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		November 2011 Blog Archive https://www.maharaj.org/blog/nov11.shtml My archived blog article for November 2011 is below. You can also click the respective links for my current blog articles, my featured blog articles, and my complete blog archives.
		To Lead or to Serve 22 November 2011, 20h45 EST (GMT-5) https://www.maharaj.org/blog/2011_11_22.shtml My YouTube Video Click image to play the video Waves of rebellions and revolutions are washing over the world, as long-repressed peoples from a vast array of cultures choose to risk their lives for freedom, rather than continue dwelling quietly under tyranny. Yet simultaneously, established democracies are drowning in cynicism and popular disengagement from our own political insitutions. In my broadcast essay for TVOntario's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, I make the case that active participation in the political process is the price that each of us must stand prepared to pay if we wish to be citizens rather than merely subjects. The broadcast is available via streaming video through my YouTube Channel and via podcast through iTunes, as well as directly above. My original text is below. * * * It has always been my conviction that public service is the secular reply to the yearning each of us feels to be part of something greater than ourselves, to live life in pursuit of ideals more noble than the satisfaction of personal appetites. And yet, there is no denying that there is a crisis of cynicism in our country, about politics, politicians, and even the ideal of public service. While this would be a misfortune for any country, it is a catastrophe for ours. Unlike Old World states, Canada was not created by accidents of history or the determinism of geography; indeed, with the vastness of the land and the sparseness of the population, our very existence is a triumph of hope over reason. Canada exists because, and only because, we have willed ourselves into being as single nation bound together by a set of shared political values. In this context, Canadians’ loss of faith in the political process imperils the national enterprise itself. Why are Canadians turning an increasingly sceptical eye and deaf ear to the politics? I find it difficult to believe that it is because politicians of the past were any more noble, or those of the present any more corrupt. Instead, I believe that a great chasm has opened between the governors and the governed in our respective understandings of the meaning of leadership in a modern democracy. Over the past quarter century, political parties have too often lurched away from being mass movements of individual Canadians sharing a common vision of the public good, and towards being backdrops for individual party leaders who speak the language of democracy while wielding near-absolute power over their elected caucuses. At the same time, Canadians have lost any appetite to huddle in the shadow of one great man who would carry us to the Promised Land. Instead, we crave an opportunity to exercise leadership in our own lives, to share in the authorship of the social contract that binds us together and defines us as a nation. Canadians instinctively remember what the machinery of politics appears to have forgotten: that election to office is a contract to serve us, not a licence to rule us; that the wisdom of society lies in the many, not the few; that if it is to be real, democracy must be a way of governing ourselves, not just a way of choosing governments. But the chasm can be bridged. In our recent federal, provincial, and municipal elections, a surprising number of younger Canadians and Canadians from other fields of public service have stepped into the political fray. Most of them have come seeking to change politics, though doubtlessly, many will instead be changed by politics. But not all. For those of us outside Parliament, we must have the courage to live out the creed of our age: that the greatest guarantor of the public interest is an engaged and watchful population standing between its leaders and the levers of power. Ultimately, active participation in the political process is the price that each of us must stand prepared to pay if we wish to be citizens rather than merely subjects. Because in a democracy, we never receive the nation we deserve; we only receive the nation we demand, and the nation we dare to create.
		Liberalism of Conviction and of Convenience 10 November 2011, 21h15 EST (GMT-5) https://www.maharaj.org/blog/2011_11_10.shtml My YouTube Video Click image to play the video Until recently, the Liberal Party of Canada was arguably the most successful political party in the democratic world. Needless to say, the world has changed for the Party. My most recent broadcast essay for TVOntario's The Agenda with Steve Paikin examines how the Party that once bestrode the nation like a colossus came to this pass, and what the future might hold. The broadcast is available via streaming video through my YouTube Channel and via podcast through iTunes, as well as directly above. My original text is below. * * * Until its defeat in 2006, the Liberal Party of Canada had been in government for 71 of the previous 100 years: longer than the PRI of Mexico, longer than the Maoists of China, longer indeed than virtually any party, of any country, on any continent, under any system of government. How the mighty have fallen. Perversely yet predictably, the Liberal Party became a victim of its own success. Its long association with government made the party a magnet for individuals drawn to power rather than to public service, a tool of Liberals of convenience rather than Liberals of conviction. After its catastrophe in the General Election, the question confronting the party is not whether it can rebuild its fabled political machine into one capable of waging an effective campaign; it is whether it can rediscover its ideals and return a party deserving of our country's trust. If it is to have any hope of doing so, it will need to find the courage to resist the lure of comforting self-deceptions and easy answers. Its decline at the polls has not been due to some lapse in judgment by a rueful electorate that yearns to repent at the next election. It has not been a want of resources that can be remedied by bagmen or ward heelers. It has not been the absence of an imagined messianic leader whose charisma could substitute for policy or grassroots renewal. The Liberal Party instead received a calculated rebuke from Canadians against the hubris they saw gnawing at it. The irony is that the tenets of liberalism remain as resonant with Canadians today as during the Liberal Party’s salad days. It is why in an effort to capitalise on its electoral successes, the NDP is debating stripping the word “Socialist” from its constitution; it is why the Conservative Party leader describes himself as a “Classical Liberal”. The ideals of liberalism are founded upon a single article of faith: that liberty is the highest political good, and that as a result, the first duty of government is to seek the greatest liberty for the one that is compatible with liberty for all. It holds that every right is balanced by a corresponding responsibility. It believes in the equal dignity of all citizens and in equality of opportunity, but it rejects equality of outcome, insisting instead that people of unequal talent and industry should reap as they sow. It celebrates individual initiative and looks towards a vision of society as a meritocracy, and expects those who benefit the most from society to bear the greatest responsibility to society. Ultimately, liberalism holds that a nation is bound together by a social contract, because the interests of each individual are inextricably linked to the well being of every other member of society, making prosperity and social justice inseparable. The 20th century began as the age of the dictator. It ended with liberalism having come of age as the ascendant political philosophy across the world. Yet liberal parties everywhere are in crisis. Can they grow with the success of liberalism, or have they been outgrown by the success of their own political philosophy? The Liberal Party of Canada has four years to decide.