I regard myself of something of a
conservative civil libertarian; I like to think that I am a
classical, 19th century liberal â “ someone who thinks John Stuart Mill got it just about right about 150 years ago and that there has not been much, useful, added since.*
I find myself attracted to much of Ignatieff's
world-view as I understand it. (I am especially impressed with the ideas he brought out in his biography of Isaiah Berlin.) I share his belief in fundamental human rights for all â “ regardless of race, colour, creed and so on. I also understand his support for prosecuting the war against the Arab, extremist, fundamentalist Islamic
movements which declared war on us.
If I like Ignatieff then I am 99.9% certain that a very, very large minority of the Liberal Party of Canada is going to thoroughly detest him if, Big IF, they ever find out what he thinks. That substantial minority â “ it may even be a majority â “ includes virtually the entire, still large and influential Trudeau wing of the party which has influence amongst both the
Martinis and the
Chrétienistas. The Trudeauites remain united in their blissful ignorance of history and economics and in their pursuit of the old, discredited, intellectually vacuous anti-capitalist policies. They, including John Godfrey, form the core of the knee-jerk anti-American wing of the party.
But we are going to have an election this winter so it is time for the gentlemen to get off the pitch and make room for the players and the Liberal Party of Canada
players, as Mr.
MacLeod has told us, are undeterred by anything as banal as ideas and intellect. They learned, back in the '60s and'70s that
charisma tops brains, integrity, ideas and ability, all rolled together, every time. The guessing,
I guess, is that Ignatieff has charisma â “ his reputation as a world famous Harvard scholar will satisfy the deep craving of a huge majority of Canadians to have whatever the Americans have. His ideas can be disguised or submerged into whatever bits of fluff the
stenographers in the Canadian media take down, verbatim, fro the Liberal hacks and flacks and then pass on to us as 'news.' All that, of course, if the Québec Wing of the Liberal Party fails in its bid to retain the
tradition of alternating French and English leaders â “ and despite the fact that Paul Martin Sr. entered the government as the Franco-Ontarian minister in King's cabinet, Montrealer Paul Martin Jr. is
not French enough to count, no matter what the Manley team says.
It is no walk over for Ignatieff,
I think. Too bad because he might, just might be the guy to rescue a once proud national institution from 40 years of rot and corruption which have made it more akin to the criminal
mob than a political party.
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* I also think that modern political
liberalism is a peculiarly English (not even British) construct which is rooted in the traditional values of several, but not all, North Western European cultures. It (English liberalism) borrowed heavily, for 1,000 years, from across the North Sea and then, in the 19th and 20th centuries found fertile ground in
some European countries. Most of continental Europe, in my view, remains profoundly illiberal â “ the French and Italians and Spanish raise their clench fists and scream
Liberation! but they rarely practice what they preach. European (mostly French) colonialism is responsible for most of what Fareeed Zakaria described (in
Foreign Affairs in 1997 â “ later expanded into a book:
The Future of Freedom) as
illiberal democracy â “ see:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19971101faessay3809-p20/fareed-zakaria/the-rise-of-illiberal-democracy.html ).
Most quasi-democratic states (including, in my opinion, many in Europe, even in the European Union, itself) learned all the wrong socio-economic and political lessons from their colonial masters â “ some, even many mastered some of the forms of democracy, like elections, even free and fair elections, but they failed to grasp the functions:
respect for laws, a
belief in the supremacy of the rule of law,
equality at law rather than (unattainable by humans) economic or social equality â “ which leads, inevitably, to Marxism and social, economic and political failure. I also believe that there are, in Asia, a few
conservative democracies â “ which are possible in the very conservative Asian societies. I have no problems with liberal or conservative democracies â “ liberal democracies are better for liberal societies, conservative democracies are, probably, better for conservative societies. Illiberal democracies are neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring and, in so far as they reflect illiberal societies (Eastern Europe? the Balkans? the Middle East? West Asia?) then, perhaps they pose dangers to our values by disguising the real problems.
