J.D. Vance: “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

 

Pierre Poilievre on a Trip: “Canada. Our Home”

This video includes scenes from the US, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Indonesia, a park in London, and two Russian fighter jets.

Source: The Guardian online, Tuesday 20 August, 2024.

                                            

The Canadian preference for a “loaded silence”

At the very least, one thinks, we should now have acquired a little self-knowledge.  But self-knowledge does not come from study alone.  It comes from a knowledge of history, from self-examination and from open and vigorous debate, a candid exchange of opposing points of view.  Too often in this country we gravitate towards the superficial, and so polls that claim to take our measure can still surprise and dismay us.  We are suspicious of debate, anxious about the truths they might reveal.  We prefer regulation, the imposition of legal barriers, in our pursuit of peace, order and good government.  We prefer, then, a loaded silence.[1]

Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions (1994)

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[1] Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), p. 3.

Is she Indian, or is she Black? Was Trump confusing Kamala Harris with Nikki Haley?

 

President Biden’s exit is a classy exercise in the limits of power – and a return to older liberal principles

Liberalism and democracy happen to be two things which begin by having to do with each other, and end by having, so far as tendencies are concerned, meanings that are mutually antagonistic.  Democracy and Liberalism are two answers to two completely different questions.

Democracy answers this question – “who ought to exercise the public power?”  The answer it gives is – the exercise of public power belongs to the citizens as a body.

But this question does not touch on what should be the realm of public power.  It is solely concerned with determining to whom such power belongs.  Democracy proposes that we all rule, that is, that we are all sovereign in social acts.

Liberalism, on the other hand, answers this other question – “regardless of who exercises the public power, what should its limits be?”  The answer it gives is – “whether the public power is exercised by the autocrat or by the people, it cannot be absolute; the individual has rights which are over and above any interference by the state.” This, then, tends to limit the intervention of the public power.[1]

On this day, President Biden repudiated Hobbesian thinking (so incarnated by Trump, who is a slave to his passions), namely the famous refrain about the “general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death.”[2]  Instead, by stepping down from the Democratic ticket, Biden demonstrated to America, if not the world, that all power should have its limits, at its heart an old principle of liberalism.

This stands in direct contrast to Trump’s desperate behaviour leading up to January 6^th and to the recent US Supreme Court decision in favour of presidential “absolute immunity” (which shamelessly was intended to protect Trump).  Apparently, six of nine justices had forgotten all legal precedent, plus the historical fact the Americans had fought a Revolution against a dreaded English King.  Hidden in the revolutionary slogan “No taxation without representation” was John Locke’s case for “the Consent of the People.”[3]  All this, of late, has been conveniently shoved aside by the Republicans (so-called), along with Lord Acton’s forgotten maxim: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

By stepping down, Biden is also making an implicit case for term limits for justices on the Supreme Court.  He demonstrates humility and an absence of entitlement, qualities which do not seem so very apparent elsewhere, for example, in the many ethical lapses at that Court.  And Biden appears to have learned from Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s example. Her fatal misjudgment not to step down when she was nudged to do so during Obama’s first term of office contributed in many ways to the present-day crises.

On the broader scale, Biden’s exit from the Democratic race speaks volumes about American democracy, once again a beacon, which thrives on competition. How will the autocrats of the world censor Biden’s grace?  The American spirit of innovation? Biden has publicly acknowledged limits on his own strength, and on the authority of the presidency, which should stand apart from his remarkable sense of moderation.[4]  On the other hand, President Xi had authorized a change in China’s constitution to make his third term possible.  Putin is approaching Stalin’s length of term in power.  Lukashenko has subjected the people of Belarus to 30 years in his grip.  Clearly there is only one person (or maybe two, now) unfit for office in America: Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance.

 

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[1] José Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate Spain, tr. Mildred Adams (London: Allen & Unwin, 1937), pp. 125,126.

