The New Mediocracy

An article in the current edition of The Walrus defines Canada's "New Solitudes." Erna Paris writes that the new chasm in Canada is not about language or religion. It is about two very different views of the world. "For a very long time," she writes,

Canadians have spoken of shared social values as a way of bridging our traditional French-English solitudes. Now I ask myself whether we might be morphing into two Canadas, each with a distinct world view. The more familiar Canada has promoted secular, humanist values, expressing them in a welfare society it took decades to build. The newer Canada is brasher, harder, and angrier. You may have guessed that the kinder Canada is the country I cleave to: it has been my heart’s home wherever I have travelled in the world. But I recognize change. And I am beginning to question how, and if, we can find common ground.

She traces this change to September 11th and the rise of the Harper Conservatives. And she worries that Canadians are not aware of the changes which the Harperites are hell bent on achieving. There is "another" Canada being born:

Its organizing principles are a powerful commitment to individualism, and to maximum freedom in every sector. Governments should be small, their powers limited, their taxing capacity curtailed. The market must be free and unfettered. Individuals are uniquely responsible for their failures, as well as their successes, and they cannot expect assistance from the “nanny state.” The critical distinguishing trait of this alternate lens on the world is a lessening attachment to the welfare state, which historically aimed at enhancing the common good — a sine qua non of the Canadian social contract for more than half a century.

But, while it's entirely appropriate for countries to change course, the Harper Revolution -- unlike what happened in Egypt over the last three weeks -- is entirely top down. Paris refers to the preamble of a document released by an ad hoc group which has christened itself Voices:

Since 2006 the Government of Canada has systematically undermined democratic institutions and practices, and has eroded the protection of free speech, and other fundamental human rights. It has deliberately set out to silence the voices of organizations or individuals who raise concerns about government policies or disagree with government positions. It has weakened Canada’s international standing as a leader in human rights. The impact and consequences for the health of democracy, freedom of expression, and the state of human rights protection in Canada are unparalleled…

An unprecedented level of secrecy now shrouds a long list of government activities and decisions, making it increasingly difficult for the public to hold the government accountable across a range of fundamentally important issues…

In this context, Canadian democratic institutions, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders have been weakened, marginalized and silenced. Their capacity to monitor and safeguard the respect for democracy, free speech, and other rights is in jeopardy. The quality and health of democratic life in Canada is under serious threat.

The Harper government only modifies its course when it is faced with defeat -- and the course correction is only temporary. Geoffrey Stevens, who retired from The Globe and Mail to teach at Wilfred Laurier University, writes in today's Straightgoods that Canada needs an election to answer important questions:

Is a Stephen Harper government the best Canadians can aspire to?
Specifically, are we satisfied with a government that preaches accountability and padlocks Parliament rather than face opposition questions? A government in which all power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office?

A government that has no foreign policy beyond what it borrows from Washington? A government that can't win a United Nations Security Council seat that would have been a slam-dunk in years past?

A government that secretly negotiates a border-security agreement that will involve some sacrifice of Canadian sovereignty without allowing Parliament to examine its provisions? A government that accepts Washington's dictate to purchase F-35 strike fighter aircraft that Canada doesn't need and, at $20 billion or more, can't afford?

A government that intends to spend billions to build new prisons for which there is no evident demand? A government that believes attack ads are the answer to all criticism?

Are Canadians content for their country to be as mediocre as their government?

For, in the end, the Harperites are devoted to self serving mediocrity. Canada -- and its citizens -- are capable of much more than the Conservatives give them credit for.

Smugly Complacent

As Stephen Harper celebrated his fifth anniversary as Prime Minister, some commentators -- such as James Travers and Lawrence Martin -- wrote that the prime minister has slowly but surely moved the country to the right. Last week, in an effort to demolish their arguments, Jeffrey Simpson cited a report by Focus Canada -- which claims that Canadians haven't changed much in thirty years:

On crime – the Harper government’s big thrust – Canadians are way offside with the government’s approach. Eighty-two per cent of Canadians don’t fear crime in their neighbourhood, and 77 per cent aren’t afraid to walk there at night.

By a whopping 58 per cent to 36 per cent, Canadians prefer prevention programs and education over tougher punishments as a way to combat crime. This sort of approach, of course, is diametrically opposite the one chosen by the Conservatives, who keep announcing headline-grabbing but functionally useless “tough on crime” measures. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” support federal gun regulations.

And, when it comes to spending priorities, Canadians are not Mr. Harper's people:

Focus Canada’s survey finds Canadians’ top spending priorities to be education, health care, elderly programs, the environment and reducing child poverty. At the bottom are foreign aid, justice, defence, domestic security and arts and culture. The ordering of these priorities hasn’t changed much in two decades, except that support for defence spending – which soared with the Afghan engagement – has returned to the low levels of the 1990s.

But amid all the counter intuitive data, there is one very disturbing number. "The Harper government can take heart," wrote Simpson, "that 52 per cent of Canadians are satisfied with the country's direction, compared to 40 per cent who aren't."

How does one square that circle? It would appear that Canadians have adopted the mantra of Harper and Company. We are smugly complacent. In the face of impending disaster, we chill out. Remember Jim Flaherty's line in the last election, just before the Great Recession? "Canada," he said," will run a small surplus." His message hasn't changed much.

Nowhere is the complacency more evident than in the Ministry of the Environment. Jim Prentice got tired of having nothing to do and left the government. The newly minted Environment Minister -- former broadcaster Peter Kent -- appears quite happy to dance to the sound of nothing.

But one of the factors behind the turmoil in Middle East these days is the sky rocketing cost of food. Some people, Paul Krugman wrote this week, claim there is a conspiracy in the financial markets. But

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

Last fall, when Canada lost its bid for a Security Council seat, the world looked at Mr. Harper and the other public faces of his government -- recycled ministers from the old Mike Harris regime -- men like Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement, and saw a cadre of the wilfully ignorant. If we truly believe these men have put us on the "right track," we should be deeply ashamed.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Voodoo Economics

During the week just passed, Republicans in the Senate tried and failed to sink the Affordable Healthcare Act. Over in the House, Paul Ryan -- the Chairman of the House Budget Committee -- proposed cutting $58 billion from President Obama's 2011 budget. "Washington's spending spree is over," he announced. "We must chart a new course."

Ryan's plan drew the following comment from The Economist -- a magazine not noted for its leftish flights of fancy:

there is no plausible argument that current unemployment or slow growth stem from the federal budget deficit. The mechanism through which budget deficits can lead to unemployment and slow growth is the bond market: government borrowing raises interest rates, which makes credit more expensive for businesses. But the 5-year treasury bond is under 2%, and the most recent auction had a bid cover of almost 3 times. Unsurprisingly, with interest rates low, the cost of credit ranks low on the list of businesses' chief concerns. Those who acknowledge that deficits don't seem to be driving up the cost of credit, but still want to blame deficits for the poor economy, have pointed to business uncertainty over potential future tax increases to cover government debt. But how does enacting an $800 billion two-year tax cut and then cutting $50 billion or even $100 billion in spending assuage business uncertainty about future debt? In any case, the main reason businesses are not expanding is that they are worried about lack of demand from consumers and other businesses, who are still deleveraging from the debts they built up during the 2000s and the collapse in their asset values during the financial crisis.

