other words, Ignatieff sacrificed the integrity of Parliament because his sense of individual “difference” (not necessarily a bad thing) had no affinity with the union guys, which was unfortunate for the rest of Canada. He is indifferent not to personal but to public freedom when it interferes with Liberal party interests as he sees them.

Consider another revealing quotation: “Doing something serious about inequality means infringing on property rights,” and here Ignatieff conflates - and almost voids - two diverse traditions of rights, the latter classical and the former presumably more radical. John Locke could not have said it better in the seventeenth century, but then the propertied few were considered a bulwark against the abuses of liberty. (And who really cared about the socialistic “Diggers” forerunners of the NDP today, a group Ignatieff neglects, because he likes to think the rights revolution began with his generation, the boomers of the 1960s.) Today, relatively many more in society are “propertied” (if we ignore the homeless) but there was still an abuse by the state when Parliament was prorogued. Property rights encouraged liberalism, historically speaking, but today’s Liberal party is not protecting the propertied (and unpropertied) from the state. Ignatieff can go on about how democracy (which he does not clearly define or analyze) perpetuates inequality, and curiously he does not seem to think of this as a problem. But even worse, he is not sensitive to the bigger difficulty: how Canadian democracy seems unable to protect itself from arbitrary rule, the likes of Harper’s abuses as we see now.

'The Rights Revolution' is fixed on rights but what about responsibilities? According to Ignatieff’s deft dismissal, “a liberal culture does not obliterate responsibility: it presumes them.” However, I am not convinced by his self assurance. The number of times his lectures discuss “rights” dwarfs the dozen or so times he mentions “responsibility.” It was the French thinker Simone Weil (she died at age 34), in 'The Need for Roots' (a profound WWII era work that appealed to socialists - and to conservatives), who offered a deeper understanding of “order” and “liberty,” ideas which begin her book on our “Duties” (a word one rarely finds in Ignatieff’s text ). In Ignatieff’s chapter on “Rights, Intimacy and Family Life” almost everything is considered a “sacrifice” (of rights) yet nothing is a “duty” (unless it is to yourself), and I find here a sense of imbalance which is disconcerting. Note that Ignatieff also does not mention the word “obligation”. Weil argued (with mankind very much in mind) that the idea of a right “implies the possibility of making either a good or bad use of it,” a notion Ignatieff admits. Rights can be abused, to put it simply. However, as says Weil, an obligation is “always, unconditionally, a good from every point of view.”

The notion of rights is originally Roman, not Greek, and serves the American neighbours to our south very well, and from his prestigious position at Harvard Ignatieff comes across as a kind of modern-day (but blue-blooded) Thomas Paine. Ignatieff has made his living on the marketplace and offers mainstream ideas, and he appears rather taken in by various national dogmas (or shall we say paradigms?). For the British, he wrote about his mentor Sir Isaiah Berlin, the exemplary historian of ideas, himself a subtle blend of various traditions and quintessential English liberty, a conservative liberal and admired Oxford icon. For the Americans, Ignatieff curried to their exceptionalism, the mix of nations and their beacon of democracy to the world – regardless of cost. And I can see why certain members of the Liberal party have fawned over him: he mimics the Trudeau legacy in their eyes, and he gives further articulation to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Today Ignatieff presents Canada as a model to the world, but at the same time also admits to a “semipermanent political crisis” since the 1960’s – a self serving notion. I am also tempted to ask: how does he know? And what damage has he already incurred, passively, in his brief tenure? “Probation” indeed.

In reissuing 'The Rights Revolution' in 2007, originally delivered on CBC Radio in 2000, one wonders whether Ignatieff has reread his words. The words expedience and hypocrisy come to mind in light of his “intellectual” activities on Iraq: “The first presumption I have argued against in these lectures is that the language of rights is an apologia for force. I am committed to the language of rights for precisely the opposite reason: because it mandates limits to the use of force.” But in extending his “rights revolution” to Iraq and in his clear and ample support of President Bush’s Holy War (Oily War?) against Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction and all that, from which he was only extricating himself officially in 2007, while still a newly minted Liberal, suggests Ignatieff looks for more than just truth. This ivory tower figure is surrounded by barbed wire, and his missions tend on the opportunistic. Today Ignatieff boasts he has friends in the Obama White House. Let’s not forget he had a friend – the President - in the Bush White House, too, whom he visited. Ignatieff gravitates to power, rather than critiques it.

Carelessness is another feature of 'The Rights Revolution'. On the one hand he is platitudinous when he says “law is supposed to be the expression of popular sovereignty,” and I find it striking that there is no mention of “parliamentary sovereignty” – something that seems to have been sacrificed over the recent months, partly because Ignatieff likes to read the polls, rather than lead them. On the other hand he comes across as primitive (and lacks foresight) when he talks about “the babbling, incontinent inhabitant of a psychiatric ward or nursing home.” Here Ignatieff demeans both the mentally ill and the aged in one stroke, putting his opinion in the same league as Mark Twain’s dated “Injun Joe.” But there is no doubt even former Harvard academics will fall victim to old age (often considered a second career) assuming they are well enough to live that long.

