Leadership conventions.
There have been many of them in our nation’s history. Each party has renewed itself through these events which are, in essence, a celebration of grassroots democracy. Many have provided some of the more dramatic moments in our nation’s political history. Party members drawn from every corner of the country, whether it be from downtown Toronto, fishing outposts in Newfoundland, or small towns on the prairies, decend upon a central location to meet and discuss the impending succession. Canadians from all walks of life, bound only by their party ties and commitment to democracy, put prospects to the test, and prepare themselves for yet another generation.
It never used to be this way. Parties, similar to the British model, would simply hole up their MP’s and Senators in a room, and pick one from among them to be their champion.
It was the Liberal Party of Canada that broke from this practice, and invited its rank-and-file members to be part of the process. In 1919, they elected Mackenzie King as their new leader, and, over time, every major political party in every province has adopted the same means of selection.
Some have delegated conventions, with a dozen or so people from each riding. Some have an open popular vote, while some apply some equal weighting to constituencies. The point is that for almost 90 years, the expectation of card-carrying members of Canadian political parties is that they personally, or a dozen of their friends and neighbours, will vote to select a person who could very well be Prime Minister, or Premier.
Now, ironically, the same party that first subjected national leadership to a grassroots vote, has decided that a conference call among some MP’s and Senators will suffice in the ratification of Pierre Trudeau…I mean, Michael Ignatieff, as Leader of the Liberal Party.
Sure, it wasn’t going to be much of a race with only one candidate in the running. Mind you, we had three eager beavers last week, and one of them, Bobby Rae, was talking tough as recently as the weekend. How do you go from criss-crossing the nation, doing the rubber chicken circuit and pressing the flesh, to saying “on second thought, no thanks.”?
Rae, ever the team player, isn’t saying much, but what he has been saying gives me the impression that the problem wasn’t one of desire or motivation.
I get the impression that the people on Iggy’s team are fans of the Godfather movie trilogy, because I see in Bobby Rae someone who was politely told that pushing things any further would result in the political equivalent of waking up with a horse head in your bed, or getting a shot like Moe Green when his rubdown was so rudely interrupted.
So, it appears that there is happiness in the land as the Grit-erati all line up to kiss the ring of Michael ‘Corleone’ Ignatieff, and declare and end to the truce between the three families…Oops, I mean, parties.
There are doubtless many in Liberal Land who are ready to uncork the sparkling cider and celebrate the beginning of their triumphant return to 24 Sussex. While such scenarios are not outside the statistical possibility, let’s be a bit more pragmatic.
First, your party is flat broke. Pledge drives for PBS stations bring in more cash, and what you do get is largely due to the stipends you receive from Elections Canada.
Second, you screwed up big time with the amateur hour putsch, and the PR damage will take more than a couple of months to repair.
Third, you burned your grassroots by making the leadership convention a moot point. You made your peace with Bob Rae and Dominic LeBlanc, but I can’t imagine their supporters don’t feel like they just got screwed over.
Fourth, you have vacated the high ground, because you can’t wax philosophical about democracy when you rear-end your own rank-and-file to obtain power.
Fifth, you are twenty points back, and will probably have to contend with all of the above – less money, fewer foot soldiers, and diminished status – while at the same time answering why your leader, in his writings, identified himself as ‘American’, not Canadian. Of course, don’t get me started on his published views of Ukrainians (read ‘Blood and Belonging’) and how that will bump up the Grit vote in the West.
A new name on the doorplate, or a new logo, or an new PR stunt will not save the Liberal Party. An commitment to old ideas like democracy and accountability might, in the long run.
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
I see your Johnson, and raise you a Dickens...
The 3 Stooges, and their surrogates, throw out the oft-used quotation by the learned Samuel Johnson, that "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."
They argue that due to 26% plus 18% plus 10% plus 6% of Canadians who scattered their vote among the 4 platforms, the law allows them the right to conveniently gloss over the internal distinctions, and rule as a unified front.
Indeed, it does, and not withstanding the prorogation, they may still legally get their chance at the end of January.
