But in 2010, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat on the dais next to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representing the opposing powers of the conflict that had more in common than differences, where are we?  What has happened to the dream, that moment of pure joy and hope?

As its predecessor, World War Two was not the war to end all wars.  Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list is long and bloody.  Our ability to kill has improved with each new conflict.  Diplomacy is ridiculed as the the fires of nationalism brightly light the banners of the legions.  The eagle of Rome and Germany now demands the people of the world bow down to the eagle of  America.  That the symbol of power since early history has been a scavenger should speak to us.  But somehow it doesn’t.  Fear, distrust and ignorance drive us into our imagined communities, not seeing the realities that connect us behind the myths that divide.  And so the story continues written in the blood of millions.

Political lies continued to swim in human blood.  In Hungary and Iraq honest people were encouraged to rise up against tyranny only to be abandoned when they did so in good faith believing that they would be supported.  The Hungarians listened to Radio Free Europe spew its propaganda East.  Not realizing that this was only a tactic to undermine Soviet stability they rose up and awaited the aid implicitly promised.  They stood firm as the Soviet tanks rolled over the Hungarian frontier and into the streets of Budapest.  Still gazing West in desperation as they were slaughtered, the survivors later lost in the void of the Gulag.  The Shi’as of southern Iraq encouraged by Bush senior to rebel were again abandoned as were the Kurds of northern Iraq.  How much different is this to the guarantees given to the Czechs and others prior to the war.  Horribly the Tutsi and Hutu at different times learned that ‘Never Again!’ was hollow rhetoric as did the people of Srebrenica in their turn.

Domestic persecution so abhorred in the Third Reich still visits us as well.  From the Cold War where America and the Soviet Union tried to outdo each other with show trials and mock patriotism to the Patriot Act and Canada’s anti-terrorism laws and Arizona’s yellow sombrero law (see previous post The Yellow Sombrero) we have repeated the ideas and concepts of Hitler and Himmler.  People persecuted, hounded for what they believed or what they were not what they had done.  Over one million Canadians were blacklisted as communists/socialists.  Rarely were any Soviet spies.  That was not the point.  It was the idea that was feared, not the people.  The idea needed to be destroyed lest it upset life of the power elite.  Today it is Muslims.  The ‘experts’ talk about Islamic culture and say it is violent, that it praises terror, that it is regressive.  What they don’t say is, like Nazi depictions of Jewish culture, it doesn’t exist.  It is a fabrication.  There is no ‘Islamic Culture.’  There are several Arab, Persian, Turkic and Malay cultures.  Most North Americans see ‘Islamic Culture’ and think Arab Culture but it in itself is not a monolith and Malay is the largest Muslim ethnic group.  If the threat is real why would it be represented by a mythical creation?  It seems only that some threat must exist.  But why?  What is it that the powers that be don’t want us to see.  Today we can look back at the Third Reich and see what Hitler and Goebbels didn’t want the world to know.  Will historians 65 years from now be revealing abominable secrets buried behind American imperialism?  Research the provisions and justifications of the Enabling Laws introduced by German Chancellor Hitler in 1934 to see a reflection of the Patriot Act and its ilk.  Racial profiling of Mexicans and Muslims is no different than that used by Nazi administrations.  Look at the propaganda below showing the same basic caricature used in two contexts but really about the same people, Semites.

Mussolini said that fascism could more accurately be called corporatism.  Is that not the culture we have today in Canada and the United States?  Is not the corporation and the financial sector the new Rome?   Is it not the sum total of existence, that which gives meaning to our lives?  We are told constantly that there is not enough money, enough wealth to maintain the welfare state that was to raise all boats; to create a floor not a ceiling to use William Beveridge’s phrase.  Apparently the neo-conservative Right has taken him at his word and want to cut the floor out from under the powerless in order to extend their ceiling to the heavens.  Corporations steal our money to fund their failures.  And still George Will this morning on This Week (ABC) claims that the crisis in Greece is the masses thinking they are entitled when their is no money left to fund such entitlements.  What better example of self-entitlement than the bail out of General Motors or Lehman Sachs and the rest.  They told us they were too big to fail.  They told us we needed to give them more of our money for our own sakes.  Those who would now eject us from our own homes, destroy our retirements and deny our children of the same education and career opportunities as their children feel so entitled as to believe that such behaviour is an act of gratitude.  Don’t tell me there is not money to fund entitlements.  You mean there is no money to fund those who don’t belong to your class Mr. Will.

But corporations have always held the people in disdain.  They always believed in a natural leader class.  That is why so many of them supported Hitler and nazi ideology, before and during the war.  Ford enriched itself on slave labour in Nazi occupied Europe.  IBM vaulted to the lead in tabulation later computation by designing the system that sent six million Jews to the gas chamber.  President Roosevelt had to relieve Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, from his post as ambassador to the Great Britain because of his praise of Hitler and Nazism and his repeated effort to undermine British resolve in the face of what he considered a superior German system. Do we believe that suddenly they changed their philosophy when the war was over?  Are we that naive?  Or just so afraid that if we say such things somehow we will be next on the train to the camps.

