Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, March 12, 2012

Ideology gets out of hand in Toronto-Danforth byelection

Canadian political commentators — myself included — have spent a considerable amount of time accusing the Conservatives of putting ideology ahead of pragmatism. For instance, it is widely acknowledged that the Tories’ adherence to a rigid “watertight compartments” idea of federalism is behind the government’s inability to develop a national vision for reforming health care.

Of course, this problem isn’t limited to the Conservatives. Members of all political parties have some form of ideology through which they filter facts, be it all-encompassing or limited to particular issues.

Yet sometimes, the malady of taking ideology beyond the brink becomes so laughable that it deserves an explicit mention in a media outlet or two. Such is the case of the NDP’s candidate in the Toronto-Danforth byelection, Craig Scott.

Al-Muzir Es-Sayyid, 22, is not a Canadian citizen. Yet since arriving in Canada in 1996, he has amassed more than a dozen criminal convictions, including possession of heroin, carrying a concealed weapon and armed robbery, and eventually was ordered deported by a Federal Court judge after having committed a series of armed robberies targeting sex trade workers. Notably, his father Mahmoud Jaballah is alleged to have been a member of a terrorist group with ties to Al-Qaeda.

Scott helped Sayyid’s lawyer challenge the deportation order in a rather odd way — by authoring a paper that claimed that the judge in question was biased against criminals. The paper’s conclusions were studied and later debunked by three appeals court judges, who dismissed Scott’s claims as being ‘tainted by ideology’.

In this instance, what should be most concerning to residents of Toronto-Danforth in particular and to Canadians in general is not whether or not Scott’s legal reasoning is sound but rather why he went to such lengths to defend a convicted criminal and non-citizen. Scott’s logic fits the NDP’s ideology quite well — an ideology rooted in the worldview of the radical left.

Those who adhere to this ideology can only understand an issue through the framework of “the oppressor vs. the oppressed” and view their role as needing to stand in solidarity with “the oppressed”. To them, men are the oppressor and women are the oppressed. The 1% is the oppressor and the 99% are the oppressed. Whites, the oppressor and ethnic minorities, the oppressed. Western nations can do nothing right and third-world countries can do no wrong.

Of course, the issues of women’s rights, domestic economic inequality, ethnic pluralism and global inequality are important and require leadership from Western governments — whether that leadership is pro-active or deregulatory. What is novel, however, in the approach of the radical left is that all issues are defined by an existential struggle between oppressor and oppressed, and hence require taking sides.

The consequence of this is bad policy. For instance, for the radical left, standing in solidarity with the 99 percent means supporting a welfare system that is financially unsustainable. For them, taking action against climate change requires redistribution of wealth both domestically and among nations, with no strings attached.

As a result, individual liberty and personal responsibility take a shellacking.

A natural consequence of this doctrine is the adoption by these leftists of an ends-justify-the-means doctrine. This is what is at play when it comes to Craig Scott’s paper. Scott, by selecting the most bizarre of ways to try to undermine Canadian interests, effectively demonstrated that he would go to any length short of violence to defend Es-Sayyid. Why? Because the latter is a member of the “oppressed”. (Note, however, that the “short of violence” condition is often waved for radical leftists on university campuses, some of whom have been known to resort to physical intimidation and breaking windows, among other tactics, to silence their critics.)

Every Canadian should have the right to live in peace, dignity and freedom. Furthermore, the responsibility of any government in a liberal democracy is to protect the lives of its citizens. Thankfully, the Federal Court judge in this case understood this better than Craig Scott — a man who, as a candidate for Parliament, presumably aspires to be a member of Canada’s government.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Zach Paikin

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