Monday, May 28, 2012
Jan Wong's "Out of the Blue" - A Comment
Only
Jan Wong has succeeded in having (different) works by her proscribed by the
Communist Government of China and Canada’s parliamentarians in Ottawa. Her latest book, Out of the Blue, is well worth reading.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Harper and History: "Essential Weapons in Government"
Ever wonder why The War of 1812 figures so highly with Harper and Canada's Minister of "Heritage"? The Cambridge historian, Sir Jack Plumb, offers an explanation in his classic work, The Death of the Past (1969):
The past was constantly involved in the present, and all
that enshrined the past, monuments, inscriptions, records, were essential
weapons in government, in securing the authority, not only of the king, but
also of those whose power he symbolized and sanctified. The purpose, the maintenance of authority,
was simple, not complex, and it moulded the explanation: defeat was the scourge
due to a god’s neglect; failure to attend to a god’s wants could lead him to
turn his back on his people as the god Nidoba had done on his city of Lagash. In
such a world the defeated were always wicked and the successful righteous. The past cannot be more simply used than
this, yet its simplicity has never hurt its popularity. The same historical methods, hoary with age,
were used by Cyrus, in 539 B.C., when Babylon’s turn came. Yet primitive as this type of method may be
in handling the past, it was, in various forms, to last not only for centuries
but millennia. Annalistic history, until
very recent times, has been, with hagiography and biography, the dominant
method of dealing with the past. It is
true that the activities of the gods have been pushed further and further into
the background, but the general purpose of annals, whether they be written by
Livy, by Tacitus, by the ancient Chinese sages, or by Baker, Holinshed or
Fabyan, or Macaulay, Bancroft or Bishop Stubbs, have the same fundamental
purpose: to explain the past in order to strengthen and to serve the authority
of the ruling powers. Disasters,
setbacks, even defeats, conspiracies and rebellions, can be contemplated so
long as the result is right. But
obviously, as societies become more complex, more sophisticated in their
traditions, and more varied in their class structure, and more diverse become
the sources of social and political power, so does the problem posed to the annalist become more difficult to
solve, calling on greater powers, not so much of historical analysis as of
literary ingenuity. The differences
between the Annals and Histories of Tacitus and the Book of
Chronicles are at first sight staggering; the highly sophisticated contrasts sharply with the simple. Yet the
purpose of both is the same. As Hugh Lloyd-Jones
has reminded us, ‘All ancient history – perhaps all history – is the history
of a ruling oligarchy.’ But it is
more than this; it always contains, as indeed the Annals and Histories of
Tacitus do, a justification of the authority of the state. History as criticism of the basis of power
and authority, rather than history as criticism of the way men have used it, is
of very recent origin in the history of human society. This method of dealing with the past by
narration of events of particular peoples, nations or communities in order to
justify authority, to create confidence and secure stability, opens up a huge
complex of ideas that is far too vast to deal with here in the detail which it
deserves. And I only wish, at this
point, to emphasize one aspect of it. I
have used the example of Ancient Mesopotamia because of its simplicity,
because, like the cleaned skeleton of an animal or bird, it displays the
obvious. But every literate society
which has so far existed has needed to use the past for the same fundamental
purpose. The past has always been the
handmade of authority.[1]
[1]
J.H. Plumb, The Death of the Past.
Preface by Simon Schama. Intro by Niall Ferguson (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2004), pp. 37-40.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
On Senate reform
The Editor:
Re: Face to Face:
Should Canada’s Senate be reformed or eliminated? (Friday April 13, 2012)[i]
Both Face to Face columnists Andy Radia and Jim Nelson think
of the Senate in its current form as “proof- readers”. This may well be the case today since Harper
has appointed almost no one who merits attention, save for a skier, a number of
journalists – and an illiterate sports figure.
Multiplying the number of elections at the federal level will not
increase our democracy, especially since Harper’s moves are not exactly constitutional
in the first place, a point Mr. Radia misses.
Harper’s changes mean we will be bogged down in endless court
challenges. Such is a Strong and Stable
government, indeed.
And if Harper’s vision of the House of Commons as having
“stand alone” supremacy over an elected Senate ever succeeds, then the
significance of the Senate will again diminish in the eyes of Canadians. I
foresee elections for the Senate will be about as popular as the Civic vote –
with incredibly low turnouts. An elected
body at the federal level can only be equal to another elected body at the
federal level, and this has fundamental implications because it overturns the
whole of the Canadian Constitution. In
other words a Triple-E Senate is for those who think of our Constitution as
some sort of comic book, as if any government with a majority can change it at a
whim.
