Wild About Writing

The Liberal Party national convention in Ottawa next week could  be a milestone on its  road back to power in Canada — but only if Liberals forget about power for the moment and instead put policy first.

How do you separate the two?

Look for what delegates spend the most  time on — figuring out process that they hope will help them win an election, or fathoming what kind of policies will warrant their eventual return to office.

Process involves such things as leadership selection and voting rules. All important stuff,  but which should be disposed of pretty quickly.

One quick step that could be taken would be to abolish the strictures that have been set on Bob Rae as interim leader. The rules say he can’t stand for permanent leader, and that he’s not allowed to enter into any dialogue with the NDP that might culminate in a merger.

Both are unreasonable restrictions, and should be dropped.

As to opening up leadership selection to a primary style vote, letting anyone cast a vote who is prepared to say they support the Liberal party, I think that’s a good idea. People who take advantage of that will be more likely to join the party and support it financially in the future.

But it’s policy, not process, that will carry the Liberal party back to power, if that’s ever going to happen. Liberals will have to address important issues that are generally considered too hot to handle. It’s the failure of the parties to address these kinds of issues that has led, I believe, to both the poor voter turn-out of recent elections, and the increasingly negative view we hold of our politicians.

A few examples:

1. The militarization of Canada. At a time when the U.S. is preparing to strip a trillion dollars out of its defense budget, the Harper government seems determined to pick up the pieces. Ordering F-35 “first strike” planes for which we should have no use is a colossal waste of taxpayer money, at a time when the country is struggling to get out of deficit.The Harper government seems to have become the prisoner of what U.S. President Eisenhower warned against when he left office in 1961 — the “military-industrial complex.”

When you have the Prime Minister and his Minister of Defence, Peter McKay, going before the annual convention of Canadian arms makers — the Conference of Defence Associations — as they will do again in February to explain their military intentions — it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion that they are indeed prisoners of said military-industrial complex.

The Liberal party should set out — as the NDP has done — a vigorous set of alternative policies in defence and foreign policy.

2. The war on drugs. This is another great issue that’s damaging the country — in terms of ruined lives, sky-high policing costs, and ever-growing investments in bigger prisons. Witness the Harper government’s new “tough on crime” approach. Better to call it “stupid on crime.” Liberals should demand a medical focus on the problem of improper drug use, a strategy that would have a far greater prospect of success in bringing the drug problem to resolution than the present approach. Treat the drug addict medically — just as we need to act on the medical problems that bring large numbers of mentally-ill prisoners to our jails.

It’s fine for Liberals to be addressing the future of the monarchy, and calling for a an all-party committee to consider replacing the Crown with a Canadian head of state. But not a whole lot of people really care too much about that, one way or the other. We’re not suffering as a nation because we pay allegiance to the Queen.

3. Justice for Canada’s “First Nations.” We can no longer, in conscience, tolerate the conditions under which native Canadians live. I was involved in a study a decade ago, for the Canadian Council on Native Business, that showed aboriginals in this country are actually WORSE OFF than when the first Europeans arrived four hundred years ago. We need to begin by investing people on the reserves with some responsibility for their own lives, rather than being forced to accept Ottawa’s dictates. The Liberal party should develop a clear, practical policy with this native self-responsibility as its goal.

How about it, Liberals? Let’s start focusing on some REAL issues for a change.

The scientists searching for the God Particle — the phenomenon that turned energy into mass at the time of the Big Bang to create the universe as we know it — say they’re closing in on their quarry.

Of course, there’s nothing God-like about what they’re hunting, but the fact they’ve chosen to give it this name aptly illustrates our preoccupation throughout human history with deities of one kind or another.

Human beings created Gods (in our likeness?) around the time that we moved from hunter-gatherer status to tillers of the soil — or maybe earlier. The Sumerians, ancient Greeks and then the Romans codified their Gods but it took the rise of Judaism and Christianity — and later Islam — to create the monotheistic, all-fearing, vengeful God handed down to us in the Common Era.

