A Crisis of Leadership: Reflections on the recent Ontario election

Disclaimer: I know that hindsight is 20/20.  What I'm writing here is actually (believe it or not) what I was saying privately during the election and still hold to now.

The fact of the matter is, I didn't support much of the NDP's recent platform.  I find the obsession with minor issues (ATM fees, etc.) to be slightly ridiculous, as well as ineffectual in terms of significant, impactful, policy decisions that would reverse, stem, or quell the "neo-liberal" turn.

With that out there, I also am aware (painfully so at times) that I am not the average elector.  I am extremely over-educated and one could argue my leftist principles and preferences reflect a certain privilege (even if those views are also shared and held by many without said privilege).

More than that, I also realize that politics, especially the specific variety practiced in North America, is a very strange beast.  I know that it doesn't run on logic nor even on appearances.  It is extremely difficult thing to "get" - and I've seen die-hard idealists and realists read elections and outcomes in absolutely opposed and sometimes absolutely identical ways - and both be wrong.

All this is to say that while its hard to say I respect Canadian politics, I respect that I do not *know* how to read it very well.  And that, combined with my experience of a left politics that has lost all sense of solidarity and trust, I am often dismayed by the left-on-left criticism that is displayed during the mere 30 days of an average electoral campaign.

In the case of this recent election, the "open letter" by the Toronto left elite condemning Horwath seemed to me like a plot straight out of the Liberal playbook.  How could these intelligent people not see that their outcry could have no real benefit on leftist fortunes?

I am honestly unsure.  The fact of the matter remains that left parties are experiencing a crisis of leadership - a crisis that is not contingent on any particular leader but on the idea of leadership itself.  The hubris of left intellectuals is so great that they refuse *ever* to be yolked to a leader who potentially or actually diverts from their individualized vision of the party.  These people have neither the patience nor the forsight to direct their criticism where it belongs (at convention) and instead openly work to destroy the party to which they belong.

In my view, Andrea Horwath asked us for her trust for 30 days to do what she's been elected to do: lead.  She chose, as elected leader, to try a strategy of peculiar centrist populism.  Whatever the outcome (and an increase in seats and total vote share may, arguably, dictate she was successful), we owed her our allegiance, our solidarity, and even our silence - if only for 30 days.

Now, I'm afraid it truly is impossible to judge the outcome of the NDP because it is difficult to separate the leadership of Horwath from the sabotage of some members.  Had Horwath had our faith, and failed, the outcome would be obvious (as it was, with Hudak).  Instead, I'm left confused.  Should she resign over this outcome, slightly favourable as it is?  Would she have done better had the Left not intervened to sabotage her?  I'm unsure - its impossible to know.

All told, I wish we had let her have her shot so that we could allow her to be answerable to its outcome.  As it is, I feel we cannot do that, and perhaps thats the worst of it - because if she did blow the NDP's chance at significant gains (official opposition or better) - she should be given the boot - but instead we're left with the blame game and the unfortunate losses of NDP MPPs like Jonah Schein and Rosario Marchese - losses which may have been prevented had the Left got its own mouth under control.

Going forward, I hope that the disease that seems to affect most intensely the over-educated and privileged left, can be addressed.  I hope the values of faith (or trust) and solidarity make a return to leftist politics and that the hubris and individualism of expert opinions (almost always from the mouths of the most privileged of leftists) can be lessened considerably. 

Until then...

In solidarity.

Justin Trudeau's "Pro-Choice" Decree

Trudeau’s recent pronouncement that new candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) must be "pro-choice" has stirred up some controversy. Criticism stemming from the National Post’s Andrew Coyne (Trudeau ban on pro-lifers implies the issue is settled. It isn’t) and the Toronto Star’s editorial board (Justin Trudeau contradicts ‘open nomination’ pledge) slammed Trudeau’s one-sidedness. The common theme is that this issue is still controversial and Trudeau is decreeing that it has been settled. Trudeau is accused of silencing dissent over an issue that can exist as an open-ended questions within a stable, liberal, democracy.

It is at this point, however, that I find myself in disagreement with Coyne et al. Insofar as we frame the issue as one between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” then indeed the issue has been settled. Canada is a firmly “pro-choice” country, like the others Coyne cites (Netherlands and Sweden). Let me explain what I mean. Between the options of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” the matter at hand is fairly simple. Either abortion is legally permissible or it is not. That’s it - let’s not add in any qualifiers. There is no stable, liberal, democratic country that remains on the side that abortion is outright illegal. Ipso facto, there is no country in the list Coyne produces that is “pro-life.”

Now, many will rightly point out that actual abortion policy varies from nation to nation. This is correct, however, the fact of the matter is that the “pro-choice” (i.e. legalized abortion) position has become the de facto, if not de jure, norm. Variations do not amount to concessions to the pro-life side.

Now, some will argue that because Canada has no legal guidelines on abortion Trudeau was wrong to take a side on the issue of abortion. I cannot see the connection here. Limitations on abortion exist within the framework of its permissibility.  Whereas the “pro-life” side can be honestly and accurately identified with the perspective that abortion is murder (and therefore absolutely impermissible), the “pro-choice” side cannot be identified with the opposite. Indeed, while there are a fringe minority that argue that abortion should be available for all nine months of a pregnancy, the vast majority of pro-choice supporters only desire a reasonable allowance for abortion. If we stop speaking of the issue abstractly, we can note that while Canada does lack legislative restrictions on abortion, there exists de facto limitations established by the Canadian medical community that essentially limits abortion to the first trimester, well in line with the norm amongst other “pro-choice” countries.

So what has Trudeau really done? He has said the future LPC must exist within the long-established status quo on abortion in Canada and that the stance that abortion ought to be outlawed should receive no accommodation. The debate instead should focus on how or if, within the rubric of a “pro-choice” (i.e. permissive) perspective, we decide to place limits on abortion. This debate, however, Trudeau seems rightly uninterested in having, because outside of the false debate on whether abortion should be legal (it should, is and will be), Canadians are quite satisfied with the de facto status quo. Even Stephen Harper is satisfied.

Coyne and the rest who are scrambling to denounce the end of free speech or free votes on the issue of abortion are, in my opinion, creating controversy where there is none. Certainly one can still run for parliament as a pro-life supporter whether as an independent or perhaps in a post-Harper Conservative party. Otherwise, all Trudeau is doing is sidestepping a pointless debate that has already been settled. To allow it to, even potentially, take the spotlight within a major political party (especially of the centre/left variety) is, in my opinion, the equivalent of allowing a debate between anti-vax and vaccine supporters. Its a non-debate. Trudeau was right to treat it as such.

*Edit: It has been pointed out to me that the issue of access to abortion services needs to be urgently addressed as there are growing areas of the country that effectively forbid abortion because of the lack of available (funded) medical services.  I strongly believe that *this* is the issue that should be addressed in parliament.  The "debate" between pro-life and pro-choice unfortunately distracts us from addressing this crucial issue.

Abstraction & The Divine Exception

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”¹

And so the argument goes, round and round, where it stops, nobody knows, the centuries old battle between public and private, between socialism and capitalism, seems without end, as if the disputants, intoxicated by rarefaction of the abstract heights, have ignored the process of history itself which has largely made irrelevant these very musings. Yet, humanity has never felt it beneath itself to starve, struggle, maim and kill another on behalf of an idea, and so the battle must be settled in the ideal sphere itself, in the realm of ideas.

Michel Foucault once called the cold war face-off between capitalism and socialism a mere “tempest in a teapot,” snubbing in four words a conflict that had immersed millions and brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. Can such an outrageous remark be attributed to that run-of-the-mill academic pretension that so haughtily places itself above everything concrete and meaningful? Or, rather, was Foucault on to something profound that not only permits but encourages an aristocratic flick of the hand that dismisses the whole scene as something utterly sub-standard and not worthy of an enlightened process of digestion.