German education under the Nazis convinced young Germans that they were superior by blood to the other races of the world.  They twisted ancient northern European myths to create an image of the Teutonic race as the defenders of civilization against the barbarian hordes.  Anything that might bring that image into question was dropped from the curriculum.  Self appointed ‘experts’ shored up the image with quasi-science and bad academics.  Education seen as the conduit to maintain the social order whether or not that order is right.  Sound familiar?  Does to me.  I see it every day in the classroom and I am both sad and afraid.  I know where it will lead, not might lead.  Young Americans today are brainwashed into believing that the American way is not jut the best way but the only legitimate way.  Other cultures, other peoples, other values are ridiculed or vilified.  The lie of democracy used to shade the evil intent:  Power.

So what have we learned in sixty-five years?  What has happened to the possibilities of 1945?  Today they are just the puppets of power.  Power corrupts.  But mostly it perpetuates.  Those who have it seek to keep it.  Those who don’t lament their suffering as the Athenian generals counseled the Melians in Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War,“for you know as well as we do that right … is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” or they live Zapata’s words:  “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

Today I mourn not because nazism and fascism were destroyed but because they survived.  I mourn because the ideals of Adolph Hitler are the ideals of the Obama administration and American Imperialism.  They are cloaked in the facade of democracy and humanist rhetoric but they are the same.  I mourn because my country, like so many others, complacently accepts this outrage lacking the courage to die on our feet if needs must.  We play the Jester to America’s Lear.  Around the world today the celebrations are not of the end of something but of its perpetuation in secrecy.  Hitler’s mistake was to open a window and let the world see.  That could not be countenanced if the power elites elsewhere were to continue without public outrage.  Secrecy reigns once more and all is well in Washington as on Wall Street.  So celebrate, but excuse me if I weep.

Conservatives are often the culprits in both countries though not exclusively as the reference to Clinton shows.  It is not really that the Liberals are all that chaste.  But Conservatives are always lecturing us to be choirboys, seemingly forgetting that being a choirboy can be hazardous to your virginity.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Gerda Munsinger Affair that scandalized the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.  Apparently Gerda had done the rounds of the Conservative party leadership including the minister of defence.  She was rumoured to have connections to the East German secret police.  The story was disseminated in the early 1960s, likely by the Kennedy administration who worked tirelessly to oust poor old Dief and install the more likable (at least to Kennedy) Lester Pearson.

More recently there was the scandal over Maxime Bernier leaving secret documents at his girlfriend’s home.  Pundits at the time wondered why he would risk his political career by dating a  woman with biker connections who had once worked as an exotic dancer.  Ah! our intrepid media, a brain trust if there ever was one.  I can give you two very large reasons up front it you would like.  If the reporters don’t realize why they should talk to their cameramen because they always seemed to place the reason front and center.

I always knew Betty Davis eyes were a popular look but Sarah Palin hair?

Now we have the dynamic duo of scandal, Rahim Jaffer and wife Helena Guergis.  Allegations have been brought to the prime minister’s attention of some shenanigans by Ms. Guergis and she was asked to resign from cabinet and was at the same time expelled from caucus.  Although no official word has surfaced as to what specifically she is supposed to have done rumours abound.  The only observation I will make is that having a minister resign is a common tactic to ease pressure and embarrassment for the government.  But also expelling the member from caucus in one fell swoop is not an every day occurrence.  Whatever this is Harper must think it makes him and his government, which is the same thing, look really, really bad.  I can hardly wait I am so excited with anticipation.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at her husband Rahim Jaffer a former Conservative MP from Alberta, land of cold hearts and toxic waste.  Apparently, Mr. Jaffer was internalizing some toxic waste of his own last September when he was pulled over by Ontario police.  He was speeding, drunk and cocaine was found in his car.  In a plea bargain the more serious impaired and drug possession charges were dropped and he pled guilty to the lesser charge of careless driving.  Wait for it.  That’s not the best part.

The reason for pleading Mr. Jaffer down was the Crown’s decision that conviction was unlikely.  Why you might ask?  Well the Ontario Keystone Cops refused to let the man see his own lawyer on request and made the poor man get naked.  That’s right, naked.   Now I know we hear constantly in the media that there is a shortage of cops out there and the workload is getting pretty heavy.  Dalton McGuinty says these little slip ups will happen from time to time.  But really now, give these poor guys some R and R and let them see their wives and girlfriends once in a while.  We can’t have police roaming the highways looking for some unsuspecting speeder to fulfill their fantasies.

Now I could be interpreting this wrong.  After all I am reading it in a CBC report where the wording could be read another way.  The actual quote is “… repeatedly denying Jaffer access to his own lawyers and a strip search after he was pulled over on a rural road …”.  So was Jaffer asking for a strip search.  Maybe he’s thought the silhouette of his body in the moonlight would bring a soft sigh and a warning rather than arrest.  Either way our police need to find better ways to relieve the tension.  Perhaps that could be a new use for those tasers they are so fond of.

Of course, even if the Crown had moved forward on the cocaine charges Jaffer could have used Richard Hatfield’s defence.  Hatfield, then Conservative premier of New Brunswick, was found at Fredericton airport with a bag of marijuana in his luggage.  He denied it belonged to him and had the police dust the bag for prints.  When his weren’t found charges did not proceed.