Some were relieved that Ryan recommended making only half the cuts which Republicans campaigned on during the last election. But, even so, Ryan's proposal sounded eerily like Andrew Mellon's advice to Herbert Hoover: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate."

Despite Republican claims that business is uncertain about their future tax burden, the real reason they are sitting on all that cash is lack of demand. Why start up production if you fear there will be no customers?

Mark Twain wrote, "History doesn't repeat itself -- at best it sometimes rhymes." Huck Finn said it even better: "I been there before."

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Stephen and Ayn

Stephen Harper returned to Parliament this week, intent on changing the country. He is a true believer. But what -- or, more precisely, who -- is the source of his faith? Modern conservatives like to trace their philosophy back to Edmund Burke, whose lucid defence of social institutions rings true to this day. Without them, wrote Burke, we would all be victims of a Reign of Terror -- and he pointed to the French Revolution as a case in point.

But modern conservatives -- as Thomas Frank aptly documented in his book, The Wrecking Crew -- have little respect for government and its institutions. They came to Washington to tear them down. They have worked tirelessly during the last thirty years to do just that. And we are living amid the debris they have left behind.

Mr. Harper has taken his inspiration -- as his latest attack ads against Micheal Ignatieff remind us -- from American Republicans. But both they and he bear no allegiance to Burke. Their real Godfather -- or rather Godmother -- is Ayn Rand.

Rand was a Russian refugee who, having experienced one form of governmental tyranny, jumped to the illogical conclusion that all governments were tyrannical. She preached a "moral" philosophy which she called "objectivism" -- a faith in rampant individualism -- and railed against the welfare state which "morally and economically creates an ever accelerating downward pull." In her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, she claimed that accepting government assistance was tantamount to "delivering oneself into gradual enslavement."

Individualism Unbound was her credo. And a true believer, like Howard Roark -- the architect in Rand's turgid novel, The Fountainhead -- would blow the building up if he could not get his way. Mr. Harper feels he can function quite well without Parliament. He has done so twice. And he has proven quite adept at blowing others up. Ask the former heads of supposedly arms length government agencies, like Linda Keen, Pat Strogan or Munir Sheikh, about Mr. Harper's respect for them and their work.

But there is a delicious irony to the story of Ayn Rand. A life long smoker, she succumbed to lung cancer and required surgery. So she applied for Social Security:

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits. A similar FOI request was unable to either prove or disprove the Medicare claim.

Between December 1974 and her death in March 1982, Rand collected a total of $11,002 in monthly Social Security payments. O’Connor received $2,943 between December 1974 and his death in November 1979.

The woman who railed against "moochers" was one herself. However, she applied for the benefits under her husband's name. Such reversals require an alias. Mr. Harper has already reversed himself several times -- on income trusts, on government accountability, on running a deficit. But one wonders what name he will adopt after he blows up the building.

``We Do Big Things``

As Barack Obama used the phrase last night, it was no boast. It was a a simple statement of fact. From Abraham Lincoln`s establishment of the land grant colleges, to Franklin Roosevelt`s electrification of America through projects like of the TVA, to Dwight Eisenhower`s construction of the Interstate Highway System, to John Kennedy`s commitment to land on the moon -- what Obama said was no opinion. It was a statement of fact.

Obama also wants to do big things because, as he put it, ``this is our generation`s Sputnik moment.`` It will not be easy. As Micheal Gerson reminded his readers this morning: ``Paul Ryan and many Republicans believe that America has entered a fiscal emergency that requires a fundamental reconsideration of the role of government.`` For Republicans, this is not a new idea.

Obama did not argue for the status quo. Indeed, as his example of the government`s responsibility for salmon illustrated, there is a great deal of wasteful duplication. But he also did not argue -- as Ronald Reagan did -- that government is the problem. As Gerson also observed, he was ``unapologetic about the need for government activism.``

And so the battle has been joined. And make no mistake. It will be a battle. At some point, Obama will be faced with the political equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But last night the president asked Americans to tap their imaginations -- to think big. Because before Americans can do big things, they have to dream big things. May he and his fellow citizens succeed.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Whose Sacrifice?

Over the weekend, Stephen Harper delivered a speech in which he congratulated himself and his party for five excellent years. He claimed that he and his Conservatives were merely humble public servants. "We are not in Ottawa for what we are owed and what we think we can get." he trumpeted. "If anybody is, they are in the wrong party. For Conservatives it is about public service and public service means private sacrifice."

But who, exactly, is doing the sacrificing? James Travers notes that: "On average, Canada's CEO's, the 21st Centrury's income rock stars, lugged home 2009 rewards averaging $6.6 million. In sharp and growing contrast, working stiffs typically pocketed about $43,000, more than 150 times less."

Wealth, too, is concentrating. Less than four percent of Canadian households now control more than 65 percent of our net wealth, excluding real estate. That's up from 61 percent five years ago.

So when Mr. Harper tells us that Canadians are doing better, the question is, which ones?

There has always been a huge gap between what Mr. Harper says and what he does. Back in 1991, he ended his Master's Thesis is Economics with the following conclusion: "The record indicates that particularly activist Keynesian policy has been rare in the post war period. The results indicate that it should remain so." This, from the man who has applied that biggest Keynesian stimulus since The Great Depression.

So, what do the results indicate? They indicate that Mr. Harper will do whatever it takes to survive. When other politicians take that course, he calls them hypocrites. Or he questions their patriotism. His most recent ads questioning Mr.Ignatieff''s patriotism are a case in point.

The question is simply this: "When the Prime Minister opens his mouth, can you believe him?" I suggest the answer is "No." Our humble public servant is neither humble nor honest.

A Stark Choice

In a recent column in The New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote about the chasm which exists between the two major parties in the United States:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state -- a private enterprise economy but one in which society's winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net -- morally superior to the capitalism, red in tooth and claw, we had before the New Deal. It's only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft.

Historically, the Liberal Party of Canada has stood for the first option. It was a notion which the old Progressive Conservative Party also stood for. The rise of Stephen Harper's Conservatives represents the ascendancy of the second option -- which is why the late Dalton Camp spent his final years warning his readers of the dangers of what he correctly diagnosed as a faux Conservatism.

