Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Canada's Supreme Court Message to Harper on Senate "Reform"

You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
                                                Adage attributed to Lincoln, 1886[1]




[1] It appears that the original precursor to Lincoln’s alleged (and unproven) remarks was Jacques Abbadie, a French Huguenot, who wrote in 1684: “One can fool some men, or can fool some men in some places and times, but no one can fool all men in all places and ages.”  http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/11/cannot-fool/

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Trinity Western University: Public and Private Inversions

Fact: In the wake of the Great Recession (in what might have been an Augustinian - or "Bible Bill" - moment following the sack of Rome), the “Harper Government” gave over $20 million of federal public money from its “Economic Action Plan” to evangelical teaching institutions across Canada.[1]

Fact:  $2.6 million was given to Trinity Western University (TWU) in 2009, a private Christian university in Langley, B.C.  The source of money was the so-called Knowledge Infrastructure Program.

Fact: TWU’s trove of public money was announced by the Conservative MP for Langley, Mark Warawa, himself a graduate of TWU, who did not see any conflict of interest.

Fact: Education is considered a provincial responsibility, and our public colleges and universities are underfunded.

Fact: No one at TWU complained of a crisis of conscience in light of the violation of Canada’s federal finances.

Fact: TWU now has a Law School, set to start in 2016, but the university prohibits what some people do in their bedrooms.

Fact:  What was public was given to the private, and what is private will now interfere with the public - all in the name of religious freedom.




[1] See Marci McDonald, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada (Toronto: Vintage, 2011), p. 245.   See also http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christian-schools-received-20m-from-infrastructure-fund-1.1329280

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Flanagan's "Game Theory and Canadian Politics"


The blueprint for today’s Conservative Party can be found in Tom Flanagan’s work Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998).  The discovery that Harper’s erstwhile mentor has written a book on Game Theory - not a very interesting one, mind you (a selective read is recommended) - makes the evidence of the proverbial smoking gun become clear. Game Theory explains the so-called Fair Elections Act.

This blog first broached Game Theory in my review of Lawrence Martin’s Harperland, and I returned to the matter more philosophically with my discussion of “Harper and Hobbes”. Rather than repeat myself excessively I invite the reader to consult the aforementioned entries, but allow me to point out that Game Theory began  in 1944 with the publication of The Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, the joint work of John von Neumann (a mathematical genius) and Oskar Morgenstern (an economist).  It was also later developed by Princeton’s John Nash (“A Beautiful Mind”), for which he won a Nobel Prize.

Stephen Harper would have encountered Game Theory in his study of economics, and this fact has been missed by his many observers – and critics.  Game Theory is also rooted in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, particularly his Leviathan (1651), published in the wake of England’s Puritan Revolution – and the execution of King Charles I in 1649.  Central to both Hobbes and Game Theory is what Flanagan describes as its “Methodological Individualism” which is inherent in “Rational Choice”: “… rational choice is sceptical about speaking of vague aggregates such as ‘society’ or ‘the nation’ because such terms are often used to disguise very real differences among the people who make up the collectivity.”[1]  Game theory argues from the premise of “rational actors seeking to maximize their own self interest”[2] (two questionable assumptions, indeed), and Flanagan twists himself into knots (indicating shallow imagination) over the altruism of Mother Teresa.

According to Game Theory there is essentially nothing but rational self-interest, a rather paranoid vision of the world, which helps to explain Harper’s penchant for secrecy (and John Nash’s bout with schizophrenia).  Game theory also argues that is rational not to cooperate, which implies – logically speaking, of course - that a Game Theorist would never trust his or her Doctor, who must have an ulterior motive.  True to form, Game Theory flouts public health concerns and gives legitimacy to those who avoid vaccinations, dubiously described by Flanagan as “a rational exercise in pursuit of self-interest.”[3]  Apparently Flanagan – and Game Theory - forget David Hume’s famous contention in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”[4]

As discussed, Game Theory also has no sense of collective values: Medicare can be privatized and the CBC slashed, raising the question of what is Canada, outside of Harper’s symbolic esteem for the military and (of course) the “cult” surrounding our Prime Minister’s excessive “leadership” (thus tearing a page from Hobbes’s Leviathan).  Because Game Theorists have no sense of the public, how is it that the “Harper Government” deigns to speak in terms of elected “public service” – surely a relic from a bygone age.  Conservative “parliamentarians” are actually living a public lie at the public’s expense by acting only in their self-interest: hence the so-called Fair Elections Act.

It is important to note that Pierre Poilievre, the Democratic Reform Minister who is responsible for the “Fair” Election agenda, attacks our Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand in vitriolic terms derived from Flanagan’s book: “he wants more power, a bigger budget and less accountability” as quoted by the Globe and Mail in their record eighth editorial opposing the Fair Elections Act.[5]  Compare this with Flanagan’s text who writes in his conclusion of Game Theory and Canadian Politics: “Nevertheless, the evidence of self- interest is all around us … [for example] public servants seeking bigger budgets and career advancement.”[6] In other words, Poilievre’s speech writers are dipping into Flanagan to justify their case.

Meanwhile Flanagan laments in his forthcoming book Persona Non Grata that Harper is “Nixonian” and treats people as “disposable”, surely one of the hazards of Game Theory when only the “individual” counts – society be damned.[7]  Allow me to recommend by way of conclusion some folk wisdom, which comes from an observation of nature (Game Theory is also big in biology today): a tree does not grow in solitude; trees need other trees around them to survive and flourish.  In other words, we as people cannot thrive as self-interested individuals alone, a fact which indicates that the asocial and atomized model behind Game Theory as it applies to Canadian politics should be jettisoned lest it poison the public any further.






[1] Thomas Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 5.
[2] Ibid., p. 164.
[3] Ibid., p. 73.
[4] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest G. Mossner (Toronto: Penguin, 1985), p. 462 (Book II, Section 3 “Of the influencing motives of the will.”)
[5]  Globe and Mail, “If only evidence could vote,” Saturday April 12, 2014, p. F9.
[6]  Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics, p. 164.
[7]  Globe and Mail, Thursday April 10, pp.A1,A4.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Canada and remembering the Magna Carta

Did you know that the year 2015 represents the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta by King John, who, by so doing (after being forced by English barons) acknowledged that the monarchy was under the law?  By raising the question of who sets limits on the authority of the King, the Magna Carta (or Long Charter) contributed to the rise of parliament.

Unfortunately James Moore, former Minister of Heritage, and our current Minister of Heritage, whose name escapes me, along with the rest of Cabinet, as well as, assuredly, the Prime Minister, have focussed their attention on more recent events to mark.  First there was the recognition of the War of 1812, and since then preparations have long been under way to remember our boys at Vimy Ridge in 1917, and the First World War in general.

This emphasis on our military history brings out a certain Roman sense of virility. But what about the medieval history of the “mother of all Parliaments”?  Surely the Government of Canada should want to celebrate the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy on such an auspicious occasion.  Or are the Conservatives suffering from a serious case of cognitive dissonance?

At any event, let’s also remember that 2015 is also our election year, and it’s our opportunity to set limits on the authority of our King Prime Minister.