While there are many points of entry to begin our critical discussion, our purposes are best served to begin with Ayn Rand, whose ideas are still clung to, by some, with a religious ferocity, and who set herself up as a major critic of socialism and uber-proponent of capitalist individualism. According to Rand, government is to play a small set of rudimentary roles. “These basic functions are: the police, the law courts, the military. (These represent the only moral justification for the existence of a government: the protection of individual rights, i.e., the protection of individual citizens from the initiators of physical force.)”²

What is interesting about Rand, in this case, is not that she enumerates a number of exceptions to the ideal of a pure laissez-faire model of capitalism, as the “proper” sphere of government but that she does so without being arbitrary, never pretending as if their number and existence were guaranteed by virtue of their presence on the page or as if they had tumbled from the very mouth of God. Rand is far too smart for such dogmatic utterances and thus she describes the test that produced that list, the test of “the protection of individual rights” -- not, it is to be noted, a test of efficiency which is a measure that plays solely to capitalism's strengths and goals. Rand's “test,” however, far from marks her as a thinker on the fringe of mainstream discourse. Instead, it places her snugly within the bosom of liberal thought dating back hundreds of years. It is this test, in fact, that has linked together serious and thoughtful individuals that today are claimed by a variety of ideologies but that overall fall within the expansive European tradition of liberalism that links Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and J.S. Mill with Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx. Hobbes, whose famous four words will be remember long after Foucault's memory has completely dissipated, describes an existence of pure individualism as “nasty, brutish and short.” Starting from lofty and idyllic beginnings of humans living solely for their own needs, he quickly stumbles across the contradiction of death via an all out war. In the place of pure individualism then, he argues, there must exist a social contract binding one with another that serves not the bogeyman of “collectivism” but that very individualism he previously demonstrated to be contradictory in its very being. Hobbes realized that an ideology of pure individualism led to a “war of all against all” where each sought to dominate the other for fear of being likewise dominated. Yet, rather than simply reject individualism, Hobbes aimed to guarantee it through its opposite – the collective. Thus Hobbes's most valuable contribution to political and philosophical thought is twofold: the individual alone (and the ideology of pure individualism) is contradictory; and, that this contradiction is resolved through its opposite, the social realm.

Hobbes leads us by the hand from abstract individualism (“I exist for myself”) to concrete individualism (“I exist because and through the existence of others whose existence I, too, work to guarantee”). The difference or the “middle term” between these two modes of individualism is the social realm, sometimes identified with the government. This simple journey lies at the core of the liberal thought that embraces the scholars above and many more. Rand, herself, finds a home within this skeletal system when she makes government a necessary element to provide for the existence of the individual – for she knows, as does Hobbes, that the individual left to itself is a contradiction. The individual exists only within the social.

As I alluded to above, Rand's list of three functions of government is the product of a test and not the results of a divine exception that arbitrarily secludes those aspects of a social order from the rest. While chronologically they appear before the test in Rand's phrase, they are the logical results of that test. It is the test of the “the protection of individual rights” that spawns, in her eyes, three products: the police, the law courts, the military. However, because it is the test that counts and not the products, these three items are always susceptible to a re-test to determine if they continue to meet the standard. Moreover, because these three are not arbitrarily chosen a priori, as if plucked from the mind of God, but are products, they are not bound by any logical determination to be the only three. The test, in all its formulaic glory, is not limited by any earthly consideration, neither number nor ideology. Its goal is simply to test each potential candidate against the aforementioned measure and decree a result. As such, the difference between the chosen three and any number of items, say health care, postal services, road maintenance, coffee production, dentistry, etc., is eliminated. All items, like individuals, are equal before the law, and the law decides in each case according to the merits of each. Some items, it decrees, assist the task of translating individuals from abstract to concrete reality, others hinder it.

What becomes apparent at this point, is that Ayn Rand's test is no different from that of Hobbes, Smith or Marx's. The test for all is the same, what is different, is the outcome tallied by each individual thinker. Hobbes tallies the least, listing only government, Smith tallies more, including a role for social welfare within his model, and Marx tallies the most, enumerating a lengthy number of roles that must be brought within the realm of social supervision in order to protect the rights of individuals (such as the length of the working day, public education, etc.). Each of these thoughtful individuals are thus in communication with each other, disputing not between dissimilar systems but nuances within the very same system. Moreover, this argument across time has none of the bipolar features of Internet discussions that bounce between abstract individualism and abstract socialism. Each thinker above accepts and makes the individual and his or her concrete existence the goal of their system, and thereby weighs the institutions of society accordingly. Each thinker implicitly or explicitly accepts that the individual and the social exist together, reinforcing each other, in dialogue. For them, there is no world of pure individualism or pure collectivism.

Thus, from what appeared to be a world war without possibility of mediation, we find instead an internal war, a civil struggle – which as history teaches us can be of the most uncivil variety – between foes with a similar purpose and a common heritage. In this understanding, the divine exception that seemed to miraculously cleave Rand's three roles from charges of “socialization” is eliminated. The functioning of a liberal, individualist, society is seen anew as one that exists on a continuum of socialization. Thereafter, the charges of “socialism” lose their heretical potency to be replaced instead with thoughtful contemplation and practical experimentation, based in the empirical realities of everyday existence, that seek to determine to what degree more or less socialization preserves the rights of individuals. The divine exception removed, citizens are free to wonder why, if the police exist necessarily to protect individual rights should there not also exist a social health care system to protect the property (the body included, according to Locke) of citizenry? With the divine exception removed everything becomes fair game for the test whose results are never predictable beforehand and must always be interpreted using empirical data by the democratic multitude for which it exists. For again, there is no simple abstract pre-existing law enumerating a set number of social services.

Henceforth, abstraction, deemed a calumniator for its earnest attempts to foment eternal contradiction, is considered persona non grata and banned from the social realm for good. Hurray!

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1 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Dutton, 1992): 199.
2 Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Reader, ed. Gary Hull and Leonard Peikoff (New York: Plume, 1999): 105.

My response to Margaret Wente in the G&M

First, read Wente's piece here (I've also pasted it below as quote): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081024.wcowent25/BNStory/specialComment/home
My response follows.

What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true
MARGARET WENTE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

October 24, 2008 at 8:03 PM EDT

Was Canada once a land of savages? And is saying so tantamount to racism? Many people would answer no, and yes. That's why Dick Pound, the high-profile Olympics figure, is in a heap of trouble for describing the Canada of four centuries ago as " un pays de sauvages." He was talking to a reporter from La Presse about the Beijing Olympics and the issue of human rights. "We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European descent, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization," he said.

Not surprisingly, native groups are up in arms. "Mr. Pound must apologize to first peoples and educate himself about the history of first peoples in this country," insisted Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. Some want Mr. Pound to resign from Vancouver's Olympics organizing committee, and some want him to quit his post as chancellor of McGill University. He says he wasn't referring to today's native peoples, and he didn't mean to give offence. But critics aren't mollified. B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell calls his remarks "disgraceful."

"Stupid" is another word that comes to mind. The B.C. government and VANOC have been working furiously – and sparing no expense – to get aboriginal groups on side for the 2010 Winter Games. The last thing they want is for native protests to steal the spotlight. Comments about "savages," in whatever language, are not helpful.

Mr. Pound's choice of words was inflammatory, to say the least. But what about the underlying thought? Is it fair to say that the Canada of 1600 was not as "civilized" as China?

Yes, says Frances Widdowson, who, along with Albert Howard, is the author of an impressive new book on aboriginal policy and culture. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (to be published next month) knocks the stuffing out of the prevailing mythology that surrounds the history of first peoples. That mythology holds that aboriginal culture was equal or superior to European culture. At the time of contact, North America was occupied by a race of gentle pastoralists with their own science, their own medicine and their own oral history that was every bit as rich as Europe's.

The truth is different. North American native peoples had a neolithic culture based on subsistence living and small kinship groups. They had not developed broader laws or institutions, a written language, evidence-based science, mathematics or advanced technologies. The kinship groups in which they lived were very small, simply organized and not very productive. Other kinship groups were regarded as enemies, and the homicide rate was probably rather high. Until about 30 years ago, the anthropological term for this developmental stage was "savagery."

"Never in history has the cultural gap between two peoples coming into contact with each other been wider," Ms. Widdowson says.

Today, however, it is simply not permissible to say that aboriginal culture was less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture – even though it's true. Ms. Widdowson argues that the most important explanation for aboriginal problems today is not Western colonialism but the vast gulf between a relatively simple neolithic kinship-based culture and a vastly complex late-industrial capitalist culture. "It doesn't mean that they are stupid or inferior," says Ms. Widdowson. "We all passed through the stage of neolithic culture."

The fact that North American cultures never evolved further can be explained, as American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond showed, by geography, climate and a host of other material factors. But today, it's not acceptable to argue that some cultures are more highly developed than others, or that cultural development is a force for good. Instead, our policies are based on the belief that aboriginal culture is equal but separate, and that the answer to aboriginal social problems is to revive and preserve indigenous culture on a "separate but equal" parallel track.