There have been other Cassandras. In yesterday's Toronto Star, James Travers writes that the Prime Minister has changed the country "more than we realize." Harper has done this by effectively operating below the radar, by shutting down Parliament, by capitalizing on the Liberals' disarray, and by smearing his opponents:

Wrong footing rivals is the Prime Minister's favourite dance step.Those who criticize building super prisons, Canada's laizzez faire environment record, or Canada's diminished reputation are quickly forced to defend themselves against message track charges that they don't share Conservative concerns about victims of crimes, energy jobs or principled values.

The opposition needs to begin its defence with an attack on the Conservatives' so called "principled values." Once again, the Harperites have begun to beat the "separatist coalition" drum. But, in September, 2004 -- when the future of the Martin government hung in the balance -- Mr. Harper penned a letter to Adriennne Clarkson, the Governor General. He wrote:

We respectfully point out the the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise, this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all your options before exercising your constitutional authority.

That principle has disappeared into the aether. So has the principle of government accountability and the commitment to balanced budgets. This Prime Minister will -- to mangle John Kennedy -- avoid any price and abandon any burden to get elected. The only time the opposition parties stopped him dead in his tracks was three years ago when they threatened to form a coalition.

Harper only respects his opponents when they can do him real harm. Otherwise, he rules --as Susan Diebel has noted -- through fear and loathing. Given what is at stake, it is imperative that the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois think carefully about how to deal with Mr. Harper. He is focused on his objective. And he will stop at nothing -- short of an effective coalition -- to obtain it.

Arizona on My Mind

The tragedy in Arizona this weekend has generated an ocean of comment on both sides of the border. In The New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote:

Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming overwhelmingly from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michelle Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the GOP.

In The Toronto Star, James Travers saw plenty of blame to go around: "In Ottawa as in Washington, the result is that abuse is now the common tongue of policy debate. Invective and vitriol are heaped on those who reach different conclusions."

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh attacked Sheriff Clarence Dupnick for fanning a left wing conspiracy aimed at shutting down free speech. And Sarah Palin's spokeswoman -- not Palin herself -- suggested that the cross hairs on her electoral map were meant to be taken metaphorically, not literally. Both pundits deny any responsibility for what happened. And they are both right. Neither is legally culpable. The man with the gun is in custody.

But what both Limbaugh and Palin appear absolutely ignorant of is the truth which Abraham Lincoln felt in his very bone marrow -- that words can be used as weapons; and that democracy works best when citizens are guided by their "better angels." He stuck to that conviction throughout the Civil War. He said it best at his second inaugural:

With malice toward none; with charity toward all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who has done the battle, and for his widow and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations.

It's worth remembering that when invoking the name of the Creator, Lincoln never claimed that God was on his side. He did, however, hope that he was on God's side. We suffer from the delusion that we are the instruments of righteousness. Certainly Limbaugh and Palin suffer from that disease. We need to find an antidote. We could start by practising a bit of humility.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Hollow Man

Stephen Harper claims that he does not want an election. But there he was, in today's National Post, testing the electoral winds and drawing lines in the sand.

He talked again of a separatist coalition: "I think what we've seen is that it's pretty clear that next time, if there's not a Conservative majority, the other parties will form a different government;" and he further claimed that he "will not back down on corporate tax cuts, which he said are essential for the Canadian economy."

Never mind that he was quite willing to enter such a coalition to bring down the Martin government. Never mind that he broke his own fixed election law in calling the last election. No, said Mr. Harper, it's all about principle:

We have made it a fundamental principle of our government since we got into office that we would have a competitive tax structure for job creators, for employers in this country.

It is, indeed, remarkable that Mr. Harper can repeat this stuff with a straight face, after thirty years of growing economic inequality. And, again raising the coalition chimera, he claimed that the coalition partners will move "the next day" to relegate his party to opposition status. No, said Mr. Harper, a coalition would be bad for the Canadian economy. It couldn't take the strain. Never mind that the Canada Pension Plan and Medicare were the products of coalition government. The nation is too fragile for such an arrangement. What the country needs is strong leadership -- his leadership.

Gerry Nicholls, writing in the Globe and Mail, knows what this is all about. Nicholls used to work with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition:

To be blunt, Mr. Harper's ultimate strategic goal really isn't to win a majority government -- it's to eradicate the Liberal Party as a viable political force.

Indeed, his desire to eliminate the Liberals is something he and I discussed way back in the days when we worked together at the National Citizens Coalition. His theory, as he explained to me, was that conservatism would be better served in this country if Canada had a two party system, one that pitted right against left, free enterprise against socialism, Conservatives against New Democrats.

There would be no room for coalitions in such a landscape. But there's more. For Harper, says Nicholls, it's personal:

In his view, the Liberals have exhibited an anti-Alberta bias since the days of Pierre Trudeau, a bias that resulted, among other things, in the disastrous national energy program. Mr. Harper holds a grudge, and he wants payback.

Nicholls is only another in a long list of people -- from Preston Manning to Deborah Grey to former Harper staffers interviewed for Lawrence Martin's book, Harperland -- who have a less than salutary opinion of the Prime Minister.

Canadians would be foolish to ignore these signs. They would be wise to dump this prime minister -- and a coalition government would be the perfect instrument to accomplish that end. Mr. Harper enjoys a reputation for strategic genius. But, as Eliot reminded us, hollow men have head pieces "filled with straw." And, as Joseph Conrad -- who inspired Eliot's poem -- reminded us, such men seek to fill that emptiness with power.

The Jig Is Up

On Wednesday, the unelected Senate -- that chamber of "sober second thought" -- killed a climate change bill which had been passed by the elected members of the House of Commons. Its demise was made possible because the Prime Minister did precisely what he had fumed about in the past: he packed the Upper Chamber with his own partisans.

Liberal senators did not call for a vote to pass the bill. They voted to bring it to the floor for debate. The Conservatives simply killed the bill. The Prime Minister made no attempt to defend the tactic. He condemned the bill as a job killer. And he reaffirmed that his government's environmental policy was to wait until the Americans decided to act on that file.

The vote will not go down in history as a profile in courage. But, since its inception, this government has acted like a gang of school yard bullies. One does not look to them them for courage. However, the vote again illustrated that this Prime Minister and his minions are no democrats. During the previous week -- in yet another illustration of his faith in autocracy -- Mr. Harper announced that the policy of extending the Canadian mission in Afghanistan is an executive decision. Parliament, he said, could debate the decision; but it had no right to vote on it.

This is the same man who prorogued Parliament twice in the last four years. On both occasions, he was on the ropes. If votes of confidence had been allowed to proceed, his government would have fallen. This is the man who sneered when Jack Layton suggested talking with the Taliban -- the very policy which is now being pursued. This is the prime minister who dismissed as spineless the Liberal suggestion that the Canadian mission to Afghanistan be extended in order to establish the foundations of a civil society in that woe begotten corner of the globe. The Prime Minister's hypocrisy is stunning.