To this end, might I offer another quote - this from the character Mr. Bumble from Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" :
"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass- a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience- by experience."
We can only hope so much...
They argue that due to 26% plus 18% plus 10% plus 6% of Canadians who scattered their vote among the 4 platforms, the law allows them the right to conveniently gloss over the internal distinctions, and rule as a unified front.
Indeed, it does, and not withstanding the prorogation, they may still legally get their chance at the end of January.
To this end, might I offer another quote - this from the character Mr. Bumble from Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" :
"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass- a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience- by experience."
We can only hope so much...
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A Rural Requiem
The rural way of life has always been defined as one of struggle and of sacrifice. Often lacking in the trappings of a cosmopolitan existence, and being at the mercy of the capricious nature of the elements, rural folk have assumed a requisite level of adversity in their quest for survival.
Through it all, through equal measures of ingenuity and industry, successive generations were able to meet, and exceed, the challenges often fatal to their forebearers.
As they became more prosperous, and their survival less tenuous, they could devote more of their energies and intellect to collective pursuits – the building of communities and societies. Indeed, the birth of the United States - and modern concepts of liberty and democracy - owes a great debt to ‘gentlemen farmers’ such as Washington and Jefferson who saw no inconsistency between toil in the fields, and grounding in the liberal arts – Greek, Latin, and Philosophy. Even the very nature of the Common Law that regulates our lives, in the creation of the Magna Charta and the principles of habeas corpus, emanated from the power struggles between the Crown and those who owned the land.
It was at this time when the urban age saw its genesis. The great metropolises of our day were the modest civic outposts of the previous era, just as vulnerable to the vagaries of nature and fate – perhaps more so.
All that urban society needed for its very survival lay beyond its grasp – food to nourish, raw materials to fashion into the products of a new age, and the money to construct the roads, public utilities and other assets that form the very sinew and muscle of the city state.
Rural society produced the food that fed the body, mined and harvested the raw resources that fed the factories, and, being the majority, produced the capital, taxation, and political leadership that fed the civic soul.
It was an equitable exchange, for, in return, rural people were able to obtain the modern implements of the new industrial age to improve their harvests, the education to improve their prospects, and the expanded markets to improve their condition of life.
Therein formed an unwritten social compact – strong cities benefitted the countryside, and that prosperous rural communities were vital to the sustenance of a growing urban populace.
Even in the first half of the twentieth century, when political and economic power shifted to the cities, the compact was honoured and preserved. Many urbanites were either from rural communities, or were the sons and daughters of rural folk. It was through them that the legacy of rural life was kept alive – through stories passed down, or the frequent pilgrimages to visit rural cousins who elected to stay.
These stories and shared experiences of a rural heritage were treasured, for these people did not necessarily forsake their rural homes out of spite or disdain, but in the quest of opportunity and more lucrative prospects.
In the past generation or so, however, something has changed. As time moved on, so, too have the urbanites whose connection to the land and rural life was strongest. Each new successive generation has moved one step further from the land that sustained their ancestors and their communities.
For them, rural Canada is but a part of history, a backdrop to past recollections. If it has any modern relevance, it is only as the scenic interlude that divides cities – gaps of wilderness that separate the outposts of what they deem as ‘civilization.’
It has been an enduring fact of this human condition that hostility and prejudice are borne of ignorance – of peoples and their condition. When indulged, it transforms into an ungrounded anger, leading to an indifference that denigrates and dehumanizes.
The first casualty has been the compact between urban and rural peoples. The partnership that built and sustained one of the world’s truly great nations has been neglected by most, and repudiated by some. The idea that strengthening one another was an achievable end, and a worthy goal, has been replaced by the notion of a ‘zero-sum game’, whereby the project of creating an ‘urban renaissance’ is wholly incompatible with strong, vibrant, and sustainable rural communities. Cooperation and mutual respect have been supplanted by policies that, while never articulating the words, have taken a stance for rural communities to ‘conform or die.’
One should only look to authorities who impose harsh rules on small communities and their economic progress in order to ameliorate conditions caused by neighbouring metropolises who have failed in their ability to regulate their own growth and sprawl in a responsible manner.
