Harper's Hobbesian scripts: more on war

Here from Leviathan are Hobbes’s First and Second Natural Laws, which Harper uses to support the war against ISIS and Bill C-51 respectively.  Notice in the first paragraph quoted below how Hobbes distinguishes between the “law of nature” and the “right of nature” (the right to “defend ourselves”), the latter notion developed by Harper who recently spoke of a dubious need for guns for self-protection in rural areas, thereby attempting to counter criticisms that Bill C-51 harbours a Hobbesian police state for all Canadians.  However, Canada’s expansion of the war against ISIS into Syria, in singular support of the USA, raises the question as to the extent to which we are ‘defending ourselves’ from terrorists (and not cohabiting with a more “genocidal” force, if we are to use a term bandied about by the Defence Minister Jason Kenney).  

Syria’s president (‘He who shall not be named’) is such an unpleasant bedfellow (responsible for the death of over 200,000 Syrians and 4 million refugees), but given that a Canadian election is around the corner (there are no greater imperatives in the “Harper’s government”) foreign policy “compromises” must be made. I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s (much simpler) Fakland Island military venture – which returned her to office.  God forbid that Harper would ever make such “compromises” with Canada’s Opposition.  The bitter irony is that Harper’s military efforts against ISIS assists Lord Voldemort of Syria (and Al Qaeda, also located there), yet it is Harper who demonizes coalitions in Canada.

The second paragraph quoted below by Hobbes deals with the “contract” that establishes political society, a sort of negatively mechanized Gospel, and it can be likened to the tenants of Bill C-51: we all give up some rights so we can all get along (and live in safety). At the surface level we appear to be caving on our civil liberties and loosening on our Constitution, tolerance for the niqab at citizenship ceremonies, and all that.  Harper is an economist, not a lawyer, who is out of his element when it comes to Constitutional matters (despite his many and all too frequent references to the “rule of law”). The vague language in Bill C-51 can open up space for arbitrariness and degrees of irresponsibility, not a good sign in legislation.  Remember the shocking police violence at the G20 Summit in Toronto under Harper’s watch (swept under the rug), and we thought this would never happen in Canada?  That was before Bill C-51. 

And it is striking that we have this debate in the same year as the 800^th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, an event clearly neglected by Harper himself.  Apparently, at the level of symbolism, at least, Harper wants to sublimate our heritage of rights to the so-called ‘defence of the realm’ (something that happened to the 700^th anniversary of the Magna Carta in Britain in 1915), but the comparison between the trenches of WWI with today’s Caliphate does not hold.  There remains still the possibility of a great Canadian Leviathan and much more myth making.

When four former Canadian prime ministers warned of the lack of civilian oversight in Bill C-51 they were making the case for “balance”: increased CSIS powers means we need increased oversight.  But the concept of “balance” also implies “reason” and “science”, two classical notions we find in short supply in the “Harper government”.[1]  Instead, given Harper’s refusal to consider amendments to Bill C-51 (which is predicated on the idea of an extended war against ISIS in the first place), Canadians are to take it on “faith” that said Bill will not violate civil liberties, just as the dynamic and willful Harper took it on “faith” and “mimicked” in Parliament an Australian prime minister’s entire speech while he was Canada’s Leader of Opposition, attempting to follow the American path of destruction in Iraq set out by the lesser Bush (the one known to have prayed in Congress)[2] undoubtedly the least presidential of leaders ever in the USA.

We would not be having these debates today had there been no Canadian attack on Parliament Hill in October 2014 – and if the Harper government had beefed up (by even a modicum) security  on the Hill at the time when the mission against ISIS was first announced.  During WWII Japanese Canadians were interned and entirely dislocated.  In 2014 when the “Harper government” went to war against ISIS there was no change in security on the Hill, which in turn paid no attention to its government’s legislation. The Conservative government’s own incompetence has since been turned on its head and transformed into a propaganda tool.  Hobbes (who also specialized in “force and fraud”)[3] would likely applaud:

Hobbes’s First and Second Natural Laws in his own words:

And consequently it is a precept or a general rule of reason that every man ought to endeavour peace, so far as he has hope of obtaining it; and where he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps in advantages in war.  The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is to seek peace and follow it.  The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is by all means we can to defend ourselves.
     From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavor peace, is derived the second law; that a man be willing, when others are so to, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down his right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself… Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that ye do to them.[4]

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[1] See Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press/Galaxy, 1957), pp. 359 ff. (Part III).

[2] “Editors’ Introduction” in Habermas and Religion, ed. Craig Calahoun, Eduardo Mendieta an Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 3.

[3]Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed., A.P. Martinich (Peterborough: Broadview, 2002), p. 97 (I, xiii).  For a clear sketch of Hobbes’s difficult work, see A.E. Taylor, Thomas Hobbes. London: Archibald Constable, 1908 [Nabu Reprints].

[4] Ibid., p. 99. (I, xiv)

The niqab debate and the Treaty of Westphalia

The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended the devastating Thirty Years’ War and invoked the religious principle of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) which declared cuius religio, eius religio.  This meant that “the ruler of the land would determine the religion of the land”.[1]  If you disagreed with your ruler – or more likely with the confession of your area - you were allowed to migrate elsewhere.