It is abundantly clear that Stephen Harper's word is worthless. It is the Canadian equivalent of monopoly money. Jim Prentice understood that his mission as the Minister of the Environment was to do nothing. He decided to go to where the real money is. It's beginning to look like Peter Mackay is ready to return his property to the bank and leave the game.

Consider who will be left: John Baird -- full of sound and fury -- can claim no great legislative achievements. Jim Fahlerty's record is depressingly consistent: as both a provincial and a federal Minister of Finance, he has left mountains of debt in his wake. And Tony Clement has proved that he can dance to whatever tune the prime minister chooses. He simply can't compose one of his own.

The Harper government has managed to survive. But it has run from every challenge -- until the United States has acted. And then it has chimed in with a timorous "Me, too." It has marked time. The jig is up.

Looking Back In Sadness

I have, on more than one occasion, expressed my admiration for the work of James Travers. On this Remembrance Day, he wrote of his father who "learned to be a soldier at Kingston's Royal Military College" and his uncle who "died soon after wearing pilot's wings for the first time."

They would, he wrote, not recognize the Canada of 2010. "They wouldn't understand a country where patriotism is partisan, where men and women in uniform are used as political props or where death and sports are shamelessly conflated on Hockey Night in Canada."

For we have become a mean spirited country and -- according to the prime minister -- we have done it as a matter of principle. But, as Lawrence Martin made clear this week, the prime minister's principles are pure piffle -- whether they be government accountability, fiscal frugality, a firm commitment to an end date in Afghanistan, or the free market sale of Canadian assets like potash.

Many of us never accepted those principles. What is remarkable is that Harper is still selling himself as a Conservative. For the truth is that he is no such thing. His convictions are totally malleable and are easily altered by his quest for power.

He seems to have befuddled Canadians. But the rest of the world has his number. Under Harper's leadership, Travers wrote:

Canada fell from global grace because it is no longer a modest but constant light among nations. Rather than holding steady, it flickers in the gusting winds of great challenges -- among them Arab Israeli peace, African poverty and climate change -- that are to this generation what world wars were to our parents and grandparents.

Canada, like its prime minister, has become puffed up by its own self importance. It is worth remembering that we used to be a much different -- and a much better -- country.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

A Victory for Wooden-headedness

In the week the Republican Party took back control of the House of Representatives, Richard Cohen weighed in on the subject of Sarah Palin: "The fierce stupidity of this woman," he wrote, "is hard to comprehend. It is the well from which she draws her political sustenance." It's obvious that many Americans have been drinking from the same well.

The historian Barbara Tuchman had another term for the Palin Effect. In The March of Folly, she defined "wooden-headedness," as "the source of self deception:"

It consists [she wrote] in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring and rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

For the simple truth is that the mess Mr. Obama inherited will take more than two years to clean up; and the Republican objective -- stated with laser like clarity by Mitch McConnell -- is to make Obama a one term president.

When John Boehner says that his priorities are the "peoples' priorities" one must ask, "Which people?" That is what the mid-term elections were all about -- which people will be served. The Republicans have been very successful over the last thirty years in convincing common folk that the priorities of the wealthy are their priorities -- even though the facts point to a much different conclusion.

At the end of his life, Mark Twain -- who, like modern American voters, had no respect for Congress -- concluded that there was little hope for "the damned human race." Thornton Wilder was a little more charitable."Wherever you come near the human race," said the stage manager in Our Town, "there's layers and layers of nonsense."

Rand Paul declared last night that he and his ilk have arrived to take back the country. It will be interesting -- and truly sad -- to see what they do to it.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Mad As Hell

James Travers is one of the most astute political analysts in Canada. Writing in The Toronto Star on Thursday, he observed that voter anger in both Canada and the United States is fueled "more by disillusionment than by ideology." Sifting through the entrails of Ontario's municipal elections -- particularly Rob Ford's storming of Toronto's mayoral barricades -- he wrote:

Seeping north from our stricken southern neighbour is the slow realization that the great political divide is no longer between right-leaning conservatives and left-leaning liberals. What now separates elites from the madding crowd is optimism and pessimism, secure pensions and vanishing jobs and, most of all, privileged access to a system that can be so profitably gamed.

The Tea Party crowd -- and we have them north of the border, too -- is appallingly ignorant of their countries' constitutions. In the United States, Christine O'Donnell questions the separation of church and state. In Canada, a right wing rump believes we elect a Prime Minister, not a local member of the national legislature. They do not understand that, when the government loses the confidence of the house, another party or parties can assume power without an election.

Travers rightly traces a line between Pierre Elliott Trudeau's concentration of power in the office of the Prime Minister -- largely a response to the October Crisis of 1970 -- to Jean Chretien's benevolent dictatorship through to Stephen Harper's pursuit of a majority at any cost.

Lost along the way was trust in a system that, despite its many faults, could once be counted on to act in the best interest of most citizens, most of the time. Growing in the vacuum created by lies, fraud and countless broken promises is the acidic judgment that parties are guided by self interest and the powerful few who whisper in their ear.

Voters are mad as hell. They understand that the game is fixed. But, if that anger is married to ignorance, we will all be worse off than we are. Next week's election in the United States -- and the coming election in Canada -- will be more than referendums on the politics of the present. They will, indeed, be tests of the wisdom of the people. For, when all is said and done, the old saw is still true: we get the politicians we deserve.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Learning Nothing from History

Back in the last century, when I taught high school in the Province of Quebec, the Ministry of Education insisted that every student take Canadian History. But there was no requirement that every student pass the course.

That memory came to mind on Friday, when I read Paul Krugman's column in The New York Times. On the subject of the British government's new austerity measures, Krugman wrote:

Both the new British budget announced on Wednesday and the rhetoric that accompanied the announcement might have come straight from the desk of Andrew Mellon, the Treasury Secretary who told Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression by liquidating the farmers, liquidating the workers, and driving down wages. Or if you prefer more British precedents, it echoes the Snowden budget of 1931 which tried to restore confidence but ended up deepening the economic crisis.

So too were there significant historical cautions about invading Afghanistan -- from Alexander the Great, to Great Britain, to the Soviet Union. If there is one thing that marks Western political elites, it is their appalling ignorance of history. And it is that ignorance which led Krugman to declare that:

Maybe Britain will get lucky and something will come along to rescue the economy. But the best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." That's why the Quebec Ministry of Education's insistence that every student take history but not pass it was so woodenheaded. I'm beginning to wonder if the same rule applied in several international jurisdictions.

And, lest Canadians begin to feel smug about their own situation, they should remember that the Harper government plans to turn off the stimulus taps in March, 2011. In fact, at last summer's G20 Conference in Toronto, the Prime Minister worked hard to get members to accept the very policy which he and Mr. Cameron plan to follow.

