Book Review: True Patriot Love. Michael Ignatieff
July 13, 2009
This week I ran into an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail by Tom Flanagan, expatriate American, University of Calgary professor and former Conservative campaign manager. Flanagan’s thesis in the article is that “Liberals are whining like sissy girls” over CPC attack ads when the ads in question are no worse than some of their own. This is what passes in Canada today for political discourse: our campaign is no more disgusting than yours, and the only reason you whine is because Obama got away with it when he conned the media and muzzled McCain.
What I find distressing about Flanagan’s argument is the way he assumes that this is the only way that politics and government can operate. He likens an election to a game of football, all tactics and force.
Whatever happened to ideas? To pride in one’s country? Is there no place for optimism in politics today?
In desperation I turned to True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada. Michael Ignatieff builds his narrative of the Grant family around a few vivid mental pictures. The first is of his great-grandfather George Monro Grant galloping across the prairie with Sanford Fleming to chart a route for the new railroad. The account pieced together from Grant’s own journals is an entertaining read and an interesting look at a Victorian adventure.
The next most vivid picture is one of thousands of Canadian high school students, their teachers and veterans swarming over Vimy Ridge at the 90th anniversary of the Battle in April of 2007. William Grant’s myth of Canada as a community of sacrifice came to fruition with the hordes of young Canadians who came to the shrine to learn about and celebrate the heroic young men and women who with their lives enabled Canada to emerge as a nation.
A sadder image is that of the bombed-out shelter in London where a young Rhodes scholar, George Grant, lost his optimism and turned forever against the war machine which could view the bombing of Hiroshima as a reasonable tactic.
A final, poignant image shows Ignatieff and his wife retracing his great-grandfather’s path and finding the railway spike George and Sanford Fleming drove into a giant pine along a river bank just outside Jasper, 128 years before.
The Grant dynasty wrote the myths which have made Canada.
George Monro Grant set out with Sanford Fleming to map the new railway line across the continent, but his real impact was through his lectures and publications in which he sold Canadians on how the railroad would extend the British Empire to the Pacific and elevate Canada far above lowly colonial status before King and Empire.
For King and country, William Lawson Grant led a generation of young men to war in 1914 with his pamphlets, his recruiting efforts, and his personal leadership in training camps and at the Somme. Later in his career he shaped the study of Canadian history with his textbooks, his educational leadership, and his unending devotion to the memory of those who gave their lives that Canada might emerge as a nation.
Seared by his experiences as an air raid warden during the Battle of Britain in London, George Grant revolted against the prospect of American nuclear weapons on Canadian soil with the pamphlet Lament for a Nation. Grant created the myth of the inevitable colonization of Canada by American economic and cultural interests. Inflamed by his defeatism, my generation mobilized against it, and over the ensuing fifty years we have proven the prophet wrong.
And now it is up to Michael Ignatieff, the fourth in the Grant line, to forge a new myth of Canada, a myth which gives purpose and connection to the many diverse points of view of Canadians. For the need is immediate. As Ignatieff says in the first chapter, “The lives we live alone do not make sense to us unless we share some public dimension with others. We need a public life in common, some set of reference points and allegiances to give us a way to relate to the strangers among whom we live. Without this feeling of belonging, if only imagined, we would live in fear and dread of each other.”
What we need to take Canada into the future is a new and better myth to give us hope and meaning, and to galvanize Canadians into patriotic action on behalf of our country. If Stephen Harper wants to compete with Michael Ignatieff in the next election, let him find his own myth to inspire Canadians, not look to the divisive and mechanical tactics of the Republican Party to the south.
On Democracy
January 18, 2009
In The Voyage to Lilliput Jonathan Swift portrayed a class of men whose fortunes depended upon their skill at balancing on a tightrope. Another group analyzed such performances and predicted who would fall and when. Swift’s light satire of the British Parliament takes an ugly turn, however, when Gulliver realizes that these beautiful miniature humans routinely use their laws to justify savage acts of aggression and greed, and there is no virtue in them.
I fear Swift’s words apply as well to democracy in the 21st Century as they did in the 18th. The signature moment of the last quarter of the 20th Century had to be the death of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first quarter of the 21st may well mark the death of democracy.
Let’s look at the last two years in Canada as an example. The Liberal leadership convention was manipulated by Gerard Kennedy, a clever rope-balancer who would not have appeared out of place in Gulliver’s Travels. In hopes of personal benefit he formed an alliance with Stephane Dion to leapfrog the two leading contenders. Delegates with an eye on little but victory went along with the plan, and almost by luck of the draw Stephane Dion ended up the deeply-flawed leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
This left the door open for Stephen Harper, a man of unsteady balance, to take power and keep it by a ruthless campaign of partisan attacks upon any and all opponents.
