A Land without Liberty: Canada, Prorogation and the Olympics

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

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

"‘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.

On "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" by Milton

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

“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.

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

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."