Kevin Coleman

My good friend, Kevin Coleman, died 17 years ago today. I honour him and remember him in the struggle for greater human freedom and prosperity.

Democracy and Money

There is a spectre haunting democracy; the spectre of money. Modern democracy is in a terrible state of decay as money colonizes every little corner of the structure. While many on the right and in the centre of political spectrum continue to imagine that democratic governments are an expression of the general will, others with a more dynamic definition of power understand that so-called democratically elected governments are less and less the expression of any general will as money plays an increasingly powerful part in the process of elections and the daily running of government. As society sees an startling increase in the difference between the wealthiest and the majority of working people, apathy and alienation rob people of their belief in democracy and their commitment to electoral results.

This democratic deficit is made considerably worse by the fact that the majority of people have no clear idea of how their own system of government works. This is true throughout western democracies but was made particularly clear in recent events in Canada. The majority of Canadians appear to believe that their votes translate into a general will of the people in the House of Commons. For this to be true we would have to have a system of proportional representation. But of course we do not. Instead we live in a constitutional monarchy in which representatives are chosen by a series of first past the post, local elections. In our system, sovereignty is held first in the monarch or her representative. That sovereignty then flows down to the body of representatives who sit in the House. Though we have political parties, in the House, parties actually mean very little in an ideal sense because the House elects a leader to be a first minister. It matters little in our Parliamentary system whether you voted with the goal of one party leading over another. What matters is the sovereignty of the House. The will of the House determines the Government, period! Whoever maintains the confidence of the House will be the First Minister and will form a Government. This person might be someone who represents the party for which the majority of electors voted, or it might not. Tradition dictates that whichever party got the greatest number of seats has the first opportunity to form a government but the will of the House can ratify this or not as it pleases. The problem is, of course, that in a fractured parliament, whichever party gets the most seats is unlikely to reflect the majority of voters. This creates a democratic deficit. As a result of this many parliamentary systems have opted to look toward coalitions so that the government better reflects the general will of the voters. The most democratic option is for proportional voting coupled with coalition governments. In extremely fractionalized countries this can be unwieldy so they opt for a combination of some proportional representatives along with some first past the post, local representatives. Either way, in a parliament we elect representatives who constitute a higher sovereignty than individual votes.

Of course, all of this is perverted if the majority of people do not understand it, and is doubly perverted by increased concentrations of wealth in politics. But if Canadians are to move toward greater levels of democracy we must come to grips with the system we have. We do not live in a system of plebiscites in which everyone votes on everything. Such a system itself is actually impossible in the modern age because a system of direct democracy can only be meaningful with a small number of people. In a large complex system someone would still have to fashion the policies on which everyone could vote. If Conservatives in Canada are really concerned about democracy and making their vote count they would be actively pursuing some form of proportional voting system. But of course most conservative don’t give a toss about democracy, they care about power. And in our ‘democracy’ power flows through those with the money, pure and simple.

So next time you hear a Conservative (or a Liberal for that matter), complain about lack of democracy, slap them firmly across the mouth. Tell them to learn about their own system of government or actively work to change it, or keep their mouth shut.

A Rite of Passage

The other day I had to partake of one of the great rites of passage for any parent; the teacher-parent interview. Many of the other parenthood obligations pale in the face of this dreaded duty. Choosing a name, midnight feedings, hundreds of diaper changes, being vomited on, all of these are mere child’s play in the face of the first teacher-parent interview. Of course, nothing is ever as dreadful as the fervent mind imagines it will be. But still, what a difficult responsibility it is to have to face your child’s first teacher with all the requisite obligations and possibilities.

