The Crisis of Canadian Liberal Homelessness

 

The first Canadian Prime Minister I Remember

I am a liberal. What concerns me most is protecting our basic freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, democratic rights, and so on. The issues stated most famously in the American Declaration of Independence and the American Bill of Rights; but also the fundamental premise for all government in the liberal democracies. These are the sine qua non. Without them, we can achieve nothing else. And they are always under threat. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” 

It occurs to me that this underlying concern explains my vote in every Canadian election, and my preferences before that, since my earliest memories.

Diefenbaker-Pearson: Pearson was okay, but Diefenbaker was the liberal. He introduced the Bill of Rights. He fought apartheid in South Africa. His government was shambolic, but I had to love him.

Trudeau-Stanfield: Trudeau seemed initially the liberal standard bearer: “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” Stanfield was a Red Tory, which really means an autocratic conservative. So I was with Trudeau and the Liberals. 

But Trudeau turned tyrant with his hate laws and his War Measures Act. The NDP was the only party that opposed it, and, even better, under David Lewis, fought corporate welfare. So I was an NDPer. 

Then Mulroney pushed for Free Trade with the US. Free Trade, the old Laurier reciprocity platform, was the classic liberal position. It assumes human equality and promotes freedom. And the Liberals and NDP opposed it. It was then I was fully convinced tht the Canadian Liberal party was not liberal in principle. So I had to go to the PCs. Even though Mulroney was a Red Tory otherwise.

But Mulroney gravely violated democratic rights with Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord. He was going to change the constitution with no public consultation and then freeze it, beyond the reach of the popular will. Worse, all parties supported this--except Reform. So I had to go Reform, although it was mostly a Western rights party. 

During the later Chretien years, it was a problem that Canada had no effective opposition. And I thought Chretien was undemocratically trashing the Westminster system by giving himself, and other party leaders, the power to approve or veto all local candidates. This made Canada in effect an elected dictatorship.

Then Paul Martin tried to undemocratically push through the Kelowna Accords, again without public consultation, enshrining inequality of citizenship. The same sort of autocratic move as Mulroney with Meech Lake. So I had to go hard for Harper. 

The Liberal party has since become the international flagship of illiberalism. They have become systematic in their efforts to limit or end human rights; and the NDP has been in lock step. The frivolous declaration of the Emergencies Act, and freezing of people’s bank accounts, was unforgivable. The growing censorship and media control is unforgivable. 

Yet, frighteningly, the average Canadian does not even seem to care. 

Reform UK and Reform Canada

 

Mr. Charisma

Summer is usually slow for news. Not this summer. We have epochal elections underway in both France and the UK. In the UK, many people are pointing to the “Canadian example.” Kind of flattering to get noticed. 

They mean the election of 1993, in which Kim Campbell led the Tories from a majority, 168 seats, to just two seats in total. The suggestion is that something similar could happen to the British Tories in two weeks’ time. In both cases, supposedly, it was because of the emergence of a new party on the right, in both cases named “Reform.” 

(The original “Reform” was actually a US movement, under Ross Perot; but that perhaps takes us too far afield.)

Are the situations really similar?

Campbell in 1993 was actually facing two insurgent parties, Reform and the Bloc Quebecois, a regional separatist party. The BQ actually did better than Reform in that election, and so was a more significant factor. The BQ was formed by former Conservatives, and mostly cut into their vote. In the UK, there is a comparable regional separatist party, the Scottish Nationalists. But they naturally cut into the Labour vote, not the Conservatives. 

Based on this difference, it seems the British Tories have less to fear.

On the other hand, the leader of Canadian Reform at the time, Preston Manning, was not charismatic. Nigel Farage, the UK Reform leader, is uniquely charismatic. 

Based on this difference, it seems the British Tories have much to worry about.

On the other other hand, Canadian Reform was also fuelled by regional resentments, whih gave them a natural base generating seats in Parliament. UK Reform does not have this.

In either case, the reason for the insurgency is the same: no federal party was addressing an issue, or issues, of vital concern to the general public. People felt they were being ignored. In Canada, it was about changing the constitution; although immigration levels were already also a concern. In the UK today it is mass immigration.

More broadly, there is a natural schism in “Conservative” parties. Because the left has gone Marxist since at least the 1930s, perhaps since the “Progressive” era of the 1920s, “conservative” parties have become coalitions of everyone else, of both actual conservatives and classical liberals. 

These philosophies are not compatible. 

In the UK, conservative Conservatives are referred to as “one nation” Conservatives, or sometimes as “wets.” In Canada, they are called Red Tories. They believe in paternalistic, government, as did Disraeli or Burke. Classic liberals want a smaller government and respect for individual rights and freedoms, like Gladstone or Jefferson.

Tension between the two is inevitable. If one faction suppresses the other, you get a revolt. Yet it seems that a coalition of both has been needed to overcome the Marxists.

This may no longer be true. 

The Conservative Liberal Budget

 

Friend Xerxes summarizes the highlights of the new Canadian federal budget as “child care, a green economy, pandemic relief, increases to old age pensions, funding for improving the health of indigenous communities.”

Although introduced by the “Liberal Party,” this is a strikingly conservative set of priorities—conservative in the true sense.

The OED defines “liberalism” thus: “Support for or advocacy of individual rights, civil liberties, and reform tending towards individual freedom, democracy, or social equality; a political and social philosophy based on these principles.”