I am disgusted at the gleeful way that Harper and his minions pick over the bones of what was once the great institution of Parliament, but I recall what has happened to leaders in Canada who have attempted to act unselfishly. At his retirement Bill Davis extended full funding to Catholic schools. John Tory promoted equitable funding for the schools of all religious denominations. Voters rejected the plans resoundingly. An election campaign is no place for ideals.
Stephane Dion’s carbon tax was the right approach to lead Canada into a new century, but citizens voted their wallets, their prejudices, and the images created for them on television. All Harper had to do was claim loudly that the plan was “crazy” and “would screw everybody” – even when his own studies proved the opposite to be true – and voters gleefully torpedoed the Liberal Party.
Then we come to Count Ignatieff, a man who shows little interest in democracy, but seems willing to listen to Canadians. His reluctant philosopher-king persona harkens back to a time when wisdom, vision, and commitment to the greater good were what mattered in a leader, not fund-raising ability or the willingness to savage opponents. Perhaps it is appropriate that he took office by coronation. Democracy hasn’t exactly distinguished itself lately.
Then we look below the border to the Obama inauguration. I like Obama and I love his oratory. The doubt in the back of my mind has to do with the nature of his democratic mandate. Admittedly, the Republican Party was so bankrupt after eight years of George Bush that they had lost the will to govern. They selected the most liberal of all their candidates and then wondered why few Republicans supported him. They cheered when McCain brought in the Palin soap opera to energize the most conservative Republican voters. Neither of these tactical errors ensured the victory of Obama, but one blooper killed the McCain campaign: they failed to raise enough money.
Obama may come to be known as the Internet president. While McCain made the fatal error of admitting that he couldn’t use email, Obama’s political machine used social networking sites to raise millions of small contributions from individuals. It is here that his “democratic” mandate lies. The flow of cash left no doubt that many, many people bought into Obama’s vision of a better world.
These funds enabled his campaign to blanket the culture with advertising, even to the point of buying space for billboards in video games. The U.S. Presidential Election was won not on the debating podium, but in the battle of the budgets. Obama had four times the money to spend that McCain had. That’s democratic in some sense, but I still have my doubts.
So what’s wrong with selecting leaders by vote? It should work fine in a village to hire a dog catcher. It might conceivably work to elect a president in the U.S. system. But Canada is a vast mosaic of cultural, regional, and economic groups. To cram all of their needs and aspirations into a single ballot is to enable the tyranny of the winner over the vast majority.
All it took to form the government of Canada the last time was 37.6% of the vote, with a turnout of 59.1%. But Stephen Harper took the choices of the 22% of Canadian citizens who voted for his party as a personal mandate to bludgeon the 78% who did not support him. Thus in his first economic statement Jim Flaherty went after the opposition parties, public servants and women, and Harper showed his spite after a failed courtship with bridge-blowing tactics designed to cut Quebec off from the rest of Canada.
So now comes the new budget. That pall over Ottawa these days is the smell of Stephen Harper’s Hush Puppies smouldering as Iggie holds the PM’s feet to the Parliamentary furnace. This undignified Anglo Saxon method of encouraging a man to keep his word might very well work. Be ready for plenty of squeals from Harper and his minions this week, though.
Ignatieff? He’ll do. Let’s get to work.
December 10, 2008
The crowning of Michael Ignatieff gives the Liberal Party a unique opportunity to attract young Canadians, especially those at universities and those planning to attend. Face it, the guy’s a world-renowned and respected academic. Who wouldn’t want to be on his team?
Following Stephen Harper’s self-mutilation over the last two weeks, the CPC’s main competitive advantage is its bank account. It’s time to refill the Liberal coffers to neutralize that edge. Bob Rae had a good point about the need for grass roots support for a resurgent Federal Liberal Party in Canada. The Achilles’ heel of the one member-one vote leadership campaign he proposed was the creation of instant Liberals to distort the vote. I once joined the Conservative party just so that I could vote against Jim Flaherty in a leadership contest. Those new memberships might work very well as a fund raising strategy, though.
When Rick Mercer’s online petition to ask Stockwell Day to change his name scored hundreds of thousands of signatures in a short time, it signalled that the Internet was here to stay as a force in Canadian politics. Internet use has replaced pubbing as the time-waster of choice of this generation. You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and websites attract active minds during their times of idleness. These minds look for interesting, arresting ideas which they can’t find in the mainstream.
Ignatieff and company should be able to capitalize on this opportunity. The Green Shift was a good idea sold badly. Liberalism is a compelling idea which has captivated young minds since the days of Bertrand Russell. My opinion of Ignatieff stems from his address to the Liberal National Convention back in 2005(?). It was a terrific speech on what it is to be a liberal.
Who says Canadian federal politics has to be grimy and dull? The mud wrestling of the last month has certainly drawn attention, but it shouldn’t be that hard to raise the level of discourse — if Ignatieff and team act quickly.