So thank you for being consistent, Conservative party.  Hypocrisy is what you are best at.  Good thing cause you aren’t good for anything else.  The Liberals may be slimy, power-hungry spawn of Satan who would pimp their mother for a vote, but at least they admit it.  The Conservative choir may sing like angels but up close there cassocks smell of booze and stale sex.

Such is the dilemma of the Canadian people this fall.  Michael Ignatieff vows he will bring down the government at the first opportunity.  An easy vow to make knowing the NDP is in no shape for an election and would be inclined to support the Harper government rather than fly into debt they cannot pay.  Actually Layton and the NDP had been using the same strategy vowing never to support the Conservative government in the knowledge that the Liberals at that time feared an election.  And so the brinkmanship and the nonsense continue.  Caught in the middle of the sandbox, surrounded by surly children each wanting to be King for a day or however long a government lasts these day, is the Canadian people.  Mired in recession, casualty counts from an unpopular war rising and being shafted by the so called friend (U. S.) that dragged us into this mess, Canadians are in no mood for childish behaviour.

The sad thing is that minority governments can be the best government.  Forced as they are to compromise in order to govern, history has supplied us with numerous examples of successful minority governments.  Much of the social safety net we are so proud of today was the result of minority government as were our national anthem and our flag.  Minority government can also be full term government as in the Davis minority in Ontario during the early 1980s and the King federal government of the early 1920s.  Both of those lasted four years.

In this round of minorities the egos of the players get in the way.  Mr. Harper strikes at Mr. Ignatieff’s narcissism and lengthy sojourn to the land of the drive-thru gun shop.  Mr. Ignatieff parries and replies with a thrust at Mr. Harper’s dogmatism.  The King-makers are the 2 court jesters.  Painted harlequins they prance around the two main party leaders, now getting smacked aside, now being embraced and cajoled.  Their patrons laugh and sneer at them at caucus meetings and use them as they wish in the House of Commons.  They stand as the most fitting symbol of the current state of Canadian politics:  parliament would be funny if so many people weren’t getting hurt.

Arguing that we should avoid an election now because we would just get more of the same begs the question whether we should ever again bother with such an ineffective, expensive farce.  More of the same is what we will get for the foreseeable future.  Even if one of the head knobs were to form a majority government, nothing much would change except that the opposition parties would feel even more secure in mugging for the cameras, portraying themselves as the great champion of the Canadian people.  No my friends Canadian politics has changed.  We can hope that Harper’s Hamlet and Ignatieff’s Laertes politically die on each other’s swords but the hope is probably vain as who might follow may be no better.  No my friends we must come to the realization that the only lions left in Rome are in the arena.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with the axiom that freedom of speech does not include yelling fire in a crowded theatre.  While this is somewhat out of context of the actual ruling that Holmes was making at the time, the concept serves me well here.  If I am in a crowded auditorium or arena of some sort and I falsely begin to yell fire, it is reasonable to assume that someone may panic.  One would suspect that it was my intent to create panic as no other logical motive exists.  Panic, psychologists affirm, is very contagious.  If the building is crowded and everyone rushes toward the exits at once injuries and even death are likely if not certain.  The premise here is simple.  I have misinformed those around me who have no time or ability to judge the veracity of my assertion.  In the absence of an alternative voice shouting that there is no fire and assuming no sane person would falsely call the alarm, everyone in the building would assume that there was indeed a fire.  It is therefore prudent for them to attempt to exit the building as quickly as possible given that a clear and present threat to their lives appears to exist.  The bottleneck created by a large number of individuals acting without guidance crushing the exits insures a tragic outcome.  Because my speech led to a tragedy that I should have easily foreseen, barring any mental abnormality, I am responsible for that tragedy and should shoulder the consequences.  If someone dies, I should be charged and found guilty of at least intentional manslaughter if not a higher count as my actions were not only reckless but frivolous.

People like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others of their ilk have been yelling fire at the top of their lungs.  They are not presenting alternative opinions and reasoned criticism but rather sensationalism in a hunt for ratings and top spot on the neo-con rubber chicken circuit.  The American people caught up in the fear mongering presented as journalism by these self-important gurus of Right-wing thought are reeling under a deluge of misinformation.  Hearing screams across the airwaves that Obama is going to murder their grandmothers and turn their children into socialist robots, fear takes over and few people make good decisions when they are afraid.  For the record, one more time, I have read Obama’s policies and watched his performance over the last several months and I can affirm categorically that he is not a socialist nor are any of his policies socialist.  On health care he is simply proposing what amounts to an extension of the existing medicaid program to provide for a voluntary opt in.  It will not solve the current problems in health care and will be more expensive than it should be because the major health insurance companies will still control the bulk of the market.  As for his speech to school children, asking young Americans to write an essay on how they might help their president and their country hardly seems indoctrination unless you follow the philosophies of Ayn Rand and believe that you should never do anything to help your community or your country.  How is it indoctrination if the children themselves will be giving their thoughts to the president on how to make a better America.  That sounds more like patriotism than indoctrination.  After all what is a country if it is not its people working towards common goals?  I thought that was the big complaint of the Republicans and Right Wing activists that the Democrats were not listening to the voice of the people.

Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, mired in two foreign wars that they cannot understand and see no end to, the people of America are confused and frightened.  America no longer looks like the giant it did only a few years ago.  Americans now doubt the certainty of their childhood, that America is the most powerful and wealthy state in the world.  It’s economic dominance in tatters and its military failing abroad there is not much security left in the American psyche.  So what do these super-Americans do?  Why exploit the situation for personal gain of course.  After all that is the American way.  Lacking a coherent criticism of the Obama administration’s policies and fearing the popular surge that brought him into office in the last election, the far Right has reached into the past to resurrect the great Satan, the eternal boogie man of the Cold War, Socialism.  A word they know will fan the fear and paranoia already extant.  I see another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in our future.

Now people are showing up at presidential appearances sporting assault weapons.  I wonder how these same shock jocks would have reacted had someone shown up at a Bush appearance with an AR15?  Oh wait I seem to remember security ejecting a couple of people from an event for simply wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.  In America you have the right to bear arms at a presidential event but not insults.  Never mind, we on the Left prefer to take people out with footwear,  not guns.  How long before some confused and misinformed American attempts to assassinate President Obama in a righteous rage brought on by the words of these depraved disseminators of dissociative behaviour?  Or an already disturbed individual seizes his opportunity to be a hero or just to become immortal like Lee Harvey Oswald?  The stage is set.  It may no longer be an if but a when.  Rhetoric is already turning to action and unless the flames are dowsed soon it is only a matter of time before at least an attempt is made on the president’s life.  Like the reckless person in the theatre yelling fire, Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of the provocateurs should then be held accountable for their actions.  They should be charged as conspirators and if the attempt is successful, assassins.  The full weight of the law should be brought to bear on them just as it would be on me if I yell fire when there is none and someone dies.  Their actions make them as guilty as if they pulled the trigger themselves.

But back to unemployment and the current financial situation.  Disasters like the current crisis should be learning tools.  They are opportunities to rethink a number of previous ideas and practices, from how we regulate financial markets to how we respond to citizens in crisis.  On the latter our system of assistance at all levels needs to be reviewed.  Our social safety net developed ad hoc, various programs appearing at various times as needs arose or ideas presented themselves.  It is time now to systematize their delivery. 

Every Canadian political party has at one time or another toyed with the concept of a guaranteed annual income.  The Conservative Party preferred to call it negative income taxing.  But all parties have considered this basic idea.   There are a number of draw backs which prevented implementation of the policy; start-up costs, bureaucratic reorganization and federal provincial relations.

Under a guaranteed annual income scheme the government would sent every citizen a flat monthly stipend.  Whatever a citizen earned over that would be taxable.  Therefore those who are not in need of the money would have it taxed back.  Our current Old Age Security program works in a similar way.  It is universal.  Those Canadians of wealth declare it as income and end up paying it all back to the government.  A guaranteed annual income would work differently in that it would not be taxable.  Only income earned over that amount would be taxed.  But there would be no personal deductions on your income tax including dependency deductions (because your dependents would be receiving their own guaranteed income).  Not only would personal income tax deductions disappear so would virtually every welfare program now in existence.  Old Age Security (mentioned above), provincial old age supplements where they exist, employment insurance (no need to worry about eligibility arguments), general welfare, disability pensions, family allowance, child tax benefit and the list goes on which shows the waste involved in the current delivery of our social safety net.  Not only would these be replaced by the guaranteed annual income but their bureaucracies would become redundant thus saving millions off the civil service payroll. 

The first year of a guaranteed annual income would be costly.  After the first year though the program would begin to pay back in savings more than it cost initially.  Within a few years governments would have the luxury of lowering taxes or investing the surpluses created.  Of course this idea of short term pain for long term gain would reverse the current philosophy of all Western governments who advocate long term pain for short term gain.  There would need to be a transition plan as the size of the civil service shrank substantially but this problem is not insurmountable.  One of the benefits of a guaranteed annual income is the stability it provides to the economy.  A secure and stable economy would create sustainable growth which would over time absorb the loss in government jobs.  Further, the ability to rely on a base income would encourage individuals to pursue ideas they might now forego for fear that basic family needs could not be met during start-up periods.  This also counters the argument that such a scheme would sap people’s initiative.  That criticism is based on the cynical myth that people only work because they have to.  Like all half-truths this myth has persisted.  The full truth is that people only work at jobs they hate and where they are abused because they have to.   Employers would certainly have to behave better than they currently do to keep valued employees.  A huge stumbling block here in Canada is the idiocy of our federal-provincial relationship.  But once the Canadian public was properly educated in what a guaranteed annual income would mean for them and the country, pity the ignorant government who tried to screw it up.  They might well face the kind of political assassination that happened to the Progressive Conservatives back in 1993.  The Canadian electorate is a fickle lot so piss them off at your peril. 

In the end a guaranteed annual income is the logical solution to our income supplement programs.  Citizens in most modern democracies expect their governments to play a supportive role in their lives.  Therefore, a guaranteed annual income is rational, cost effective, efficient and just plain the right thing to do.

