This posting might be a bit more polemic than my other posts and I apologize to my international readers if this takes on too much of a Canadian spin but sadly I live in a country where democracy is more threatened than in any other western nation (see this great summary from Australia). If I lived in any other democratic country in the western world there would have been protests in the streets and we would have been burning our government buildings in protest at the anti-democratic antics of the government, in Canada we are instead prepared to reward that same government with potentially even more legislative power than they had previously. I am not a died in the wool partisan of any ilk, I am known to think that Brian Mulroney, a Conservative, was the best Prime Minister of my lifetime, but I usually vote Liberal or Green so this is not an attempt to support one party over the other, but to ask at what level we are prepared to sacrifice our democratic institutions through our complacency and our financial self interest.
The level of complacency in Canada relative to it's democracy is alarming and, moreover, it seems to be taken for granted, as if it could never come under real threat and any supposed threat is just partisan posturing. Now I don't disagree that the last several years there has been a lot of political antics in the Canadian parliament of a partisan nature, but when the government refuses to report directly to parliament on how it spends its money and on it's policy platforms as well as blatantly lying and forging documents, it is effectively refusing to report back to the people. The role of parliament is to keep the government accountable to the people of Canada. I am not arguing about the efficacy of the institution, only the fundamental role that it plays in our democracy.
If the government is no longer accountable to parliament and by extension the people then who is it accountable to. We have slowly absconded this responsibility to the media which now seems to play the role of official opposition and the role of parliament in protecting our democracy. This is potentially dangerous. Firstly the media has a corporate agenda of profit-making; while there are a lot of great journalists out there, ultimately the goal of media is to make money and support a political agenda that is favourable to corporations. I am not convinced that it is safe to put our democracy in the hands of a few select corporations where we have no say in who is running them or making the decisions on what is important on our behalf.
Secondly there is always the danger that the media becomes just another arm of the government, it's happened before it can happen again. Maybe not today, but I am not arguing that democracy is about to fall off a cliff, only that it is slowly eroding, if we accept a few small infringements on our democracy today and a few more tomorrow eventually things might happen that we thought never could and it might be harder to get them back than we think. It's a bit like a china cup that falls on the floor and shatters, once it's broken it is difficult to put back together. Putting our democracy in the hands of few select corporations is has risks that we need to be aware of.
Consider also the reason that most people cite for not being alarmed at the erosion of democracy. It's about jobs we are told and the economy and this government is the best one for making jobs and managing the economy. I don't want to go over the top on this one or dismiss the importance of the economy and jobs, but look at fascist Germany in the 1930's it created thousands of jobs and turned the German economy around, but we saw where that got them Not that we are even close to what happened in Germany, I am using hyperbole to demonstrate that sometimes there are things that are more important than the economy and jobs. It is a sad state of affairs if we are prepared to sell our democracy for money in our pockets. If we continually do that we might just find we've sold our souls.
Which is the point of this blog which is to inspire good men to good works which is the ultimate renaissance man, to go beyond the pecuniary artifice of everyday and stand for something other than what fills his bank account. Not to be idealistic, because I am not a socialist but a believer that man is greater than the sum of his financial assets and some things, like democracy, freedom of the press have intrinsic value. Ask an Egyptian or a Libyan.
As I said democracy is not about to fall into an abyss in this country, we will not likely find ourselves in a fascist dictatorship after the current election, but we must not take our democracy for granted or we might just find at some point after a long slow erosion we don't have much of one left and the result might not be the one we were hoping for. We must always be on guard to protect our democracy and fight the complacency that is so easy to fall into or be prepared to suffer the consequences.
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