Another thing. In Eastern Ontario where I live the ridings are traditionally safe Tory seats. But this may have occurred because strong Liberal candidates haven’t made the commitment while out of power. Kingston MP and Speaker Peter Miliken for twenty years has taken his duties to his constituency seriously. His approach seems to be, “If there are five events to attend and you can’t get to all of them, go to four.”
If a Liberal candidate showed that kind of commitment in Leeds and Grenville, and even in Lanark, the outcome might be very different in a few years.
In the meantime, we geezers should get out our chequebooks… Uh… I don’t use cheques any more. Iggie: how about an email address to which we can send online contributions?
The Road to Power
December 7, 2008
The road to power in Canada is to march to the left while claiming to march to the right, and to adapt to every eventuality while proudly proclaiming that you will never change.
Nobody I asked was able to give me the source or precise wording of the above truism, but all agreed that it has been around Canadian history for generations. If any reader can clarify the statement, please drop me a line.
My point with the quotation is that Canadian politicians invariably change after they are elected and discover the true nature of their jobs. Honourable men and women, regardless of their politics, once in parliament form a strong commitment to doing the best they can with what they have. For this reason I trust Gilles Duceppe a lot more than Stephen Harper because Duceppe has long demonstrated pragmatic behaviour in the House of Commons, despite his claims to the contrary. He does his job as defined by his constituents as well as he can, and I believe he will honour his commitment should the coalition take power.
Stephen Harper gained re-election on a promise of pragmatic leadership, but as soon as the opportunity arose, he tore off to the right wing in a spectacularly un-Canadian manner, seeking to settle a few personal scores and upsetting everyone to no good purpose. When cornered, he let loose blasts of vitriol which I fear have blistered relations within the country for the foreseeable future. As more and more analysts are now saying, it seems he can’t help himself: he just has to attack.
In all fairness, though, I can’t go through with my suggestion that Harper is to blame for the closing of the Chaudiere Bridge to Quebec from Ottawa because of crumbling arches. Last week’s bombast, even though fired in that direction, just wasn’t that powerful.
Speaking of bombast, we had an amazing evening of television last week when Harper asked the networks for time to make a public service announcement and the coalition members asked for equal time. I wonder if Simpson, Jaccard and Rivers had any inkling of what could happen when they named their 2007 publication Hot Air. Stephane Dion’s inadvertent endorsement of the book on climate change turned into one of those bizarrely cruel accidents on which the fates of nations turn.
Liberal aide Mike Gzowski mustn’t be much of a photographer. The camera’s automatic focus seemed to be oriented toward the upper left corner of the screen, rather than Mr. Dion’s face in the centre. Thus the only thing clearly in focus for the entire speech was the end paper of the volume at the corner of the bookshelf in the background, Hot Air.
As I watched I found it very difficult not to take this as an editorial comment upon all that was happening on this fevered and painfully amateurish evening in Ottawa. First we had Stephen Harper-as-vampire in a darkened red room, heavy with draped Canadian flags, speaking soothing banalities in a strange lisp through bad pancake makeup.
Then came a half-hour of Peter Mansbridge ad-libbing – not an unpleasant experience, by the way.
At long last the tape began with a flash of red, and then Dion’s nose. Why in the world would anyone set up a camera at this angle? Gzowski couldn’t figure out how to raise the tripod? At first I thought it must be deliberate sabotage, or that the nutty professor was trying to use the camera by himself. If I were to write a comic scene for a novel I couldn’t do better than this.
My mind flipped back to the defining moment of the election campaign in which Dalton McGuinty replaced Ernie Eves as Ontario P.M. The initial goof was a Friday press release from the Tory war room calling McGuinty “an evil, reptilian kitten eater from another planet,” but that wasn’t the defining moment. It came the following day when at a media stop on a dairy farm, a kitten wandered over to the feet of the candidate. With a grin to the photographers he picked it up and they snapped away. As soon as I saw that picture Monday morning, I knew the thing was won.
In this case, amid the hyperbole, distortions and outright lies emanating from Harper and his Myrmidons, I ran across this word from the gods: “Hot Air!” But the only lie so far I had heard from Dion was a vague claim to competence. From the looks of this film, though, that claim was a real whopper, and it has left Dion’s leadership in tatters.
On Sunday evening as I write this the political landscape in Canada has again changed. Stephane Dion will resign the leadership prior to the Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday, and Dominic Leblanc and Bob Rae will throw their support behind Michael Ignatieff as Liberal House Leader. This puts Ignatieff into the game in time for the return of Parliament on January 26th.
Stephen Harper can’t be happy about this development: the Liberals have used his time-out to their advantage, and what’s more, he still has a trunkload of anti-Dion ads and only a month or so to dust off some anti-Soviet, anti-Harvard stuff. What’s more, Iggy will be no pushover.
The play which could still win the day for the CPC would be if Harper resigned or the caucus removed him. Coalition support would evaporate on the spot. If they have the guts to do it my next vote is Conservative, because the local MPs seem to be pretty good guys.
the Walnut Diary 