More incidious has been what this attitude has metastasized into. It has evolved into an arrogance that places a moral superiority of urban ‘modernism’ over a rural culture perceived as backward and degenerate.
To vocally defend the old compact, and assert one’s inalienable rights and interests as rural citizens is to be mocked and ridiculed as a ‘hick’ or a ‘redneck.’ These tactics are purposeful in the sense that the debate shifts away from the legitimate grievances of the rural people, and rests on whether those people possess the mental acuity to understand either the world, or their true welfare. Without having a single grievance answered, the rural citizen must defend either their intellectual capacities, or the charge that they are not simply embracing the dying relics of a bygone era.
They also belie an attitude that is anathema to the rural ethos. ‘Redneck’ is used as a slur, and yet it pertains to the reddened neck of farm workers, and other labourers, whose skinned was tanned as they performed their toil. While a badge of hard, honest work is held as a badge of ridicule, those who work in towers moving papers, money, and other contracts from one place to another are hailed as modern heroes of industry. While the common man and woman do their duty in anonimity, we celebrate the exploits of those who sing, but cannot write the song, those who pretend to be someone else based on the stories of wordsmiths, and those who receive fame for no other reason that they are willing to be the court jester for the masses.
The distances of time and priorities of thought permeate mass culture, economics, and every human pursuit, and make us alien to one another.
Today, the policies of government and industry that so affect rural life – agriculture, and natural resources – are devised by men and women who, in theory, may never have set foot in a rural community, much less lived there. Their ideas are approved for adoption by politicians who, for the most part, may not have a single rural citizen as a constituent. Many times, these policies are presented by a Minister of Agriculture whose riding lacks farms, or a Minister of Natural Resources whose very own home community possesses none of the attributes that fall within their remit.
The final stroke of indignation, however, rests within the attitudes of those who come to rural communities in the name of openness and fraternity, while seeking to alter and reconstitute the very nature of those towns, villages, and burghs. Rather than educating themselves about the enduring truths and legacies of these special places, they see something that is in need of fixing, or correcting to a standard they have imported from the city – that of an urban community with fewer people.
Like the zealous missionaries of centuries past, who destroyed local customs and wisdom in order to ‘save the heathens,’ many urbanites come to urban communities and, with equal passion, use the power of government and other modes of influence brokering much as Jesuit priests used the Cross and the Holy Book.
In the name of the environment, the economy, and of cultural standards that are continually revised and refined, rural people are told that they are somehow deficient of standards and a morality that befits today’s world. The economic and cultural practices of generations are an abomination to modernity and civilized comportment.
The neglect of rural issues, the breaking of the compact, the indignity that comes from the debasing of one’s intellect, culture, and traditions – all of these have contributed to a quiet discontent that has become less quiet of late.
We are the people of the countryside. We mine and drill for the materials that feed your factories. We grow the food that nourishes your bodies. From rough wilderness, we laid the foundations for your governments, your laws, and your towers of glass and steel.
If you choose to come here to lecture us on the preservation our natural heritage, it is simply because you have squandered your own. While our communities are as old as yours, we may yet still breathe the fresh air, and drink the fresh water from where we live. We are not a land of brownfields, polluted streams, and chemical poisons. Save your own soul before you attempt to save ours.
If you come to correct perceived defects in our philosophy of life, it is because you are woefully ill-informed of its merits and its purpose. If you bemoan what rural communities receive by their own right, it is because you are ignorant of a past where you were dependent and vulnerable upon us, a present where waste and malappropriation exist in your own home, and a future where ‘civilization’ can give you everything but the very thing you need to live.
The trust that assured our mutual survival has been broken. Our compact has been betrayed. Sadly, while your progress has imbued you with a sense of invincibility and inevitability, deep in your heart, you must confess that we are an inseparable part of your past, and without us, there will be no future.
The time has come for us to reconcile our relationship, to come to terms with what divides us, and not simply to assimilate us into a mere image of oneself. It is time to place a true and equitable value to what has, and continues to be contributed. It is time to end the intolerance and indifference in the plight of the countryside, and her people.