That is more or less what they call “libertarianism” in the US now. The Koch brothers are liberals. Maxime Bernier is a liberal, or was when he ran for the Conservative leadership.

“Conservatism” or “Toryism” sees this approach as soulless. The state, instead, is like a family. Equality is not the point; the point is everyone having responsibilities to everyone else.

Let’s go down the list of what the Liberal government wants:

Government-funded child care is classically conservative. The government as parent: this is an almost perfect expression of that concept.

A green economy: this is conservation, preservation of what is, conservatism by both definition and etymology.

Pandemic relief: Conservatives, seeing government as a parent, would of course issue relief. I assume, however, that any government would see this as their responsibility in an emergency. And all governments have, worldwide, in this pandemic.

Increases in old age pensions: in Canada or the UK, the old age pension was originally brought in by a Liberal government, but less as a matter of ideology than to co-opt the Marxist left. In world terms, the first old age pension was introduced by Bismarck in Germany, under a conservative regime. It can probably be justified by either ideology: as paternal care for a vulnerable group, or as just reward for labour.

Funding indigenous communities: a classic conservative position. Liberalism calls for social equality. Treating indigenous people differently is an obvious violation of that principle. Conservatism is more inclined to endorse such things; it sees the indigenous people as wards of the state, like children. Liberals would consider this an affront to human dignity.

Perhaps the most important distinction between the two philosophies is that conservatism seeks to preserve the status quo, with those in power preserved in power, while liberalism wants to open things up and, broadly, democratize. 

In this ultimate sense, too, the modern Canadian Liberal Party is conservative. It is the “natural governing party,” which represents and is supported by the big corporations, the government bureaucracy itself, the professions. It sees “populism,” unrestrained democracy, as its enemy.

Each philosophy might have an argument, but the important thing is to keep our terminology consistent. There is a danger is political speech to deceive by falsifying the meaning of terms. The general intent of much political language, Orwell warned, is “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

The Political Spectrum

I put my stock in Locke

I have never referred to myself as a “conservative.” I am not. I am a lifelong liberal.

That used to put me on the left of the political spectrum. But now, everything that is not Marxist is considered “right-wing.”

Since Marx has been positively disproven, that more or less means that anyone who is simply lucid is now “right-wing.” Our politics have become that distorted. 

Marx brothers.

There is something deeply symbolic here about the US Democrats rushing to nominate for their presidential candidate someone who is obviously suffering dementia. There is something symbolic about their almost phobic reaction to a seemingly sincere candidate like Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders in favour of an obvious huckster. Honesty and sanity are clear and present dangers.

But liberalism and conservatism are different philosophies, which used to represent the opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Liberalism believes in the political philosophy of John Locke: democracy, equality, human rights. It wants definite limits on government power. It advocates free trade and free markets. The core idea is free choice: man exists to make moral choices, and human dignity accordingly demands that free individual choice must be wherever possible respected. It is generally opposed to foreign entanglements; it does not like the discipline of military culture on principle, and given human equality, other nations need to be free to settle their own affairs. 

Perhaps the founding philosopher of modern conservatism: Edmund Burke.

While not in opposition to this, conservatism has no special interest in democracy, equality, or human rights. It sees the state as an organic entity, like a family. Like a family, it is the duty of the more capable to look after the less capable, as parents might look after children. This rejects equality intrinsically; it means democracy may well also need to be set aside, and human rights. The rights of a child are limited, even if there are more children than adults in the family.

Conservatism sees no formal limits to the power or involvement of the state. The state is there to help as needed, and should do whatever is required. Nevertheless, it would generally prefer non-state solutions. The state is there to preserve and support the culture, and if the culture is healthy, the state has less need to intervene. A healthy culture means a balance of interests, with respect for traditional institutions which have developed organically.

Conservatism believes in an active foreign policy, on the premise that the state has a duty to do its part to preserve international peace, just as neighbours have the duty to look after neighbours. Again, not believing in human equality, it holds that a healthy and a wealthy nation may have a moral obligation to intervene elsewhere to help a less-advantaged population. It prefers favouring local producers over free trade, and sees no problem with government intervening in the market to pursue national interests.

Sometimes modern liberals brand themselves “libertarian.” I do not use this term for myself, because it implies a rigid adherence to liberal principles, and I see good arguments on both sides. In a given situation, I can be persuaded that the conservative policy is better. And there is something intrinsically wrong with being doctrinaire, rather than debating and considering each situation on its merits.

But what does the modern “left” believe? Like conservatives, the Marxist left has no natural interest in either democracy or human rights. Nominally, it sacrifices both to equality. Yet the Marxist concept of “equality” is actually the conservative idea of class difference: that the capable must care for the less capable as if they were children. The “capable” for Marxists meaning the bureaucrats, the professions, or the “vanguard” of intellectuals.

Classical Marxism would and did oppose foreign entanglements, and modern leftists most often do, although inconsistently. Wars exist, in their minds, only to benefit the ruling class. They are supposedly always about “oil,” by which they seem to mean, more specifically, more profits for some oil company. Apparently ordinary people do not need oil, and are oppressed by it.