The lemmings are on the march.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

In Search of Sanity

Perhaps Frank Rich is right. Sanity will not return to American politics until there is "a decisive rescue from our prolonged economic crisis." Until then, he wrote in Sunday's New York Times:

Don't expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day -- no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they'll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow. . . Not for the first time in history -- and not just American history -- fear itself is at the root of a rabid outbreak of populist rage against government, minorities and conspiratorial "elites."

Even if Republicans regain control of both houses, Barack Obama will still be president on November 3rd. What will he do? What should he have done before Americans reached this crossroads? In the most recent edition of The New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky wrote an extremely perceptive analysis of what has gone wrong for the Democrats:

In American politics, Republicans routinely speak in broad themes and tend to blur the details, while Democrats typically ignore broad themes and focus on details. Republicans, for example, routinely speak of "liberty" and "freedom" and couch practically all their initiatives -- tax cuts, deregulation, and so forth -- within these large categories. Democrats, on the other hand, talk more about specific programs and policies and steer clear of big themes.

What Democrats have typically not done well since Reagan's time is to connect their policies to their larger beliefs. In fact they have usually tried to hide those beliefs, or change the conversation when the subject arose. The result has been for many years that the Republicans have been able to present their philosophy as somehow truly "American," while attacking the Democratic belief system as contrary to American values.

Many commentators have noted that, while Ronald Reagan sought to repeal much of what Roosevelt put in place, his leadership template came straight from Roosevelt. President Obama will have to face whatever the storm leaves behind on November 3rd. In preparing for the aftermath, he could do worse than to return to Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech -- delivered a month after Pearl Harbor. In that address, Roosevelt enumerated what he saw as the four essentials -- not just for Americans, but for all human beings:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want -- which translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which translated into world terms, means a world reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit a physical act of aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world. This is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our time and our generation.That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Roosevelt's speech married vision and and poetry -- something Obama did during the 2008 campaign -- but something he has not done in office and something he is not doing now. The President has often expressed his admiration for Mr. Lincoln. One hopes he has the same admiration for Mr. Roosevelt. And one hopes that Roosevelt will act as a muse as Mr. Obama addresses his nation in the future.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

He Didn't See It Coming

"If any Canadian woke up this morning," Robert Silver wrote in yesterday's Globe and Mail, "still under the mistaken impression that Stephen Harper is some kind of political strategic genius, surely to God the result of the UN Security Council vote has put that once trendy canard to rest once and for all."

Canada was rewarded yesterday with the same kind of shrug Mr. Harper has shown the United Nations during his entire time in office. His two speeches in the last couple of weeks marked the first time he had addressed the UN since he first came to office in 2006. During the last UN Climate Conference he was conspicuously absent. And he has pointedly let it be known that his time is better spent chatting up the locals at a northern Tim Horton's.

The Harperites reacted to their defeat by claiming the members of the General Assembly are less "principled" than the Government of Canada. But, once again, Silver had their number:

I say other than unwavering support for Israel and indifference towards Africa, can you articulate those unpopular but principled positions? Moreover, did those principled positions suddenly become popular in the last 24 hours in a quickly shifting public opinion environment? Surely Harper had some clue before the vote that Canada's foreign policy couldn't carry two thirds of the countries?

And that is the point. The Prime Minister didn't see it coming -- just as he didn't see the Great Recession coming. When he was re-elected, he forecast a "small surplus." On the day Canada's bid for a Security Council seat failed, Jim Flaherty announced the biggest annual deficit in Canadian history -- $55 billion. And historians pointed out it was 63 years ago to the day that Lester Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to defuse the Suez Crisis.

The day after the Security Council defeat, Allen Gottlieb -- who served both Conservative and Liberal prime ministers in Washington -- noted how the Foreign Affairs Department, located in the building which bears Pearson's name, has slipped into obscurity during the Harper years:

In Ottawa, power and influence have shifted away from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council. Afghanistan and climate change are handled by agencies outside of Foreign Affairs. Three deputy ministers report directly to the Prime Minister on foreign and national security affairs.

And, of course, the Harperites blamed Michael Ignatieff for the loss. "Not being able to speak with one voice as a country had a negative impact on Canada's bid," said Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. That statement completely ignored the letter which Harper sent to The Wall Street Journal after Jean Chretien politely refused to join George W. Bush's Coalition of the Willing: "For the first time in history," Harper wrote, "the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need." He was certain that Canadians were on his side; they were, he said, "overwhelmingly with us." Such was not the case. Once again, he missed the boat.

The Tory propaganda machine has told us repeatedly that the Prime Minister is blindingly brilliant. It becomes more apparent with each passing day that Mr. Harper is simply blind. The General Assembly served notice yesterday that they get it.

This Angry Season

In the United States, the conventional wisdom holds that, when the nation is on the wrong track, "we the people" will set it right. It's a comforting thought. But, in this angry season, one must ask if that axiom is always true. There is a pathological quality to much of the anger one sees and hears these days. When Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Carl Paladino keep returning to the refrain that Americans are mad as hell, it is worth remembering the late Lee Atwater's explanation of how the so called "Southern Strategy" worked:

You start out in 1954 saying 'Nigger, Nigger, Nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by product of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites. . .' We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'nigger, nigger.'

Given the assertions that President Obama is a Muslim alien and Kenyan anti-colonialist, one wonders how much of the anger stems from an unemployment rate of 9.6%, and how much of it is a socially sanctioned way to yell, "nigger, nigger."

I do not wish to minimize the legitimate anger Americans feel towards those from both parties whose faith in unregulated capitalism has led to the loss of their homes and their jobs. Those whose 99 weeks of unemployment insurance have expired are in a particularly precarious position. Their fury is completely understandable. But, when Rand Paul muses that he might not have voted for the Civil Rights Act, and when those protesting the recently passed health care bill throw the "N" epithet at people like John Lewis, it is clear that there is more than unemployment behind their rage.

Moreover, when people like retired Utah Supreme Court Justice A.H. Ellett argue for the repeal of the 13th, 14 and 15th Amendments to the Constitution -- the so called "Reconstruction Amendments" -- you know there is a lot more in the mix that just joblessness. Justice Ellett wrote:

The validity, or should we say the invalidity, of the Civil War Amendments is very important to reinstating the inalienable rights of free white citizens of the United States of America. At every juncture where the government of the United States of America and/or the governments of the several States attempt to usurp inalienable rights, the Civil War amendments are ultimately claimed to be the authority for such deprivations of rights.

And precisely what right or rights have those amendments breached? Before 1865, white Americans were immune African American political influence. Ellet pulls no punches. In his view, the Constitution was desecrated by the extension of the franchise -- and the right to hold office -- to America's citizens of color. Before the Civil War:

. . . only White State citizens held the privileges and immunities known to Article IV, Section 2 among the several States, and no State could confer that Constitutional protection on any other race. In consequence thereof, the "also" could not authorize a "non white" to be an Officer of the United States government.