The failure to meet this challenge – to assure a place for rural people, their communities, and their way of life in the context of a broader society, and under terms that are respectful and tolerant of our uniqueness – will mark no less than the eventual decline of all we have assumed for our future, its hope, promise and prosperity.
Through it all, through equal measures of ingenuity and industry, successive generations were able to meet, and exceed, the challenges often fatal to their forebearers.
As they became more prosperous, and their survival less tenuous, they could devote more of their energies and intellect to collective pursuits – the building of communities and societies. Indeed, the birth of the United States - and modern concepts of liberty and democracy - owes a great debt to ‘gentlemen farmers’ such as Washington and Jefferson who saw no inconsistency between toil in the fields, and grounding in the liberal arts – Greek, Latin, and Philosophy. Even the very nature of the Common Law that regulates our lives, in the creation of the Magna Charta and the principles of habeas corpus, emanated from the power struggles between the Crown and those who owned the land.
It was at this time when the urban age saw its genesis. The great metropolises of our day were the modest civic outposts of the previous era, just as vulnerable to the vagaries of nature and fate – perhaps more so.
All that urban society needed for its very survival lay beyond its grasp – food to nourish, raw materials to fashion into the products of a new age, and the money to construct the roads, public utilities and other assets that form the very sinew and muscle of the city state.
Rural society produced the food that fed the body, mined and harvested the raw resources that fed the factories, and, being the majority, produced the capital, taxation, and political leadership that fed the civic soul.
It was an equitable exchange, for, in return, rural people were able to obtain the modern implements of the new industrial age to improve their harvests, the education to improve their prospects, and the expanded markets to improve their condition of life.
Therein formed an unwritten social compact – strong cities benefitted the countryside, and that prosperous rural communities were vital to the sustenance of a growing urban populace.
Even in the first half of the twentieth century, when political and economic power shifted to the cities, the compact was honoured and preserved. Many urbanites were either from rural communities, or were the sons and daughters of rural folk. It was through them that the legacy of rural life was kept alive – through stories passed down, or the frequent pilgrimages to visit rural cousins who elected to stay.
These stories and shared experiences of a rural heritage were treasured, for these people did not necessarily forsake their rural homes out of spite or disdain, but in the quest of opportunity and more lucrative prospects.
In the past generation or so, however, something has changed. As time moved on, so, too have the urbanites whose connection to the land and rural life was strongest. Each new successive generation has moved one step further from the land that sustained their ancestors and their communities.
For them, rural Canada is but a part of history, a backdrop to past recollections. If it has any modern relevance, it is only as the scenic interlude that divides cities – gaps of wilderness that separate the outposts of what they deem as ‘civilization.’
It has been an enduring fact of this human condition that hostility and prejudice are borne of ignorance – of peoples and their condition. When indulged, it transforms into an ungrounded anger, leading to an indifference that denigrates and dehumanizes.
The first casualty has been the compact between urban and rural peoples. The partnership that built and sustained one of the world’s truly great nations has been neglected by most, and repudiated by some. The idea that strengthening one another was an achievable end, and a worthy goal, has been replaced by the notion of a ‘zero-sum game’, whereby the project of creating an ‘urban renaissance’ is wholly incompatible with strong, vibrant, and sustainable rural communities. Cooperation and mutual respect have been supplanted by policies that, while never articulating the words, have taken a stance for rural communities to ‘conform or die.’
One should only look to authorities who impose harsh rules on small communities and their economic progress in order to ameliorate conditions caused by neighbouring metropolises who have failed in their ability to regulate their own growth and sprawl in a responsible manner.
More incidious has been what this attitude has metastasized into. It has evolved into an arrogance that places a moral superiority of urban ‘modernism’ over a rural culture perceived as backward and degenerate.
To vocally defend the old compact, and assert one’s inalienable rights and interests as rural citizens is to be mocked and ridiculed as a ‘hick’ or a ‘redneck.’ These tactics are purposeful in the sense that the debate shifts away from the legitimate grievances of the rural people, and rests on whether those people possess the mental acuity to understand either the world, or their true welfare. Without having a single grievance answered, the rural citizen must defend either their intellectual capacities, or the charge that they are not simply embracing the dying relics of a bygone era.