After all, nothing can bring your own childhood back to the foreground of your mind than having to face a teacher again. The smell of the class-room, the chalkboard, the posters reminding you of the letters of the alphabet; they all serve to transport you suddenly back to a time of sheer terror. Then you find yourself crushed into one of those little under-sized chairs staring a teacher in the face and you are a child again. No matter how hard you try to look old, to act experienced, it’s just no good. The circumstances make you a child and you are paralysed with inadequacies. Somewhere in your head, you are still an adult worried about the fact that you forgot to put snow tires on your car, but all your grown-up responsibilities are nothing in the face of the teacher’s powerful gaze. You could be a emergency-room doctor who just sewed someone’s finger back on after a bagel cutting accident, but if that teacher tells you to sit down and be quiet, you are suddenly a helpless six year old who will do whatever you are told.

Not that there wasn’t many moments of joy and excitement in your school-days. But somehow they all fade into the background when you find yourself back in the classroom. You don’t want it to be so but there is seemingly nothing you can do about it. And to make matters worse, my daughter’s teacher was suffering through a bad cold, making her voice deep and raspy, and therefore even more authoritative then it might have otherwise been. She is a nice woman, she really is, but as nice as she might be, it is difficult to see her as anything but a teacher. I am quite certain that she could have told me to write “I will not bring gum to parent-teacher night” fifty times on the blackboard and I would have done it.

It didn’t begin very well. When I got to the classroom, the previous parent was still there talking to the teacher so I sat down on one of the very low tables to wait. I didn’t think anything of this. After all, it is a pretty big class and from where I sat I couldn’t hear what was going on between the teacher and the parent. Anyway, how much confidential information is revealed concerning the details of a kindergartener’s school career? But my daughter’s teacher quickly put me in my place. With little ceremony, she asked me to wait in the hall and I was quick to oblige. Then I found myself sitting in the hall for nearly ten minutes with my mind in overdrive. Because, as sure as one is that your child is basically intelligent and well behaved, there is still a part of you that worries what the teacher is going to say.

When I was eventually let into the class and approached the little table that served as a stand-in for the teacher’s desk, my trepidation was by no means eased by the teacher’s first words. “I will just take out Cairo’s file,” she said in her flu-infested voice which made her sound more like John Lee Hooker than a grade-school teacher.

“Take out her file,” I thought to myself. Is she a kindergarten student or an FBI suspect? This really disturbed my equilibrium. Seeing my daughter’s teacher lay her ‘file’ gently on the table like she was J. Edgar Hoover on the hunt for some public enemy really did a number on me. At that moment I don’t think I would have been surprised by anything. She could have told me that my daughter was the class bootlegger and I would have taken it in stride.

But she had no major crimes to report. Instead, she showed me a detailed sheet of student evaluation on the various tasks that my daughter regularly undertakes. And there was nothing negative to report. Not only was my she adequately fulfilling all academic expectations, but she was even exceeding them in a few areas. It seems that she loves drawing and produces unusually colourful and elaborate drawings which seemed to genuinely surprise the teacher.

And after being shown a few dozens drawings and being assured that Cairo is happy at school and plays well with others, I began to feel more at ease. These assurances allayed my biggest concerns because my daughter has always been at home with me and though she has three siblings, her brothers and sister are considerably older than she, which means she has never been compelled to compromise with other children her own age.

After the interview I was sent on my way with my daughter’s school pictures and the teacher’s assurance that all was well. All in all, a pretty favourable outcome given my concerns and fears. Of course, this is only junior kindergarten and there has been little time for things to go wrong. But I am proud to say that I have conquered another of the great rites of passage of parenthood with little more than the loss of a few nights sleep and few difficult childhood flashbacks.

A Window on Childhood

I have never been a big fan of winter. It is probably because I spent a substantial part of my important childhood years in southern California. Melancholy old men talk as though everyday of their childhood was bright and sunny. But for me it was true. Southern California is essentially a desert and one so seldom sees rain that people even write songs about it.