Marxists not only see no natural limits on the power of the state; Marxists want the state to aggressively appropriate power from all other traditional institutions. This dramatically distinguishes them from either conservatives or liberals. The premise is that all existing traditions exist to perpetuate inequality and buttress the ruling class. Marxists want the state to aggressively destroy the culture as a whole, on the same premise. The classical idea is, of course, that on the rubble a government-free, truly equal society will spontaneously emerge.

This is all rather like a farmer imagining that, if he kills all his livestock and burns all his crops, infinitely better crops and better livestock will spontaneously appear.

Modern Marxists, or at least the modern left, oppose free trade as well. The premise is that free trade helps the rich and harms the poor. This premise seems perfectly arbitrary in Marxist terms, since foreign workers are working class too, and poor people benefit from cheaper manufactures more than the rich, but this is where it stands currently.

And they are aggressively in support of open borders and large-scale immigration, which seems to directly contradict their stance on free trade.

Nevertheless, this contradiction seems less important than the hope that a large influx of people from elsewhere will degrade traditional non-government institutions and traditions, like church, neighbourhood, manners, or family.

I said at the beginning that Marxism has been positively disproven. I do not only mean the conventional argument that everywhere it has been tried it has led to eventual economic stagnation or collapse, and genocide. It has, but that experiment need never have been tried even once. It was already disproven on its own terms before Lenin detrained at the Finland Station.

Marx claimed a scientific basis for his theories. That means they are falsifiable: Marx made certain definite predictions, and if they did not come true, the theory was wrong.

They have not come true.

Marx predicted that over time, a smaller and smaller group of “capitalists” would become wealthier and wealthier, while more and more people would descend to the proletariat, living on wages for manual labour, and this large mass of the population would become poorer and poorer. 

Despite all the Marx-inspired current talk of “income inequality” in the US, this has not happened. The class of people owning the means of production has instead steadily grown, fewer and fewer people are members of the proletariat, and the proletariat itself has become steadily better off.

Marx predicted that the revolution, and the transition to socialism, was a natural evolution, and so would come first to the most industrialized and developed countries. Instead, Marxist revolutions have consistently been in poorer and less developed areas: Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, here and there in Latin America or Africa. And they have tended to collapse into “capitalism” over time. While Marxist parties have had some electoral success in the developed world, it has been hit and miss, and no evolutionary trend seems evident. If anything, their proportion of the popular vote seems in decline. At the same time that Marxism has been growing in influence on the left, the left as a whole seems to have been shrinking. Two words: Jeremy Corbyn.

Marx predicted that, given the intrinsic structural problems in capitalism, over time periodic recessions and depressions would become worse, until the system collapsed. Instead, touching wood, our recessions and depressions have become less severe since the 1930s.

That being so, why is it that Marxism still holds such power over the left, seemingly growing year over year?

I think Marxism thrives as an amoral alternate explanation of society; a trait it shares with that other amoral asteroid-challenged theoretical dinosaur that refuses to lie down and die, Freudianism. If you embrace Marxism, you are free to reject all “bourgeois” moral restraints.

Put it all together, and modern leftism is both a serious mental illness and a dangerous social disease.

A Glimpse into the Future

An interesting study just published in Science concludes:

“countries with longer historical exposure to the medieval Western Church or less intensive kinship (e.g., lower rates of cousin marriage) are more individualistic and independent, less conforming and obedient, and more inclined toward trust and cooperation with strangers. Focusing on Europe, where we compare regions within countries, we show that longer exposure to the Western Church is associated with less intensive kinship, greater individualism, less conformity, and more fairness and trust toward strangers. Finally, comparing only the adult children of immigrants in European countries, we show that those whose parents come from countries or ethnic groups that historically experienced more centuries under the Western Church or had less intensive kinship tend to be more individualistic, less conforming, and more inclined toward fairness and trust with strangers.”

Put more simply, our high levels of social trust, which allow for individual freedom, democratic institutions, relative social peace, and an efficient economy, are based on historic Christian values.

If the study is right, it follows that:

1. Undercutting or discarding traditional Christian values will probably lead to a loss of freedom, social order, and prosperity.
2. Importing large numbers of immigrants from historically non-Christian countries threatens social peace, prosperity, and democratic institutions. Especially if they are encouraged to preserve their previous traditions, as with “multiculturalism” and a stigma against “cultural appropriation.”

All social science studies are dubious. But this one ought at least to prompt some debate.

Why Christians Must Be Liberals

To commit a moral act requires three things. First, the act must be itself good in its effects. Second, one must do it entirely of one’s own volition. Third, one must be fully aware of its nature.

And the same three considerations apply to sin.

Has anyone else noticed that this is in itself a powerful moral argument for limited government? Free will requires freedom. The more choices the government takes from us, the more it does in our behalf, the fewer the opportunities to do either good or evil. Given that we were created with free will as moral beings, this is a negation of our worth and our significance as humans.

Freedom means the freedom to act morally.

Therefore, while government is needed to maintain social order, to protect the weak from the strong, to prevent acts obviously and intrinsically evil, it should never intrude where there is not a compelling reason to do so.

To “legislate morality” is a contradiction in terms.

Compassion and Conservatism

Burke

One of the most annoying traits of the left is to consider themselves compassionate; while the right is supposedly stern and cruel. This is a level of hypocrisy that would make a Biblical Pharisee choke on his dinner.

And many on the right are stupid enough to buy into it. As when George Bush the younger called for “Compassionate conservatism,” or when Romney described his record as “severely conservative.”

