Politics – Page 211 – a sibilant intake of breath

Gay marriage back under debate

Most annoyingly, it seems that Canada’s Conservative Party is trotting out gay marriage, which is presently legal in Canada, for new Parliamentary debate.

As I have written before, Parliament does not have the right to stop gay people from getting married. The right to not suffer discrimination supersedes the authority of Parliament to legislate, by virtue of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is not a right that can be restricted in keeping with “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” While the Notwithstanding Clause could be used to nullify that legality, doing so would be profoundly illiberal.

The whole thing is likely to be a vote-loser for the Tories, since even Canadians who have problems with gay marriage now generally consider the matter settled. Hopefully, the Tories will take some well-deserved flak for this political theatre and all parties will realize that they should leave the matter as it stands in the future.

My previous entries on this are here: 1 February 2006 and 3 June 2006.

Liberal conference concluded

So, Ignatieff is out. I knew nothing about the other candidates, so I cannot really say anything worthwhile. He may have made debate more interesting, but turning the Federal Liberal Party into a group that can win the next election is obviously foremost in the minds of supporters. Given the egregious environmental policies of the Harper government, I wish more power to them.

Taylor Owen knows more. So do Tim and Tristan. Doubtless, many more politically minded Canadian blogging friends of mine will weigh in soon. Who would have expected that to be such a substantial group?

I am off to bed, but please link additional relevant items in comments.

The Devil Wears Prada

It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.
-Edmund Burke

Through a combination of circumstances that was rather unusual, I ended up watching The Devil Wears Prada with my father at the Phoenix Cinema around midnight.

Prior to seeing the film, I never really understood the virulence with which some people and groups reject the superficiality and extravagance of capitalism. As a result of the film, I now feel more as though I understand the various revolutionaries of the twentieth century and before who sought to smash this wasteful and myopic parasite within society.

Thankfully, the film itself was probably a misrepresentation. In reality, those people with intelligence and resources must be concerned with the millions dying of AIDS, the dangers of nuclear war, increasing authoritarianism in Russia, climate change, and all the rest. Mustn’t they?

Live-blogging Keohane

Anyone interested in reading about Robert Keohane’s presentation to the Global Economic Governance Seminar can do so on my wiki. There is still nearly an hour in the session, so if someone posts a clever question as a comment, I will try to ask it. I doubt anyone will do so in time, but it would be a neat demonstration of the emerging capabilities of internet technology in education.

Since this is a publicly held lecture, I don’t see any reason whatsoever for which the notes should not be available. Those who don’t know who Robert Keohane is may want to have a look at the Wikipedia entry on him.

[Update: 7:30pm] Robert Keohane’s second presentation, given at Nuffield on anti-Americanism, was well argued but not too far off the conventional wisdom. I am here taking “the conventional wisdom” to be that in a survey on Anti-Americanism that I am almost sure ran in The Economist during the last couple of years.

Basically: it does exist, more so in the Middle East than anywhere else. The Iraq war has exacerbated it almost everywhere, but the biggest turn for the worse has been in Europe. The policy impact of Anti-Americanism is not very clear. Finally, lots of what would be taken as a legitimate political stance if expressed by an American at home is taken as Anti-Americanism elsewhere.

Keohane distinguished four sorts of Anti-Americanism, three of which have been expressed on this blog. The first was the kind grounded in the belief that the United States is not living up to its own values: what he called Liberal Anti-Americanism. Guantanamo, and everything that word conjures up, gives you the idea. The second is social Anti-Americanism: for instance, objections to the death penalty of the absence of state funded health care. The third is Anti-Americanism based on fear of encroachment into the domestic jurisdiction of your state, what he called the state sovereignty variety. The last was radical Anti-Americanism, which I would suggest is distinguished more by the language used to express it, the degree to which the positions taken are extreme, and the kind of actions justified using it than by the kind of analysis that underscores the rational components thereof.

Quebec and nationhood

First Ignatieff said it, and now Stephen Harper has: ‘Quebec is a nation.’

The claim is a tricky one, for a number of reasons. ‘Quebec’ is a federal component of Canada: a province granted particular jurisdictions and roles under Canadian law. Like some other parts of the country, it includes a minority population with unique linguistic, educational, and other concerns. While I am perfectly willing to accept that French Canadians may constitute a “large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people,” to take the definition from the OED, it is clear that Quebec is not synonymous with French Canadians.