This belief has produced a sizable industry of academics, consultants, lawyers, social workers and bureaucrats, to say nothing of lucrative sinecures for many aboriginals themselves. Ms. Widdowson once belonged to this industry, as a government policy analyst in the North. She soon became disillusioned and switched to an academic career, where she has been a lonely voice in a world where native spirituality and "traditional knowledge" are held to be just as valid as Western science.

Today, "traditional knowledge," which generally resides among the elders, is sought after by governments, studied in universities around the world, and recognized in environmental assessment processes. But Ms. Widdowson says most of it is useless – a heap of vague beliefs and opinions that can't be verified or tested. Why have the muskoxen drifted west? Because, according to the elders, the animals were "following the people because they missed them and wanted their company."

We have romanticized indigenous culture so much that it is often described (especially in native studies courses) as morally superior. Historically, aboriginal people were more spiritual, more egalitarian, more peaceable, less greedy and more ecologically minded than the rest of us. (To which Ms. Widdowson responds, "It's hard to damage the environment with a stone axe.") People are reluctant to challenge these assumptions. And they're not inclined to challenge indigenous spiritual beliefs, no matter how absurd. For example, anyone who questions the widespread belief that aboriginals originated in North America (rather than Africa, like the rest of us) is bound to be accused of disrespect and cultural insensitivity.

Claims about aboriginal contributions to civilization are also vastly overstated. Did the Iroquois Confederacy really influence the Declaration of Independence? Sorry, no. Do native medicinal herbs play an important role in modern drugs? No. Yet, some leading intellectuals try to argue otherwise. The thesis of John Ralston Saul's new bestseller is that we are at root a Métis civilization, even though he has no evidence to prove it. What is a Métis civilization? That's not too clear, either. But it's a good thing.

Much of our romanticism, of course, is fuelled by guilt. We robbed and mistreated aboriginal people for a very long time, and most of us feel terrible about it. Yet, Ms. Widdowson believes this denial of reality is extremely damaging. It dooms hundreds of thousands of native Canadians and their descendants to lives that remain isolated from the modern world, without the skills and aptitudes they need to make their way in an increasingly complex society. The message they get is that they need not, and should not, change.

But a neolithic culture cannot possibly give them a future. And it's time for us to face that. "The existing policy direction is so harmful," she says. "Aboriginal people are people like everyone else. They deserve to interact with the modern world like everyone else."

Needless to say, Ms. Widdowson, who currently teaches at Calgary's Mount Royal College, has been accused of hating aboriginals, and much else. "It doesn't mean that you're a racist or a colonialist if you recognize that there's a culture gap," she says. "But to say that aboriginal people were just as sophisticated as the Europeans – that's just nonsense."

The definition of savage, according to the Random House dictionary, reads: "1) fierce, ferocious, or cruel; untamed: savage beasts. 2) uncivilized; barbarous: savage tribes." Margaret Wente defends Dick Pound and his labelling of the original inhabitants of North America because it is "not permissible to say that aboriginal culture was less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture - even though it's true." This argument utilizes what we ivory-tower types call conceptual slippage. How did Ms. Wente go from an argument that such-and-such a group are "savage" to "less evolved"? Furthermore, how does Ms. Wente measure evolution and why does she continue to slip between "cultural" factors and "technical" ones? Jared Diamond, who Wente cites as an authority for her argument, writes that geographical factors determine technical development - not cultural development. Diamond makes this argument in the book titled "Guns, Germs and Steel" which serves to encapsulate his argument and to demonstrate that the difference between the "savage" and the "civilized" lies not in the production of culture or "sophistication" but in the proliferation of weaponry, both biological and technical. The same weapons that were turned on North America in 1492 would continue to be used in Europe itself in what could only be called a "fierce, ferocious or cruel," i.e. savage, way. Thus, Europeans may win the award for technical "evolution," but I am quite certain that is not the argument that Mr. Pound or Ms. Wente are making. By slipping between the argument that we are more technologically-advanced to one of culture, Ms. Wente justifies her claims to superiority and that is what is racist about her argument. Further, by defending Pound's position on the "savage" nature of the indigenous, Wente has gone far beyond identifying a "cultural gap" (if such a thing exists, and if it does how do we measure it, by how well another culture imitates our own?). Instead she strips the original inhabitants of culture altogether, for "savages," the "uncivilized" and "barbarous," are terms antithetical to culture. If a comment can be both dumb and true, it should be cause for self-reflection. In this case, I believe the comment is dumb (read wrong), and the truth is that it resonates with Margaret Wente's worldview.

Jason Harman
Toronto, Ontario

Why Legalizing Prostitution Is Necessary

I'm somewhat disappointed in myself for slacking off on the blog. While I enjoy adding the new music posts, they are somewhat of a cop-out for the more personal creative enterprises such as my own photos or writings that I had intended to fill these electronic pages.

This post actually came from my comments on a friend's blog (see This Must Be The Place). The issue isn't exactly foreign to me as I've been discoursing (at some length) on it for the past year or so. The event that generated my line of reason was the discovery of the Pickton murder victims in Port Coquitlam, BC and his subsequent trial.

To frame the discussion, my perspective comes between two positions that dominate the discourse on 'solving' prostitution. The first and perhaps outwardly more feminist position is that it should be made completely illegal and that a crackdown on male users and pimps will suffice to eliminate prostitution. This view insists upon the moral bankruptcy of prostitution. It also structures the relationship into a solidly dichotomous antagonism between (active) predator and (passive) victim. Perhaps most importantly, in my estimation, is that despite this arguments solid moral principles, it lacks little if any historical, social or political analysis. In this sense, it is the least strategic and most idealistic of the perspectives forwarded.

The alternative and more "liberal" (approaching on "libertarian") perspective is that of outright legalization. This opinion, often espousing the practical models operating in European countries, and seems to operate on an almost completely different plane than the previous one. Whereas the "feminist" approach is based solidly upon moral and ontological evaluations, the "liberal/libertarian" approach utilizes a completely pragmatic logic. Adherents of this position avoid the moral or ontological categories. Prostitution is as neutral a position as baker and the women that engage in it are rational-agents seeking to take advantage of the largely (benign and natural) male demand. Despite its innocent leanings, it clearly adopts a perspective on both men and women and it channels this ideology from liberal-capitalism. Like the "feminist" approach, the pragmatic perspective ignores the historical, social and political web that interpellates prostitute, john and voyeur. This position emphasizes its strategic or pragmatic sensibilities but at the expense of any trajectory. It simply seeks to capitalize (as institutionalize; in the sense of bringing within the domain of capitalism and its norms and values) a 'profession' which is intricately tied to prevailing power relationships.

My position seeks to provide both a strategic and idealistic solution. Here begins a copy of my comments from This Must Be The Place in response to a post citing Rape Relief's denunciation of the legalization of prostitution.

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I'm for the legalization of prostitution personally. Unfortunately I do not see any good options put forward by groups such as Rape Relief, etc. Making it completely illegal simply pushes it further underground. Have our marijuana laws and other drugs laws made drug use disappear?

Prostitution as it is now = rampant capitalism with no regulation. Legalizing it will not prevent rampant capitalism but will regulate it.

A better step will be legalization and state-control. No private brothels.

That way it can be properly regulated and plenty of support can be made available for those women who would like to leave the industry.

This method both provides prostitutes with dignity of not being told what they should or shouldn't be doing by self-righteous men & women and eliminating pimps (as individuals or as brothel owners).

I think an equivalent of the Vancouver safe-injection site could be a first step.

Furthermore, (sorry for being so verbose) government legalization would have the benefit of allowing complete criminalization of prostitution outside government channels. Currently, prostitutes are not criminalized and 'johns' are. This makes protection of prostituted women extremely difficult because they actively seek to avoid the police in order to make money in an activity that is illegal. This is the equivalent of charging police to protect drug-dealers although they are mandated to arrest drug users. Obviously, the prostitutes do not want anything to do with the police despite not being criminals per se and this ultimately leads to risks to their lives.

By government legalization, prostitution outside of this channel would be illegal and the women could be arrested. This would be beneficial namely because women operating outside the government system would likely be operating in a state of coercion (pimped). The women could then be offered ways out of the 'business' or work at the government brothel. Again, instead of morally-denouncing women they are offered the dignity of a choice freed of coercion.

Obviously, welfare policy must be modified to prevent abuses (such as those in Europe that insist women engage in prostitution if they cannot find employment elsewhere). Prostitution could be handled strictly as a means to ending it through government assistance.

This approach has the obvious downside of dirtying the hands of government and consequently the public. I'd much rather have that responsibility on my shoulders than the airs of purity that come with evangelical positions of eliminating prostitution with a wave of the (legislative) hand or simple and self-righteous denunciation strategies of certain feminist groups.