One leftish Facebook friend recently asked me, “How can you, a Christian, support Trump?” I did not, mind, support Trump; she was assuming this, perhaps from the fact that I was a professed Christian. She, of course, was not.

If I thought this were true, that left-wing policies were compassionate, and right-wing policies were a matter of sticking it to the poor and vulnerable, I’d be a left-winger. But the whole notion is based on a Marxist fantasy, an inverted idea that free markets promote greed, while a government intervention is a corrective to this.

This is the opposite of the truth. The whole point of a free market is that it prevents greed and selfishness. Try to ask for more than your product is really worth, and you go bankrupt. Try to take out more profit than you’ve earned, and you go bankrupt. Granted, there are distortions. But the solution to such distortions is to end them, not to add them.

And with a free market, if there is misconduct, if there is oppression, the remedy is immediate: you stop buying the product. You stop working for the company. You pull out your investment. You cannot do this with government. At best, you get input about every four years, it is just up or down for everything, and you have to hope a majority of your countrymen agree with you.

On the most important issues, it seems to me consistently the left that acts selfishly and is prepared to screw the less fortunate.

Abortion is the most obvious. Who is more vulnerable and in more need of society’s help? Abortion is now the worst holocaust, the greatest mass murder, the world has ever seen, and it is happening now. How can anyone on the left think that anyone on the right could, in conscience, vote for the left, now that they demand abortion paid for by government, on demand, and without apology? And ban from their ranks anyone who disagrees? Is it okay because the left does not see the unborn as human? Was killing the Jews okay because the Nazis did not see them as human?

School choice is also an obvious marker. This would, of course, be most valuable to the poor; the rich can already send their kids to the schools they want. I note with knowing horror that of all Trump’s cabinet choices, the left is most opposed to Betsy DeVos, the advocate of charter schools. When it comes down to what is most important to them themselves, screwing the poor is top of the agenda. Failing schools are the surest way to keep down rising generations. Note that these wealthy liberals almost always send their own kids to private schools. Guaranteeing their class privilege.

This probably explains their opposition to the free market. It allows a poor person or poor family to work their way into the upper class. Mired, of course, with all the filth of trade. The poor are supposed to stay poor. Welfare does that. The rich are not supposed to have to compete with the hoi polloi.

Trade protectionism. Trump is a protectionist, but the right in general is not; the left have been the protectionists over the last few decades, certainly in Canada. While protectionism might be good for some local workers, it is necessarily always at the expense of poorer workers abroad. And even at home, what is gained by some workers is at the expense of poorer people on fixed incomes or without work, whose cost of living must go up.

Minimum wage laws: these benefit those who keep jobs against those, necessarily poorer, who now cannot get jobs. The haves are given at the expense of the have-nots. Most hurt are the young, looking for their first job. Simple truth: if I want to work for X money, and you want my work for that amount, we both have an absolute human right to make that deal. Prohibit it, and I starve while you do without.

Burke parodied for wanting rights for Catholics. "Driven back to his native potatoes."

All of this is aside from a social safety net. There may be crazies on the right who oppose a social safety net, but this is certainly not the conservative tradition. The fundamental concept of Burkean conservatism is that society has responsibilities to its weakest members. More recently, classic liberalism has also been labelled “conservative,” but when did classic liberalism, either, involve or advocate failing to provide for the poor? (I consider myself a liberal, not a conservative.) The debate here between left and right is on how to do this most fairly, efficiently, and respectfully. All else is straw.

And the difference is, first, the left wants the bulk of the money to go to well-off bureaucrats, instead of to the poor. Second, the left sees poverty as a permanent state that should be permanent, while the right wants the poor to become, if possible, better off.

An Old Hope

Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!

I am no expert on economics. It fascinates me, but it is, in the end, a social science. Which means to me that its data are unreliable. So I am not qualified to comment on this recent piece. But I include it because of its possible relevance to my own point that Western Civ died in the First World War.

Despite the title, its thesis seems to me to be hopeful. It argues that free trade and globalization make war increasingly unlikely. The century of relative peace between Waterloo in 1815 and Sarajevo in 1914, sometimes called “Pax Britannica,” was, it holds, no lucky accident. The First World War was a desperate rear-guard action by the traditional old landed elites, seeing their powers slip away. And, if we can ever shake off the last vestiges of socialism and Keynesianism, we may yet get back on track.

The argument seems to me to make some sense. After all, more land or even more resources means nothing in an industrial economy and given free trade. Let alone that, in modern democracies, you have to give any conquered people the vote. The one group to whom it would matter is the old landed warrior class, committed both to land and to war, who would see an expanding empire as an opportunity for their younger sons. Moreover, going to war would magnify their political power back home.

Germany was clearly more worried about Russia than France...

I note that the nations most responsible for the war’s outbreak were those in which the old landed warrior class were a) most dominant, and b) most threatened; yet also the nations that c) as nations, had the most to lose. The initial culprit was Austria: a terribly rickety aristocratic government already clearly in decline. Next to break the peace was Czarist Russia, by mobilizing in response: still run by aristocrats, but developing quickly. After that, industrialized but autocratic Germany. It was the ancien regime’s last throw of the dice, driven to desperation by their declining importance in the modern world.

Conservatives Are Anti-Science?

The progressive world view.