The French Canadian nation does not occupy Quebec to the exclusion of other groups. There are Anglophone Canadians, recent immigrants, members of the First Nations, and others. Some, like the Cree, have considerable historical precedence over the settlers of New France; other have arrived recently enough to be subject to the special language laws the province has enacted in recent decades. Just as French Canadians must be given appropriate treatment within the wider federation of Canada, so too do other minority groups within Quebec deserve to be treated with fairness and due consideration under the law. Empowering the government of Quebec with special rights to represent the French Canadian nation must not diminish its obligation to honour the rights of other groups within the province.

The French Canadian nation (if it makes sense to treat it monolithically), is also not confined within the borders of the province of Quebec. New Brunswick is officially bilingual, and there are French speakers and people of French descent throughout the entire country. As such, dealing with Quebec and dealing with the full ramifications of that minority issue are not one and the same.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, concrete policy developments will arise as the result of these declarations. I do not think that recognizing French Canada as a nation, in the sense quoted above, is a threat to the integrity of Canada any more than recognizing the rights of First Nations peoples has been. Being able to accommodate different groups with competing claims is, after all, the root purpose of federalism. Given demographic shifts in Quebec, it makes less and less sense to conflate the issue of French Canadian identity with that geographic zone. Hopefully, the declarations from Ignatieff and Harper have just been pragmatic recognitions of the above.

Camera phones and police brutality

One very considerable advantage of the greater dissemination of video phones is increased ability to effectively document police brutality and other abuses of power. A recent example example involves UCLA police officers gratuitously using tazers on students in a library. While that situation cannot be entirely understood from the YouTube video, it supports testimony given elsewhere that the use of force was excessive and inappropriate. Hopefully, these tazer-happy UCLA police officers will end up in jail. At least one other incident filmed with a camera phone and uploaded to YouTube is being investigated by the FBI. That incident is also discussed in this editorial.

As I have said again and again here: protection of the individual from unreasonable or arbitrary power – in the hands of government and its agents – is a crucial part of the individual security of all citizens in democratic states. In a world where normal activities increasingly take place within sight of CCTV cameras, it’s nice to see that recording technology can also work for the protection of individuals or – at least – improve the odds of things being set to rights after abuse takes place.

Just don’t expect for it to be impossible for people to determine whose camera was used to shoot the video. Apparently, output from digital cameras can be linked to the specific unit that produced it.

On disagreement

Several people have commented today that I would likely not enjoy the Burning Man Festival, because people there would be overly radical. (See my prior post on the possibility of going.) Since the theme of the event this year is the relationship between people and nature, there will be a lot of engagement with issues in which I have personal political stances and pre-existing understandings. The kind of radicalism that people seem to be talking about is the idea that some kind of fundamental philosophical alteration of human understandings and interactions is required for environmental sustainability. The exact opposite view is to chalk up all environmental problems to ‘market failures’ that can be corrected by altering incentive structures. Clearly, each view is inadequate. The first lacks pragmatism, as well as a comprehensive conception of how a thing could possibly be brought about. The second presents the world in an overly simplistic fashion. In many areas relating to environmental choices, dialog is still very much required. In others, there is enough consensus among the reasonable for the focus to shift to implementation.

For the festival to have any importance, beyond that of a hedonistic collection of art and experiences, it needs to involve some real discussion. An open-minded representation of a fairly moderate, mainstream sort of view might provide some useful grounding, even if it might be frustrating for all involved. Having your complacency challenged can be unpleasant, but it is also necessary if views are not to ossify and those with different opinions are not to be completely alienated from one another. (See: recent post on partisanship) The hardest perspectives for me to deal with are wooly notions of spirituality that are entirely out of keeping with the ideals and modes of thought associated with science. I cannot but conclude that astrology is utter nonsense, and that human life in general would be better if everyone could completely and finally reject it as bunk. I expect that many people at the festival will not hold such views. That said, since my days of ferocious arguments with fellow members of LIFE about how crystal healing is nonsense, I have learned the point at which one can only agree to disagree.

Given that I still have no idea what I will be doing next year, I cannot say whether I will be free in North America with sufficient funds for such an expedition, when the time comes. That said, I don’t see any reason not to go, on the basis that the conceptions of the world I generally hold are not the same as those held by many other likely attendees. I have been missing debate since I left UBC, anyhow.

[Update: 20 November 2006] If you want to read a much more forceful – though not necessarily any more accurate – criticism of the Burning Man Festival, have a look at this description that Jessica sent me. Definitely worth a glance, before making a multi-thousand kilometre journey.