A new book, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton) explores how some of the early philosophers, notably Epicurus in 3rd century BCE Greece, and Lucretius in 1st century BCE Rome, challenged this belief in gods. Greenblatt has constructed  a fascinating narrative around a 15th century ex-Papal secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, who  found  the forgotten manuscript of Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, in a monastery in southern Germany. He had it copied (in beautiful calligraphy as readable as modern printing), and soon it was influencing the work of Renaissance thinkers, insidiously undermining the conventional wisdoms of the Church. With the discovery, Greenblatt writes, “the world swerved in a new direction.”

Epicurus had taught that  the gods, if they exist, did not care at all about human beings. If the gods did not care, why should we? The purpose of life, Epicurus said, should  be the attainment of pleasure, and one should believe only that which can be tested through direct observation. The universe is made up of atoms, moving randomly about.

Lucretius used these arguments to bolster further disbelief in gods. As Greenblatt sums up Lucretius’ conclusions: “There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design … no reason to think that the earth or its inhabitants occupy a central place” in the universe.

The notion of atoms, and of evolution, was joined in The Nature of Things with the conviction that “there is a hidden natural explanation for everything that alarms or eludes you.”

According to Lucretius, Greenblatt writes,  “there is no single moment of origin, no mythic scene of creation … There is no afterlife … When you are dead, there will be neither pleasure or pain, longing nor fear. You will not care, because you will not exist … There are no angels, demons or ghosts.”

Greenblatt points to the rejection by Lucretius of the cruelty of religion, as manifested in the sacrifice of a child by its parent in order to please a god.

“Writing around 50 BCE he (Lucretius) could not, of course, have anticipated the great sacrifice myth that would come to dominate the Western world, but he would not have been surprised by it or the endlessly reiterated, prominently displayed images of the bloody, murdered son.”

When the ancient manuscript found by Bracciolini began to circulate in Western Europe, the Church of course took action. An early strategy was to impugn the teachings of Epicurus as nothing more than a craving for gluttony and a sinful exercise in excess. More damaging was the persecution by the Holy Office (the Inquisition) of those who dared advance scientific thought.

The author of The Swerve draws an interesting comparison between the attack of the early Christians on scientific thought, and the enlightened pursuit of knowledge that had taken place in Egypt under the Ptolemaic kings before the birth of Christ. With their Greek heritage, they encouraged intellectual inquiry which led to the development of higher mathematics (geometry and calculus), posited that the earth was round, that the year was 365 1/4 days thus requiring a leap day every four years, and speculated that India could be reached by sailing west from Spain.

All of this knowledge, and more, was accumulated in half a million papyrus scrolls in the Alexandria Library. Early in the Christian era, Jews, pagans and Christians lived side by side in tolerance. After the Roman emperor Constantine decreed Christianity as Rome’s official religion, the attack on Alexandrian pluralism began. There must be no free-thinking inquiry, everything must give way to religious dogma. Soon, Christian mobs were vandalizing the great library, slaughtering pagans and expelling Jews. Rome’s own libraries fell into disrepair, with the historian Marcellinus bemoaning that “Romans had virtually abandoned serious reading.”

The collapse of the Roman Empire quickly followed. The Western world fell into a thousand years of stagnation and decay. Stephen Greenblatt’s Swerve leaves me wondering how much of a factor was Christianity in those lamentable occurrences. Did the Christian suppression of scientific inquiry cost us ten centuries of progress? Where might we be today if the seeds planted in Alexandria had been allowed to flourish in Rome, Florence, Venice and London ?

Ultimately they did of course bear fruit, in many ways and in many different places. Concludes Greenblatt: Thomas Jefferson would give “a momentous political document, at the founding of a new republic, a distinctly Lucretian turn. The turn was toward a government whose end was not only to secure the lives and the liberties of its citizens but also to serve ‘the pursuit of Happiness.’ The atoms of Lucretius had left their traces on the Declaration of Independence.”

The mini boom in Canada’s largest city in support of Margaret Atwood for Mayor raises some interesting questions. Would the 71-year-old novelist, poet and sometime political activist ever seriously consider jumping into politics? And if she did run for Mayor of Toronto, could she win?