 In recent times, it has been fashionable for liberals in the US and Canada to accuse conservatives of being “anti-science,” mostly for opposing initiatives to prevent the dread global warming. Also cited are their opposition to contraception (?), and, of course, the dispute over Darwinian evolution versus creationism and intelligent design.

However, this recent survey seems to belie the claim. Which seems weird to begin with to any of us familiar with postmodernism, feminism, and post-colonialism, important elements of the left who promote the belief that science varies with sex, race, and personal preference. Not to mention the left's seemingly instinctive opposition to all material progress. Now it turns out that liberals are far more likely than conservatives to believe that astrology is scientific, and far less likely to know that the earth goes around the sun. Pretty basic stuff.

Here’s the distinction: liberals are more respectful of scientific authorities. This is because, to them, science is something magical and mysterious. Conservatives are more informed about science. For this very reason, they are less inclined to rely upon scientific authorities.

Authority and science are competing sources of knowledge; the concept of "scientific authority" is a bit of an oxymoron.

Libertarianism vs. Feminism

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding regarding the political doctrine currently called Libertarianism. A left-wing friend of mine recently referred to Ayn Rand as the “high priestess of libertarians.” This is certainly wrong, since Rand condemned libertarianism. Another complained of the semi-libertarian Canadian Reform Party, some years ago, that it violated the traditions of Canadian conservatism, and was a foreign import (i.e., from the evil United States). Yet an American friend objects to the libertarians on the grounds that they have no history there, unlike the mainstream Republicans.

Obviously, many people think libertarianism is something new. I am not sure why this seems to them to be a telling, indeed a decisive, criticism; I am not sure what they really mean by this. But the claim is certainly false. Only the name is new. It was coined by HL Mencken in the 1930s, as a new term for the doctrine traditionally called liberalism, because that term had been co-opted by FDR to describe his New Deal. The New Deal was essentially the opposite of liberalism, which had always stressed personal autonomy and limited government.

In other words, libertarianism is simply liberalism. It is the political stance championed by Thomas Jefferson, and, more broadly, the founding assumption behind the US Declaration of Independence. Hardly something foreign to the American experience. In Canada, it is plainly the same political creed held by Laurier, the Clear Grits, Baldwin and Lafontaine, and Joseph Howe; certainly within the Canadian mainstream. In the UK, it is Gladstone’s program. If you doubt this, simply check the policies they campaigned for, the party platforms of the day: smaller government, freer trade, less regulation of our daily lives, no foreign adventures. The consistency of the liberal/libertarian doctrine over time is in fact striking.

Lafontaine and Baldwin.

Far from being new, therefore, this thing currently called “libertarianism” in the US can be traced directly back to the philosophy of John Locke (17th century). He in turn had his clear antecedents among the early Jesuits, who built on St. Thomas Aquinas, who built on some principles clearly stated in the Bible. You don’t see a longer philosophical pedigree for any other political stance.

So why does it seem to so many to be something new and radical? Because in the US, the general public was subjected to a verbal shell game in the 1930s, when a political approach that really was new, the New Deal, was marketed with the euphemism “liberal.” This was done because its proper name was unsalable. The British euphemism of the day was a bit more direct: “labour.” On the continent, it was called “socialism.” But at the time, the proper moniker in current use might even have been “Trotskyism”—that’s what Orwell called his own brand of democratic socialism. Bit of a tough sell in the USA, then or now. So they used, and still used, “liberal” or “progressive” in the US.

This illegitimately appropriated a fake pedigree for social democracy, as if it were the culmination of the ideas of Jefferson and Jackson. At the same time, it left the ideas of Jefferson and Jackson looking like orphans. This may be behind the insistence that libertarianism is something “new.” The modern left does not want to accept the truth that their own pedigree is bogus. But the plain historical fact is that it is. The pedigree of the modern left goes back to Marx.

The influence of American culture is such that the same verbal sleight-of-tongue has confused political terminology elsewhere, although in most of the world even now liberal still means liberal. In Canada, more influenced by the US than anyone, it has led to the myth of the “Red Tories.” 

Last of the red-hot Tories.

There are not now and never have been any “Red Tories.” The “Red Tory” program is simply the Tory program, traditional conservatism, Burkean conservatism, which likes big, paternal government. The non-Red Tories are the traditional liberals, the Clear Grits. There is a reason why, in Laurier’s day, the Liberal party dominated the Prairies, while today, the non-Red Tory Conservatives do. The politics of the West have not changed; only the party programs.

If all of this is clear so far, a further interesting question arises. What caused this major political shift, which seems almost like a switching of roles between left and right? What caused a political philosophy that used to regularly command about 50% popular support, in Canada, the US, and the UK--liberalism--to fall back to a minority movement—libertarianism in the US, the Liberal Democrats in the UK? And in all three countries, at about the same time? The last clearly liberal administration in the US was Calvin Coolidge’s, elected in 1924; although Reagan ran as a liberal, he did not succeed in actually reducing the size of government. The last large-l-Liberal Prime Minister of Britain, Lloyd George, resigned in 1922. In Canada, Mackenzie King went from being a traditional liberal, in his early years in power, to a New Dealer in the 30s. But by that time, he was actually imitating RB Bennett's conservatives in the switch: if the Liberals had not occupied this new turf, the Tories would have.