Should Treatment be Mandated for the Mentally Ill?

Do you think people diagnosed with mental illness should be legally required to accept treatment?

A question with frightening consequences, however, Canadian's came through with their core progressive values on this one.

Yes | 10437 votes (55%) 10437 votes No | 8666 votes (45%) 8666 votes

Total votes: 19103 <Globe & Mail Weekly Poll>

I don't really have the energy to rant about this. For one, I am so far on one side of the fence with an issue like this that I can barely relate to the other opinion. I'll leave it for comments from anyone who'd like to chime in his or her opinion (without fear of a raving tirade in response from me!).

Addendum from Marx's Capital

Here's a minor addendum from Uncle Karl's Capital Vol. 1 (in relation to the previous post "Machiavellian Morality"):

"...it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist..." (Marx Capital 98).

This passage is interesting because the capitalist is defined not as one who simply engages in making money but one who does so as an end-in-itself and also, inevitably, ad infinitum. In this, I think Marx is uncovering the pathology of our time: the tendency toward absolutism; toward excess. Whereas Marx reveals that commodity exchange has its end goal in the usage of the commodity sought after (a finite exchange) the capitalist has no 'end' in sight. The accumulation of money is not therefore strategic in the Machiavellian sense espoused below. Rather, money for the sake of money, power for the sake of power, torture for the sake of torture is the rationale behind Marx's "rational miser" (98). Here lies the 'law' of excess which permeates the banality of existence.

Furthermore, this process sees the dissolution of the end and the prioritizing of the means. Marx points out that money was designed as a means to facilitate exchange of commodities. The 'ham' in the commodity sandwich (commodity-money-commodity). In the case of the capitalist, the sandwich is reversed to money-commodity-money. Money, the previous means, become the ends which is itself nothing but another means for another end, etc. In Worthington, instead of torture being cautiously advocated (and hopefully investigated) as a means to an end, it takes on a whole new form, as the final solution. Torture will reveal a potential truth (more often a pain-induced lie or hallucination) but more torture for more potential truths. In the "war on terror", itself a vaguely described struggle whose enemies can morph into anyone, Worthington's blank cheque encourages losing ourselves within an abyss of excesses.

The solution must be the reconstitution of these "means" as means. In the sense of capitalism, money can only take the back seat when the person or society begins to posit concrete values for which to strive. Similarly, torture - if it is indeed even strategically worthwhile - can only find a place within a war that is defined realistically (a slightly meaningless word but meant to conjure the tenets of the Machiavellian method outlined below and reappropriate the term from Realism), not vaguely as a war on terror. Unfortunately, if the war is read simply as an outcropping of capitalism, which it very much appears to be, then it will not be able to be defined realistically. It will not be able to curb its tendency toward excess because its very essence is excess. It is simply an embodiment of the money-commodity-money pursuit, in which torture, murder, rape and general strife (all excesses that will beget their own excesses) are the 'ham' in the sandwich of dollars. In this way, originary excess spreads its seed wherever it goes and finds its most worthy accomplices in those 'students of realism' who advocate for curing our present quagmires with more of the same.

Machiavellian Morality

This new essay - hot on the heals of the controversial post regarding the Politics of Discrimination is admittedly also, in part, a reaction to my favourite source of (mis)information, the Sun Media Corp. As a daily reader of the Canoe.ca website I am constantly astounded by the sheer ignorance and audacity that make the news world spin. Generally its the editorials that are the worst, and I suppose they are designed this way. If they don't create some kind of backlash or fervor of voices - either for or against - then they don't serve to sell papers, or advertisements, or whatever makes profits these days. In fact, editorials of these kind generally aim at that fringes. Their guise is the everyman but realistically it is only the few that take offense or applaud the often low-brow attempts to antagonize: the partisans. Most intellectuals of merit don't read such pieces, call that elitism or 'discriminating taste'. The rest of society are too busy living whatever they deem life is and some just have an ounce of that ol'fashioned good sense not to be interested when the latest pundit starts pounding his podium.So where does that leave me? I certainly "react" to these posts, am I any different? This is certainly up for debate and my opinion on the subject is definitely not authoritative - however, I would submit that my responses, at least on here, are not simply a "reaction", that knee-jerk sort of response that fills most political forums and legislatures. Rather, in the interval between, my desire is to reshape this original energy into an action in its own right, adding a positive force to an essentially negative (hence the 're-' in reaction) movement. Thus, while I berate myself for adding nothing new in the previous posts, I have been trying to espouse surreptitiously a path between the action and reaction approaches of partisan politics, as well as a new methodology of truth (rather than new truth in itself).

Today's stimulus will give me the occasion to reveal more clearly this methodology, as it finds itself rooted, in part, in similar observations, but ends with radically different conclusions than our friend from Sun Media Corp. Thus, without further ado, an column by the Toronto Sun's Peter Worthington entitled: Winning the War on Terrorism (I originally came across this article after reading an editorial on it by Salim Mansur, who earns his pay by regurgiating the work of columnists writing for the very same paper: Gitmo Captives Not POWs, Just Prisoners). I have cut the article to a few key paragraphs which I believe summarizes Worthington's view succinctly (although without the gory details of torture methods he seems fond of recounting):

Here at Guantanamo, where 432 Taliban and al-Qaida core leaders are still confined, American custodial staff -- military police gxuards, trained interrogators, FBI, psychologists and assorted experts seeking information -- are severely hampered by humane restrictions that detainees exploit.

The Americans at Guantanamo are on the front line against terrorism, just as soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are. Both are hobbled by limitations and public relations concerns that make success difficult.

After all, al-Qaida doesn't provide Bibles to American (and other) prisoners before cutting off their heads as video cameras whirr.

History has innumerable examples of terror movements quelled only by greater violence -- and few examples of fanatics or terrorists being persuaded to amend their extremism by discussions or gentle persuasion.

If America were to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, as these are not needed to assure humane treatment, the Supreme Court would be powerless to rule otherwise. And America would be freer to use whatever means it takes to win this war (my emphasis). It would also give pause to her enemies, and reassurance to friends.

And at Guantanamo, the Americans would be able to find better ways to persuade hardcore detainees to talk than by taking away their pillows, or bribing them with ice cream.

This common sort of argument reveal the tendencies of one of the modes of our thinking. Namely there are two types which I will place into the old categories of "idealist" and "realist". Oddly enough, those who claim to be one or the other are generally both at once, and the consequences are generally sinister. For instance, the most rabid advocates for the war in Iraq, which has seen somewhere close to half-a-million dead (the majority of that number being civilians) come from the conservative heartland of the United States and Canada. These are the "moralists" of the crowd who believe in the absolute commandments of "thou shalt not". Such a system of absolutes quickly results in paradox, how can we believe in "thou shalt not kill" for example and yet bear the blood of thousands of dead Iraqis? In comes 'realism', a belief that in its essence is fundamentally amoral and anti-progressive. Coming from the realpolitik tradition, realism is the strategy of the superpowers to keep the status quo by any means necessary. This sort of nihilistic logic, often wrongly attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli, is at the heart of Worthington's pro-torture piece. We can win if we break, batter, and beat prisoners - that is the moral of his article, and the one behind realism in general.

Thus moral absolutism quickly leads to a sort of pragmatism or realism, although rarely ever in a coherent manner (such as a logical removal of most if not all absolute principles). In fact, today's moral leaders are blessed at having all the benefits of a stiff and inscrutable moral code while having the flexibility of a mobster in dealing with a local proprietor behind on his debts.

The Moral-Realist hybrids write columns like Worthington's. Fresh out of church on a Sunday afternoon, they hunker down in front of the keyboard to extol the virtues of Colonel Kurtz's "exterminate the brutes" mentality. For them there is no contradiction. 2+2=5 and that's that. It's obvious and you should start seeing it there way next time they ask you: how many lights do you see?

This 'logic' is the most insidious strategy, whether conscious or unconscious, of modernity. I use modernity - such a loose and ambiguous term itself - simply because there is no one group that I can attribute to orchestrating such a massive assault on cognition and thought. Nor can I simply say this is a right-wing strategy. The left loves to mix itself into this regime of mixed-up moral realism, stumbling over its own tongue as it tries to figure out what it stands for and how to engage it.

Every few years one or both sides acknowledges this 'moral corruption' and advocates for a consolidation of the ranks within each of their idealist camps, where they go through ideological retraining to purify themselves of realist taint. A reaction to the situation that most certainly comes no closer to rectifying it and only widens the gap between the poles of left and right and makes the future 'realism' more mendacious than the last.