They also belie an attitude that is anathema to the rural ethos. ‘Redneck’ is used as a slur, and yet it pertains to the reddened neck of farm workers, and other labourers, whose skinned was tanned as they performed their toil. While a badge of hard, honest work is held as a badge of ridicule, those who work in towers moving papers, money, and other contracts from one place to another are hailed as modern heroes of industry. While the common man and woman do their duty in anonimity, we celebrate the exploits of those who sing, but cannot write the song, those who pretend to be someone else based on the stories of wordsmiths, and those who receive fame for no other reason that they are willing to be the court jester for the masses.
The distances of time and priorities of thought permeate mass culture, economics, and every human pursuit, and make us alien to one another.
Today, the policies of government and industry that so affect rural life – agriculture, and natural resources – are devised by men and women who, in theory, may never have set foot in a rural community, much less lived there. Their ideas are approved for adoption by politicians who, for the most part, may not have a single rural citizen as a constituent. Many times, these policies are presented by a Minister of Agriculture whose riding lacks farms, or a Minister of Natural Resources whose very own home community possesses none of the attributes that fall within their remit.
The final stroke of indignation, however, rests within the attitudes of those who come to rural communities in the name of openness and fraternity, while seeking to alter and reconstitute the very nature of those towns, villages, and burghs. Rather than educating themselves about the enduring truths and legacies of these special places, they see something that is in need of fixing, or correcting to a standard they have imported from the city – that of an urban community with fewer people.
Like the zealous missionaries of centuries past, who destroyed local customs and wisdom in order to ‘save the heathens,’ many urbanites come to urban communities and, with equal passion, use the power of government and other modes of influence brokering much as Jesuit priests used the Cross and the Holy Book.
In the name of the environment, the economy, and of cultural standards that are continually revised and refined, rural people are told that they are somehow deficient of standards and a morality that befits today’s world. The economic and cultural practices of generations are an abomination to modernity and civilized comportment.
The neglect of rural issues, the breaking of the compact, the indignity that comes from the debasing of one’s intellect, culture, and traditions – all of these have contributed to a quiet discontent that has become less quiet of late.
We are the people of the countryside. We mine and drill for the materials that feed your factories. We grow the food that nourishes your bodies. From rough wilderness, we laid the foundations for your governments, your laws, and your towers of glass and steel.
If you choose to come here to lecture us on the preservation our natural heritage, it is simply because you have squandered your own. While our communities are as old as yours, we may yet still breathe the fresh air, and drink the fresh water from where we live. We are not a land of brownfields, polluted streams, and chemical poisons. Save your own soul before you attempt to save ours.
If you come to correct perceived defects in our philosophy of life, it is because you are woefully ill-informed of its merits and its purpose. If you bemoan what rural communities receive by their own right, it is because you are ignorant of a past where you were dependent and vulnerable upon us, a present where waste and malappropriation exist in your own home, and a future where ‘civilization’ can give you everything but the very thing you need to live.
The trust that assured our mutual survival has been broken. Our compact has been betrayed. Sadly, while your progress has imbued you with a sense of invincibility and inevitability, deep in your heart, you must confess that we are an inseparable part of your past, and without us, there will be no future.
The time has come for us to reconcile our relationship, to come to terms with what divides us, and not simply to assimilate us into a mere image of oneself. It is time to place a true and equitable value to what has, and continues to be contributed. It is time to end the intolerance and indifference in the plight of the countryside, and her people.
The failure to meet this challenge – to assure a place for rural people, their communities, and their way of life in the context of a broader society, and under terms that are respectful and tolerant of our uniqueness – will mark no less than the eventual decline of all we have assumed for our future, its hope, promise and prosperity.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Will someone please deal with that psycho despot Mugabe?
Despite the ‘red meat’ in my comments, I am not a man who readily believes that violence is an answer to anything. This may be due, in part, to years of Sunday School (often taught by my own mother), but it also lends to a degree of pragmatism. Just as Newton’s Third Law of Physics dictates “an equal and opposing reaction” in nature, acts of violence usually result in retaliation.