A study of university professors in Ontario (Canada) reported students were immature, lazy and unprepared.  They also lacked the research skills that might yet save them from going blithely forth to their, and our, doom.  The so-called most informed generation had little knowledge and what they did possess was superficial at best and outright myth at worst.  For example, Canadian troops, in one form or another, have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2002.  Yet when I ask students at beginning of semester where Afghanistan is only 1 or 2  can answer correctly.  None of them have a clear understanding of how we got there and what we are trying to accomplish.  But if I ask whether they support their troops the majority answer in the affirmative.  How can you support your troops if you don’t know where they are or why they are there? 

Something not reported was that many of them are functionally illiterate.  A functional illiterate can read and write but with severe limitations.  They could perhaps read a menu (without the pictures found in fast food joints the purpose of which is a recognition of the extent of illiteracy); they could read the headlines of a newspaper but would struggle with the content.  If they get news at all it is from television and even then they are lucky to fully comprehend the story as their vocabularies are woefully inadequate. 

Are teachers to blame?  They are certainly the easiest target.  They stand on the front lines in the classroom day after day.  Surely they are aware that what passes for education today is a hollow shell.   The problem is that people outside the education system can’t see the forest of bureaucrats hacking away gleefully on the ability of the trees to teach.  Teachers have marginally more say as to what goes on in the education system than the school janitor.  Decisions are made by bean counters and other bureaucratic nitwits shuffling papers in some climate controlled paradise.  They wouldn’t know what end of a white board marker to use let alone how to fire up the data video projector.  They love flow charts but anything with real people involved like a classroom, forget it.  Those bipedal chatterboxes in the hallways are clients or products to them not kids with a life that demands preparation.  The business mentality that has invaded our schools has created good cogs but poor humans. 

This is not the first study to raise an alarm that something horrible is happening in our society.  It will likely not be the last.  What I have yet to come to grips with is why we allow this to continue.  Maybe the reaction by students in one of my classes to the survey sheds some light.  They laughed.  They had been insulted and they thought it was funny.  They had been called immature and they accepted it. 

In a separate study this generation of high school graduates was found to be closer to their grandparents than their parents in attitudes and outlook.  Fresh-faced youths interviewed for the news report merrily expressed their optimism for the future.  The current recession/depression concerned them not at all; nor did the two foreign wars that are going badly for western powers.  They seemed oblivious in their certainty that life would unfold as it should.  But is this optimism or naiveté?  When I was their age I too was optimistic.  I believed that we could create a better, more just, and more humane society.  I believed the future could bring an end to unnecessary suffering and ease the pain of the rest.  And of course I believed that I would find love and adventure.  Optimism in youth should be a given.  I still strive for that better society.  Change is slow but it is measurable.

However, I knew the dangers presented by an illegal and unjust war in Southeast Asia.  I realized the fragility of life under the umbrella of nuclear weapons.  I watched the machinations of government destroy people’s lives without conscience and knew only herculean efforts would bring about meaningful change.  I was optimistic not that things were great but that things could change; that most people were basically good and if we banded together there was little we could not accomplish.  The key was being in as well as of my world.  My father always complained that I was an idealist but it was an idealism grounded in reality.  I am not saying that young people today should rent their clothes and wail at the fates all the time.  I don’t now and I didn’t then.  Rest and recreation, which I admit was sometimes chemically induced when I was their age, has always been important to me.  I am definitely a Type B personality.  But denying the obvious is not escapism it is just dumb.

This generation thinks everything is basically wonderful and Bill Gates will fix everything else.  That truly is a telling reminder of the 1950s.  In the Leave It To Beaver era housewives wore pearls to vacuum and were ditsy redheads whose antics would attract disapproving but loving smiles from their husbands.  The 1950s was the clean cut illusion of what life in North America was supposed to be.  Ike was in the White House and he would fix any problems that might arise.  There was a sense that the world had been settled with the defeat of Naziism.  There was a comfort and certainty about society.  But it bore little resemblance to the reality.  Many teens of the era, particularly those of interest to ‘popular’ researchers, knew nothing of the world outside their immaculate suburbs.  Blacks were smiling Rochesters singing and dancing, happy in their simple life.  Mom was always home to make a hot meal and gush over the latest kitchen marvel.  These young people had not yet learned of the horrors of life in the ghettos of the North or shantytowns of the deep South.  They had no idea that after they kissed mom goodbye in the morning she would turn to a bottle or pill to get through her day, both gleefully prescribed by a male dominated medical profession who thought the little filly was just suffering from a bout of female hysterics.  While conscientious studies chronicled the dark side of society, there was an entire industry within social science to prop up the illusion and a flickering television to inject the social sedative. 

How did we end up with a generation that knows little and worships the fatuous?  Shouldn’t we have seen this coming and done something about it?  For the past 30 or so years successive political leaders in Canada and the United States have been trying to fix the education system.  But wait a minute.  When did it break?  There is the key to the problem.  An Ontario education minister in the 1990s said everything we need to know about the problems we see with our youth today.  He brought his senior bureaucrats into a meeting and told them to create a crisis in education because he was going to fix it.  I will not hold it against this particular man that he himself did not finish high school.  After all neither did I.  I completed only grade 9 while he went on through grade 11.  The difference between us is I never stopped learning.  He did.  I quit high school for social reasons; he quit because he believed education was unnecessary.  Like many on the Right, he believed the sole purpose of education was to inculcate vocational skills to suit the current job market.  But there is more.  I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories but I do believe there can occur a confluence of interests.  As the franchise had been expanded in the 1960s and 1970s to include the previously disenfranchised groups, women and minorities but also the lower classes, life became more complicated for those who wielded the instruments of power in western society.  Democracy is a messy, chaotic, inefficient, and if you are a corporate capitalist inconvenient, method of governing a country.  More people in the mix just slows the process down further.  Knowledge is power and knowledge was increasing in groups who had been cheated by the status quo. 