To this point, the gathering support for Atwood for Mayor is not much more than a lighthearted fling, a spontaneous outbreak of enthusiasm following her intervention in the debate over the future of the city’s library system.

The novelist is accustomed to taking stands on issues affecting arts and culture. She’s been a bitter critic of Stephen Harper. Now, in the wake of Mayor Rob Ford’s determination to “cut the gravy” from city spending, she’s become the prime proponent of saving the Toronto Public Library’s 99 branches that circulate more books than any other system in North America.

Ms. Atwood started it all with a Tweet to her 233,361 followers on July 21, responding to the KPMG report that identified library closings as a possible way of helping the city out of the $750 million hole that Mayor Rob Ford has dug it into in the first year of his term.

The Tweet heard round Canada: “Toronto’s libraries are under threat of privatization. Tell city council to keep them public now.” Her appeal drove readers to an online petition on a web site of the Library Workers Union. The site promptly crashed, and as I write (Sunday, July 31) it’s attracted 41,499 signatures.

More pointed Tweets followed, including this one:

“Twin Fordmayor cld fight for fair shake from ON, but that’s not the agenda? T(he)y want to trash old folks + readers + working moms instead?

The Twin Ford reference cleverly links in the Mayor’s witless brother, Doug Ford, who promptly denied any knowledge of who Margaret Atwood might be, or what she does.

“Good luck to Margaret Atwood, I don’t even know her. She could walk right by me – I wouldn’t have a clue who she is,”  Ford said in response to Atwood’s tweets. “Tell her to go run in the next election and get democratically elected. I’m happy to sit down and listen to Margaret Atwood.”

So how about it, Margaret Atwood. Would you run for Mayor?

Anyone who knows her knows that Margaret Atwood could never fill the role of a back-slapping politician. But she wouldn’t be the first artist to go for political office. I’m thinking of Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and poet dissident who was the President of free Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. Or Jan Paderewski, the great Polish composer and pianist who was the second Prime Minister of an independent Poland after the First World War.

Would Ms. Atwood have the interest, the stamina, or the ability to withstand the inanities of a political life? Anyone who’s been through the ordeal of author tours as she has, surely has the stamina. Age is not a factor. Look at Hazel McCallion, long-serving mayor of neighboring Mississauga, and at 90 only now is in what will be her final term.

But let’s face it, Margaret Atwood running for Mayor of Toronto is a highly unlikely prospect.

Let’s suspend disbelief for a moment, and pretend Toronto voters could choose between Atwood and Ford in the next election.The campaign would be highly entertaining, pitting culture against the barbarians. However, like all things political, it probably wouldn’t be fought on any rational understanding of issues facing the city. The Ford forces would depict Margaret Atwood as a “tax and spend liberal.” She’d fight back, brilliantly, but perhaps not successfully.

The library controversy is a case in point. It would be nice to have a rational discussion of the cost/benefits of the city’s chain of libraries. Doug Ford claimed, erroneously, there were more branches in  his Etobicoke district than there were Tim Hortons coffee shops. Not true, but what’s that got to do with it?

With the city hard pressed to cover its costs, perhaps a rational analysis might turn up one or two libraries that could be closed without depriving anyone of reasonable access. Even if that were the case, the savings would be miniscule. But it would give Mayor Ford the spoon of gravy that he needs to feed the right-wing voters who put him in office.

As of today, Margaret Atwood is off Twitter for a week, busy on a writing project. Maybe she’ll tell us when she comes back how she would feel about becoming a politician.

If I were a young person — say 25 or 30 — with political ambitions and ideas about how the country should be run, I’d jump into the Liberal Party with all the energy I could muster. Why? Because a party that’s down — or new — is wide open at the top and the bottom. And all it takes to move up the ranks is determination and patience.

This is not a new idea with me. I had these thoughts fifty years ago. I thought there were two things you’d have to do. First, build your own personal constituency through some kind of citizen activism. It could be any kind of a cause. Second, mobilize that constituency to help you get elected and on the ladder to the top rank in your party.

