Batman and Robin, and a homeless shelter

Did you know that the example of Batman and Robin provides direction on how to deal with the Tri-Cities[1] Bridge Shelter?  The story of Batman and Robin was inspired by the Middle Ages, when there once was a King Alfred (and a Robin Hood), and where Gothic architecture reigned.  At the heart of the medieval system was the reciprocal relationship between lord and vassal (or in popular terms, the allegiance of Batman and Robin).  The vassal, or peasant, offered his service to the lord, and the lord offered his protection.  It was a relationship based on duty, and it kept society connected.

The medieval model of society was shattered by Revolution, Industrialism and, of course, Darwinism, the notion of “the survival of the fittest”.  But feudal allegiance appeared once again in the trenches of World War One, only to be immortalized by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, in particular the relationship between the two Hobbit heroes, Frodo and Sam.  Today we still find traces of the medieval idea of service and protection in our police, our firemen, our churches, our nurses – and in our doctors.

But we don’t find medieval ideals, or much reciprocity, in our Federal Government, which has not yet guaranteed funding for the Tri-Cities Bridge Shelter.  Without it, there will be no service for the homeless “peasants” of Tri-Cities suburbia until a permanent shelter is built in 2015.  Batman is equipped with his “Gothic” cape to help and protect society while our government touts “Roman” rule of law, but forgets the inverse: our equality before the law.  Selfless protection has perhaps morphed into selfish protection, and the Tri-Cities is poised to degenerate into the likes of Gotham City, thanks to possible government inaction.  What would Batman and Robin have to say about this particular absence of duty to our fellow mankind? Probably a lot.

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[1] Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody are known as the Tri-Cities, part of Metro-Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 

On Conservatives, Roman History and the "Gothic balance"

Recently Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail published an interesting column: “Political scholars fiddle while Rome burns.”[1]  While there is some merit to the fact that Canada’s scholars are not playing as big a role in our national debates as they used to, I wish to draw attention to the “Roman” metaphor considered apart from the familiar allusion to Nero’s role during the great fire of AD 64. It is in fact Canada’s Conservative Party, once aided by  Tom Flanagan (since fallen from public grace) that has pushed the references to Roman history; any number of Professor Flanagan’s Globe and Mail op-ed contributions drew examples from the Roman period. But are Conservative Party principles consistent with Roman history?

A reading of the philosopher- historian R.G. Collingwood would imply some consistency but is not flattering. He explains in The New Leviathan: “although the word ‘legislation’ is one we owe to the Romans, the Romans did not clearly distinguish in their own minds between what we call legislation and the enactment of an executive decree.”[2]  This is clearly the problem with the Harper’s very troubling use of numerous “omnibus bills” (amounting to hundreds of pages in length each) which mask the executive as the legislative.   Another significant historical parallel are the Enabling Acts, beginning in Weimar Germany in October 1923, which gave Cabinet the power to “enact such measures as it deems advisable and urgent in the financial, economic and social spheres.”[3]  Does the reasoning not sound familiar?  Germany had previously engaged in four years of trench warfare and was at the time enduring hyper-inflation.  In a recent statement the incoming Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, described recovery from the 2008-09 financial crises in excessive terms as “post-war reconstruction.”  For the “Harper Government” in other words, history implies a Roman legacy of executive decrees – or war.

Another thing the Romans gave us was the rule of law, which by inversion meant that everyone is equal before the law.[4]  However, this central principle suggests that Conservative Party thinking is not in agreement with Roman history.  In Canada everyone is equal before the law, except for the “Harper Government” which rules as if there is no reciprocity in political life, because expanding one’s power is considered more important than Parliament.  A corollary of this is Harper’s definitive refutation of Friedrich Engels (the close collaborator with Karl Marx) who famously claimed that “the state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away.”[5] Harper’s anti-statism is only party pretension, and we can see that in his current interference with the CBC, which should be at arm’s length from the government of the day.  In Canada the state shall not wither away, because the Conservative Party has now become the country’s ruling class.[6]

The Romans also gave us the secret ballot, and here is James Harrington on the topic in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), aided by his reading of Cicero:  “the tablet or ballot of the people of Rome (who gave their votes by throwing tablets or little pieces of wood secretly into urns marked for the negative or affirmative) was a welcome constitution of the people, as that which, not impairing the assurance of their brows, increased the freedom of their judgement.”[7]  Given the implicit role of some unknown people in the Conservative Party behind the “robo-call” affair, and given the continuous brow-beating of negative party advertising, one wonders how “free” the vote is in Canada.  Again, the Conservative Party does not compare well with this Roman example.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Parliament buildings in Ottawa are not “Roman,” or “neo-classical” (as in Washington, which definitely has a more than a touch of Versailles to it); rather, they are neo-Gothic, modelled after the Houses of Parliament in England, which burned to the ground in 1834, after standing for 800 years, only to be rebuilt.  And keep in mind that the average Gothic window has only three points to it, likely inspired by St. Augustine’s Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, a theme that I have developed elsewhere in this blog.  This three-fold nature is also known as the “Gothic balance”: there is an implicit sense of mediation, reconciliation and reciprocity – in other words, a notion of “the middle”.[8]  These are not intrinsically Roman values (despite the moderating influences of Cicero and Horace); they are Medieval ones, aided as I have said elsewhere by St. Augustine and, of course, Aristotle.  By preoccupying themselves with various aspects of Roman history, the Conservative Party may have missed the boat on essential Canadian history and culture.  In other words, under Harper there is no sense of “Gothic balance”. This essay is an attempt to clarify a very un-Canadian problem.

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[1] The Globe and Mail, Tuesday June 4, 2013, p. A11.

[2] R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, or Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism. Revised ed. by David Boucher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005) p. 217.

[3] Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), p. 25.

[4] Collingwood, The New Leviathan, pp. 329,331.

[5] Friedrich Engels, Anti-dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, tr. Emile Burns, ed. C.P. Dutt (New York: International Publishers, nd [Nabu Press, USA, Reprint, 2010]), p. 315 (Part 3, Chapter 2).

[6] See R.G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, p. 277.

[7] James Harrington, “Oceana” in Ideal Commonwealths, Intro. Henry Morley (New York: The Colonial Press, 1901), p. 205.  Harrington first published The Commonwealth of Oceana in 1656.

[8] For “Gothic balance” see Harrington in Ibid., pp. 216 or 217.