You can’t just stop teaching in schools altogether so you need to make it appear as if everyone is getting an education

when they are not.  The solution arrived at was a return to the 3 Rs, Readin’, Ritin’ and ‘Rithmetic.  I have always loved this little phrase about education because it is the mantra of morons.  At least people who can’t spell because only one of the words really begins with the letter R.  (For those educated in our current system the three words are actually Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.)  The fact that it usually comes from people on the political Right gives me added joy.  But what do you expect from a political movement that considers Ann Coulter a seminal thinker?  The 3 Rs is Right-wing code for let’s gut the content of education.  History, civics, geography, anything that expanded the human in our young people was brushed aside as a waste.  Critical thinking was replaced by rote learning.  No wonder students get bored at school.  How many times can you recite the times table or set formulas?  Add to this little mix forcing teachers to become boosters for the little cretins and voilà a generation that can be lied to and manipulated to support any atrocity, any blunder and George W. Bush for two terms.  Stupidity should be a choice not a given. 

Well the Right got what they wanted, a crisis.  And what might you ask about the children of the people who did this to education.  Don’t worry.  They are in private schools that still provide education.  Nice how everything works out for the best for those in charge.

The Good

The Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago focused among other things on the exclusion of Cuba.  President Obama appears ready to engage Cuba but on what terms.  A return to pre-Castro Cuba is not an option, at least for the people of the island.  Fidel Castro was an icon of the 20th century.  His legacy will live on in Cuba for generations to come.  Some people hate him, some people love him.  Castro has done marvelous things for Cuba.  Did he make mistakes?  Yes, of course he did.  But the benefits to the island far outweigh any negative. 

It is true that elections as we know them have not been held in Cuba since Castro marched into Havana to seize power January 1, 1959.  Oh wait, elections hadn’t happened in Cuba for a long time prior to Castro occupying the presidential palace.  So maybe U. S. hatred of Cuba wasn’t about democratic ideals.  I know, it was about land reform.  How dare Castro distribute land legally owned by faceless American corporations to those greedy campesinos.  Or maybe it was the public education or health care that offended the moral sense of America.  Whatever it was, for the sake of the Cuban people, I sure hope the Americans don’t get their way and dismantle it. 

The Bad

I have always wondered what the Castro revolution might have looked like had it not faced the enmity of the world’s most powerful state since its infancy.  All states while under siege from a foreign power centralize authority and keep a fairly tight reign on political factions.  For example Canadians should read the War Measure Act.  To think that U. S. behaviour did not affect Cuba would be naive to the extreme.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its patron and source of much of its foreign capital.  The island has been facing economic hardships since the 1990s, not because Castro’s economic policies were flawed, but because the United States won the Cold War. 

People will follow anyone who offers them bread.  Castro gave them bread but much more in the bargain.  While he was forced to keep tight political control he did not sink to using death squads as most American supported Latin American regimes have done.  Cuban jails hold political prisoners as does America’s today.  Just ask Leonard Peltier of the American Indian Movement.  Barak Obama has a chance here to show that he is truly a different kind of American politician.  Can he reach out America’s hand in friendship without clenching the fist and forcing a wad of America political culture back down the throat of Cubans.  A minor incident gives me some inkling of what is to come.  When questioned about a book he received as a gift from Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, Obama made a joke.  The book was a chronicle of the abuses of the South American continent by American and European powers.  I know that would leave me laughing in my

The Ugly

armchair.  (The book is The Open Veins of Latin America:  Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano) 

Our intrepid leader, Stephen Harper, in his usual right off the hay wagon style said that he supported warming up relations between Washington and Havana but reassured his supporters back home that he was still an anti-communist conservative.  I must have missed that class back at university.  The one where we studied pro-communist conservatives because I have never heard of them before.  It just shows that none of us are as smart as we think we are.

For the Cuban people, Fidel Castro passing from the political scene, should be and I suspect is for most, a moment of reflection.  Fidel’s health has been failing in recent years.  He has had to hand over political control to his brother Raul although I suspect he is no farther away from the levers of power than his health forces him.  Raul reminds me of those reasonable facsimiles one could send in instead of actual boxtops to receive a baking soda submarine.  He is just not the real thing.  Regardless it is not Raul that the Americans have to deal with, it is the legacy of a giant, Fidel Castro.

It is interesting to note in current times that those who most argue for a minimalist state are those who also argue for greater state coercive power.  The New Right does not want the state to be involved in our lives except to keep THOSE people under control and we all know who we are.  When they talk of a minimalist state they are referring to the Hobbesian Grand Watchman.  Government should keep us secure.  Good idea on the surface.  But justice would keep us even more secure without having heavily armed paramilitaries running our streets with guns and tasers (see past articles on RCMP love of tasers). 