As Budget Bill C-10 (and all its baggage) cruises through Parliament, without meaningful criticism by the Ignatieff Liberals, Opposition falls to others. Harper succeeds because he is like the character Zelig in the Woody Allen film of the same name, who assimilates the physical characteristics of the people around him: first John Howard (the war on Iraq), then Duceppe (“Distinct Society”), then Bush (the environment) and now Obama (the environment). He could not assimilate Dion, who was too unlike a typical politician, so he attacked him. Ignatieff, who is so liberal he can be considered a conservative, and perhaps also because he is coy when it comes to power, is now emulating Harper, who as we now know has not an original mind. The end result: two Parliamentary party leaders assimilating one other. Among the rights that Ignatieff does not articulate in 'The Rights Revolution' is the Canadian right to a Parliamentary Opposition, and in neglecting to do so this esteemed man continues to condemn the public.

THREE CHEERS FOR Two Cheers for Minority Government

2009-01-31T11:06:00.000-08:00

Peter Russell, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Toronto, has written an important and timely book: Two Cheers for Minority Government (2008).

Published just before the simpering tempest of our very own prorogued parliament (brought on by none other than our rogue prime minister), Russell makes it very clear, in his first page, what all Canadians should know and understand by heart: “We don’t elect a government; we elect a representative assembly.” And his concluding remarks about our “Educational Deficit” strikes at the heart of our faltering democracy: “the vast majority of Canadians know very little about the nature of parliamentary government and its virtues.” (p. 162). We need to read his book. The lackadaisical attitude with which most Canadians approached their prorogued parliament speaks volumes about the lack of adequate political discourse in this country. We not only do not have an Obama; we are now missing in a political culture.

Canadians, at least those who can afford to, are so busy amusing themselves by means of television, internet, ipod, and Nintendo game, that they are not taking the time to be informed and critical citizens, which is a responsibility, not just a right. We are all members of this vast, diverse community called Canada, and I implore (as does Russell) that every intelligent adult take part – and certainly newcomers, as well. Remember (and it cannot be said too often) there once was a man, democratically elected to power, named Hitler, who closed the Reichstag and demonized the Jews. What’s so different about Harper effectively closing parliament (upon request) and demonizing the separatist vote?

Reading Russell one gets the sense of how much Harper oddly mimics Trudeau (and his expanded PMO), only without the charisma. Trudeau’s War Measure’s Act maybe even compares with the unconstitutionality of the Prorogued Parliament – only the latter is far worse, because there was no crisis. (Coalitions exist elsewhere, why not Canada, asks Russell in a central thesis.) Both Trudeau and Harper showed disdain for parliament; and both prefer, in terms borrowed from Richard Gwyn, plebiscitary type leadership. In terms of party discipline, mass advertising and “public management”, Harper excels, especially when the PMO, overriding the Finance Department, “leaks” budget details to Bay Street (as well as to mainstream Canada).

By seeking popular approval from the people and the TSE, Harper undermines parliament, and it underscores why his cabinet ministers, whose names and faces one keeps forgetting, still do not matter in the public’s eye. For modern politics television matters most, not, it appears, the august political institutions themselves, and it explains why the federal subsidy for the shift from analogue to digital TV remains so important to presidential politics in the USA. But deliberately leaking the budget is ruinous towards the House of Commons. First of all, as the great British Liberal thinker L.T. Hobhouse explained a century ago (in a footnote): “financial measures are entirely unsuited to a referendum.” Secondly, Harper is taking financial control away from the House of Commons, which is why control is there in the first place, for those of us interested in history. Harper’s moves were not “reforms” or “new rules”; rather these manoeuvres can be seen as on the slippery slope of parliamentary destruction, by the PMO’s duping of the media – and we must be made aware of this abuse.

The increase in prime ministerial power is more marked in Canada than in any other parliamentary democracy, Russell explains, and I am not surprised at the revelation. Jean Chrétien was our Louis XIV, and Stephen Harper that other seventeenth century figure: Cromwell, our Lord Protector. Canadians should read Two Cheers, before they have nothing to cheer about.

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES - AND NEITHER DOES THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

2008-12-31T16:35:00.002-08:00

A prime minister on the perimeter of a prorogued parliament has appointed 18 new senators, most of them not known for having a mind of their own: pity the Canadian people.

They are conservative minions mostly, two journalists and a skier – loyalists, no threat to the party line, otherwise known as Harper hand-me-downs, too weak to win even their own elections.

Why not circumvent democracy once again and appoint the lot of them to the upper chamber? Why not stray from certain party platform, and continue to dispense with “parliamentary niceties”? Why do we not look to the Ottawa Senators (the hockey team) for constitutional guidance as Harper continues to skate all over Parliament Hill?