The Treaty of Westphalia legally recognized Calvinism in Europe for the first time in addition to Lutheranism and Catholicism, but the principle behind Augsburg had been active before 1555.[2]  We find it in Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella, in an effort to establish a homogenous territorial state, expelled the Jews and gained Moorish Granada in the same year that Columbus set sail for the Indies.

Similarly, prime minister Harper – not long after the Franklin discovery – is turning Canadian nationalism into a secular religion by attempting to cleanse the few niqab-wearing women from the citizenship ceremony.  While Canada is not quite a unified confessional state, save for government ventures in populist nationalism, and drum beating, Harper is employing the same principle found behind the Treaty of Westphalia, but he is no King, or prince.

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[1] Donald Kagan, Steve Ozment and Frank M. Turner, The Western Heritage, 4^th edition (Toronto: Collier Macmillan, 1991), p. 406.

[2] See José Casonova, “Exploring the Postsecular” in Habermas and Religion, eds. Calhoun, Mendieta and VanAntwerpen (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), pp. 37, 38.

St. Augustine on Harper's niqab debate

Harper relies heavily on the social and political thought of St. Augustine, as a future blog entry shall establish.[1]  But in the current niqab debate Harper clearly deviates from one of St. Augustine’s classic statements found in City of God:

While this Heavenly City, therefore, is on pilgrimage in this world, she calls out citizens from all nations and so collects a society of aliens, speaking all languages.  She takes no account of any difference in customs, laws, and institutions, by which the earthly peace is achieved and preserved – not that she annuls or abolishes any of those, rather, she maintains them and follows them (for whatever divergences there are among diverse nations, those institutions have one single aim- earthly peace) provided that no hindrance is presented to the religion which teaches that the one supreme and true God is to be worshipped.  Thus even the Heavenly City in her pilgrimage here on earth makes use of the earthly peace and defends and seeks compromise between human wills in respect of the provisions relevant to the mortal nature of man, so far as may be permitted without detriment to true religion and piety.[2]

Saint Augustine, City of God, circa. A.D. 413-426

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[1] See Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

[2] Saint Augustine, City of God, tr. Henry Bettenson (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 878  (Book XIX, Chapter 17).

Two words that define Harper:

War psychosis.[1]

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[1] For this term, and many other insightful ideas, see the Canadian classic: Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press/Galaxy, 1961), p. 473. Christianity and Classical Culture was first published in 1940. 

Herodotus and the 'law of balance' (absent from Harper's Canada today)

Here we find the ancient Greek notions of compensation, moderation and nothing to excess:

You know, my lord, that amongst living creatures it is the great ones that God smites with his thunder, out of envy of their pride.  The little ones do not vex him.  It is always the great buildings and the tall trees which are struck by lightning.  It is God’s way to bring the lofty low.  Often a great army is destroyed by a little one, when God in his envy puts fear into men’s hearts, or sends a thunderstorm, and they are cut to pieces in a way they do not deserve.  For God tolerates pride in none but himself.[1]

Herodotus, The Histories, circa 440 B.C. 

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[1] Herodotus, The Histories, tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt, revised ed. (Toronto: Penguin, 1996), p. 378. (VII 10 e).  Cicero named Herodotus the ‘the Father of History.’

Georges Sorel and Bill C-51 considered as revolutionary myth

Here is what the French thinker Georges Sorel, author of the classic Reflections on Violence (1907) might say of Harper’s anti-terrorism legislation, Bill C-51.  Note how Harper creates an epic state of mind (for example, in the struggle against “evil”, otherwise known as Satan) by minimizing debate, criticism, and dismissing analyses of said Bill C-51.

In the course of these studies one thing seemed so evident to me that I did not believe that I needed to lay much stress on it: men who are participating in great social movements always picture their coming action in the form of images of battle in which their cause is certain to triumph.  I proposed to give the name of ‘myths’ to these constructions, knowledge of which is so important for historians: the general strike of the syndicalists and Marx’s catastrophic revolution are such myths.  As remarkable example of myths I have those which were constructed by primitive Christianity, by the Reformation, by the [French] Revolution, and by the followers of Mazzini.  I wanted to show that we should not attempt to analyse such groups of images in a way that we break down a thing into its elements, that they should be taken as a whole, as historical forces, and that we should be especially careful not to make any comparison between the outcomes and the pictures people formed for themselves before the action.

     I could have given one more example which is perhaps even more striking: Catholics have never been discouraged even in the harshest trials, because they have pictured the history of the Church as a series of battles between Satan and the hierarchy supported by Christ: every new difficulty that arises is an episode in this war which must finally end in the victory of Catholicism.[1]                                                                                      

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By employing the word ‘myth’ I believed that I had made a happy choice, because I had put myself in a position of refusing all discussion with the people …[2]

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[1] Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, ed. Jeremy Jennings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 20.

[2] Ibid., p. 21.