More elections, increased partisanship, and marketplace
competition are not the answers to all our public problems. Look to the United States today with all its
checks and balances – and intractable politics. Who wants that? I would say an
element of considered thought is desirable. And Canada’s Senate achieved just that in 2006
with its ground-breaking document Out of
the Shadows at Last, which made the persuasive case for a national approach
to mental health and addiction. Such an
initiative could not have been made with everyone vying for elections. Here the Senate was doing far more than mere
“proof-reading”.
Scrapping the Senate is again comic-book stuff, but I do foresee meaningful changes to the institution in the future.
Once Harper retires from politics (about 20 years from now) a wise
legislator will introduce the rule (because there will be no effective
opposition) that the Prime Minister is required to appoint a proportion of Senators
who do not belong to the ruling party.
Paul Martin appointed at least three Senators who were not Liberals –
and these were people generally recognized for their competence. Let’s just hope that in 20 years there will
still be persons of public virtue – unsullied by government market mantra - and
meriting an appointment.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Stephen Harper meets Benjamin Disraeli
Here is Stephen Harper as Leader of the Opposition writing
in the Montreal Gazette about a year before coming to power:
Information is the
lifeblood of a democracy. Without
adequate access to key information about government policies and programs,
citizens and parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and incompetent or
corrupt governments can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy.[1]
Here is Benjamin Disraeli, upcoming Conservative British
Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons to the existing Conservative
Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, March 3, 1845:
Dissolve, if you
please, the Parliament whom you have betrayed, and appeal to the people whom I
believe mistrust you. For me there
remains this at least, the opportunity of expressing my belief, that a
Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy![2]
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Huguenot Resistance Theory in Sixteenth-Century France (continued)
The notion of a constitutional right of resistance first
emerges from the French Religious Wars (1562-1598) but most notably after the
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 when perhaps 10,000 Protestants were
chopped to pieces by Catholic mobs in as many as a dozen cities
across France.[1] The pope gave Mass in honour of the Catholic achievement,
and France’s wily regent Catherine de’ Medici forever sealed her reputation. French
Protestants (known as Huguenots) were forced to develop theories of resistance
which can also be found in John Locke, a century later, leading some to think of
his Two Treatises of Government as the
“classic text” in this radical Calvinist tradition.[2]
Selected below are excerpts from two texts: François Hotman’s
Francogallia (1573) and Theodore Beza’s
Right of Magistrates (1574). Looking to Francogallia we see the clear influence of Cicero (long the detractor of Julius Caesar) and of St. Augustine, with an appeal to
moderation – and representative intermediaries – hidden in the concept of the
Trinity: “three marks of tyranny”, “Assembly of the Three Estates”, “three
simple types …”, “a third component”, “mixture of three elements”. Resistance is not about popular revolution; rather
it is guided by representative institutions, where a “triple form of
commonwealth” is shared in the interest of “balance and fairness”.[3]
Looking to Beza’s Right
of Magistrates, we see the emergence of a “political theory of revolution”[4]
that recognizes popular sovereignty, only as guided by lower magistrates or legislators,
while restricting any individual person or the people considered as a whole from taking
initiative.[5] These
notions are carried forward in Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos (1579), (see my blog).
Huguenot resistance theory is also significant to today’s readers
because it carves out notions of a “public space”, something which the Genevan tradition
in Calvinism (which one finds in the Conservative Party of Canada) has great trouble recognizing (again, see my blog). Needless to say, Huguenot resistance theory - and its historic context - has great relevance to the bloodbaths in today's Syria.
François Hotman, Francogallia (1573)
Chapter X: The form in which the kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.
Chapter X: The form in which the kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.
Now that these matters
have been briefly taken up, we should next explain the form in which the
kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.
We have already shown that the people reserved to itself supreme power
not only to make but also to remove a king.
