24 September 2012

Canada and America: Fuzzy Origins or Founding Myth?

It is not surprising then that Canadians are more accustomed than Americans to thinking of their allegiances as multiple and layered. That most Québécois are loyal to Québec first and Canada second does not bother most of us. That some older English-speaking Canadians still stubbornly fly the Union Jack is never taken as a sign of disloyalty to Canada. Quite the contrary. We Canadians love our country but recognize that it has no exclusive claim on our affections or even on our resilient political institutions, which we share in large measure with other Commonwealth realms.
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10 September 2012

A polarized election

This is my latest column in Christian Courier, published 10 September. Please subscribe today.



Once upon a time in a land to the south of us, the Democratic and Republican Parties were big-tent organizations, trying to appeal to as wide a swath of public opinion as they could manage. Although the Republicans were generally conservative and the Democrats generally liberal, there was a huge area of overlap between them. They were divided, not so much by governing philosophies, as by somewhat divergent interest groups along with their pet issues. Big business tended to support the Republicans, while big labour was onside of the Democrats.

In those days there were conservative Democrats, many from the south, who championed the rights of the states over what they saw as an excessively intrusive federal government. Senator Strom Thurmond and Alabama Governor George Wallace exemplified this group. There were also liberal Republicans, such as the late Illinois Senator Charles Percy, who introduced legislation to encourage the building of affordable housing for low-income families. After the US Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973, the two parties were internally divided on the issue, with pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats sharing the political landscape with pro-life Republicans and pro-choice Democrats. Even Senator Edward Kennedy initially considered himself pro-life.

When I started teaching a quarter of a century ago, this was still largely the lay of the land, but no longer. In recent years the two parties have become increasingly polarized. Although there is still a dwindling number of pro-life Democrats, the party leadership has deliberately marginalized them. Those who persist in maintaining their convictions on this issue find themselves unable to advance within its ranks. Even Democrats for Life America is compelled to pose this question on its website: “Can you be pro-life in a pro-choice party?” Although Catholics and Southern Baptists were once integral components of the Democratic coalition, the current secularizing leadership has pulled the party in a direction that would have been unthinkable to Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

Sensing that the Democratic Party was moving away from the American mainstream, the Republican Party successfully reached out to these two core groups in the 1980s, thereby adding the so-called “Reagan Democrats” to its own support base. The Republicans looked set to establish their own dynasty for years to come, capitalizing on the missteps of the opposition. With the current administration’s attack on the religious freedom of faith-based organizations, this should be the Republicans’ year. But things may not turn out that way.

Although the libertarian component had always been part of the Republican coalition, it has gained more visibility with the Tea Party in recent years. As Mitt Romney was poised to become his party’s standard bearer last month, he chose as his vice-presidential candidate Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has Tea Party support. Ryan once professed to be heavily influenced by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, who wrote a book called The Virtue of Selfishness. An atheist and avowed opponent of altruism, she championed the individual over the community, as seen in her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have a cult following amongst North American libertarians. Rand’s preferred social ethic would see a minimal state at best, along with a strict laissez-faire economy. From her perspective, the welfare state is not just ineffective and expensive; it is immoral.

Sad to say, polarization has brought out the worst elements in both parties. The Democrats seem to be controlled by those who misunderstand the comprehensive claims of religious faith, narrowing freedom of religion to a mere freedom of worship. The Republicans appear to be flirting with social Darwinists who believe in survival of the fittest. Not a pretty picture.

Yet there is more here than meets the eye. Both parties accept the historic liberal preference for individualism and voluntarism. One defends the right of individuals to follow their own personal and sexual preferences, even at the expense of institutions with stricter internal membership standards. The other believes the individual should pursue his or her own economic goals, even at the expense of the commons. If Democrats and Republicans are indeed polarized, it is not, after all, over basic principles; it is over who has rightful title to those principles.

I will not presume to predict a winner in November, but I will predict that there will be no happily ever after.

06 September 2012

Québec . . . encore une fois

The voters of Québec went to the polls two days ago and brought the Parti québécois back to power for the first time since 2003. Its leader Pauline Marois thus becomes premier of the province and leader of a minority PQ government. Her Liberal predecessor, Jean Charest, lost his own seat and quickly resigned his leadership of the Parti libéral du Québec. According to the province's chief electoral officer, the PQ won 54 seats with 31.94% of the popular vote, the PLQ won 50 seats with 31.21%, the Coalition Avenir Québec won 19 seats with 27.06%, and Québec solidaire 2 seats with 6.03%. Total voter turnout was 74.61% of those eligible.

The main thing to be noted about these results is that the PQ and the PLQ were virtually tied in the popular vote, each winning less than a third of the total popular vote. Coalition Avenir Québec (Coalition for the Future of Quebec) trailed the other two parties by only 4 points yet won far fewer seats. This means that 23.83% of the province's eligible voters have, at least potentially, put the national unity issue back on the front burner for all of us. If Québec had some form of proportional representation in place, there would be two likely effects: (1) no party would have been capable of governing on its own, thus necessitating the formation of a coalition government of at least two parties and thereby softening the separatist influence; and (2) voter turnout would likely have been higher, as the risk of wasted votes is lower.

It's past time for electoral reform in this country.

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