A Machiavellian Morality

Antonio Gramsci can be credited with bringing to my attention Machiavelli's 'project'. He was not writing a treatise simply on maintaining power but a revolutionary text on creating a new power, a new state: an Italian nation-state that would rival those European superpowers of France, Spain and Britain. Machiavelli's dream would not be realized in his lifetime nor for a number of centuries afterward, Italy being a latecomer to the unified nations club, arriving in the 19th century. In Machiavelli's work, we can see that his goal was not simply to "win" although that is always good, but to achieve a material goal. Thus, Machiavelli's project is not bound by the realpolitik that grew out of the 19th century conservatives which was used to secure and maintain power; it is not a cyclical perspective that accepts no movement, but rather a radically progressive methodology that requires both values and strategy in order to power itself.

"Nietzsche asserts that having one virtue is better than having many, for 'it is more of a knot for fate to hold on to.'" (Wikipedia on Virtue).

If multiple absolute principles results quickly in paradox - ultimately requiring their being broken as we most unfortunately witness on a daily basis from those most-upstanding members of society - then the simple solution is not a dissolution of all principles, a becoming Kurtz, as Worthington and others are so willing to do from the comfort of their world so far removed from an actualized 'state of nature' (see Iraq) that their mind-numbing formulations suffer no penance. Rather it requires a strict examination as to what morals / virtues can possibly be willed indefinitely, against all odds. Who among us looking with that kind of scrutiny into our virtues could possibly say that Nietzsche's claim of even a single virtue is not a boast!

Honesty is the best policy. If we did not lie to ourselves to begin with, extolling our virtues as the West is wont to do, then we would not be accused of our moral hypocrisy nor bear the toll it takes on our individual psyches as we become more and more accustomed to the Big Lie ("The Goebbels technique, also known as argumentum ad nauseam, is the name given to a policy of repeating a falsehood until it is taken to be the truth" (see Wikipedia's Big Lie)).

It is in the vacuum left behind by the removal of surfeit morals that we may examine realism in view of Machiavelli's progressive capacity. Worthington argues that there is no reason to hold back on the Gitmo prisoners, that the Geneva conventions don't apply anyway and if they do we should just remove ourselves from the convention. Finally, he asserts that not torturing is related to not-winning. If we tortured more we'd win. The argument has no moral compass whatsoever. In fact, the only lifeline thrown to the prisoners by Worthington is that the torturer and his society will provide the only necessary check on torture - much like arguing the police should check the police, the legislature the legislature, etc. A complete reversal of checks and balances theory itself.

The problem with the Worthington style argument is not its incorrectness or untruth. In fact, I might even contend that Worthington is completely within the realm of truth, Geneva may not in fact apply, and there certainly is no god I believe in that will stop us from torturing these prisoners to a messy pulp (weather Worthington's god is in agreement who knows these days, it seems the Christian god has stopped carrying about Muslims just like he did for Blacks during slavery and Jews during WWII - our god is a selective god). However, Worthington in all his eagerness to kick-some-turban-to-the-curb fails to provide a single point of merit on how torture will result in victory or change of any kind. In fact, Worthington is very short on details when it comes to what the end goals of torture are at all. Certainly torture could yield information to stop an attack but where is the evidence? What is the limitation? As it is, torture is advocated unlimitedly, for its own purposes. There is no measure, no goal to be achieved, because one can never stop winning, one can never be sure that another attack is around the corner. This is Worthington's blank cheque, which he very aggressively endorses with his consent.

A Machiavellian position would proceed differently. Firstly, it would posit a realizable goal. Torture for torture's sake or for a generalized notion of better security would not suffice. Rather, it would be properly laid out by an understanding of the here and now with an aim toward the there of future. This could be as simple as we must prevent a second terrorist strike against the United States.

Secondly, rather than starting with the assertion that more torture = more results all tactics would be examined. Does torture yield results and what kind of results? Factors such as increased coercion leads to faulty information, loss of legitimacy, excesses (ie. murder) by soldiers, and generalized indictments regarding the moral compass of the armed forces and government are to be considered (after all, you can't win a war when you're being booted out of office). Does Worthington consider these? Not at all. Torture for him does not need explanation, despite being one of the most coercive and violent activities one can commit on another. It passes from his lips/pen/keyboard as easily as if he was ordering a pizza.

A strategic reading of the situation would debate whether torture could possibly yield positive results and if so, in what cases. It would require specific license and not a generalized one. Torture writ large, by Worthington and others, is a license to backfire - as it did for the United States (which makes it doubly confusing why, despite the real critiques and complications that the Bush government's torture police has engendered, any one would advocate for it). Which itself brings us full circle. The realists are nothing more than the idealists they had descended from. Their proposals, which seem realistic simply because they are harsh and brutal, advocating excess pain and suffering for all, are nothing more than simple-minded ideals coded in the same absolutist manner. They are negative idealists but idealists nonetheless and their very form of thought is a violence which is most insidious to those of us that breathe it in. Worthington means nothing to those imprisoned at the US base in Cuba. They will never hear of him, never read his words. But Canadians will, they will absorb his doublespeak, they will praise his blunt 'realism' and will to win, and they will become the same, speaking in paradoxes that seem themselves evident and non-contradictory.

In contrast, a Machiavellian morality is neither idealist nor realist. It attempts to overcome idealism through the removal of absolutes and to enhance realism by becoming more realistic - looking at inputs, outputs, degrees of change. A Machiavellian morality embraces uncertainty rather than trying to eliminate it absolutely. At most, a Machiavellian morality is an old-fashioned ethic of moderation, designed for navigating the rocks shores of an unknown coastline rather than barreling straight through. A Machiavellian morality always knows where it is going and where it has come from and where it is, even when the journey goes off track. It is always open to re-evaluation, for the means are very much part and parcel with the ends. A means of unlimited torture yields as its end a society that has unleashed a devastation onto itself and its others - there can be no pretensions otherwise.

In sum, this is my rough sketch of a Machiavellian morality as contained in yet another critique of the Sun Media Corp. I hope to be able to further expand on this outline which in its vagueness is open to as many critiques as it supposedly resolves. In the meantime I will let it stand for some feedback.

Thanks.

The Politics of Discrimination

As per usual, my (non-music-related) addition to the blog is a reaction. I wish I could come to the blog-o-sphere with some new affirmative truths wrestled from the beast of ignorance and ideology but unfortunately those have to go through the rites of passage first (namely the ridicule and insults of friends and colleagues) before they are battle-tested enough for the permanence of print (even web-print has some permanence). Not to mention I don't want the three people who read my blog to steal my new ideas - its a capitalist world out there and I gotta protect my few assets (joking of course, you'll be the first to pilfer whatever it is I know).

Anyway, without further ado, the stimulus:

The student union at McGill University is refusing to allow blood donation drives in its buildings until Quebec's blood collection agency agrees to accept donations from homosexual men.

Héma-Québec screens donors by means of a questionnaire.

Among other questions, it asks whether male would-be donors have had sex with another man at any time since 1977. If they answer yes, they are not allowed to give blood.

Health Canada put the policy in place after the tainted blood scandal of the early 1990s, to prevent blood infected with HIV from getting into the health-care system, but the McGill student union calls it discriminatory.

Aaron Donny-Clark, president of the Students' Society of McGill University, says it is a question of dignity.

"Some of our students have passed these people with the buttons, eating the cookies or whatever, and know that the only reason they can't give blood has nothing to do with their blood, nothing to do with anything relevant at all," he told CBC News.

"We just can't stand for that."

Health Canada must approve change

André Roch, vice-president of public affairs for Héma-Québec, acknowledges that the screening question is outdated. New blood tests have been developed that make it easier to screen for AIDS, he said.

However, he said Health Canada must give the go-ahead before Héma-Québec's donor questionnaire can be changed.

Héma-Québec has recommended that only men who have had sex with another man in the previous 12 months should be prohibited from giving blood, Roch said.

This is not the first time the blood donor question has caused controversy in Quebec.

In January, Héma-Québec shut down a blood drive taking place in the William Shatner University Centre on the McGill campus.

"This decision became necessary after an anonymous note encouraging potential donors to lie on their blood donation questionnaire was posted within the premises of the centre," the agency said in a news release posted on its website.

In 2004, the province's largest school board, the Commission scolaire de Montréal, cancelled a blood drive at its office as it pressed for the question about past sexual activity between men to be dropped.

