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I have often wondered whether I am, on the political spectrum, 'conservative', except that conservatives drive me crazy. I find I have the same feelings about most 'liberals'. There's something about adhering faithfully to an ideology that sets my teeth on edge.
One of the things I like least about conservatives is their appeal to mediaeval life (for evidence I offer the most recent editorial by Citizen columnist Dave Warren). There seems to be this feel that, if we only adopted - what, a mediaeval view of life? The mediaeval virtues? Mediaeval political practice? - if only we adopted such a thing, life would be better.
It is hard to see how life would be better. First, because it isn't clear what it is we're supposed to be adopting from the Middle Ages. You would think specific recommendations might be made: such as, for example, Dorothy Sayers's suggestion that we adopt the mediaeval curriculum. Whether you think the idea good or bad, at least it is a specific idea whose strengths and weaknesses can be identified.
Second, an appeal to the past generally is woolly thinking. I'm sure it is classified under some logical fallacy, probably as an unsubstantiated appeal to authority (appeals to authority can be legitimate, but not under every circumstance).
I remember going to a 'Last Night of the Proms' concert (how's that for nostalgic sentiment, eh? 'Rule, Britannia' and all that) where the concert master, one Garth Hampson, said, and I paraphrase, 'wouldn't our country be better if only we sang [God Save the Queen] in our schools'. Now, I realise that the argument can be made that singing the national anthem does something, presumably good, for students, but when I sang the national anthem at school, I always felt a little embarrassed, and not patriotic, or proud of my country, or whatever. From the way my classmates sang 'O Canada', I could tell they felt much the same way as I did. Nor do I think it an unreasonable extrapolation to suppose that most students who sing 'O Canada' feel that way. Their singing of the national anthem is not doing them any harm, but, on the other hand, nor was it doing them much good. So the idea that singing 'God Save the Queen' would magically make Canada a better place is a bad one, as much as I like to belt out 'God Save the Queen' on Victoria Day.
As those of you who remember my posts on The Discarded Image or Planet Narnia know, I am fond of the Middle Ages. But I don't pretend that appealing to them is going to make the world a better place. There may, indeed, be qualities that mediaeval man possessed that we do not, qualities which we should seek to recover. But the mediaeval world is gone, and there is no getting it back.
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In recent articles in the Ottawa Sun by columnist Michael Harris, the stimuli of Barack Obama's package (yes, I'm deliberately inciting your minds to drop into the gutter) are shown to consist of throwing a lot, and I mean a lot, of money at failing and even fraudulent businesses. What the Canadian government's response is, I don't know, but I'm sure the Conversative stimulus package (I don't know about you, but I'm sure Harper's package is less stimulating than Obama's) is busy putting the socialist back in conservative.
In many cases, the collapse of the global economy shows up the flaws and problems of the practices of many governments and businesses which were apparent, but able to be ignored, in happier times (happier, of course, for some, not for all). I have no idea whether the economy (which right now must appear to be akin to the Sarlaac, a giant, unmoving pit, swallowing anything unfortunate enough to tumble into it) will indeed be stimulated by the various packages on offer. Not being an economist or having experience in understanding the issues at hand, I don't wish to say things will go one way or another. Much ado was made at Obama's inauguration; but the truth is that Obama will need to be more than America's first black president if the U.S. is going make it out of the valley of the shadow of economic depression - he will need to be a good president, too. As for the Great White North, I don't know whether there is any party or team which might form the government which can, at present, be relied upon to deal with the economic crisis rightly. Government! What is it good for? Apparently, absolutely nothing, at least according to one letter writer in today's Ottawa Citizen. Consider the analogy he makes. What, he asks, are compassionate responses to, say, a man begging on the street? He gives three options, the third of which, he writes, is 'consistent with the ethics of big government socialism', which is to 'rob some of the other passerby [sic] and give their money to the poor man, perhaps keeping a small amount for your trouble.'
If that is how one is going to define taxation, how else, then, is one going to define government of any size or ideology? That 'robbery' is what all governments do; it's not just the behaviour of 'big government socialism'. Presumably 'small government capitalism' would use the money it 'robs' from 'some of the other passer[s]by' for other purposes. Actually, this view reminds me of St. Augustine's famous comparison of the empire of Rome (and of all kingdoms) to an enlarged gang of bandits. What, he asked (and I paraphrase), is a state but little more than a gang of bandits with impunity? The author of the article then states that the U.S. is straying 'far from the wise and just values of their founders'. In what way? 'By adopting big government socialism'? I suppose this is a shift; but on the other hand, how can any government be anything but big nowadays? Anyway, one of the planks of the American Revolution was 'no taxation without representation'. I presume that a corollary to that is that if those represented agree to it, taxes can rise and government can swell. And anyhow, what were the 'wise and just values' of the founders of the American polity? The author doesn't care to state; we are left to suppose that they are on his side (as an aside, it always pays to have either the Founding Fathers of the United States or Jesus on your side). I wonder. That said, there is, I'm sure a very good case to be made against 'big government socialism' - but his isn't it. I'm sure Barack Obama is going to be a swell president. But I think most residents of Ottawa (and visitors like myself) thought that, today, he was a swell way to get a headache. His coming and going caused traffic snarls, long delays, and much sitting around on buses, the last of which was the case for me. I said to a couple people following my return home that the next time Obama comes to Canada, he can go to another city. That, or they should make a presidential lounge at the Ottawa International Airport and he can stay there the whole time.