The tit-for-tat that began in Sarajevo in 1914, egged on by the labyrinth of alliances, produced the ‘War to end all wars.’ The overly punative terms against Germany relating to that conflict sowed the seeds for the next one.
These caveats aside, and bearing in mind the full import of my view, I will say it nonetheless. Somebody should help the opposition in Zimbabwe arm to the teeth and deal with Robert Mugabe’s genocidal regime once and for all.
People are dying of starvation because they do not possess the whellbarrows of worthless currency needed to buy a loaf of bread, where price inflation is running in excess of 200,000 percent. Once the breadbasket of sub-Saharan Africa, exporting food to the world, it now depends upon the charity of the international community.
Anyone who dares speak out against the regime risks torture or death, the methods of which are often reported in gruesome detail. We know that journalists, both Zimbabwean and foreign, risk much in bring details to light. This week, we hear that the US Ambassador, James McKee, along with American and British diplomats, were detained and risked summary execution.
Add to all of this the mass exodus of refugees across the Limpopo River into South Africa, which has caused such a societal strain on that country, that once now sees television footage of gunfights on the streets of Johannesburg reminicent of an old re-run of “Gunsmoke.”
Still more disturbing was the attempt of a Chinese ship attempting to offload weapons for the Zimbabwean regime. The insult to injury, however, are the reports that Chinese soldiers are in that country right now, and are participating in the repression.
And so, I say again, as the regime will not recognize a legitimately transparent democratic process, and because it has engaged in activities worthy of Nazi Germany, and because this behaviour has created a destabilizing influence beyond its borders, and since the Chinese have picked a side, can someone please give massive amounts of firepower and military training to any group of people willing to take back their country from Bob the lunatic?
Overthrowing the regime gives Zimbabweans an opportunity to take back their land and destiny. And as an aside, if Beijing wishes to be taken seriously as a reponsible power on the world stage, they may want to study the lessons learned by the Americans in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan - that backstopping immoral regimes will give you no dividend but one of grief.
The tit-for-tat that began in Sarajevo in 1914, egged on by the labyrinth of alliances, produced the ‘War to end all wars.’ The overly punative terms against Germany relating to that conflict sowed the seeds for the next one.
These caveats aside, and bearing in mind the full import of my view, I will say it nonetheless. Somebody should help the opposition in Zimbabwe arm to the teeth and deal with Robert Mugabe’s genocidal regime once and for all.
People are dying of starvation because they do not possess the whellbarrows of worthless currency needed to buy a loaf of bread, where price inflation is running in excess of 200,000 percent. Once the breadbasket of sub-Saharan Africa, exporting food to the world, it now depends upon the charity of the international community.
Anyone who dares speak out against the regime risks torture or death, the methods of which are often reported in gruesome detail. We know that journalists, both Zimbabwean and foreign, risk much in bring details to light. This week, we hear that the US Ambassador, James McKee, along with American and British diplomats, were detained and risked summary execution.
Add to all of this the mass exodus of refugees across the Limpopo River into South Africa, which has caused such a societal strain on that country, that once now sees television footage of gunfights on the streets of Johannesburg reminicent of an old re-run of “Gunsmoke.”
Still more disturbing was the attempt of a Chinese ship attempting to offload weapons for the Zimbabwean regime. The insult to injury, however, are the reports that Chinese soldiers are in that country right now, and are participating in the repression.
And so, I say again, as the regime will not recognize a legitimately transparent democratic process, and because it has engaged in activities worthy of Nazi Germany, and because this behaviour has created a destabilizing influence beyond its borders, and since the Chinese have picked a side, can someone please give massive amounts of firepower and military training to any group of people willing to take back their country from Bob the lunatic?
Overthrowing the regime gives Zimbabweans an opportunity to take back their land and destiny. And as an aside, if Beijing wishes to be taken seriously as a reponsible power on the world stage, they may want to study the lessons learned by the Americans in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan - that backstopping immoral regimes will give you no dividend but one of grief.
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