Full-text available at the CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/11/13/mtl-blood-drives.html

Nothing extraordinarily surprising here, Quebec youth and students have long been at the forefront of political activism and the quest for equity - when it comes to "progressiveness" - that gooey non-substance - they get it and put it into action post haste.

Now as to the 'meat' of the text, the so-called dispute as framed by the CBC and likely by the Students' Union themselves is the "discriminatory" nature of the blood questionnaire. What is interesting, however, is that the idea that the questionnaire is "discriminatory" is itself an allegation or in contention at all. Is not the point of a questionnaire to discriminate? They are not asking the questions for the sake of asking - it is for the sake of selection, a discriminating behavior par excellence.

Which brings me to the larger question: to discriminate or not to discriminate?

In today's context this hardly seems a legitimate question. The discourses of many on the left and right have unified into a sort of 'politically-correct' leviathan which threaten all who oppose it with charges of anti-**** or that. To discriminate, in its essence, has become evil - the mark of the racist or sexist. But let's rewind to the dictionary entry of discrimination:

1. to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality: The new law discriminates against foreigners. He discriminates in favor of his relatives.

2. to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately: to discriminate between things.

3. to make or constitute a distinction in or between; differentiate: a mark that discriminates the original from the copy.

4. to note or distinguish as different: He can discriminate minute variations in tone.

5. marked by discrimination; making or evidencing nice distinctions: discriminate people; discriminate judgments.

Care of Dictionary.com

Without getting into any of the nuts and bolts of this definition, I will say that it speaks to me clearly as the essence of difference, particularly observing it and at times action taken upon noting it.

Clearly, "discrimination" is a neutral term and one only has to remember its positive inclinations to be rescued from the abyss of one-sidedness where this term has been thrown. Examples being, of couse, "discriminating taste" or the ability to "discriminate right from wrong", etc.

So, what happened to discrimination?

It would be ahistorical to look over how difference has been cast in the last... forever-many years. Its negative connotation did not come about magically but through the very sufferings of millions of people because of a "noted or observed difference". This includes, of course, discrimination of race, gender, ability and sexual orientation. But is the answer the destruction of discrimination?

Returning to the article, the McGill Students' Union's charge against the survey is simple, it discriminates. Not exactly a nuanced argument, which gives an idea to the weight the word carries in itself. One need not say more - "discrimination" carries its own 'recriminations'. But is the abolishment of difference the answer to a millennium or more of the persecution of difference? Is the answer a making-homogeneous? Or rather a time to "celebrate difference" to use the cliched saying that seems to be the banner of the same people who are actively out to erase differences of any kind.

Speaking again of the questionnaire, its job is to go beyond politics (something I will not say with certainty that it does) and deal with medical realities. Some of the questions on the questionnaire pointedly ask where you have been in your lifetime or recent travels, with the countries listed being some of the poorest in the world and not simply by coincidence. I myself, a frequent blood-giver in my youth (I'm a grizzled old man now) was prohibited from giving blood for a year because of my travels in Central America, due to the prevalence of tropical diseases. A friend of mine who accompanied me once to give blood was also rejected, something about using cocaine not being cool?!? I dunno where that came from, but I'm no doctor. Certainly these examples too are discrimination. Not to mention, we also had to pass by the table of cookies (mmm fudgios) with a certain sadness in our hearts knowing that we couldn't help those who needed it. I managed to survive by realizing it wasn't personal, it was statistical, my friend returned to doing blow to get over his grief.

From HealthCanada's perspective, it couldn't take the risk after blood scandal upon blood scandal, including the giving of HIV-infected blood to patients, effectively signing their death certificates, the cardinal sin of the medical profession. Which begs the question - for whom is giving blood? Us donors or the receivers? If giving blood is some kind of 'right' of the giver, then perhaps I could understand one's desire to give blood regardless of their suitability to the operation (which one should note is expensive given the blood screenings and would become more so the less 'pre-discrimination' is required) much like how people who have nothing important to say (ie. me) have the right to blab on blogs. But if giving blood is not a right of the donor then what's the fuss? Last I checked giving blood wasn't an equity issue.

As to the science behind the questionnaire, if it is poor, advocate for its change. The strategy of evicting HealthCanada and a blood donation station from Students' Union property seems to me a serious blunder that seeks to propel a new group of "politically-correct" experts above the medical ones - to the detriment of blood recipients. As to strategies of lying on the questionnaire in order to give blood, I can only refer to that as an appalling lack of self-restraint and misguided desire to help.

In sum, I can say I applaud the McGill students' union for stirring the pot as to the legitimacy of the questions asked by Health Canada, but the motives of and actions undertaken by the students' union are extremely questionable and concretely detrimental to hospital patients. Furthermore, the politically-correct agenda taken to extremes, as in this instance, reveals the paradoxical nature inherent in any rational or 'progressive' model pushed to its limits. In this case, the attempt to subvert medicine to the dictum of equality start to become absurd - and while I'm no fan of the power of medicine, the idea that it should take its marching orders from the McGill Students' Union is somewhat unsettling.

This issue appears as the flip-side of the coin, the heads to the tails that the Bush administration is using to discriminate and persecute people at his leisure. But to return to the notion of "discriminating taste" as a refinement of the palette to detect even the most subtle degrees of difference, I would argue that what we need now is more discrimination, not less. More as in that heightened ability to seek the smaller differences that separate not just ethnicity from ethnicity, gender from gender, (that's for amateur's) but terrorist from tourist. A difficult task for certain, but one that re-embraces the notion of difference rather than suppressing it. It is in this way that we can truly "celebrate difference".

Bitches and Bastards & Sun Media

Double-standard on B-words

by John Gleeson, Editor of the Winnipeg Sun

Back in March 1999 I penned a column for the editorial page in which I described then-PM Jean Chretien as "a mean-looking bastard." It was a purely subjective description. I also said he "had dead eyes."

No one afterward seemed to find the strong language particularly offensive. No one demanded Sun Media silence me or fire me or that other media outlets not hire me or use my work. And certainly no one suggested that by calling Chretien a bastard, I was saying that all men are bastards (though I have known some women who adhere strictly to that point of view).

This week we heard the shrill voices of feminists calling for the head of commentator Norman Spector after he characterized MP Belinda Stronach as "a bitch" on a Vancouver radio talk show.

What struck me as amazing about this feminist outrage was how old-fashioned, almost Victorian, it sounded. Basically they were saying, "That's no way to talk about a lady." And they were apparently saying it with straight faces. Have neither of these women seen Sigourney Weaver in Alien?

We can all lament the drop in standards of public discourse during our lifetimes. For decades the movies we've watched, first in theatres and then in our own livingrooms, have been so full of the F-word that we now have many young (and not so young) people who can't utter a single sentence without using it. Like it or not, the English language has devolved, reflecting nastier cultural norms.

"Bitch," as unsavoury as it might sound to some ears, has become so commonplace in most quarters that it hardly packs a punch. Men and women use it routinely to describe women who are hard-headed, hard-hearted or just plain difficult. Gays also use it to describe gay men who display similar tendencies. It's all over mass media and there was even a book published this year by author Sherry Argov called Why Men Marry Bitches.

Feminists like Black and Alphabet demand equal treatment with men -- until the going gets tough. And then they fall back and demand to be treated like "ladies" again. Too frail and vulnerable, and ultimately just "too good," by virtue of being female, to be called bad names.

Many Liberals were proud that Chretien was a bastard. A strong leader pretty well has to be a bastard -- at least some of the time.

The same applies to women. With notable exceptions like Mother Teresa, very few highly successful women get that way without being bitches -- at least some of the time.

It's a bastard of a world and life's a bitch.

And the equality train's already left the station.

Excerpts from John Gleeson's article in the
Winnipeg Sun's Thursday Editorial page.

These articles aren't really uncommon, so I don't know why I feel the need to write about it. When I read it this morning it didn't particularly raise an eyebrow but as I was walking around campus it rolled on back through so I thought if it made enough impact to merit a second thought I might have enough energy to blog about it. I've gotten this down so far so that's a good sign - generally I'm either apathetic about politics or moved to rant in an outrageously violent fashion until it passes (neither of which are conducive to the relative calm act of typing into an inanimate text box).

As to the article, like I said, nothing uncommon here. I'm sure editors write one like this defending their views on a similar scenario two decades ago and then pull it out, blow off the dust and reprint it. That's what being a journalist these days is all about. My comments on this article are simply:

1) Reporters as Shills. Now, everyone's got a perspective, whether they admit it or not. As one of my very first rants on this blog mentioned, people nowadays shop for ideologies and once signed up generally hold onto their party card for life. Truth with the capital 'T' may have been thrown out by the lazy over-educated nihilists of academia years ago but they were only the last on the boat. People dropped truth for ideology long ago and journalists sooner than most. Most, like John Gleeson of the Winnipeg Sun have no problem continually shilling for their party of choice no matter what the issue. In fact, Gleeson tries to establish his "objective" stance by mentioning he's got no problem attacking Liberals of any gender. Now that's intensive journalism if there is any.