The obvious answer, and I think the traditional one, is that the Depression changed our perspective on traditional laissez-faire liberalism. John Maynard Keynes's new economics supplanted the traditional liberal economics as a response to this crisis. A re-evaluation of both Keynsian economics and traditional liberalism in light of the stagflation of the Seventies then led to the revival of classic liberalism under Reagan. But this explanation does not really work. Look again at those dates: the shift was already apparent in the 1920s, before the Depression hit. 

In the long run, he's dead.

We may even be reversing cause and effect here.

There is another major political event that seems be be a better contender in explaining the shift. There a sudden doubling of the electorate at about this time in all these countries. It should hardly be surprising if this had some effect. Women got the right to vote in Britain in 1918. No Liberal government has been elected since that date, although they were in power then. Women got the right to vote in the US in 1922. Only one further liberal government, two years later; the re-election of an incumbent. After that, never again, with the possible exception of Reagan.

In Canada, the franchise was extended in 1917. In the very next election, 1921, there was an unprecedented electoral earthquake. A new party, the Progressives, formed only the year before, came from nowhere to win the second-largest number of seats in parliament.

Their program was ideologically mixed: they have traditionally been painted as a regional party representing the West, and an agrarian party. But something obviously had changed. They called for freer trade, a liberal position, but rather more radically, for the nationalization of key industries, notably communications and transportation. They wanted fixed grain shipping rates. In other words, their program was largely socialist. The great majority of the “Progressives” then melded into the Liberal Party, while the more “radical” among them became the CCF/NDP.

There you have it. Men and women are different, and want different things. Men in general want freedom and independence. They want government to stay off their backs, and the right to manage their own affairs. Women in general want to be taken care of. They want security and seek to avoid personal responsibility. No surprise if this is reflected in their voting patterns, and has changed the political landscape.

Prohibition: A good way to raise prices.

The original and overriding “feminist” issue was Prohibition—in itself, whatever its other merits, a major intrusion into daily life. Its failure briefly held back the progress of the “women’s movement,” but by the Sixties feminism was back on track. The personal is again political. And, while serious liberalism could command 50% of an all-male electorate, it manages only about 25% of a mixed male-female electorate.

So what? Don't women have the same right to choose their own government that men do? Surely yes, as a question of natural right. However, this may be a big problem for practical purposes. There may, in the end, be a practical reason why our ancestors so often sought to ban women from the council fires. Ibn Khaldun, the great Arab historian whom Arnold Toynbee has called the founder of the social sciences, collated a great deal of evidence in support of a theory of the rise and fall of civilizations. Civilizations inevitably decline, he theorized, because the burden of government inevitably grows to the point at which it drains the vitality of the state.

Restricting the vote to men only might have been a practical way to slow this decline. Extending it to women might be a good way to hasten the process.

Indeed, it seems clear that Western Civilization as a whole has been in some kind of a funk since about 1918. Another obvious correlation with votes for women...

Leftists, Liberals, and Progressives

It seems to me that if the left were dealing straight, they would not play poker with words. As George Orwell showed in both 1984 and his essay “Politics and the English Language,” tinkering with the language is the first refuge of the political scoundrel. It is the first way to put something over on the public.

Take, for example, their violent abduction of the word “liberal” to describe their own positions. In fact, there is nothing liberal about them. “Liberal” implies an overriding concern with basic freedoms and individual rights—in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, “(in a political context) favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate reform.”

This is a far better description of the Conservative than the Liberal party in Canada; and far closer to the Republicans than the Democrats in the US.

Who favours the right to bear arms, Charlton Heston or Michael Moore?

Who championed individual over group rights, John “No hyphenated Canadians” Diefenbaker or Pierre “Multiculturalism” Trudeau? Who supports “affirmative action,” systematic and enforced employment and advancement by group identity?

Who champions free speech, Ezra Levant or Warren Kinsella? Who invented “hate laws,” “speech codes,” and “politically correct” speech?

Who introduced free trade, the Liberals or the Conservatives? Who now talks of tearing up the deal, John McCain or Barack Obama?

Who supports the right to life? Who is against the individual liberty to smoke? To hunt? Who is more reliable in defending the right to property? Life, liberty, property—check. Those are John Locke's big three.

The problem is that “socialism” is such an unpopular word.

But using a new word never fixes the problem—because the original word was unpopular for a reason. Now the left has hopelessly tarnished what was once a very honourable term; nobody any more wants to use the word “liberal” either. A leftish friend of mine this morning instead employed the more recent euphemism “progressive,” explicitly contrasting it with “right-wing.”

But surely a “progressive” should, at a minimum, believe in human progress? And who is eternally convinced in the face of all evidence that the world is going to hell in a shopping cart? If not straight into nuclear holocaust, or overpopulation, or running out of oil, or ozone depletion, or pollution, or running out of water, or into global warming, or somehow, no matter how, descending into poverty, disease, and starvation? Who is broadly fearful of the future, and who is not?

By actual survey, consistently, Democrats are; Republicans are not. Republicans, therefore, are more progressive than Democrats.

Aw heck, why stop? Who opposes development generally? Who favours “conservation”? Who commonly opposes new technologies and efficiencies like genetically modified organisms, nuclear energy, outsourcing, plastics, globalization, increasing automation, new hydro installations, new anything? Who considers change per se bad (hint: check speech transcripts. Two words: David Suzuki)? Never mind human progress; who actually wants fewer human beings?