Too many things got in my way of following through on those ideas. (Although I did join the Liberal party, back in 1972.) Now, there’s a great opportunity  for someone with the commitment and motivation to create a new leadership role in tomorrow’s Liberal Party.

It’s been done before, in other parties.

Tommy Douglas joined the CCF as a young church minister in its early days in Saskatchewan, rose to be Premier, and later leader of what would become the  Official Opposition, the New Democratic party.

Ernest Manning, a youthful Bible student, became enraptured with the idea of Social Credit, joined the new movement in Alberta, and served for years as Premier of that province.

W.A.C. Bennett, a disgruntled B.C. Tory, took hold of Social Credit aspirations in the west coast province and established a political dynasty that ran out only after his son, Bill, has succeeded him in power for several years.

Rene Levesque, unhappy with the reluctance of the Quebec Liberal Party to move from “maitre chez nous” to all-out separatism, built the Parti Quebecois from the ground up, establishing a legacy that endures to this day.

Joey Smallwood, convinced that Newfoundland would be better off in Canada, campaigned for Confederation and became the odds-on choice to head up the Liberal Party when that island became a province. He reigned for years.

Gilles Duceppe, a one-time Maoist and union organizer, became the  first elected MP for the Bloc Quebecois in 1990, setting him on a twenty-year trajectory in Parliament.

All of which goes to prove, in my view, that booking into a political party at its nadir, or catching the rising star of a new movement, offers unusual opportunities.

And of course, you need to engage with the community, as Duceppe did as a community organizer (also Barack Obama) and as Gerard Kennedy, the onetime Ontario Education Minister and federal liberal leadership contender, did with the foodbank movement.

In saying this, I’m not advocating self-serving opportunism. You’ve got to have ideas to go with your ambition. And if your ideas are really important, they probably won’t be very popular at first. Witness Tommy Douglas on healthcare, Smallwood on union with Canada, Bennett on B.C. economic self-sufficiency, or even Duceppe on separatism.

What ideas might a future leader of the Liberal party embrace as Canada goes forward from 2011? They shouldn’t be ideas based on what the public says it wants, or what might win a few seats at the next election.

Really important ideas need to be fought for, and take a long time to fulfill.

Here’s one: family planning, as an element of Canada’s foreign policy. The government of the day refuses to fund international aid involving the teaching of family planning or practice of abortion. Canada’s policy should be just the opposite. Give foreign aid only to countries that agree to embrace family planning.

Drug addiction. Treat it as a health issue, not a crime. End the insanity of a system that, like the prohibition of alcohol, creates vast cesspools of crime. Do just the opposite of what we’re doing.

Immigration. Combined with a global family planning program, Canada could in a clear conscience severely restrict immigration to only those who bring significant new knowledge and cultural compatibility to this country.

Foreign policy: An end to international adventurism, putting a stop to making war on countries like Libya.

This handful of ideas, all in diametric opposition to current policy, would not be an easy sell. But for too long, politics has been based on parties trying to find out what the pubic wants, and then giving it to them. We need a different approach. Come up with  good ideas and then sell them to the public.

Michael Ignatieff closed his resignation speech by saying he hoped that someone out there, perhaps a young woman, was listening to his remarks and he hoped they would come into the arena, and perhaps one day lead the Liberal party.

I hope so too, and with ideas that will engage Canadians into thinking about real solutions to real problems in the 21st century.

Is democracy a pocketbook issue? Probably not, which explains why Michael Ignatieff fell short of his goal in last night’s English federal leaders’ debate. He may have gotten to the five-yard line, but he didn’t score.

Ignatieff was hard-hitting and on the money in properly calling Stephen Harper to account for his dictatorial tactics in refusing Parliament a proper accounting of the costs of government legislation.

“This is about the economy, about telling the truth,” Ignatieff said. He reminded Harper that parliamentary debate isn’t “bickering,” it’s the stuff of democracy. “You cannot be trusted with the institutions of our country.”

But it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for the Liberal leader’s performance. The Toronto Star has a good wrap-up here.

