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.]

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

The scary new Canada is a myth

A year after Canada gave the Conservatives a majority government, we are still hearing how the country is becoming more and more conservative.

This kind of philosophical triumphalism didn’t start with the 2011 election. When Rob Ford became mayor of Toronto in 2010, for example, commentators crowed that the country’s largest city was turning right.

When the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario were leading the Liberals in the polls last year, those on the right gleefully predicted a conservative trifecta (municipal, provincial and federal) in the country’s industrial heartland.

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals won a third consecutive term. Ford remains highly unpopular, even reviled.

Two weeks ago, we were told of a new conservative ascendancy in Alberta, reflecting, again, the conservative shift in Canada. Behold, the new Ottawa-Calgary axis on the oil sands and climate change.

But that didn’t happen either. Indeed, as much as there was a realignment of national politics on May 2, 2011 — principally, the decline of the Liberals and the rise of the New Democrats — you might say the same of provincial politics in Alberta. Alison Redford, the new premier, is a progressive who drew support from Liberals and New Democrats. She is closer in philosophy to Joe Clark, Red Tory, than she is to Stephen Harper, Reformer.

What we learned is that Alberta isn’t that conservative after all. Hard-line social conservatism — on abortion, capital punishment, gay rights — cuts no ice in Canada anymore. While Danielle Smith is not a social conservative, she now knows she cannot afford them in her Wildrose caucus. Harper understands the dangers, which is why he won’t re-open the debate on abortion.

The prime minister, who thought that celebrating the anniversary of the Charter of Rights would be “divisive”, knows that nothing would undo his agenda faster. The lesson: if Canada is really becoming more conservative, that metamorphosis is happening outside these issues.

And that’s the reason — along with the prospects of left-of-centre governments taking power in Quebec and British Columbia — to doubt that this heralded new conservative consensus is real at all.

But along comes Noah Richler from the left, warning that Canada is changing in other dangerous ways. While we may not be forcing women into back-alley clinics, he thinks we’ve gone from a nation of peacekeepers to a nation of warriors.

In his wooly, ponderous polemic, What We Talk About When We Talk About War, Richler warns of “a vigorous trend which has come to the fore over the course of the last decade.” He laments “the fantasy of a political lobby that, unchecked … has seen the country’s ability to fight wars as the truest indicator of its maturity.”

The war party includes eminent historians David Bercuson and Jack Granatstein, journalist Christie Blatchford and other members of Canada’s military intellectual complex.

Richler exaggerates the importance of Canadian peacekeeping in the post-war world, but does correctly identify the rise of the military in Canada, which had fallen into disrepute by the 1990s. A generation ago, a federal government would not have mounted a costly display of military might on Parliament Hill to mark the end of the war in Libya, or spent millions commemorating the War of 1812. Then again, it would not have denied the legacy of Lester Pearson, either.

Contrary to Richler’s argument, Pearson knew the limitations of peacekeeping, which isn’t to say that he didn’t embrace it in the Suez Crisis. His proudest accomplishment was the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a commitment to collective security, for good or ill, which took us to Afghanistan and Libya.

There has been a renewal of pride in the military in Canada and a revival of Remembrance Day, which are good things. At the same time, repudiating Pearsonian diplomacy, denying peacekeeping, denigrating the United Nations, and acquiring expensive weaponry without debate, does Canada a disservice. So does our inability to have an adult conversation about Vimy Ridge and our role in the Great War.

But have we changed fundamentally as a people because we fought in Kosovo, Libya and Afghanistan? To listen to the perfervid Richler, Canada has become Sparta.

His argument is overwrought. Fundamentally, Canadians remain moderate, centrist and accommodating, tilting both liberal and conservative, committed to social justice, democracy and liberal internationalism. Abroad, we keep peace when we can and fight when we must, always with others, and thankfully, not in Vietnam and Iraq.

Maybe our values will in fact change. Maybe we will become more self-absorbed and belligerent. At the moment, though, this much-vaunted, much-feared, callous Canadian has yet to show his fangs.

Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Andrew Cohen

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