I just find it ironic that when the leader of a country which values, or claims to value, freedom so highly, goes elsewhere to visit, it causes a great deal of inconvenience and lack of freedom of movement for the citizens of that locale. Well, that's my gripe for today. I need to correct a few statements which I made in my previous posts.
1) '[I]t should be a little worrying that the coalition's statement only mentions the current economic crisis in the title' The coalition (which in fact consists only of the NDP and the Liberals; they have an accord with the Bloc) has produced a document regarding economic policy. I leave it to better minds to determine how useful it will be. However, there was no mention in either document as to what the Bloc gets out of this; while I would like to think that Gilles Duceppe is doing this out of the goodness of his heart, it is more probable that his agreement has been assured based on, as they say in hockey trades, 'future considerations'. 2) 'The claim also, so far as I can tell, not been substantiated by a public, representative, or scientific poll.' As if to condemn my forgetting the 'has' in this sentence, it turns out that there has been a poll regarding the formation of a coalition government. The results of the poll barely favour the coalition. I promise, this is the last I'll be blathering about the current political crisis. Some problems with arguments about the current political crisis.
'Millions of Canadians...' We will be told, by the political parties, by Facebook groups, by people or organisations in favour of either the Conservative minority government (such will be, as a rule, in favour of the Conservative party generally) or the possible coalition government, that 'millions of Canadians' prefer their option. Strictly speaking, this is true. But as an argument in support of either option, it is fallacious. First of all, of the approximately 23 million eligible voters, nearly 10 million of them did not vote in the 2008 federal election. Based simply on the numbers, more 'millions of Canadians' don't care one way or another than cared enough to vote for any one party. More to the point, saying that 'millions of Canadians' think one way at best cancels out the 'millions of Canadians' claim made by the other side. I suppose it does, then, have that negative role in argument and debate. The problem with using it as a positive argument is that it doesn't necessarily have any ethical or moral strength in fact, as in, 'millions of Canadians support anti-Semitic measures', or, 'millions of Canadians are in favour of residential schools', both of which were probably true for a long time, but which are ethical disasters. The fact that 'millions of Canadians' support a venture does not tell us that it is good. Therefore, arguments for or against the coalition (or the Conservative minority) must needs be otherwise framed. The claim also, so far as I can tell, not been substantiated by a public, representative, or scientific poll. Except, of course, the 2008 federal election, when a sufficient number of 'millions of Canadians' preferred the current elected government, i.e., a Conservative minority. Meanwhile, the poor voter turn-out of the last election affected the would-be coalition more: compared to the 170,000 votes lost to the Conservatives, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc lost 1,090,000 votes between them. In other words, more people cared not to vote for the parties which now wish to make a coalition than cared not to vote for the Conservatives in 2008 than in 2006. This further undermines the claim that 'millions of Canadians' prefer a coaltion. Add to this the fact that, when we went to the polls, the idea of forming a coalition was denied by the leaders of the parties now planning on forming a coalition, one really wonders how representative the coalition will be. As for the problems with the popular vote, this seems to be more of a concern with those who support the coalition. The claim seems to be, 'why should a Conservative minority be considered legitimate when a coalition represents a greater percentage of the popular vote?' The present government won the election with 37.65% of the popular vote, to the tune of 5.2 million voters. The question could be fairly asked in 2004, when the Liberal minority government had 36.73% of the popular vote, and just under 5 million votes. (As an aside, back then, Harper considered some kind of coalition with the NDP, so his pother right now seems downright hypocritical.) In 2000, the Liberal majority won with a popular vote of 5.2 million voters, or 40.85% of the vote. At that time, there were around 21 million eligible voters, of whom 13 million voted, for a turn-out of 61.2%. So, in 2000, the number of people voting, and the number of people voting for the party which formed the government, was nearly the same as it was in 2008. (# of voters: 12,997,185 in 2000; 132,832,972 in 2008; # who voted for the governing party: 5,252,031 for a Liberal majority, 5,208,796 for a Conservative minority). The question of the legitimacy to govern is a fair one to ask, but in the context of a coalition replacing the elected government, should have been asked at the polls. What the results of the 2008 federal election would have been if the issue had been at the forefront, who can say, but they would have been surely different. Moreover, the numbers show that a majority government is capable of being formed with those numbers. If things had turned out differently on Oct. 14, the Dec. 1 agreement by the Liberal, NDP, and Bloc would never have happened because the Conservatives would have enjoyed a majority - which, thank God, they do not. And, of course, individually, none of the coalition parties has a greater percentage of the popular vote than the Conservatives do, which is the context in which we should interpret the data, given that the coalition parties did not run on a coalition platform in the 2008 federal election. All this is not to say that a coalition government would be worse than the current Conservative minority government, although I suspect sadly that this would be so, but since the debate is important, we should at least be aware of the facts (something which seems lacking at times; e.g., if you read replies to articles posted on cbc.ca or entries in groups on Facebook, &c.), and be careful of which arguments we use in favour of one side or another. The subject line, by the way, is random. It has nothing to do with the subject of the post, nor do I actually miss Paul Martin.
The possibility of a coalition government consisting of the Liberal party, the New Democratic Party, and the Bloc Québecois replacing the current Conservative minority government has some excited, and some up in arms. ( Blather about politics ) |