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)