Now my point is not defend the Liberals, Jean Chretien or Belinda. It may well be that she's a bitch and he's a bastard, its just an irritation to hear the same people defend whatever comes out of the mouth's of their party officials as true and good. For instance, the Conservatives actually did something very-unconservative lately by levelling a tax on income trusts. The first out the door to chastise them? Liberals. Even the NDP couldn't help but applaud and criticize at the same time - trying to have their cake and eat it too.

2) Bitches & Feminism. I'm just going to be honest and say that John Gleeson knows as little about feminism as he does about investigative journalism. A low blow perhaps, but I'm not published in a province-wide newspaper nor syndicated on a popular online site. My responsibility toward actually knowing whether Mr. Gleeson is another pathetic rightwing douchebag or an upright journalist full of integrity is less than his responsibility to know what the hell he's talking about, I admit it, and I'll exploit it.

To establish at least a minimum of similarity between us, I think we can suppose that when Mr. Gleeson talks of equality for women he means a change of some kind. I seems pretty sensical to imagine that women or any group wouldn't campaign for equality if it didn't entail a difference. Thus, we can suppose from Gleeson's article that women in "inequality" were not called bitches and that this has been the result of the 'equality train' leaving the station, as he puts it. Thus, now that women have reached, at last, the realm of equality we are finally free from our noble restraint to call them bitches and to stop treating them as ladies, as we have through history. A solid argument, something akin to saying that as Black / African-American people reach equality we will be free to call them niggers. If they spit and sputter, we can always just sit back and say "hey, that's the equality train choo-chooing along my savage friend".

Now far be it for me to lecture some dude from the progressive capital of Canada (and who writes for Sun Media Corp.), but I would suggest that because two words start with the same letter does not give them equivalence. If it did, I'd sure love to hear someone call Scott Brison a Butt-fucker in parliament. After all, gays and lesbians may be a bit further down the equality train track but that only means they've been shielded too long from the equality that b-words carry. Time to stop treating them like ladies and usher them into full democracy.

As for "bastard", I think in all serious that term is about as meaningless as democracy itself. Calling someone a "bastard" in any forum doesn't really call for chops, its not even gender-specific anymore. It has no connection with its historical definition. When Gleeson boldly called Jean Chretien a bastard from the writing desk of his cubicle somewhere in Winnipeg I doubt he was calling into doubt Chretien's parentage. He was just trying to add some sauce to another otherwise worthless and insightless piece of political drivel. As he mentioned, "bastard" has become synonymous with leadership ability. "Bitch" not quite so. Thus, I'd suggest that if Gleeson wants to show he's got the chops to really expose himself as the bitter partisan he is, he should make a qualitatively-equal gesture toward men in politics by pulling out his slang dictionary and writing about the time he donkey-punched Paul Martin.


This is Jason Harman, reporting live from somewhere in the Mediterranean.

Codifying Childhood: Conservative's Legislative Agenda

"This is common sense legislation. This protects Canadian children, and I believe that even Liberals would agree with that."

Canadian Justice Minister Vic Toews

Strategem

Defn: "Common sense": the most sinister phrase in the English language, a strategic siege of cognitive space. The consolidation of a certain arrangement of power and knowledge as hegemonic, in that the knowledge has become to be deemed truth and the power relations implied consented to...

Strategy: "even Liberals would agree with that": Constructs standard playing field "us" v "them". Defines Conservatives on the side of Canadian children and "common sense" which "even Liberals" could be a part of - but important to note, are likely not to be.

Effect: Silences discussion by deflecting criticism against the ironclad shield of "common sense". The usage of Canadian children, highly idealized and strategically victimized in this legislation, will act to polarize the situation. Critics will be linked to pedophilia or child-hating...

Creation of 'Childhood'

New arrangements of power/knowledge depicted as "common sense" fundamentally rely upon an ahistorical viewpoint and strategic and usually consensual "forgetting". Unlike philosophical argument, logical reasoning is never cited, rather an a priori knowledge is implied - that humans the age of 14 and 15 in this case specifically are in need of a special protection (in lieu of certain freedoms) because they are intrinsically vulnerable and unable to make moral choices in regards to their choice of sex partner (as this legislation does not criminalize sexuality at this age but consensual sex with partners 4 + years older). This piece of legislation finds itself within a moral code that speaks confidently about what sex is, and thus importantly helps to prefigure the subjectivities of a youthful sexuality along a relatively new (in terms of size and importance [morally and academically]) axis: childhood.

By saying that childhood is a relatively new concept is not to say there was never a division between children and adults but that such a division has become problematized in the modern era, resulting in profuse legislative and moral codes designed to control and examine the behavior of "children." Examples abound from the Catholic / Christian crusade against "self-pollution" that was consuming the idle hands of its ewes. One can also reference the proliferation of new laws both 'aiding' and 'restricting' the activities of young people, including the introduction of 'child' labour laws, mandatory public schooling and a bevy of age-limited prohibitions on sex, alcohol, drugs, firearms and perhaps the most dangerous - voting.

Seen within this matrix of an evolving domain of moralities, the age of consent can be plotted with the extension of childhood into the teen years. In the recent Globe & Mail article where Justice Minister Vic Toews was quoted, the original age of consent was stated as 12, which was raised to 14 in 1890. Future predictions would recommend a further hike to 18 in approximately a century.

"Grow up!"

The obvious irony after all these years of being the juvenile generation, shirk responsibilities, refusing McJobs to sleep-in, is that the very people that want us to "grow up" have subsequently been delaying and elongating the length of childhood. A situation that has been increasingly paradoxical by the fact that exposure to the 'negative' aspects of adulthood: low-paid (slave) labour, rape, violence and poverty has steadily infiltrated youth cultural through parental and governmental neglect while rights, responsibilities and privileges have been denied or sabotaged (an easy target since the target demographic cannot vote),

Simultaneously, we have witnessed a similar shirking of "adult responsibilities by those already in adulthood. The Jackass generation - no longer children but not adults either - has become a new biological middle-class. Having grown-up through the longest childhood in history there is no longer an incentive to cross-over.

Even trends seemingly indicating the opposite - increasing numbers of young people entering the work force, for example - cannot be read as a reversal of the infantization of our population. Driven to work by eroding standards of living which are grossly ill-proportioned due to materialist obsessions, young people have abandoned the Generation X attitude of "F#$ it" for Nike's ubiquitous three-word mantra only to be received by attempts to sabotage and profit from their labour by discriminating either explicitly or implicitly by age (see the lowering of minimum wage introduced by the BC Liberals after the 2001 election). Furthermore, whereas the past linked jobs with responsibility, the necessary foundation for settling down, acquiring separate accommodation and starting a family, new jobs provide 0 benefits and low wages: they satisfy immediate material needs (sometimes) and feed addictive consumptive behaviors. This is not a transitory stage - instead this new biological middle-class has fallen into minimum-wage hell where life is saving up nickels for 5c candies at corner store.

Sexuality

Context, the background of the Canadian Conservative party is as well-known as its roots. It is, sometimes unabashedly and other times secretly a protestant evangelical socially conservative organization. In this respect it is difficult to dismiss charges of interest in seemingly "common sensical" legislation. One can easily finger patriarchy (a miniaturization of women into children and thus female children into ???), an overconfidence in law and order to establish moral reform and a predilection for neo-conservative capitalism and its (often times contradictory) patterns of social development with a end-goal in returning to a fairy tale collection of vaunted simulacra that includes the idealized child, the feminine mother and the masculine father.

This imagery is founded on a manufactured history that ignores the sexual proclivities of young people as well as the sanction of those acts by both society and, the case of Western history, the church. Indeed, the actions that are today considered criminal and morally repugnant were previously both common place and respectable. Adulthood gauged by one's (men's) ability to take certain actions that were deemed a civil (responsible) - finding employment, a partner - rather than mandatorily by age. As such, many new families sprouted up with at least one parent (usually the female) a scant decade or so older than their first child. Today, these same women are 'undeniably' children themselves, morally / legally banned from taking part in the 'corrupting' processes of sex.