The slogan so commonly chanted at rallies and marches, No Justice - No Peace, is not a threat but a statement of fact.  In an unjust society motivation to violence is never far away. Where justice prevails only those few who suffer from anti-social disorders would create a problem diminishing the need for state coercive power.  We could save young people entering the police force the psychological damage done them by a training regimen that makes them the social problem they are today.  Saving not only them but their families and friends as well.  Current police personnel could be put into rehabilitation facilities where mental health experts can attempt to salvage something human in them.  Okay.  Okay.  I digress.  My ranting aside my point remains valid.  Where people feel they are treated justly, they are less motivated to destabilize the society by violence. Less violence; less need for coercion.  Simple.

As factory workers and the service workers who rely on their commerce lose their homes, anger is bound to rise.  It is not that we think that everyone should be paid exactly the same or live exactly the same lifestyles.  Equality is not sameness.  But there should be some relationship between what someone can legitimately expect to receive from society and what they contribute to the society.  Here in Canada we have a game called hockey.  It is a fun game and I have fond memories of playing it myself in a vacant lot or on the roadway.  But today grown men are paid millions of dollars to chase a frozen rubber disc around an ice pad.  Is there any connection between contribution and recompense here?  America has its equivalent baseball and football.  Today, men (mostly anyway) are receiving multi-million dollar thank yous for driving companies into the ground.   Only bad management and arrogance can explain General Motors plunge from number one to bankruptcy in fifty years.  Especially since the number of cars sold today is exponentially higher than the number sold then.  Apparently they not only did not gain any of the increase but lost the customers they had.  Quality management there, eh?  With grown men playing for millions while children scavenge to survive; with incompetence rewarded by the very people it destroyed; how can anyone expect peace and calm? 

For a practical example of a peaceful yet poor society one only need look at the Tanzania of Julius Nyerere.  Nyerere retired from office and returned to live in the village in which he had been born.  There was no coup or assassination attempts.  Tanzania is a very poor country and Nyerere died as poor as any other citizen.  Justice works.  But in North America we see increasing calls for more police, tougher sentencing, greater restrictions of citizen rights.  The Patriot Act and the anti-terrorism laws in Canada are just the tip of the iceberg.  (One thing I will give Americans, they always have neat names for their laws ).  Terrorism is a convenient excuse to accelerate a process that has been going on for decades.  Particularly since the expansion of the franchise to all formerly discriminated groups, we have seen a steady gutting of the political sphere and an aggressive campaign for control by economic players.  Can’t have THOSE people thinking they can determine the course of their own lives.  If you go back and watch the scene in the film Remains of the Day where Anthony Hopkins character is being ridiculed by the participants of the pro-Nazi meeting you will witness an example of the attitudes of any of our current business leaders.  The very concept of democracy is ridiculed. 

And there is the problem.  Justice means sacrifice.  Justice requires honour and humanity.  Police are cheaper.  So lock your doors tonight but don’t feel all that secure.  Remember the words of Phil Ochs’ song ‘Outside a Small Circle of Friends:’

Living in the ghetto with the coloured and the poor

The rats have joined the babies who are living on the floor

Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops

But they got too much already and besides we got the cops

For now anyway, for now.

Anyone who has ever sat in on an Anglican Church Board of Management meeting will be familiar with the words, ‘We’ve never done it that way before’.  Change is a scary thing to most people.  So why should we change our electoral system.  We have elections.  Governments get created.  So what is wrong?  In the United States, which uses the same system, the answer is a simple nothing.  America has a very narrow political culture and this is reflected in their two party political system.  The United States lacks a genuine conservatism and an indigenous socialism.  All Americans are some shade of liberal, from the classical laissez-faire liberalism of a George Bush to the reform liberalism of a Ted Kennedy.  With only two parties in play the single seat plurality system works just fine because it mimics a majoritarian system.  Once the universe of ideas expands the system begins to break down and cause problems. 

Proponents argue that the single seat plurality system (SSP) or first-past-the-post is preferable because it can produce a majority government with a minority of the vote.  The underlying assumption here is that majority governments are better governments because they are more stable.  The evidence in Canada shows that SSP fails to deliver on this approximately half of the time.  Half of all elections since 1921 when Canada’s political landscape began to expand beyond the Conservatives and Liberals, have resulted in minority governments.  Most of those minority governments have lasted two years or more with the odd exception.  Some like Mackenzie King’s 1921 minority lasted a full four years.  Provincially in Ontario, the only province with a healthy multi-party system, the final Davis Conservative minority government lasted from 1981 to 1985.  It is difficult in the face of the evidence to argue that minority government is inherently unstable.  Minority governments have often shown themselves to be very legislatively active as well.  Many of our most favoured policies such as our current health care system were the product of minority governments.  So good policy gets passed and elections are not held every other day, so what is so terrible about minority governments?  Of course you have to know how to govern.  A minority government forces compromise, negotiation and cooperation among the parties.  If you are a simple minded ideologue who cannot fathom that other people might have ideas and you must always get your own way then yes a minority government would be a problem (Not to mention any names but we all know who we are talking about here).    But those sorts of people should be discouraged from public office anyway.  Look what happened to Germany when they elected someone like that in the 1930s. 