A market for kidneys?

In an somewhat extreme demonstration of their commitment to free markets, The Economist has come out in favour of allowing people to sell their kidneys (subscription required). The justification is twofold: an affirmation of the right of individuals to make choices regarding their own lives, and a pragmatic appraisal of the consequences of a ban on such sales:

With proper regulation, a kidney market would be a big improvement on the current, sorry state of affairs. Sellers could be checked for disease and drug use, and cared for after operations. They could, for instance, receive health insurance as part of their payment—which would be cheap because properly screened donors appear to live longer than the average Joe with two kidneys. Buyers would get better kidneys, faster. Both sellers and buyers would do better than in the illegal market, where much of the money goes to the middleman.

Regardless of such arguments, I think this position is wrong. Unlike illegal drugs – where the sheer impossibility of preventing production and sale forms the basis for a strong argument for legalization on harm-reduction grounds – it does seem as though the surgical profession can be regulated to the extent that illicit kidney transplants can be made very rare. Clearly, there is an international dimension to consider, but that doesn’t seem like an insuperable obstacle to the effective prevention of illicit transplants in most cases.

On the philosophical side, it is true that in a liberal society the onus is on governments to justify restrictions of individual liberty. In this case, it seems like a strong case can be made. The idea that you can legitimately give consent to sell a kidney ignores the fact that most of those who would do so would presumably have their hands forced by especially dire financial circumstances. The case is not absolutely clear-cut, largely because many such inequalities already exist, but it does not seem legitimate to add to that number.

Partisanship and politics

I read an article by Wells Tower in this month’s issue of Harper’s called “The Kids are Far Right” that seemed primarily meant to terrify readers with anecdotes about conference rooms crammed full of teenage conservative partisans. Many of the passages did have a chilling effect upon me, but I think the piece is more important for what it reveals about conviction, deliberation, and the nature of political consensus that for the direct observations included.

The most difficult kind of politics to deal with theoretically is the variety based upon a zero-sum consensus on who is right, and who can impose their views. Under such an order, the key elements of certain issues are no longer really under discussion: people have taken positions and are preparing to fight it out as can best be managed. While I intuitively feel as though it’s important for there to be a real discussion, there is no escaping the desperate twinge that accompanies reading about people who want to auction the national parks to timber companies, take education entirely out of the hands of government, and who believe that the greatest injustice relating to Hurricane Katrina was the police taking away some people’s guns. “Live and let live” is not a dictum that can be applied when the contest is over institutions and resources that are in contention between dissenting groups, especially when they are likely to be used to force certain modes of living upon the ‘losers’ of the political struggle.

People who adopt the kind of xenophobic, militaristic, and anti-government perspective highlighted in the Harper’s article seem, to me, outside the sphere in which political discussion can take place. That said, they probably feel likewise about people who believe that in an ideal world, natural resources would be managed internationally, that nobody in a well-ordered society has reason to own a personal firearm, or that governments should get out of the business of defining who can or cannot get married.

There is considerable attraction in the idea of moderation: both as something with inherent value and a mechanism for convincing the undecided. That said, regardless of your political leanings there are things about which it is intolerable to argue feebly. To be forceful, honest, and convincing in expressing moral and political views is profoundly difficult in a partisan environment. When surrounded by those who agree, the danger is that of slipping into the kind of irresponsible certainty that the Harper’s article indirectly accuses the conservative conference of fostering. When surrounded by those with a profoundly different view, the danger is to mount an overly insular and reactionary defence. In either case, the difficulty of dealing with profound differences of opinion is underscored.

Paul Martin on economic governance

Former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s talk was candid, informative and engaging. At a Global Economic Governance Program seminar, he covered a very diverse collection of issues: from China’s hunger for natural resources to the regulation of multinational corporations. I have never seen the room so packed, and the questions were excellent. He managed to get some good laughs, as well. In response to my question about climate change, he said, in part:

“Climate change has long since been recognized as caused by human activity principally.

The net effect is going to be devastating.

Prince Edward Island will disappear; Toronto won’t. That’s a disaster on both sides

That would make a great headline back home, wouldn’t it?”

Generally, he was very open, but there were certainly a few notable questions ducked. He declined to endorse a candidate for the Liberal leadership race when asked, for instance. People should feel free to have a look at my transcript, in which I have tried to quote directly wherever I could type fast enough.

PS. As today’s photo demonstrates, there is a downside to having a camera that takes 2-3 seconds to charge and fire its flash.