Canadians have a wonderful political category – the red Tory. Sometimes, it is just used as the equivalent of liberal or moderate Republican. However, it’s more interesting meaning is that of someone who’s political ideas include pieces of left and right. Not just any pieces. The wisdom of Edmund Burke, the great English conservative and REFORMER is a major piece of it. The notion that society is more than just the arithmetic sum of its individual members. The idea that grand ideological schemes are very likely to end in blood and horror. The humility to understand that any act, no matter how well-motivated and thought-through, is still likely to have unintended and not necessarily happy consequences. As well, there is the crucial notion that doing nothing is still a choice and an act. If one looks at the constitutional monarchies in the world (ones in which the monarch is a figurehead not like the monarchy in Tonga where the king has enormous power granted to him by a constitution), one sees societies that have successfully evolved from feudalism to modern democracy usually without major upheavals. This shows societies that can deal with change well.
The notion of a solid state constitution that is unchanging is a recipe for disaster and dishonesty. Disaster because a society that makes change difficult or impossible will become dysfunctional. Dishonest because it is epistemologically impossible to know what the `framers ` meant. Any society always has two major sources of disaster – an unchanging society will ossify; a too-changing society will fly apart. The more one attempts to avoid one of the more likely the other is to happen. At any given time, the balance must be and will be different.
That’s the Tory part. The red part knows that elites eventually serve only their own self-interest and one must view them with profound distrust. As well, the differences in individual abilities, talents etc. is not just a reflection of innate differences, but the result of the social system. The liberal notion of equality of opportunity is a sham and a delusion in that even if everyone is at the same starting line; their training, their equipment, and even their condition is unequal. As well, the operation of a free market is never really free so those who proclaim the glory of free markets are really only defending their own distorted power in what passes for a free market. The Tory in me is doubtful of both planning and central control and the action of the invisible hand. The red in me cannot believe that innate differences can even begin to account for the enormous inequalities in society. Is Bill Gates really that much “better” than Steve Jobs? Or even better at all?
Societies live in the natural world. We often hear of natural disasters? Are they? Or are they social failures? Yes, if out of the blue, Vermont were to be hit with a category 5 hurricane, it would be a true natural disaster as would 29 inches of snow in one day in Miami. But Katrina in New Orleans was a social failure both in preparing for hurricanes and in building levees. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level; they know how to build dikes. Yes, there were terrible floods there after WW II for obvious reasons. And yes, even successful dealings with the natural environment can warp a culture. The Dutch, brilliant at keeping out the sea, arrived in Manhattan and adapted their dike-building culture to keeping out the Indians by building a wall on what is now Wall Street. Apartheid was a form of wall building as well.
The right wing nonsense about taxation needs to be exploded. Sweden’s very high taxes have far economic effect on the Swedish economy than do taxes in this country. Why? American taxes are so complex and riddled with loopholes and exceptions that many economic decisions are made on the basis of tax consequences. As well, some really gifted individuals use their gifts in negotiating (in both senses) others through the system.
Famously, Joe Biden in his last presidential bid, plagiarized Neil Kinnock’s famous statement that the fact that he was the first member of his family to go to university did not mean he was the first one capable of it.
The liberties of society are not just a bill of rights or a document at all. In this country, we make a big deal about the Bill of Rights. New Zealand doesn’t have one in the sense of an entrenched constitutional document. In fact, it doesn’t even have an entrenched constitution. Much of constitutional government there is based on custom and usage as is the entire notion of parliamentary system as found in the Commonwealth. Guess who has the better record on civil liberties? It’s not even a close thing.
So I guess the Tory part of me comes out in a belief that we’d be better off constitutionally and freer if we had evolved as did Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Or, we’d be better off in Vermont had the Haldimand negotiations been successful.