As a child, winter consisted for me of that time of year when it was a little too chilly to spend a comfortable day at the beach. My sister and I usually only saw snow in Christmas movies or on one of those rare occasions when we would go to the mountains and see the real thing. In those few years before my parents were divorced and we had something of a normal family life, there were a few such occasion when we would be bundled excitedly into the car for a two hour drive into the San Bernardino mountains where some patch of snow was making a brave stand against the California sun. It was as though we were going to see some nearly extinct animal in a zoo; like the snow was a Blue-sided Treefrog of which there were only a few specimens left in the wild and it was our good fortune to see it for one last time before it disappeared forever.

And of course my sister and I loved it because it was like a holiday; and as everyone knows, everything looks better when you are on holiday. You can be in some hot, humid third-world country on a vacation, and as long as you don’t have to live like the majority of the local citizens, you will just see the beautiful vistas, the colourful traditions, and the exotic foods. The snow was like this for my sister and I; we didn’t have to shovel it off our driveway or dress in six layers of warm clothing to go to school every morning, so all we saw was a beautiful white playground. Furthermore, our snow-day earned us bragging rights at school where a handful of kids had never even seen snow first hand.

In retrospect, I have no idea where my sister and I got all the supplies for a day in the snow. I have photos of us with big coats, hats, and gloves playing in the snow. But we surely possessed none of these things as a matter of course, we must have purchased them for that particular occasion, just so we could enjoy an afternoon in the snow.

But these are nothing but fond childhood memories now. Today winter is no longer just some holiday opportunity of childhood; I have to live with it. Freezing feet and hands, snowdrifts blocking the end of our driveway, ice-dams on the roof constantly threatening to create leaks; all of these things are part of the struggle of daily life at least four months out of the year. It is difficult to maintain the excitement of childhood when the daily threats of winter press upon you. On the days when we wake up to a foot of snow, the only excitement that I can look forward to is the smile on my daughter’s face who still lives in that distant country of childhood where snow is an opportunity for fun. But even that excitement dissipates somewhat after the ten minutes of struggle that it takes to put on her snowsuit, her boots, and her gloves. Her socks are never quite right and I am forced to remove her boots several times before she is satisfied. Inevitably her gloves have been turned inside out and we can never get her fingers to fit comfortably inside. It is a palaver with which most parents are familiar and it can quickly rob one of the joy that one gets from the face of your child playing in the snow.

Nowadays, when the weather report predicts a serious snowstorm I hope that either they will turn out to be wrong or that the storm will be so significant that we will all be snowed in, giving us an excuse to stay home under blankets. This is one of the few occasions that I am still able to recapture an occasional moment of enjoyment from the snow through the illusion provided to me by windows. Sometimes when the snow falls leisurely on a Saturday afternoon but with sufficient heaviness to coat the trees with thick blanket of white, I am momentarily able to see the beauty in the snow, the beauty that I saw when I was a child. Of course, I can no longer enjoy the blind excitement of playfulness, but there is still some magic to be had in the beauty of the snowfall.

It recently occurred to me that windows do this for us. All of the pleasures that age has compelled us to abandon, can be at least partially recaptured through a window. Whether it is just our living-room window looking out on a snowy day, or the window of a train or airplane making a picture of some perfect landscape, there is a subtle magic worked by a window which allows somehow for us to recapture part of our youth. Windows are like filters which take out some of the burdensome elements of the world for tired eyes. The lightness of the world that usually only a child can see, can be partially recaptured in that filtered protection. Even dilapidation can be picturesque. Travelling through the countryside in a comfortable car, a rundown farm can look beautiful. As long as it is not my barn that is falling down, it can look Christmas card perfect through the window of a car.

Just around the corner from my house is one of the oldest farms in the entire region. And from the road you can see a wooden silo that must be a hundred years old. It is beginning to twist under its own weight and is threatening to come crashing down at any moment. The other day as we drove by, my daughter noticed it and told me with unbridled excitement that the building was going to fall. And from the warmth and comfort of the car I could see the teetering silo just as she saw it. I didn’t think about the danger it presents to the barn to which it was attached nor the money that the clean-up might cost.