Perhaps the best contrast, given all this, is not “right” versus “progressive,” as my friend would have it, nor “right” versus “liberal.” Perhaps it's simpler than that. The devil being the father of lies, perhaps it ends up being just “right” versus “wrong.”

One begins to wonder, after all, what it is they themselves so badly want to hide.

Symposium on the Origin and Meaning of Human Equality: The Dessert

Dear Abbot:

Say what you will; I do not believe human rights are absolute. I have never been a believer in absolute truth.

Dr. Who

Dear Who:

Let’s take your statement just as it stands: “I have never been a believer in absolute truth.”

Never? That’s an absolute statement, isn’t it? Which means, you must not believe it. Which means it is not relatively true—it is absolutely false.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

The US Constitution is not religious in its essence, so neither is its doctrine of human equality. The US Constitution comes from "A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," which states:

“Article I. All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”

Notice the absence here of the word "Creator."

Dr. Sax


Dear Sax:

It is quite unlikely that the US Declaration of Independence (note: not the US Constitution) originated from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776. The Constitution of Massachusetts was written in 1780.

The latter, unlike the Declaration of Independence, lacks any clear reference to the source of these rights—so it is not relevant to our current discussion. It is illustrative, though, to note the preamble:

“We, therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the great Legislator of the universe, in affording us, in the course of His providence, an opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud, violence or surprise, of entering into an original, explicit, and solemn compact with each other; and of forming a new constitution of civil government, for ourselves and posterity; and devoutly imploring His direction in so interesting a design, do agree upon, ordain and establish the following Declaration of Rights, and Frame of Government, as the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

So whom are they saying all their legislation ultimately originates from?

Note too Article II (you have quoted Article I):

"Article II: It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe…”

And then there’s Article III:

"Article III: As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety and morality: Therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God…”

So the functioning of a civil society “essentially depends” on religion and morality.

This sounds religious to me.

That, plus the obvious echoes of the Declaration of Independence, are suggestive.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

Your argument, that equality is a Christian concept, would offend Judaism and Islam, not to mention Hinduism or Buddhism.

Dr. Sax


Dear Sax:

If you feel that truth offends you, do you have the right to deny it? That would be a license to lie whenever it is to your advantage to do so.

I feel for my Jewish and Muslim brethren. But I cannot change history, nor the doctrines of their religions. If any Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim reader wishes to justify their own religion on this issue, they are welcome to comment.

As a matter of historical fact, the doctrine of human equality and inalienable human rights as we know it comes from Christianity and Christian theology. It can be traced back from Jefferson, through Locke, through the Jesuits of the Salamanca School, to St. Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps further.

Locke based his argument on Genesis—the point that we are all descendants of Adam, and all made in God’s image. That makes us all brothers, and all of equal, and inestimable, value.

As the Genesis creation story is shared verbatim with Judaism, and in essence with Islam, theoretically, these religions are equally committed to the concepts of human equality and human rights.

However, it would be a distortion not to note that the New Testament gives important boosts to this idea of equality—the Messiah as ordinary man, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the communal life of the early Christians, St. Paul’s dictum that there is “neither man nor woman, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free” in Christ; and, crucially, the idea that the divine covenant is now open to all men. Without this, the Jewish idea of a “chosen people” does tend in the opposite direction. Similarly, Islam seems stricter than Christianity in limiting equality to believers—albeit this “chosen people” is a larger group than in Judaism, and an easier one to join. It can be a bit harsh on “kaffirs” or “unbelievers.”

Now let’s look at Hinduism. The original Hindu story of the creation of man is from the Rg Veda. It explains that man was created, along with the rest of the world, from the dismemberment of the cosmic person, Purusa. But, unlike Genesis, there are four distinct types of men created at the outset:

“The Brahmin was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rajanya made. His thighs became the Vaisya, from his feet the Sudra was produced.” (Rg Veda 10:90:12)

This leads to very different conclusions. The different classes or castes are, in this conception, no more similar to one another than they are to other species, or indeed to rocks and stones.

To be fair, Hinduism has several different creation stories. The later Laws of Manu and Puranas give a single creation, more like the Judeo-Christian Genesis, and like Genesis implying that all men are, ultimately, brothers, as descendants of Manu. But the Laws of Manu and the Puranas are, for Hinduism, less authoritative than the Vedas.

In classical Greece and Rome, ancient Egypt, China, or Japan—in polytheistic societies—it was common for royal houses to claim an independent creation, and a uniquely divine descent. This, of course, implied a radical inequality.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

If human equality is a religious concept, how to explain great tragedies brought about by religious warfare?

Dr. Sax


Dear Sax:

Not so hard. It’s the same question as “police brutality.” Yes, police forces are responsible for some violence. But would society be less violent without the police?

And, of course, many wars are fought for human equality and human rights—at least on one side.

Abbot

What is Equality, and from Whence Does It Come?

I have engaged on an email list in a discussion on the Slate article linked to here recently.

It seems to me the result reads a bit like a Socratic dialogue, and might be worth reproducing in paraphrase for others here.

The question on the table at this symposium was, what is human “equality,” and where does it come from?