[2] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), p. 75. [Part I, Chapter XI, Section 2]

[3] Thomas G. West, “Forward” in Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West (Carmel, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1996), p. xxvi.  See also John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. and intro. by Mark Goldie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), p. 13.

[4] John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed., Cary J. Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 206.

When Parliament was part-time

Hostile critics of Canada’s democracy in the past might be missing a giant clue to our nation’s political shortcomings in days of old.  The fact is, our parliamentarians did not receive an annual salary until beginning in 1953.  For almost a century following Confederation, they were paid sessionally, and today – even though they now receive a monthly salary - it is still known as a “sessional indemnity.”  To be sure, this means that the job of representation in the House of Commons was long skewed to those who could afford to run for office, no mean feat in a country as large as Canada.

Here, for the benefit of readers, is a more detailed History of Remuneration as put out by the Government of Canada:

The reason I sought public office was to give something back to the community. Yet the work of parliamentarians, who enter public life at great cost to their professional and private lives, is rarely accepted for what it is, and many times is seen in a negative light.[1]

Practices surrounding compensation for Members of Parliament for their service to Canada’s parliamentary business have varied throughout history. Introduction of the sessional indemnity in 1867 was designed to compensate these part-time members for losses incurred while they were in Ottawa, away from their homes and ordinary way of earning a living. The idea of membership in the House of Commons being a parttime job declined as the length of parliamentary sessions increased, and as the sessions lengthened and members’ responsibilities grew, sessional indemnities rose as well. A pension plan for members was established in 1952, and by 1953, the job was well on the way to being considered a full-time occupation: the amount of the indemnity no longer depended on the length of a session, and members started to receive an annual salary, paid monthly.

 Over the years, amendments to the Members’ Indemnity Act reflected this change in the nature and scope of parliamentary business. Today’s indemnities and allowances are the result of 24 successive amendments to the Members’ Indemnity Act and its successor statutes.

 Evolution of the Sessional Indemnity

In 1867, parliamentary business required each member of the House of Commons and the Senate to sacrifice between three and five weeks each year to tend to the nation’s needs (see Appendix, Duration of Sessions of Parliament). For this service to their country, the Members’ Indemnity Act of 1867 provided a sessional indemnity of $600 for each session that extended beyond 30 days. This indemnity was payable at an interim daily rate of $4. Any of the $600 that remained unpaid at the daily rate was paid at the end of the session. For sessions of 30 days or less, each member of the Senate and the House of Commons received a per diem allowance of $6. This was not considered a salary but was intended to compensate for lost income from private-sector employment or a profession.

In 1873 the sessional indemnity was increased to $1,000, and the daily rate for sessions of 30 days or less was revised to $10. In 1886, the Members’ Indemnity Act was incorporated into the Senate and House of Commons Act. At that time, the interim daily rate for sessions extending beyond 30 days was raised to $7. According to the preamble to the act, the indemnity was raised to reflect longer sessions and increases in the cost of living.

The sessional indemnity was raised to $1,500 in 1901, but the daily rate for sessions hat did not extend beyond 30 days remained at $10.

In 1905, the maximum sessional indemnity was adjusted to $2,500. The interim daily rate for sessions that extended beyond 30 was increased to $10, and the daily rate for sessions lasting not more than 30 days was increased to $20.

In 1920, the sessional allowance was adjusted to $4,000 and the minimum duration for which a sessional indemnity was payable was extended from 30 to 50 days. The per diem rate for sessions not extending beyond 50 days was raised to $50.

The minimum duration was increased again in 1923, from 50 to 65 days. The interim daily rate for sessions lasting more than 65 days was raised to $20, but the per diem rate for sessions not extending 65 days remained at $25.

In 1945, a new allowance was introduced: members of the House of Commons and the Senate received an allowance of $2,000 for expenses incidental to the discharge of their duties as members. The allowance was payable at the end of the calendar year and was subject to deductions in respect of non-attendance at sittings. The allowance was taxable in the case of ministers of the Crown, senators, and the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, but not in the case of members of the House of Commons.