The morning after assessment from the media and the blogosphere seems to be that the leaders conducted themselves true to form.

• Harper, the smarmy, schoolmasterish lecturer telling Canadians they’d better give him  a majority or face “a fifth or sixth election” in the next few years.

• Jack Layton, the happy warrior, smiling despite the pain he must have felt on his feet for two hours with a fractured hip.

• Ignatieff, a novice in leaders’ debates but a seasoned TV presenter, dealing all the right sound bites in his criticisms of Harper.

• Gilles Duceppe , the irrelevant fourth man, there merely to demand more for Quebec. Nonetheless a telling and effective debater; if he’d been a Liberal, he’d probably be Prime Minister right now.

The script fit nicely into Harper’s strategy. Leave me alone and let me have my way or the economy will nosedive and you’ll have to suffer the ordeal of another election. Don’t bug me with bickering. It was more of the politics of fear that Harper has traded on over crime and Coalition. It’s just possible Canadians will be so fed up with not just Harper but the others as well, that they’ll let him have his majority as the price of getting him off their backs.

More than anything, the debate demonstrated the sorry futility of hoping for a rational discussion of a vision  for the country. There’s the glimmer of one in the Liberal platform, but Ignatieff was not especially revealing in how he portrayed it.

There are two weeks plus left in the campaign for Ignatieff to sell the Liberal program to voters. There’s much in it that’s appealing, and the country can well afford the key planks of education support, assistance for home care givers, and help to seniors.

A change of pace

One of the best pieces of reporting in the current campaign is in the Globe and Mail today with an informative, highly readable account of the situation in the two key Kitchener ridings in southwestern Ontario. Traditionally Liberal, they both went Conservative by razor-thin margins in 2008. Anthony Reinhart writes knowingly of what these districts, heir to a long history of manufacturing success and Mennonite frugality, are doing to meet the challenges of a hi tech, global economy. It’s here.

It was billed as a rally on “The Future of Canada’s Democracy” and it turned out to be that and much more. Only hours before, the election had been called for May 2 . The timing changed it from a Town Hall-type meeting to an enthusiastic campaign kickoff for Dr. Ted Hsu (pronounced shoe), Liberal candidate for Kingston and the Islands, one of the fifty ridings the Globe and Mail has identified as key to the election outcome.

Several hundred people filled the Memorial Room of Kingston’s historic City Hall to hear the candidate, supported by Dr. Carolyn Bennett, the Liberal MP for Toronto St. Paul’s, deplore the anti-democratic practices of the Harper government. Examples included prorouging Parliament to avoid accountability, refusing to spell out the $40 billion costs of buying fighter aircraft and building unneeded prisons –  all culminating in the historic vote that found the Harper regime in contempt of Parliament. That brought down the government Friday and set the election machinery in motion.

Retiring MP Peter Millikan, whose even-handed performance as Speaker of the House of Commons has won him much praise, got a huge standing ovation from the mostly partisan crowd. There were a few Conservative voters there. One stood and admitted he’d made a mistake in 2008, and would never again vote for Stephen Harper & Company.

The issue that turned him around  was the government’s insistence on closing prison farms, a big issue in a riding with four federal penitentiaries. Shutting down the farms is symptomatic of the Harper government’s preference for vindictive punishment rather than reform and rehabilitation. Better to keep men locked idly in cells, they seem to think, than let them practice responsibility and healthy work — useful habits that just might motivate a few to take up a law-abidng life. The Liberal party has pledged to reopen the farms, which incidentally pay for themselves many times over in what they produce.

The former Conservative voter paid tribute to the 26 Kingston people, ranging in age from 14 to 76, who suffered arrest in protesting the closures. Outside City hall stood Bossy the cow, symbol of the campaign.

There was talk of Coalition and its role in Parliamentary life. Hours earlier, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff had made clear the party’s position. His exact words were:

“Whoever leads the party that wins the most seats on election day should be called on to form the government. If that is the Liberal Party, then I will be required to rapidly seek the confidence of the newly-elected Parliament. If our government cannot win the support of the House, then Mr. Harper will be called on to form a government and face the same challenge. That is our Constitution. It is the law of the land.”