Of course I am certain that there are many things on which the filter of a window could never produce a picturesque glean. I remember driving through Montana some twenty years ago and seeing thousands of acres of dead, brown trees; killed by the Colorado pine beetle. There was something irretrievably sad about the scene even from the comfort of my car. But for the most part even winter, once the occasional playground of my sunny childhood, can be partially returned to its beauty by a frosty window.

what's next

Anyone who believed in the Coalition might as well forget it. If the Governor-General allowed Harper to porogue parliament when it was clearly just to avoid a confidence, then she will never allow a Coalition Government to go ahead. But this morning things seem even worse. A poll shows that Harper is now even more popular than before the Crisis began! This is a man who hates democracy, displays an utter contempt for the House, and will attack the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society just to make the rich and powerful even more so! And the people are lapping it up! The reason is simple; the opposition is fighting a modern war with stones and arrows. Harper has shown that he will do anything to win; he lies, he cheats, he calls people names, he red-baits, and he is even willing to entirely marginalize Quebec with rhetoric that verges on racism, just to win. But the opposition are still trying to be ‘gentlemen of the House.’ You cannot fight fascists with polite debate and a simple appeal to truth! It would be equivalent to playing a game of chess in which you opponent plays as though all his pawns are queens and you allow it, and then wonder why you are losing. You cannot win such a game. You can’t put out an oil-well fire with a squirt-gun. As distasteful as it is, you must fight Harper, in large part, on his ground. He must be shown for the man that he is. And his thugs and bullies like Baird and Poillievre, and Kenny and all his other lapdogs that pretend they are bulldogs, must be battled the same way! I don’t know about you but I remember being bullied as a kid and calm, rational discourse was never very effective in stopping their shenanigans. This is the sad truth.

Thus the only hope now for the Liberals is to use the emergency measure in their constitution to choose a new leader immediately and get on with the real battle. Will they do it? I doubt it. But you can forget about the Coalition and probably democracy in Canada because once Harper gets a majority God help us all.

Victory or Loss?

So it really happened. The Prime-Minister prorogued the parliament. Some people have suggested that there is still a victory here. After all, the opposition stopped the Government from taking away the right to strike, and Harper was unable to take away public funding for political parties. But this victory is purely temporary. At a practical level the Governor-General has shown that she will not stand up an protect the constitution. This means that she would never have allowed a Coalition in the first place. This means that in January, when the Tories bring a budget to the House with all those things from the Economic Statement that we have temporarily stopped, the opposition will just have to let them go through in the budget. Because the GG will not sanction a Coalition and they can’t have an election three months before the Liberals choose a new leader. All that has happened is that the Tories bought enough time to spend millions on advertising, lying to the public about pretty much everything. There is no victory here.

Instead we have suffered a terrible loss. Because the Governor-General has shown that Governments of Canada can put an end to parliament any time they wish. This means that if a Government is clever they will never have to face a confidence vote again. What we really learned today is that the Government of Canada can rule by decree and that we live in a dictatorship. No, there is no victory here, neither at a practical nor at a principled level.

Remember the words of Yeats

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere Anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed eye is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Democracy

How to make no sense of Democracy
Here is a simple rational exercise to demonstrate what is wrong with what Prime Minister Harper has been saying.

Harper has said time and again that the Coalition is a ‘threat to democracy.’ But he asked the Governor-General to porogue the parliament to avoid a confidence vote because he clearly believes that the Governor-General would give the Coalition an opportunity to govern the nation. However, if the Coalition is a threat to democracy and the Governor-General could legally let them govern, then it follows that the Governor-General is a threat to democracy. But the Governor-General represents the ultimate authority in the Parliamentary System. The Prime Minister believes therefore that the Parliamentary system is a threat to democracy. But Harper is supposed to be the leader of the House of Commons in that very system. So what exactly is he defending?

In simple terms, Harper keeps telling us that he was duly elected in a system that is, ipso facto, a threat to democracy. It necessarily follows that Stephen Harper believes that Democracy is a threat to Democracy.