Pedophilia and Moral Panic

Much has been made that the primary purpose of this legislation is to combat pedophilia. In this case that would mean relationships where the partners span 4-5 years or more. The Conservatives have made known that they do not intend to attempt to crimininalize youth under the age of 19 from engaging in consensual sex. Thus, whereas one can legitimately consent to sex with an 18 year old at 14 years of age, the addition of a couple months would, essentially alter the relationship into one of pedophile and victim.

Moral Panic: The Fabrication of a Crisis. I've already made much of this subject so I'll not pay it too much attention, suffice it to say the grounds for this new legislation rests on the belief in an increase or pervasiveness of pedophilia. This has not been the case and even advocates of the instances of pedophilia and rather will force teenage sexuality underground. Politically, however, the moral momentum (translated into electoral support) gained by the collective moral-backslapping of supporters will last beyond the introduction of this bill into law and will likely help the Conservatives into the future. Strategically then, as an attempt to reform Canadian moral values this "common sensical" piece is significant in recruiting support and laying the groundwork of the moral dilemmas that are certainly to be cited in future bills (such as a revisitation of the same sex marriage issue).

Female Sexuality

Regardless of the wording of the bill, it is clear that it is targeting young female sexuality and not that of their male peers or even the actions of adult pedophiles. The legislation does not read as a prohibition of older men of having engagements with young people but rather focuses particularly on when a person - a woman - of 14 or 15 can be considered to be a consenting entity. By collectively disagreeing that 14 and 15 year-olds can be considered individuals capable of making informed consent we strip them of rights over their bodies by belittling their minds. Females are said to mature quicker than men, often entering and exiting puberty years earlier. Thus 14 and 15 year-old females are older, in terms of maturity, perhaps 16 or 17 in terms of sexuality. Thus again, this legislation targets a precocious female sexuality from engaging with partners equaling (or approximating) their maturity.

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Note: Timely article just popped up re: Adults Becoming More Immature.

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Excerpt from: "5-Year 'sex gap' should be lower"

"What kind of 19-year-old thinks it's OK to have sex with a 14-year-old? While a five-year age gap may seem irrelevant for people in their 30s or 40s, it may as well be a lifetime when we're talking about the teen years.

A 14-year-old is just starting high school. A 19-year-old is generally finished high school and has moved on to college, university or the working world. A 19-year-old can drink, drive (though not at the same time, of course), vote, smoke, and die for his or her country.

A 14-year-old can't do any of those things.

A 14-year-old is still a child.

Rather than allowing a five-year age gap, three years should be more than enough.

Some may argue that a five-year age gap can be perfectly acceptable (probably because Grandma Betty was 15 when she met and fell in love with Grandpa George, who was five years her senior, and they'll be celebrating their Golden Anniversary next month).

Sorry, folks. Times have changed.

Should Romeo and Juliet be four or more years apart, the star-crossed lovers can bide their time holding hands, kissing and text-messaging until the younger lover becomes of age.

The proposed legislation is a step in the right direction, but falls short.

So Harper's Conservatives get one thumb up and one thumb down. That's a lot better than the two fingers I gave the Liberals when they were in office.
"

Lydia Lovric of the Winnipeg Sun

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What I'd like to discuss from this article is the author's definition of adult and child. She defines the worlds of the former is radically different than that of the latter's due to the fact that "a 19-year-old can drink, drive (though not at the same time, of course), vote, smoke, and die for his or her country." Each of these symbols of maturity or adulthood is a legal entitlement conferred automatically, regardless of intelligence, ability, experience or merit. Maturity is then inferred from these un-earned privileges. According to the author a "14-year-old is still a child" simply because "a 14-year-old can't do any of those things." Not to mention that her statement that "a 14-year-old can't do any of those things" is misleading. A 14-year-old cannot do those things because they are forbidden by law from doing those things - history has shown that the capacity to engage in any of those activities, except perhaps voting, is there regardless of age. One can note how ridiculous the argument is if one looks to other countries which confer such privileges at earlier or later dates - obviously the distinction between "adult" and "child" is tenuous at best, at least in terms of defining it by age or legal statutes. Further, what is revealing is that how a circular logic - in thise case one of legal statute, age and maturity - is reinforced by organic intellectuals such as Lydia Lovric in order to strengthen "common sense". To the casual viewer, this article subconciously becomes another building block in a new rational moral order whose self-referential logic will become less glaring as the rationale becomes increasingly 'common' and thus a priori factual.

Al Qaeda - The Postmodern Terrorist Experience

Having been a young Political Science student and International Relations major during 9/11 I was able to bear witness to a paradigm shift in the study of war and conflict. Whereas the 1990s was filled with more classical Superpower diplomacy that had yet to adjust to the lack of a second superpower and then the micro-conflicts and genocidal wars unleashed by the breakup of the Soviet Union, the new paradigm was to be filled with savage beastly and crazed terrorists, people from a region of the world that Samuel Huntington had expertly divided from the "West" as one might a dog from a human.

This paradigm shift has also seen a sort of johnny-come-lately embrace of postmodernism en masse. Now every strategist, thinktank and political scientist is spewing forth about once avant garde concepts such as info war and cellularly-designed networks, all of which is wrapped in fancy tech lingo such as "Al Qaeda 2.0 or 3.0" meant to be read "Three point oh" or "Three point zero" as one might recite the various versions of Microsoft Windows (yet whereas in technology it is common place to fill the .0 with .1 and .2 with various upgrades in the post-modern strategy realm this rarely happens, they just add another integer.) So whats the point? To sound cool of course.

You see, the most postmodern part of this paradigm shift has not occurred in the "real world". It does not exist in actuality on the streets of Baghdad, Tehran or any place really. This new trendy speak has not been ushered in from the mouths of Bin Ladin or his minions and not simply because they are not cerebral enough to grasp this fantastic revolution in military affairs. Rather, I suppose, it seems to exist almost solely in the heads of Western academia (specifically those in the political strategy realm and especially those seeking to inform or influence foreign affair policy).

What we have here is a rebranding of a thousand years of traditional forms of resistance as "Al Qaeda 4.0 insurgencies" and the like. These new analysts have squawked about the evolution of terrorist cells, seemingly without the direct aid or command of a central authority. Isn't this the age-old story of resistance? Unlike battalions and regiments in the West that need careful ideological training (breaking of the will and thinking mind) and a steady diet of "intelligence" (read lies and errors) in order to defend abstract concepts in never-before-dreamed-of places, those attacked generally only require friends and access to weaponry.

It startles me that in any post-apocalyptic Hollywood movie whereupon the Western world has been decimated or dominated by some foreign foe, be it aliens or Russkies or Canadians, the viewer is not incredulous at the sight of independent groups, often times scattered across a vast geography, coming to the same conclusion: that they must resist this imperial enemy. Nor is it utterly revolutionary that they might join up with a group that is known to resist even if they have not personally witnessed it. In the end I'm left thinking of Winston from 1984 who managed to resist even when he was seemingly alone and eagerly stepped forth to join a subversive group when recruited. Read by today's "neo neo" strategists of the "neo global age" his recruitment by the resistance would be hailed a strategic milestone, but perhaps only if Winston was a savage fanatical beast opposing democracy and enlightenment...

In sum, I think the paradigm shift has largely been one at home. One that has enabled us to remarket and resanctify a war of oppression on to the rest of the world. Rather than pitching the terms of the struggle into the historical context of imperium, we have sought to make ourselves believe in a new low-tech-high-tech global enemy that is everywhere and nowhere at once. A gaggle of neologisms have flooded our language, much to the glee of analysts and military contractors everywhere. Shooting commies and shooting al qaeda 2.0s require completely different weaponry after all? Cha-ching!

Of course, I do not mean to dismiss the few real innovations that time brings. Globalization - not the corporate kind - and the spread of information technologies has doubtless led to a certain space-time compression which has managed to reverse the colonial link from the core to the periphery, allowing "them" to come at "us", bringing the battle (in rarity) to our frontier. Not to mention the use of Internet and electronic communication has led to a democratization in the usage and prevalence of propaganda, giving hitherto unknown powers to the little guy, whether he be "good or evil" which had previously only been in the domain of the State (whether "good or evil"). Nevertheless, the reality of the situation is that this war has not played out "at home" in any real capacity besides one that seeks to terrorize and inculcate the home team with the necessary ideology to continue the expansion of Empire as its gears start jamming against the cogs of a weary and wary civil society. The war exists "over there" where the same victims are killed, raped and mutilated as were in the 1970s, 1840s or 1100s and the reality remains the same: wars of tyranny and oppression yield resistance. We shouldn't frame it any other way.

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