This is clearly the form of rule that our Gauls had before they were
subjected to the power of the Romans, since the people, as Caesar says, had no
less dominion and power over the king than the king had over the people. But it is likely that our Franks derived this
form of constitution not from the Gauls but from their fellow Germans, of whom
Tacitus, in his book on the customs of the Germans, writes: “The power of their
kings was not unlimited and free.” …[6]
The constitution of
this kingdom then is the one which the ancient philosophers – including Plato
and Aristotle, whom Polybius followed – declared to be the best and most
excellent, a constitution, namely, which is a blend and mixture of all three
simple types: the royal, the aristocratic, and the popular; which is the form
of commonwealth that that Cicero rated above all the others in his On the
Commonwealth. For since royal and popular dominion are antithetical by nature,
a third component should be introduced which is between them and common to them
both, and this is the nobility, or leading men, who approach royal dignity by
the antiquity and splendour of their race and yet, because of their vassalage
or, more colloquially, subjection, are not too distant from the commoners. For, together with the commoners, they
acknowledge one and the same person as magistrate of the entire people. This noble moderation in a commonwealth has
been praised by Cicero in a striking passage based on Plato’s Republic, and because of its unusual elegance we
shall repeat it here: “With lutes and
pipes and with singing and voices a certain adjustment of distinct sounds is
needed which, if altered or discordant, is unbearable to trained ears; and this
attunement, achieved by moderation of very dissimilar voices, creates harmony
and congruence. Similarly, the highest,
lowest and intermediate orders of a commonwealth join, like sounds, in a consensus
of highly dissimilar elements, when the principle of moderation is
applied. And what musicians call harmony
in singing is called concord in a commonwealth, and it is the best and
strongest bond of safety, which, without justice, cannot possibly exist.” (On the Commonwealth, II, xlii, 69). …[7]
In view of all of
this, and since this, I say, has always been the practice of all peoples and
nations that have known royal and not tyrannical power, it is completely evident
that this splendid liberty of holding public councils is part of the common law
of peoples, and that kings who scheme to suppress this sacred liberty are
violators of the law of peoples and enemies of human society, and are to be
regarded not as kings but tyrants.[8] ….
Appendix to the Third
Edition of Francogallia, 1586
Chapter XXV: The king of France does not have unlimited dominion in his kingdom but is circumscribed by settled and specific law.
Chapter XXV: The king of France does not have unlimited dominion in his kingdom but is circumscribed by settled and specific law.
It has been
sufficiently demonstrated, we believe, that the kings of France have not been
granted unmeasured and unlimited power by their countrymen and cannot be
considered absolute. It has been shown,
rather, that they our bound by definite laws and compacts, the first and most
important of which is that they must hold the authority of the public council
sacred and inviolate and call it into solemn session in their presence as often
as the public interest demands. But
since the laws to which the king is bound are very numerous, we shall expound
only those which none will question unless he has lost his reason or has become
an enemy to his country, parents, and children.[9]
…
Theodore Beza, Right of Magistrates (1574)
Chapter VII. What remedies are available if a tyrant
prevents the states from meeting?
This is my opinion,
then, on the rights of subjects of various degrees against a sovereign who has
become a notorious tyrant. But there is
still another question of no slight difficulty.
What is to be done if tyranny has become so entrenched that action by
the Estates is difficult to obtain owing to the connivance, fear, or wickedness
of the majority of the leaders? To private persons, who have not been
authorized either by the lesser magistrates or by the more sober part of the
Estates (about which I shall speak directly), my answer is that they have no
other remedy but penitence and patience joined with prayers, which God will not
disdain and without which any other remedy, no matter how lawful it may be,
involves the danger of God’s curse. But
this does not prevent private persons from going to the lesser magistrates and
asking them to do their duty. And when
the lesser magistrates, or the more sober part of them, enlist the aid of
private persons, the duty of the latter to God and to their country is clear
from what has gone before. As for the
lesser magistrates, it is for them to join together and press for a convocation
of the Estates, while defending themselves against flagrant tyranny insofar as
they can and to the extent they should.
Finally, it is the duty of each estate to seek a common and lawful
assembly – one in which the wicked will not obstruct the good, nor the cowardly
hold back the zealous, nor the majority restrain the men of better
judgement. Moreover, I say that, in an
emergency like this, it is the obligation of private citizens to follow the
lesser magistrates, which is the duty of the subject, and that it is even
permissible for the more sober part of them to seek aid from foreigners, if
need be, especially from friends and allies of the kingdom.[10]
[1] Robert
M. Kingdon “Calvinism and resistance theory” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, ed. J.H.
Burns with Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 207.
[2] Quentin
Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. II: The Age
of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 239. See John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke. An Historical Account of the
Argument of the Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
[3]
Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the
Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought, ed. James E.G. Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), p. 46.
[4]
Skinner, Foundations, p. 338.
[5] Ibid., pp. 338,339. Emphasis in the original.
[6] Julian
H. Franklin, ed. and tr. Constitutionalism
and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beta,&
Mornay (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 65.
[7] Ibid., pp. 66,67.
[8] Ibid., p. 70.
[9] Ibid., p. 90.
[10] Ibid., pp. 129,130.
Friday, March 30, 2012
James Moore (Stephen Harper) and the CBC
Hon. James Moore
Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, B.C.
House of Commons
Ottawa
Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, B.C.
House of Commons
Ottawa
I am writing to express my dissent with your government’s decision
to slash the CBC budget by $115 million, a reduction by 10% of its annual
funding. It is clear you have trouble
keeping your word longer than six months after an election. This is reminiscent of Maurice Barrès, the
French novelist and rather right-wing political figure, who explained about a
century ago: “The politician is an acrobat.
He keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does.”