(This is more or less what I had written a couple of days ago. Ignatieff went on to pledge that a Liberal government would enter no Coalition with the NDP and would never countnenance a partnership with the Bloc Quebecois.)

Campaign coverage today has Mr. Harper still pushing  his Coalition strategy, claiming he needs a majority to stop the Liberals and NDP from ganging up and installing a government which hasn’t won the most votes. It’s a clever message — will it work?

It’s hard to see how  this issue will last until  voting day. Liberals will try to get the campaign back on ethical and economic issues — the lack of ethics in the Harper government and its economic mismanagement. Far from handling the economy well, Conservatives have blown the surplus they inherited and through unwise tax cuts for banks and corporations, have crippled our ability to get out of deficit.

Another word about the Future of Canada’s Democracy. Never have we had a government so centralized and controlled by one man. This has put Parliament, according to Dr. Bennett, in a vice between an ever more powerful executive branch, and an activist judiciary. It’s usually the right wing that complaints about the power of judges. But when you add judicial power to the power of the PM’s office, it emasculates Parliament and its authority, reducing MPs to constituency social workers helping people to get their passports on time.

Not exactly what the Magna Carta — or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — is all about.

Advertising is a deceptive craft at best. At its worst, advertising can be duplicitous, false, and harmful to the public interest. The scale runs the gamut from the simple bullshit of hair dye commercials to the “Big Lie” fostered by the Nazi Party and others of evil genius.

Advertising can be as crass as TV’s ugly used car salesman pitching his heaps from a littered lot, to the intellectually challenging, graphically inspiring theme of the historic (and since unmatched) Apple Computer “1984″ ad. Advertising of this nature requires immense creative and literary talent.

So where do political attack ads — particularly those of the Conservative Party of Canada — rank on the scale?

I’d say somewhere between misleading and fraudulent.

The latest example is an attack ad on Michael Ignatieff’s alleged position on corporate taxes. It supposedly unravels the Liberal leader’s “plan” to increase taxes. Actually, it’s another attempt at character assassination .Dissect this ad piece by piece, and here’s what you find:

Claim: That Ignatieff is pushing for a $6 billion tax increase. Fact: A Liberal government would cancel the Conservative government’s planned $6 billion reduction in corporate taxes.

Does cancellation of a tax decrease amount to a tax increase? Continuing to pay the same tax rate hardly constitutes an increase. (To say nothing of the merits of the issue: should we be borrowing money to cut government revenues by $6 billion at a time when Ottawa is running a $56 billion deficit?)

Claim : That Ignatieff’s “tax increase” would be paid for by workers. Fact: If there’s anything to be paid (which is debatable) it would be paid by corporations and their shareholders, whom Ignatieff would deprive of yet more  largesse from the public coffers, courtesy  of Stephen Harper.

If Ignatieff were calling for an increase in corporate taxes, you could argue that companies would pass the cost to consumers. But that’s not the case here: products are already priced relative to current taxes (not some future lower rate). The competitive climate doesn’t allow companies to boost prices beyond any increases in real cost.

A question the ad doesn’t address: Would still lower corporate taxes lower prices and boost jobs? Debatable, according to leading economists. Look at Ireland, which has cut its corporate tax rate to the lowest in the world. Today, it’s an economic basket case.

Claim: “He didn’t come back for you.” Fact: Another personal slur on Michael Ignatieff which reduces political discourse to the level of a chicken coop diatribe polluted by arguments unworthy of consideration by any intelligent voter. A “Big Lie” perhaps?

The Liberals have had their share of attack ads but none have descended to the depravity practiced by their Conservative opponents. The Green party, less flush than the two big old line parties, can safely boast they’ll not play this game:

The skill of the ad writers for the Conservative party cannot be questioned. But I leave it up to you to decide if your ability to twist, distort and lie about your competition is  a quality you’d want to put on your resume.

A young man burns himself to death, the result of bitter frustration and humiliation. A distinguished but little known American scholar writes a book on how to organize a non-violent revolution.