Two years ago, when Barack Obama was elected president, a significant majority of Americans were euphoric that their country had finally torn down its most significant barrier. At the same time, a significant minority ground their teeth in disgust. How much of the angry rhetoric comes from those who not only want to repeal the New Deal but who also want to repeal the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments?

This November, Americans will be asked to distinguish between legitimate anger -- which is an extension of their economic situation -- and an illness which is as old as the Republic itself. Their choice will ultimately prove the truth or falsehood of the conventional wisdom.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

When Ignorance Is King

Last week, Peter Mackay decided to rescind an invitation to Zijad Delic -- the Executive Director of the Canadian Islamic Congress -- from a defence department event marking Islamic History Month. His reason for taking back the invitation was that Delic's predecessor, Mohamed Elmasry, had proclaimed publicly that Israeli soldiers of 18 were fair targets for suicide bombers because they were "not innocent." When Zelic assumed the leadership of the CIC, he pointedly disavowed those comments.

James Travers noted in Tuesday's Toronto Star that:

Elmasry's comments pushed a couple of closely connected political hot buttons. Stephen Harper's Middle East policy skews hard to Israel and a Christian fringe firmly in the Conservative camp believes there's a connection between the restoration of Israel's biblical borders and the rapturous return of Christ.

These are the same people who firmly believe that Bishop James Usher correctly determined that the Almighty began creation on "the night preceding Sunday 23 October, 4004 B.C." Modern science has turned Bishop Usher into a laughing stock. MacKay's decision should have turned him into a laughing stock. Instead, it sowed more seeds of division and stoked the anger of Canadian Muslims, not to mention Muslims around the world.

One would think that public reaction to the prorogation of Parliament -- and the universal condemnation the government faced when it decided to deep six the long census form -- would cause the Harper Party to think twice about such obviously volatile decisions. But they have had no such epiphany.

These folks must believe that God is on their side -- or perhaps they are simply stupid. But, as Lawrence Martin's recently released book Harperland makes clear, these decisions can be traced back directly to the Prime Minister himself. As Don Martin wrote in his review of the book, "There's no absence of malice in this prime minister's political conduct. At times, malice is all there is . . ."

Malice is the handmaid of Ignorance. Any nation which chooses to put Ignorance in the driver's seat is in deep trouble.

Whose Populism?

As tens of thousands of Americans gathered on the National Mall this past weekend, Frank Rich -- in the New York Times -- warned them and their supporters not to underestimate the "useful idiocy" of the Tea Party's most recent star, Christine O'Donnell. For comedians -- particularly Bill Mahar -- she is the gift which keeps on giving. But, Rich wrote:

O'Donnell is particularly needed now because most of the other Republican Tea Party standard bearers lack genuine anti-government or proletarian cred. Joe Miller and Ken Buck, the Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado, actually are graduates of elite universities like those O'Donnell lied about attending. Rick Scott, the populist running for governor of Florida, was chief executive of a health care corporation that scooped up so many Medicare and Medicaid payments, it had to settle charges for defrauding taxpayers. Rand Paul, the scion of a congressman, is an ophthalmologist whose calls for spending restraint don't extend to his own Medicare income. Carl Paladino, the truculent man of the people of New York, grew his fortune as a developer with government handouts and favors. His California bookend, Carly Fiorina, received a golden parachute worth as much as $42 million from Hewlett-Packard, where she liquidated 20 thousand jobs.

O'Donnell, on the other hand, claims that her income for the last two years has been $5,800. That information -- like her assertion that she attended Oxford University -- may be a figment of her overactive imagination. But she is the only Tea Party candidate who appears to be lower middle class. Like the Gary Cooper character in Frank Capra's film, Meet John Doe, she is the perfect dupe for the sugar daddies -- as detailed by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker -- who are funding a pseudo populist rebellion.

The rally on the Mall was a late and desperate attempt to generate another kind of populism. Its target audience was the disenchanted progressives who are angry that health care did not include a public option and that American troops are still in Afghanistan. If they sit this election out, it's clear that -- while the change Obama has brought may not be the change they believed in -- the Republicans will ensure that there is no change at all.

Rich's colleague, Bob Herbert, wrote again on Saturday that what the country needs is real populism:

One in five American kids was living in poverty in 2009. Across the country, once solidly middle class families are lining up at food pantries and soup kitchens for groceries or a hot meal. In New York City, a startling indicator of the continuing economic crisis is the rise in the number of homes that don't have kitchens.

O'Donnell would seem to fit that profile. If, like John Doe in the Capra film, she would turn on her benefactors and explain what they stood to gain by the return of Republicans to power, she would -- despite all her other foolish statements -- gain some credibility. But don't count on it.

Despite the elaborate subterfuge, John Boehner let the cat out of the bag last Friday. "We are not," he said, "going to be any different than we've been." That statement should convince all sorts of disillusioned Democrats to go to the track and start placing their bets.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Spinning the Absurd

"The Harper government's spin machine," Jeffrey Simpson wrote this week, "is so pervasive and over the top, daily exposure leads to the dilemma of laughing or crying." This is particularly true when the propagandists assume their usual self congratulatory tone and trumpet claims about Canada which are clearly untrue:

As in, Canada is "a clean energy superpower," a claim demonstrably false by any conceivable international measure. As in, Canada is "a free trade leader," a claim belied, among other yardsticks, by being shut out of the Pacific trade talks and being an obstacle to a deal at the World Trade Organization, both courtesy of agricultural supply management. As in, Canada is an economic model for debt management, a claim destroyed last week by the OECD, which lumped personal, provincial and federal debt together and showed Canada to be among the most indebted of member countries.

The Harper crew is nothing if not boastful. But the party line in defence of the purchase of new F-35 fighter jets has taken spinning the absurd to a new level. The new mantra is that we need the jets to defend ourselves from a Russian attack. Thus, we were told that our old CF 18's recently convinced a Russian bomber -- a prop driven aircraft which has been flying patrols in international air space since the beginning of the Cold War -- to head back home, as it has been doing for fifty years.

The story has all the ear marks of little boys showing the other kids in the neighbourhood their new toys -- a clear case of "Mine is bigger than yours." It should be funny. But, in truth, it's offensive. In both Canada and the United States we have elected leaders who have no experience of war. This writer is among those who have not known combat. And, while I would not wish that experience on anyone, it's clear to me that those who have been caught in the middle of a war have a much different mindset than those who now give the orders to dispatch soldiers around the world.

My father's generation -- those who managed to come home from World War II -- were not boastful. They lost spouses, family members and friends to bigger and better weapons. They understood war in terms of human cost and human loss. They saw human cruelty up close. And, having been there, they did not want to return. When he came home, my father refused to keep a gun in the house, saying he had had enough of them during the war. And, he said, he owed his survival to "pure dumb luck."