The other problem is that Conservative members of Parliament
resemble public persons carrying out private aims. We see this when, in the name of an earlier “economic
stimulus,” $26 million were doled out to a dozen (private) evangelical colleges
and universities. Given their private
interests, our “public” representatives anticipate exoneration from their “public”
responsibilities and their “public” statements, and hence the CBC (where church
and state are not in collusion) becomes victim to spurious calls for fiscal
efficiency.
And do look out for the efficiency you want. By turning it into a primary objective, you
actually end up destroying efficiency, because you callously eliminate the
processes of cooperation and agreement, essential “public” notions. As goes the voter subsidy, so goes the CBC:
they are both vital ingredients to a public life of inclusion, justice and fairness. Our elected, “public” representatives are
busying themselves with the elimination of things “public” (and quite possibly
Canadian) in the name of a market mantra that is supposed to further
competition. As an active Minister of
Disinheritage, you - along with the rest of the “Harper Government” - might get
Canadians running on time (say, until they are 67), but what is an ideology of
market efficiency becomes, in effect, a national deficiency. What was considered effective becomes
patently defective.
As Minister-who-is-supposed-to-know-something-about-heritage
allow me to close with a rebuttal by the Huguenot thinker François Hotman,
writing in 1573, who, in his historic resistance, establishes the idea of a “public”
interest worth defending, including the likes of the CBC: “The royal patrimony,
or domain, furnishes a clear example.
Kings have no right to alienate it except for great and necessary
reasons, and those reasons have to be examined and approved by his council and
by his Courts of Parliament and of Accounts.
This examination is conducted so carefully and with such tenacity and so
much discussion that very few people request alienations of this sort.”
In other words, do you still want to be known as the
Minister of Heritage – or as the ideologue helping to destroy the CBC? Are you actually with the public – or against
it?
Yours sincerely,
Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.
Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.
[i]
Variations of this letter have previously been published as a Letter to the Editor
of the Coquitlam Now and/or emailed
to MP Moore.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
St. Augustine on "robo-calls" in Canada. Reflections on justice, community and the loss of 'the common sense of right'.
Here is St. Augustine writing after the sack of Rome in the
year 410 and interpreting Cicero’s work On
the Republic. The subject is Scipio Africanus, who destroyed the Phoenicians,
yet the heroic leader laments the absence of a “common sense of right” in the Roman
Republic:
Book II, Chapter 21. City
of God
He [Scipio] starts by repeating and supporting his brief
definition of a commonwealth, that it is ‘the weal of the community’, and he
defines ‘the community’ not any and every association of the population, but
‘an association united by a common sense of right and community of
interest’. He goes on to point out the
advantage of definition in argument; and from these definitions of his he
derives the proposition that a commonwealth (i.e. the weal of the community’)
only exists where there is a sound and just government, whether power rests
with a monarch or a few aristocrats, or with the people as a whole. But when the king is unjust (a
‘tyrant’, as he calls him, in the Greek manner), or the nobles are unjust
(he calls such a combination a factio – a caucus) or the people are unjust
(and for this he finds no accepted term, unless he should call it a collective
tyranny), then, he holds, the commonwealth is not corrupt, as had been
argued on the previous day, but, by a logical conclusion from the definition,
it ceases to exist at all – for there can be no ‘weal of the community’, if
it is unjust, since it is not ‘associated by a common sense of right and
community of interest’, which was the definition of a community.[1]
Book XIX, Chapter 21. City
of God
This brings me to the
place where I must fulfil, as briefly and clearly as I may, the promise I gave
in the second book. I there promised
that I would show that there never was a Roman commonwealth answering to the
definitions advanced by Scipio in Cicero’s On the Republic. For Scipio gives a brief definition of the
state, or commonwealth, as the ‘weal of the people’. Now if this is a true definition there never
was a Roman commonwealth because the Roman state was never the ‘weal of the
people’, according to Scipio’s definition. For he defined a ‘people’ as a
multitude ‘united in association by a common sense of right and a community of
interest’. He explains in the
discussion what he means by a ‘common sense of right’, showing that a state
cannot be maintained without justice, and where there is no true justice there
can be no right. For any action
according to right is inevitably a just action, while no unjust action can
possibly be according to right. For
unjust human institutions are not to be called or supposed to be institutions
of right, since even they themselves say that right is what has flowed from the
fount of justice; as for the notion of justice commonly put forward by some
misguided thinkers, that it is ‘the interest of the strongest’, they hold this
to be a false conception.
Therefore, where
there is no true justice there can be no ‘association of men united by a common
sense of right’, and therefore no people answering to the definition of
Scipio, or Cicero. And if there is no
people then there is no ‘weal of the people’, but some kind of a mob not
deserving the name of a people.[2]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)