The sessional basis for remuneration was discontinued in 1953, to be replaced by annual remuneration, although the name did not change. A sessional indemnity of $8,000 per year was payable in monthly installments on the last day of each month, while the incidental expense allowance of $2,000 per year, established in 1945, was made payable quarterly.

In 1963, the sessional indemnity was increased to $12,000, the incidental expense allowance was raised to $6,000 for members of the House of Commons, and the tax exemption on the expense allowance was extended to members of both chambers.

The sessional indemnity was raised again in 1971, to $18,000, and the incidental expense allowance rose to $8,000. This increase was attributable mainly to the recommendations of the Advisory Committee to Review Members’ Allowances, appointed by the government in 1970. The committee reviewed the financial arrangements for senators and members of the House of Commons, including both the sessional indemnity and the incidental expense allowances, and recommended the changes it considered appropriate.

Between 1974 and 1991, the sessional indemnity and the incidental expense allowance were raised on January 1 each year (or, on two occasions, twice in a year on the recommendation of a commission appointed to review the allowances).

Increases were suspended for two years beginning in 1975 and, as explained earlier, allowances have been frozen since 1991

Source: Supporting Democracy, Vol. 2. Research Paper 2 (Ottawa: Minister of Government Works and Public Services, 1998), pp. 32,33.

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[1] Speech by the Honourable Gilbert Parent, Speaker of the House of Commons, to the Canadian Club of Calgary, 19 January 1996.

America Unlocked - A Review of “America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life”

I will not – or maybe, cannot - read this book in its entirety, because the author’s research of the relevant literature is seriously lacking.  I got about as far as page 51.  Then I started skipping through the pages until settling on the last two chapters, which were of greater interest, even informative, but also flawed.

Historian Claire Rydall Arcenas, formerly a doctoral student at Stanford University, begins her argument as follows: “… the Declaration’s ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ cannot even be a relatively loose translation, with the substitution of Locke’s ‘property’ for Jefferson’s carefully chosen words ‘the pursuit of Happiness’.”[1]  This is gravely mistaken. 

It appears that a great number of Americans – not just the present author in question here – look to Locke’s “Second Treatise” in the Two Treatises of Government as the source of that famous trinity, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  In an effort to substantiate this claim, they rely on a particular text – Arcenas apparently among them - and on Locke’s words: “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.”[2]  

In so doing, Arcenas clearly misses the fact that Locke is the actual originator of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness.” It can be found, as I have indicated elsewhere in an earlier blog post, in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature, lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.  The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always  follow, the more we are free from any unnecessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined, whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with our real happiness: and therefore till we are as much informed upon this inquiry, as to the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we are by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desire in particular cases.[3]

I, therefore, put it to my readers that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is an amalgam of Locke’s sentence as extracted from the “Second Treatise” and Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding.  The “pursuit of happiness” is not Jefferson’s own phraseology.  It is clearly Locke’s wording.

Arcenas’s argument that the Two Treatises of Government was hardly cited after the American Revolution is irrelevant.[4]  In effect, Arcenas unwittingly supports my own case when she goes on to assert that Locke’s prevailing influence derived not from the Two Treatises but An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “In the nineteenth century [it] remained the primary basis for Locke’s nationwide authority.”[5]    She remarks (but does not wonder why) that when President Millard Fillmore was choosing books for the first White House Library in 1850: “he included the Essay but no other works by Locke.”[6]  She adds (again, without the irony) that when President Lincoln arrived at the White House just over a decade later: “he would have been pleased to find the Essay in the White House Library.”[7]  In other words, that Locke was sufficiently understood in the nineteenth century (and prior) to be the originator of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” was reason enough for American presidents to keep a copy of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding to the exclusion of any of Locke’s other works. Arcenas dwells on the Essay at some length, but appears not to have read it with care. 