He passed away last year -- having voted for the Harper government in 2006. But I cannot imagine that he would nod approvingly at the PMO's latest absurdity. He had the kind of experience which is beyond the comprehension of Mr. Harper his silly band of patriots.

Marching Toward Insanity

On Thursday, outside a hardware store in suburban Washington, the Republicans unveiled their platform for the midterm election, calling their document A Pledge to America. The prologue was full of traditional Republican boilerplate:

We pledge to advance policies that promote greater liberty, wider opportunity, a robust defense, and national economic prosperity.

We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life and the private and faith based organizations that form the core of our American values.

The problem -- as with any political platform -- is that the devil is in the details. And a close reading of "The Pledge" reveals that Republicans, indeed, plan to give the devil his due. Specifically, they propose to:

1. Roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving at least $100 billion dollars in the first year alone.

2. Repeal and replace the government take over of health care.

3. Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

There is a great deal in the document about the tyranny of big government. But, as Paul Krugman points out, the Republican platform is essentially a "war on arithmetic:"

The document repeatedly condemns federal debt -- 16 times by my account. But the main substantive policy proposal is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which independent estimates say would add $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next decade -- about $700 billion more than the Obama administration's tax proposals.

There is a legitimate argument to be made about when the Bush tax cuts should be phased out. And it bears repeating that the plan was, indeed, to phase them out. But what Republicans really want is to enter a time warp -- to return to a time when the Bush economic program was in place, and when there was no national health insurance program.

However, they want more than that: they want to privatize social security. Taking their cue from former House Leader Dick Armey, a number of Republican candidates now refer to Social Security as a "ponzi scheme." Not only do they want to roll back Obamacare. They want to roll back the New Deal.

Never mind that the financial meltdown of 2008 proved exactly why Social Security should not be privatized. Never mind that Bush's own advisers warned that the cost of administering a private social security program would rise from 0.9% to 5%. That is all minutiae. The real problem, they say, is government.

That was Ronald Reagan's line. We now have thirty years of data on the success of Reagan's experiment. Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." What "The Pledge" makes clear is that losing the 2008 election has driven the Republican Party crazy.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

What Harry Knew and Stephen Doesn't

As the government's attempt to scrap the long gun registry goes down to defeat, it is already plotting its next move. Having erected billboards in the ridings of MP's who previously voted against the registry, it is now revving up its election rhetoric, claiming that the death of the registry is an example of what would happen if Canada was governed by "a separatist coalition."

In a speech at the Chateau Laurier yesterday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty began fanning the flames of paranoia. He has given this speech before:

Under an Ignatieff-NDP-Bloc Quebecois government, nothing would be safe. No part of our economy would be spared. No taxpayer would avoid the hit. Any coalition that would give the NDP access to taxpayer's wallets should strike fear in regular Canadians. What's more, any coalition that would give a veto on national policy to a party dedicated to the break up of our country is unacceptable.

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A review of recent history reveals that the Harper government recognized Quebec as "a nation within a nation." A review of more ancient history reveals that less than fifty years ago -- when the country elected successive minority governments -- Parliament brought in the Canada Pension Plan, Medicare and a Canadian flag. These achievements required cooperation.

Both Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff have suggested that all parties work to fix the weaknesses in the registry. But Mr. Harper and company are a peculiar species. They appear to have been born without a cooperative gene in their bodies. More importantly, they appear to have no sense of history. And, therefore, they are ill equipped to face the future.

Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." If there is one thing that is striking about the Harperites, it is how rarely they refer to historical precedent. Their ignorance of history goes a long way to explain their inability to make inroads in Quebec. That ignorance -- and Mr. Harper's appalling people skills -- are the reasons he leads a minority government.

Deborah Grey once said of the Prime Minister, "People skills? He was more fond of policy. Constituency work seemed like a grind to him." Like Richard Nixon, he is an introvert who is deeply suspicious of those around him. He sees opponents as enemies; and the paranoia his mistrust breeds makes cooperation with them impossible.

When it came to Richard Nixon, President Truman did not mince words: "Richard Nixon is a no good lying bastard," he said. "He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in."

It's clear that, in the coming election, the government will try to scare voters to death. If Canadians have a sense of history -- and if they remember what happened to Richard Nixon -- they will send Mr. Harper and company to the opposition benches.

When Lunacy Masquerades As Scholarship

In the most recent edition of Forbes Magazine, Dinesh D'Souza writes that "Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history." Given the renewed health of Wall Street and the fact that General Motors is once again turning a profit, D'Souza's assertion is certainly suspect.

But even more suspect is what Newt Gingrich has called D'Souza's "stunning insight" into Obama's character. D'Souza, claims that -- you've heard this one before -- the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. He first paints a scurrilous portrait of the president's father. "So who was Barack Obama Sr?" he asks:

He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk in a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.

The president is not the first man to have had a no count for a father. He's certainly not the first president who has risen from less than auspicious circumstances. President Reagan's father had a less than healthy taste for strong brew. And President Clinton's stepfather -- whose name Clinton bears -- could be, we are told, a very hard man. None of us gets to choose our parents.

But having maligned the senior Obama, D'Sousa then goes on to assert that the president is living out his father's frustrated dreams. Like his father, D'Sousa writes, the president is an anti-colonialist:

From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

These assertions seem to be directly at odds with Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan. But D'Souza simply ignores Afghanistan. In fact, the whole article ignores facts which contradict its central assertions. It is an example of argument from innuendo; and, as scholarship, it is pure bunk.

Mr. D'Souza is a graduate of Dartmouth. He is currently president of King's College in New York City. Mr. Gingrich holds a doctorate from Tulane. Both men are reputedly smart fellows. One wonders. . .

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

A Failed Elite

"What is a failed elite?" John Ralston Saul asks in his most recent book, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. He then answers his own question:

One afraid of ideas, afraid to talk to the citizenry through ideas, afraid to encourage the wide discussion of ideas in order to find the basis for its actions, unable to act except in a veiled or populist manner, afraid of the idea of power except as an expression of interests. A failed elite would rather sell than buy, rather trade in wealth than create it. They would rather be employees than owners, managers than risk takers. Some people believe that elites fail because of their particular ideology. But ideologies are usually the refuge of the fearful.

When looking back on the four years since the Harper government came to power, it is remarkable to note how its prime directive has been fear: fear of debt; fear of "unreported crime;" fear of the other -- whether they be Tamils, Muslims or "a separatist coalition."