The most consistent problem facing Canada is unity.  At times it has reached crisis level as in 1995.  SSP contributes to and exacerbates this very problem.  Our current system rewards regional parties and punishes national parties.  Let’s look at the 1993 election results.  The Bloc Quebeςois received 13% of the national vote to win 54 seats in the House of Commons and become Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (great irony); the Reform Party received 19% of the national vote to win 52 seats just behind the Bloc; the Conservatives received 16% of the national vote to win 2 seats.  Now you don’t have to be a mathematician or a political junkie to look at this and know that something is wrong.  The two regional parties (the Bloc in Quebec and Reform in the West) received 27  and 26 times respectively the number of seats in the House compared to the Conservatives with 3% less and 3% more respectively of the popular vote.  Therefore in our system it pays to focus on a regional agenda fanning the flames of distrust between the West and Central Canada and between English and French Canada.  If there ever was evidence of the absence of character of our elected representatives this is it.  Our electoral system is tearing our country apart and they refuse to change it because they receive petty personal benefits from it.  Any parliament can change the electoral system in a matter of days if they want to.  It requires only a simple majority vote in the House of Commons and Senate.  Shame on them that they have so little regard for the nation they purport to represent.  

The more obvious and general problem with SSP is its distortion of democracy.  Democracy is supposed to mean rule by the people or the mob depending on your view.  Aristotle, from whom I derived the name for this blog, saw democracy as the best of the worst systems of government.  It appears today that many who claim to defend it are really supporting what Aristotle called a Polity, rule by the many.  In reality we are actually an elected Oligarchy, rule by the wealthy and powerful.  SSP supports this system very well.  Proportional representation would weaken but not undermine it.  As you know from my previous post no electoral system meets my standard for democracy.  But proportional representation (PR) is a step in the right direction. 

The critics of PR say it leads to perpetual minorities but I have already established that minority government does not necessarily equate to bad government.  They argue, even in the face of the historical evidence in Canada that minority government in this country is relatively stable, that should PR be adopted this would break down and elections would be a constant fact of life.  The example of choice is invariably Italy.  Now it is true that at some times Italy changes prime ministers more often than I change my underwear.  There coalition governments have been known to be quite fragile.  But that is the result of Italian political culture and not proportional representation.  Anyone familiar with Italy knows that North Italy and Southern Italy are almost two different planets.  Critics never seem to want to talk about Sweden or Germany or The Netherlands, only Italy.  Governments are stable in stable political cultures and unstable in unstable political cultures.  So there is no reason to believe that Parliament Hill would become a grand national game of musical chairs because we adopt PR.

Does the tail wag the dog in PR systems?  This is another common argument.  Proportional representation gives too much power to small parties.  I have alluded to something of that difficulty in my previous article on the upcoming Israeli elections.  Yes smaller parties become necessary partners to form governments in this type of system.  This can be a problem in Israel particularly because it is a pure proportional system.  The entire country is one single constituency so that even a party with one or two percent of the vote can win a seat.  If we were to adopt PR here in Canada it would be absurd to attempt to make the entire country one large political constituency.  As now we would divide the country up in numerous constituencies, much larger than our current ridings.  For example we might take six of our current ridings and meld them together.  In that new riding the vote would be counted and six seats would be apportioned to the parties.  This is but one example.  We might divide Canada in any of a number of ways but divide we must.  If we take the six example I have used a party would need at least 10% of the vote in the enlarged riding to receive one of the six seats.  So in Canada we are not talking about parties with one or two percent seating members in the House.  Smaller parties would still have influence and a voice but would not wag the dog.  And as much as larger parties need the smaller parties to form governments the smaller need the larger to influence policy so it is in both interests to compromise, negotiate and cooperate. 

Proportional representation would benefit Canada by easing our regional tensions and expanding our democratic culture.  Liberals, Greens or NDPs in Alberta would finally be recognized and have MPs who sympathize with and share their views to appeal to as would Conservatives and NDPs in Quebec.  There is only one real argument against adopting this system:  The self-serving pettiness of the people who have the ability to make the change.

Jack Layton is reported to have held a telephone meeting with his caucus which was recorded by a Conservative member.  The article then goes on to deal with the issues surrounding such a deal. 

But nowhere, does it question the ethics of a Canadian political party conducting what amounts to electronic surveillance on one of its opponents.  If I am reading this article correctly and the information is true, then we have a grave situation in Ottawa.  Anybody ever here of ‘Watergate’?  A very similar act brought down the most powerful politician of his time, President Richard Nixon of the United States. 

Here is what needs to happen now if integrity is a word still understood in Ottawa. 

1. The information must be confirmed and the Conservative member publicly identified.  If it is not correct then CTV needs to clarify and apologize. 
2. The Speaker of the House needs to take the matter under advisement to determine what sanction the House needs to apply.
3. The RCMP need to be consulted for possible criminal charges.
4. Stephen Harper needs to immediately apologize to the Canadian people (and actually mean it). 
5. Canadians need to make a statement by contacting their individual MPs from all parties and put them on notice that such behaviour will not be tolerated. 

I lived through the time when governments north and south of the border believed that spying on their own citizens was justifiable and normal procedure.  I will not live through such times again!