Reflecting upon a recent visit to Berlin, Toronto Star columnist Edward Greenspon had this to say:
I was particularly struck by the lessons to be drawn from 1933 and 1934, when the Nazis were not yet at full swagger. Arguably, as the depths of their hatreds quickly surfaced, they could have been tripped up by foreign pressures and a modicum of domestic spine. But elite opinion and statecraft took the passive course of hoping the accidental chancellor would fall to his own excesses. When he didn’t, foreign powers sought to mollify rather than confront him.
He goes on to write:
Berlin reminds us that democracy is a precious and a complex garden that requires constant care. It consists of much, much more than free and fair elections. It is everything that happens afterward: constitutional solidity, rule of law, an independent judiciary, checks and balances, a free press, protection of human rights, particularly for minorities.
In writing the following, Greenspon was thinking of Russia:
Societies that chip away at human rights and democratic principles, as with Russia today, must be confronted and challenged. Opposition and dissent must be respected. We owe it to history to call out concentrations of power — political and economic — and even minor incursions on the normal course checks and balances.
Ever astute, some Star readers feel he should be looking closer to home:
Re: Berlin’s Nazi ghosts, Opinion Aug. 4
Edward Greenspon’s column, reflecting on a visit to Berlin after a 20-year gap, finds “The Berlin of the present is an effervescent city. But the Berlin of the past, particularly the Nazi past, has bubbled back to the surface.”
Later, he cautions, “Societies that chip away at human rights and democratic principles, as with Russia today, must be confronted and challenged. Opposition and dissent must be respected. We owe it to history to call out concentrations of power — political and economic — and even minor incursions on the normal course of checks and balances.”
I agree entirely. But I can’t help thinking that had Greenspon substituted Canada for Russia in that sentence, he’d have presented a much more relevant warning as we endure, under Stephen Harper, arguably the most aggressively and enthusiastically anti-democratic government in our history: corporatist, militaristic, secretive, mendacious, evangelical, oppressive and repressive (just ask the peaceful demonstrators at the Toronto G20 gathering), anti-science, anti-environment, punitive of dissent and even debate, defunding any group that dares question its agenda, and dismissing all checks and balances on its authority — including our elected Parliament.
If Greenspon is concerned about creeping fascism, he needn’t look abroad.
Terry O’Connor, Toronto
I would like to draw attention to the following paragraph: “Berlin reminds us that democracy is a precious and a complex garden that requires constant care. It consists of much, much more than free and fair elections. It is everything that happens afterward: constitutional solidity, rule of law, an independent judiciary, checks and balances, a free press, protection of human rights, particularly for minorities.”
We have only to pay close attention to the state of our own “garden of democracy” to observe the creeping weeds already afoot growing from the policies of the Harper Conservatives. So many of the jewels in Canada’s crown have turned to thorns under their watch, we must find the means to protect our nation’s standing in the world community as a fair and compassionate land or we too will slide into the same moral and economic chaos our neighbours to the south now find themselves.
Michael Sherman, Toronto
The message, as always, is the same. If we truly want a healthy and dynamic democracy, we have to be willing to fight for it. Disengagement, complacence or passivity, just like the appeasement advocated so many years ago by Neville chamberlin, are not options.
Lorne, I agree with Greenspon with some reservations.
ReplyDelete(i)Societies that chip away at human rights and democratic principles, as with Russia today, must be confronted and challenged.(/i)
How does one confront Russia. It is a nuclear power maybe bigger than U.S.
U.S terribly failed after years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a matter of fact there is more violence now than prior to invasion. Is there a true democracy anywhere the way Greenspon describes?
All kinds of trade restriction on Iran did not work.
I agree with Terry O’Connor that we should look at our own country. Is it a democracy?
You raise a good point here, LeDaro. While some challenges to Russia may only be symbolic, sometimes the knowledge that a country is under international scrutiny can be surprisingly effective. For example, Amnesty International relies largely on letter-writing campaigns to try to get political prisoners released, frequently with positive results.
DeleteThat being said, I doubt any such campaign would be effective with the increasingly authoritarian government under whose yoke we currently chafe; change will only come at the ballot box, if enought people are willing to become engaged.
Lorne, Stalin was the worst dictator Russia(USSR) had after Lenin's Communism. And longest serving head of state of USSR. Did anyone overthrow him? He died in office. Same may happen to the current one.
ReplyDeleteMikhail Gorbachev was challenged by Boris Yeltsin. The result was breaking apart of the USSR empire. Now has there been democracy since in Russia. I don't think so.
Our Western democracies, or under capitalism, big Corporations rule. In states like Russia few selected individuals hold the power. What is the difference? Not that much.
This is true, LeDaro. The packaging may be different, but the rule of the few seems to prevail no matter the system. What we need in our democraciy is a rising revolution of expectations, or we have no chance of change.
DeleteI have difficulty with democracy advocacy like Greenspon's. Look at our own troubled democratic tradition from Magna Carta in 1215 all the way to universal suffrage a staggering seven centuries later.
ReplyDeleteWhat is democracy anyway? In the 70s or 80s, the great CBC journalist Patrick Watson produced a series exploring democracy as it evolved and was practiced in various cultures around the world. One thing it revealed was that different peoples rarely gravitate to the same type of democracy. There is no "one size fits all" democratic institution. Democracy that doesn't evolve naturally but is undemocratically imposed to suit someone else's notions rarely succeeds. It's a trial and error process.
We seem to expect countries that have had no democratic tradition, like Russia or Iraq, to adopt Western ways and values. Democracy, to take hold, requires well-tilled soil and infinite nurturing. It grows from seed and the people have to grow with it.
As the comments to Greenspon's article reveal, we would do well to tend our own democratic garden than to point out the weeds in others'.
I agree totally, Mound. The problem in the Middle East, for example, is that the kind of democracy that the U.S. wants for the people there is based on their model (hardly an exemplar, at least in recent times), one in which unfettered capitalism is the cornerstone. As you state, democracy is a dynamic and ever-evolving system; if it doesn't arise organically, it has little change of long-term viability.
DeleteI agree with Mound, Lorne. Democracy can't be exported. It has to be home grown. Unfortunately, George W. Bush didn't understand that insight.
ReplyDeleteIt must be something in the water that Americans drink, Owen.
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