Of themselves, events of no great importance. Taken together, they’ve played a big part in the uprisings now shaking the Arab world.

The death by self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit and vegetable seller working the streets of the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, was the spark that set off revolt in that country. (The main square in Tunis has been renamed in his honor). The spirit of revolt spread quickly to Egypt, Libya, Yeman and other countries.

But the techniques of many of the leaders of those uprisings have been borrowed from the writings of Gene Sharp, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts and founder of the Albert Einstein Institute.

Sharp is the author of numerous books, the most important being From Dictatorship to Democracy, which he wrote for the Burmese democratic movement in 1993. It outlines 198 non-violent methods to bring down an oppressive government, and has been translated into more than thirty languages.

According to filmmaker Ruridh Arow, whose film, Gene Sharp: How to Start a Revolution, will be released this spring, Sharp’s methods of popular non-violent resistance have been put to use in Serbia, the Ukraine, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Burma.

Writing on the BBC World News site,  Ruaridh Arrow says:

His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.”

Portions of the book are downloadable here.

PUBLIC OPINION POLLS — OUT OF DATE?

There’s an interesting debate raging — again — over the role of public opinion polls in shaping political views. Michael Adams of the Environics Group weighs in on the subject today in the Globe and Mail.

Adams makes the point that sophisticated pollsters are fully able to factor into their polling the effects of changing demographics. He disagrees, for example, with Alan Gregg who argues that younger voters are not fairly represented in polls. Gregg said on the CBC that people who have abandoned land lines and use only cell phones are being left out of pollsters’ calculations.

All this comes just a day after a new poll showing a big drop in support for the Harper Conservatives. It reminds me that Rex Murphy made a prophetic comment on air last week when he observed that whenever the Harperites nudge into majority territory, they screw up. The latest example, of course, being the Bev Oda saga. Sure enough, that dust-up is being blamed for the drop of a dozen points in support for the Conservative government.

There’s an encouraging endorsement from the Globe and Mail about why books will always be with us. In an editorial about Wikileaker Julian Assange’s plans to write a book on his trials and tribulations, the Globe says:

The release of hundreds of thousands of U.S. embassy cables through WikiLeaks has provided an incredibly detailed look at the inner workings of the U.S. diplomacy. But such a massive dump of information without context is entirely meaningless. Information requires order. Books – in whatever format readers prefer – serve the valuable purpose of sorting through large swaths of information, retrieving what is relevant and putting it in manageable form. This is a need that transcends technology. And it is because of this that readers will be prepared to pay to read Mr. Assange’s book, even if the raw material exists for free on the Internet.

Whether he wants to admit it or not, Mr. Assange’s seven-figure deal stands as tangible proof that books will be with us for a long time to come, and that they’re still worth paying for.”

Bravo!

MORDECAI RICHLER AS SOCIAL HISTORIAN

I spent much of the Holidays plowing through Charles Foran’s excellent biography of Mordecai Richler — The Life and Times (Knopf Canada). It is a formidable book although its 800 pages contain  so much detail that I found myself scanning parts of it. I had the pleasure of meeting up with Richler in one of his favorite haunts, the Maritime Bar of the Ritz Carleton Hotel in Montreal. Our five o’clock date was the prelude to an uproarious evening during which he managed to get thoroughly drunk and insult the client whose affair I’d arranged for Richler to speak at that night.

It’s said that Canadian universities are neglecting Richler in their Canadian lit reading lists (report here). If they don’t want him in the English department, I suggest his Duddy Kravetz and St. Urbain’s Horseman be made required reading in History studies. Like all great novelists, Richler was a social historian as well as a story-teller. Reading Foran reminds me that Richler drew on a rich treasury of social history reposing in his Montreal Jewish community. He wrote of what he knew, capturing his society from an era that has now largely passed away. His books are a form of contemporary history rooted in his 40s and 50s upbringing. In fact, his writing was so concentrated within that genre that one critic, according to Foran, remarked: “I love his book. I buy it every time he writes it.”