Charlemagne never knew the alphabet; similarly, Harper does not recognize the rules of the House.

Why does the media not call a spade a spade, or a fraud a fraud (à la Danny Williams)?

Because power, I am afraid, co-opts. Instead of staying sceptical of power, many now in the media seem to have a vested interest in defending authority, if we consider the plumb examples of our Governors-Generals past and present.

WANTED: democracy in Canadian government. Required: degrees in journalism, or public relations.

***

Relish, as well, the delicious irony of Harper avoiding a parliamentary review process (once again) in appointing Judge Thomas Cromwell to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Was there not an Oliver Cromwell (and his son Tumbledown Dick) the Lord Protector of England (after King Charles I lost his head) in the period of the civil wars of the mid seventeenth century?

And treasure whose support for this, Harper’s latest Cromwellian appointment, by none other than the “green” Leader of the Opposition, Michael Ignatieff, so well untested by democracy within his own Liberal Party.

***

A descendant of Tsarist Russian counts, Ignatieff is considered a “humanist” and a “human rights activist” – an unusual act of cognitive dissonance given his moral responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people.

The term “militant liberal” is more apt.

As a public intellectual (more headlining public than intellectual – and not known for his dissidence, or critical independence), Ignatieff seems entirely bereft of any previous understanding of the “unintended consequences” of war.

War should be waged – and the death of others can be freely advocated (mostly non-Westerners, conveniently) to no small propaganda machine, duping maybe even the President. This benign intellectual (recanting eventually in 2007) even graced the Bush Whitehouse, never risking his life over Iraq, or that of his family, or friends – all for a good cause, apparently.

WANTED: a federal leader who does not “borrow” American (or Australian) citizenship to wage war. Required: some residency in mainstream Canada.

***

Harper and Ignatieff have both waged war over ideas, which is why the former wants to decimate the opposition in Parliament, and it is why they both wanted to impose “democracy” on Iraq.

Harper and Ignatieff are also both grey-faced icons of Canadians’ current recessionary fears vested in the ‘cult of personality’.

Canadians are more attached to the idea of a leader than they are to the idea of Parliament, a certain public relations coup, thanks to Harper’s spin machine, and to our own anxieties, but also to Ignatieff’s ambivalent distance from the “historic” coalition.

Once recognizable Canadian institutions are now risked to “leadership” costs and effects – anything goes in times of economic trouble.

We cannot teach ourselves better respect for the Canadian constitution while we genuflect before our political elite, now hiding behind acres of snow, a weakened Governor-General – and the recession.

We must instruct our “political class” to continue to speak in constitutional form and forums (for this is our democracy) and we can only begin by being their first critics and teachers: starting now.

The House that Rogue Built

2008-12-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

The Governor General, in granting a prorogue of Parliament to the Prime Minister, appeased alienation in the West, made a happy Christmas for the Harpers, but at the same time set a dangerous precedent which chips away at our parliamentary democracy, paving the way for other Harper-likes.

The House of Commons is supposed to vote. That’s why we elected them. It has no confidence in the Prime Minister – and for good reason. Harper tried to veto the voters just after an election by cutting party funding. This is akin to creating a government with no opposition. Now we have a government with no sitting House.

I would like to suggest to the opposition leaders that they meet somewhere else. A Tennis Court, perhaps. All the elected opposition need is a meeting place, even the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition will do. Maybe they can swear an oath, too, never to abuse the process of Parliament, as has our rogue Prime Minister. Some people take the high road and only Stephen Harper takes the prorogue road to avoid certain defeat.

The Conservative party machine – and certainly the Prime Minister – has demonized the “separatists,” known in French as “sovereigntists,” depending on your familiarity with Orwellian doublespeak. They are a threat like “terrorists,” the FLQ perhaps, our very own El Quaida, and here Harper is reminiscent of Bush and his fear mongering. The rumour is these separatists were practicing witches in pre-Confederation times.

Harper does not want a Canadian government “beholden” to these voters. Well, by that standard, should we have a Conservative government beholden to right-wing Christian fundamentalists? Is one vote better than another in a democracy? The answer, it seems, depends on the advice the Prime Minister gets from the Fraser Institute, and on the opportune moment in his never-ending game.

The Prime Minister has played politics as if the floor of the Commons were a hockey rink. He has skated all over Parliament. He is Big Bobby Clobber, with no sophistication and no balance in his team, and it’s got all the broadcast time he wants. He’s damaged a Canadian institution.

I say we body check Harper by teaching our kids the Magna Carta. “World history” has its place, indeed, but it is incumbent on us to understand our three founding cultures and its historical traditions: English, French and indigenous. Parliament has a history and traditions that deserve our respect, and democracy is hard work. It takes vigilance. He slipped us another fast one, but never again.