The author of the Slate piece makes this important point:

"If this suggestion makes you angry-if you find the idea of genetic racial advantages outrageous, socially corrosive, and unthinkable-you're not the first to feel that way. Many Christians are going through a similar struggle over evolution. Their faith in human dignity rests on a literal belief in Genesis. To them, evolution isn't just another fact; it's a threat to their whole value system. As William Jennings Bryan put it during the Scopes trial, evolution meant elevating 'supposedly superior intellects,' 'eliminating the weak,' 'paralyzing the hope of reform,' jeopardizing 'the doctrine of brotherhood,' and undermining 'the sympathetic activities of a civilized society.'"

Just as this suggests, apparently Bryan's concerns over evolution have been widely misrepresented—what most of us know is the character in “Inherit the Wind,” not Bryan himself. And “Inherit the Wind” is fiction. Bryan objected to Darwin more as a liberal than as a Christian, feeling Darwin's ideas promoted class and race superiority and violated the doctrine of the equality of man.

And, historically, he proved right. The Nazis made much of Darwinian evolution in their race theories.

Indeed, as is often forgotten today, John Locke based his argument that men were equal not on any principle of science, but on the Book of Genesis. Chuck out Genesis, and the doctrines of liberal democracy are in trouble.

The Slate writer is wrong here, though:

"Evolution forced Christians to bend or break. They could insist on the Bible's literal truth and deny the facts, as Bryan did. Or they could seek a subtler account of creation and human dignity."

Nope. It was not the doctrines of Christianity that were in trouble. This was an issue only for a certain sort of Protestant. The Catholic Church had never believed in any special value to a "literal" reading of scripture, and did not see any fundamental conflict between its own views and Darwin's theory.

This conversation ensued:

Dear Abbot:
Men are not equal, but all men have equal value in human society. Some are better at one thing, some another -- but everyone, weak and strong, is human and therefore, "equal."

I do not see a conflict here with Darwin.

Dr. Sax

Dear Sax:
Okay, here it is: "value" in Darwinian terms is ability to survive and propagate—"survival of the fittest." Not all humans are equal in these terms—if they were, the Darwinian theory of evolution would not work. The Nazis logically extended this: survival, prosperity, and propagation of the race and species are best served by favouring the fit and getting rid of the unfit. As, indeed, they are.

You need therefore to define clearly what you mean by "value," when you say "all men have equal value." What is this value? As we have seen, it is obviously not value to the evolutionary process. It is obviously not economic value—ability to generate material wealth. It is obviously not intelligence, the enemies of Watson to the contrary—otherwise there could be no Mensa.

What is this "value"?

It is easy for one who accepts Genesis to answer this. But can you give a purely "scientific," let alone “Darwinian,” answer?

Abbot

Dear Abbot:
I think speaking of “value” and “scientific” together is an oxymoron. Value by definition is subjective and depends on the domain in which it is used. Value would be whatever contributes to achieving commonly-held objectives within that domain.

Darwinian value would be to possess attributes that would aid in adaptation. Financial value would be to contribute to stable and increasing worth.

Dr. Who

Dear Who:
It seems to me you are reinforcing Bryan’s concern. If Darwin was right, it looks as though Hitler was right, too—survival of the species being a “commonly-held objective.”

I'm not sure what you mean by saying that "value by definition is subjective," but it does not look like you are going to a good place. Oxford defines "subjective" as "based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions." Do you think, then, that the value of a human life, say, is just a matter of taste or opinion? The value of human rights? Does truth or the value of truth differ depending on "domain"?

Abbot

Dear Abbot:
Value is by definition something worth having. And we humans, regardless of religion or lack of it, have decided that equality is something worth having. Where is the confusion?

Dr. Sax

Dear Sax:
It's here: if value is simply a question of consensus, of “commonly-held objectives,” it follows that any other consensus would be as legitimate. So--lets imagine a different one, and see how it sounds. How about a consensus that life is of no value, and we are all free to murder? Or how about a consensus that we are free to kill a specific group--say, the Jews? Then it would be okay?

If so, of course, Hitler did nothing wrong, did he? But Oskar Schindler--he did. He did not follow the consensus--so he was acting immorally.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:
I do not believe in absolute truth. When the state of Texas executes one of its citizens, do we have to conclude that Texans do not value human life?

I think we must understand the context. …

Dr. Who

Dear Who:
I don't think the argument over capital punishment is really a dispute over the value of human life, but rather over how best to defend it.

As to truth not being absolute, does that mean you believe that 2 + 2 only sometimes equals 4? That every now and then it may equal 5, or 47? That two parallel lines may cross every now and then?

Abbot

Dear Abbot:
How about a consensus that we stop arguing about "this self-evident truth that all men are born equal" and simply hold this value dear to our heart.

Dr. Sax

Dear Sax:
Let's not lose the thread of the discussion here. I think we can assume that we all share the opinion that all humans are in some sense of equal value. That has never been in dispute. The question is, what is the nature of that “equality,” and where does it come from? Can it be derived from Darwin, or from "science"?

I take it you are now saying, with the US Declaration of Independence, that it is simply "self-evident" that all humans are equal. That lets Watson off the hook, in any case. But note the full sentence from which you are quoting:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created [not 'born'] equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (italics mine)

That's the full contention--all of that is held as self-evident. Now, if you deny the creation and the Creator, deny the stated source of this equality and these inalienable rights, aren't the rights themselves similarly up for grabs?


Abbot