In attempting to undermine the influence of Locke on Jefferson, Arcenas is also minimizing the importance of Enlightenment ideas, which were so profoundly shaped by Locke’s very own thinking via Voltaire, as well as other philosophes, and their readers.  Locke was also aided by Newton, certainly an Enlightenment figurehead: the two belonged to many of the same social circles, knew each other, wrote to the other, and probably read each other (or at least, Locke read the less complicated aspects of Newton).[8]  If I were to hazard a guess, when Locke began Chapter Two “Of the State of Nature” in the “Second Treatise” he was really channeling his inner Newton.  Locke’s words “A State also of Equality, wherein all the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than the other” bear some resemblance to Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  It could also be argued that the aforementioned Newtonian principle served as a model for Lockean political resistance to James II prior to the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89.  I find it fascinating that Newton published his most famous book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (which contained the three laws of motion) in 1687.  Note, as well, Newton’s allusion to a trinity in the laws of motion, a theme I have explored in these blog pages many times before.

Locke died in 1704, and the Declaration of Independence occurred in 1776. Arcenas likens the period in between these two dates to some sort of dead, or inert history.  She asserts: “… the Locke Jefferson and his contemporaries knew was an eighteenth-century Locke, one who has been forgotten, brushed aside by weighty historiographical debates, calculated political maneuvers, and the simple passage of time.”[9]  She continues this same vein in her conclusion, where Locke was taken “as a guide and a model – albeit for purposes that were often more personal and mundane than the development of political philosophies.”[10]  

What then are ideas?  Are they just ephemeral ‘schools of thought’ that die when a philosopher passes on? Are they, in an historiographic sense, simply rejigged or reinvented at certain moments of history, to suit curriculum needs of burgeoning universities in the aftermath of the Second World War, as Arcenas describes.  Is there no element of truth to an intellectual tradition?  Is there no consideration for Locke who considered himself a man of Truth?  Are we guided only by social myth?

Arcenas’s chapter, “John Locke and the Invention of the American Political Tradition,” is by far one of the more interesting, but it lacks imagination.  She points to a Life editorial of 1949, where the following was put: “We [Americans] have only the dimmest idea of where we came from.”[11]  I would put it to my readers that Arcenas also has a poor idea of American origins; so, the problem continues. Could it not be that the post Second World War generation actually had a clearer notion of the intellectual connection between “the pursuit of happiness” and John Locke?  Look, for example, at Bertrand Russell’s famous tome History of Western Philosophy, first published in 1946, regarded (according to the jacket cover) as “the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century.”  Bertrand Russell discusses therein Locke’s politics, and his theory of knowledge, and he identifies the “pursuit of happiness” as a quotation from Locke’s Essay (but lacks some precision with the citation).[12] Given this fact, I would argue that Locke was better remembered – and more accurately so - in the 1950’s than Arcenas is prepared to admit.

In the end - and, again, perhaps unwittingly, what we get from Arcenas’s work is some sort of apologia that mistakenly supports a right-wing agenda, in other words, the Trumpian Maga crowd that today seeks a “patriarch”.  Arcenas undermines the legacy of Locke and what lies behind his work - the theoretical origins of political resistance against tyranny.  Locke was no apologist.  Neither was Jefferson. Give me fresh air!

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[1] Claire Rydell Arcenas, America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023), p. 51.

[2] John Locke, “Second Treatise” in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge\: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 269 (Section 6).

[3] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 244,245. (See Book II, Chapter 21, Section 51).

[4] Arcenas, America’s Philosopher, p. 52.

[5] Ibid., p. 60.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p. 61.

[8] Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of a Genius (London: Picador, 2002), p. 18.

[9] Arcenas, America’s Philosopher, p. 51.

[10] Ibid., p. 162.

[11] Ibid., p. 128.

[12] Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 559.  Russell’s source is correct, but his chapter reference in the footnote is not accurate.  See my footnote no. 3.