Foran points out that Richler, of course, delighted in pricking the academy. He wonders if this is why “little scholarship has been devoted to Richler’s fiction in recent years, an absence all the more striking given that his two greatest novels may also have been his last: Soloman Gursky Was Here and Barney’s Version.”

Foran’s book is so fact-filled it’s inevitable he got a few things wrong. He cites the ban on  U.S. comic books in Canada during World War II (which created a temporary bonanza for Canadian comics) as an effort to conserve paper. Wrong: it was a foreign exchange decision, one of many measures to stem currency outflow. Also, he has Richler writing for Maclean’s as a weekly when it was still being published semi-monthly.

REASONS FOR FIXING THE COPYRIGHT ACT

Toronto author Bill Freeman, chair of the Creators’ Copyright coalition, makes a good argument in the Georgia Strait for fixing the Copyright Act when Parliament resumes study of Bill C-342 in February. It’s here.

I’ve always viewed copyright as a rather arcane subject, but the issue here is whether educational institutions should be allowed to do wholesale copying without compensation to the creator. As Bill says:

Bill C-32 will allow universities, colleges, and school boards to copy works and distribute them to students without payment to writers and publishers. Just how much we don’t know. The legislation is imprecise and so the courts will have to decide. With this legislation a school board or university could scan parts of text books, trade books, or journals and distribute them without payment.”

I understand there’s an Opposition motion to pin down the lawful copying section more precisely. That could help.

 The vote to sustain the Canadian Long Gun Registry — by 153 to 151 —  puts an end to current Tory hopes to abolish the forced registration of shotguns and rifles in Canada. What does it do to Tory hopes for a majority in the next election?

Amid all the clamor, Conservative strategists think it’s a win-win  situation for them. So the gun registry lives. So the gift that keeps on giving will last another season.

But I’m not so sure. The Conservatives are playing largely to the converted, the rural voters who resent having to register their weapons.

Prime Minister Harper vows his government will continue to the fight to abolish the registry. “Abolition is closer than ever,” he claimed after the vote. He said “people in the regions will never accept to be treated as criminals.” The rural voters who support him will be strengthened in their commitment. But by and large, he’s playing to the converted. Shoring up the base.

Yet that’s not what the Conservatives have to do if they ever hope to win a majority, or even another election. They have to reach out to new supporters. Fighting to keep the gun registry is not going to help them do that.

The Long Gun registry arose from the tragedy of the Montreal shooting, when Marc Lepine walked into the Ecole Polytechnique on December 6, 1989 and shot to death fourteen women.

That event led to the formation of the Coalition for Gun Control. The key mover for that initiative was Heidi Rathjen, a student who survived that day.

She later authored, along with Charles Montpetit,  December 6, From the Montreal Massacre to Gun Control (McClelland & Stewart, 1999). Rather than just grieve, she decided to do something. The book describes the fight to raise public awareness, gain public support, and then force not just one, but two gun-control bills through Parliament. Ms. Rathgen was in the public gallery as Parliament voted.

Arguments about the Long Gun Registry will never end. The federal government fumbled the launch of the registry. Costs skyrocketed to a billion dollars. Yet now, police, social agencies and women’s groups argue that the Registry serves a useful purpose.

Hunters and gun enthusiasts don’t agree. It’s not easy to legally acquire a gun in Canada. You have to disclose a lot of personal information to get the necessary Possession and Acquisition licence. So why bother with registration?

Look at another lethal weapon: the automobile. You have to have a driver’s licence. You also have to register the ownership of your car. What’s so awful about having to register your rifle?

Opponents claim that once the government knows you have a gun, they can take it away from you. And it’s been happening, apparently. In cases where there are known cases of mental problems, or criminal records pointing to gun abuse. That’s when guns should be seized. And if the registry helps toward that end, it means the registry is working.

But in the bigger picture, the Long Gun registry represents an attitude, a point of view. Long guns are involved in most spousal attacks and the majority of suicides, according to the statistics.

Those who want to see fewer guns in the hands of Canadians support measures like the Long Gun Registry. Do they represent a majority of voters? I think they do.