They are not the only failed elite. Much the same can be said of the Opposition, and -- in the United States -- the second Bush administration, and now the Tea Party, which is overwhelmingly white and wealthy. As time passes, failed elites become increasingly divorced from the citizenry they supposedly serve. James Travers, in yesterday's column, notes that trend in Ottawa:

Always a place apart, the village huddled below the Peace Tower is less and less like, or connected to, the rest of the country. Insulated from the worst of hard times and obsessed with scoring partisan points, the national capital has lost touch with Canadians focused more on pressing personal and local issues.

Our leaders, Saul says, refuse to recognize that "we are a Metis nation," which has historically been committed to the Aboriginal concept of the ever expanding circle. Instead, taking their cue from Mike Harris' so called "Common Sense Revolution," they see Canadians as a collection of interest groups to be played off one against the other. Their strategy -- divide and conquer -- is as old as it is inappropriate for this country.

Saul points out that, like Canada's aboriginal peoples, we have traditionally negotiated solutions to problems -- like national health care or Quebec separatism. Quite simply, we solve problems by talking our way through them. The Harper government has a hard time talking its way through anything. When things get sticky, it prorogues Parliament. It would much rather proclaim policy, as it did this summer with its decision to eliminate the long census form.

The result is anger and cynicism everywhere -- sure signs that our so called "best and brightest" are intellectually exhausted.

Now Is The Time

Last week, in Cleveland, Barack Obama took inspiration from a former Republican president. "In the words of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln," Obama said, "I also believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves."

The Republicans have travelled a long way since Lincoln's election. The Party of the Little Man still claims that title. But its policies belie that claim. For the last thirty years, Republicans have given their blessing to a growing income gap. And, today, as they stand four square with the wealthy, Obama is right when he says:

Make no mistake: [They] believe we should also give a permanent tax cut to the wealthiest two percent of Americans. With all the other budgetary pressures we have -- with all the Republicans' talk about wanting to shrink the deficit -- they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next ten years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 to folks who are already millionaires. These are among the only folks who saw their incomes rise when Republicans were in charge.

David Frum claims that Republicans have branded themselves the party of fear and anger. But they have no program. If, as some pundits expect, they take control of Congress in November, they

will arrive pre-exhausted, without ideas, ready to do business with K Street from Day 1. This is not good news. But it's also unfortunately not surprising news. For 24 months an emotionally intense opposition to the president has been unsupported by anything like a Republican policy agenda.

And it is that vacuum at the center of the Republican Party which is so deeply troubling. Up to this point they have, indeed, made something out of nothing. If the Democrats are to succeed in November, they will have to convince Americans that anger and fear are no substitutes for ideas. But that won't give them control of the agenda. For that to happen, Obama will have to convince a majority of voters that he understands their frustrations and that he is in it for them.

Bill Moyers likes to tell the story of the relationship which existed between his father -- a modestly educated man -- and Franklin Roosevelt. Apparently, the two never met. But, Moyers wrote, "When Roosevelt was president, [my father] knew he had a friend in the White House."

Obama's single greatest failure to date has been his inability to convince ordinary folks that they have a friend in the White House. The speech in Cleveland could be a turning point. But it's late in the game.

Now is the time for the president to return to the rhetoric which got him elected.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Harper

Canada's "new" Conservative Party -- and its Prime Minister -- were diagnosed long ago by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson understood that even the most humane person has a dark side, which is only held in check by social convention. The problem for Conservatives -- as James Laxer recently noted -- is that they are only conservative when they are held in check by a strong opposition. And -- at least until recently -- that opposition has been pretty feeble.

The Harperites' dark souls are really libertarian; and, as libertarians, they hate conventions -- any conventions, whether they are census forms, long gun registries, or the institution of Parliament itself. Their ultimate goal is to free themselves of limits -- any limits. Their problem is that Canadians are suspicious of their intentions.

So, at election time, Mr. Harper dons a blue sweater -- the equivalent of a white lab coat -- makes his rounds, and adopts his best bedside manner. Once elected, he retreats into the basement, mixes up that potion of mean spirited policies, and attempts to accomplish by stealth what he can't accomplish in the light of day.

The problem would be difficult enough if Harper were the only Hyde in the party. But, as James Travers observes in Thursday's Toronto Star, there are other Hydes lurking in the party's basement. In the run up to the vote on the long gun registry, two lesser Hydes -- James Bezan and Garry Breitkreuz -- have found their way out of the lab. Bezan

hee-hawed his way on to You Tube -- complete with horse and cowboy hat -- and Breitkruez mused about a clandestine police scheme to wrench guns from cold Canadian hands. Along with looking and sounding foolish, the two Conservative MP's exposed the soft underbelly of a Harper strategy that once seemed bulletproof.

The problem for Dr. Jekyll the Prime Minister is that he finds it increasingly difficult to control his dark side. It shows up at very inopportune times -- during elections, for instance -- and in the lazy days of summer, when he thinks Canadians aren't paying attention. Now he finds it hard to control the lesser Hydes within his party.

We all know how the story ends.

Labour Day, 2010

Last week, as we drove into downtown Toronto, my wife spotted a fellow sleeping on a bench. He was covered with a green garbage bag. Luckily, the week had been unseasonably warm. The poignancy of his situation hit us with some force because, two hours earlier, we had watched a clip about a house which had recently come on the market in Edmonton, Alberta. It was a cavernous place, equipped with the latest technology, including a driveway complete with several drains and submerged electric cables. The owner would part with his property for a mere $5.25 million.

In Canada, there is something faintly ridiculous about owning a heated driveway. It conjures up images of pre-World War II France, sitting smugly behind the Maginot Line, certain that it could avoid invasion -- either by the Germans or the armies of Old Man Winter. In four months time, the guy on the bench will be scrambling to find whatever protection he can.

I thought of him again when we got home and I read Bob Herbert's column in Saturday's New York Times. Herbert told the story of sixteen janitors who had been laid off from their jobs at a "luxury complex" owned by J.P. Morgan Chase. The janitors had been paid the princely sum of $13.50 an hour. Herbert noted wryly that each janitor's weekly take home pay "wouldn't cover Jamie Dimon's [Morgan Chase's chief executive] dinner tab." Morgan Chase's second quarter profit was $4.8 billion.

And so, on this Labour Day -- in both Canada and the United States -- we find ourselves facing The Great Divide. The numbers of the homeless and the unemployed are growing exponentially, while the captains of the economy -- thanks to taxpayer bailouts -- continue to proper, moving from one palace to another.

In the meantime, the word "shared" -- as in "shared risk," "shared sacrifice," "shared responsibility" and (as Robert Reich has pointed out ) "shared prosperity" -- has disappeared from the public lexicon. The irony, as Reich also observes, is that the economy will never recover unless and until we rediscover a sense of shared prosperity.

Labour Day used to be about shared prosperity. Today, with only 7% of the private workforce unionized, there is little to celebrate. The fellow on the bench knows that. He is easy to ignore. But we ignore him at our peril.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.