A Battery Recharger

Still trying to get my psychic energy back, I thought I would take this opportunity to post an interview of Neil Turok conducted a few months ago by Alan Gregg. Turok, the currrent head of the Perimiter Institute, delivered this year's Massey Lectures on The Universe Within. While some of what he discussed is beyond me (the world of quantum physics) the first and last part present a man who is deeply humane, the antithesis of the kind of arrogance embodied by people like Richard Dawkins.

I especially appreciated two things about Turok: his surprising optimism ("The problems we face were created by humans, and they can be solved by humans.") and the respect he has for various pursuits of knowledge, including religion which, along with science, he acknowledges as seeking utimate answers. If you want to skip the heavy topic of quantyum physics, I would recommend you watch the first several minutes of the interview, and then skip ahead to about the 16:00 minute mark for more comprehenisble and relatatble fare as he talks about Africa's potential and his respect for a variety of disciplines, including religion.

Please note there is a slight glitch at the start of the video, with several seconds of silence.

The Dominoes of Democracy - Part 2

What is one of the chief effects of the Harper regime's preference for an ideologically-based policy model over one premised on logic, facts and empirical evidence, as explored in my earlier post? The decline, perhaps even the demise, of a healthy democracy in which citizens are engaged and informed participants, thereby allowing an ideologically-driven government to pursue its agenda largely unimpeded.

In today's Toronto Star, columnist Bob Hepburn writes about the state of our democracy and the growing gap between Parliament and Canadians. An interview with David Herle, former Paul Martin campaign strategist and principal partner at The Gandalf Group, a Toronto-based research and consulting company, yields a portrait of a population deeply disaffected with politics in general and Parliament in particular.

And there are ample studies and surveys to back up that portrait:

For example, a poll last fall suggested barely 27 per cent of Canadians believe Ottawa is dealing with issues we really care about.

Most people are worried about daily issues, such as their children’s education, looking after aging parents and getting decent health care. But other than writing cheques to the provinces, Ottawa has opted out of health care, education, transportation and other issues that affect our normal lives.

Instead, there is a narrow set of issues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pursuing and for the most part the opposition parties are adhering to them. Because voters have stopped looking to Parliament for help, Ottawa has stopped responding to their needs, Herle believes.

“People are no longer putting demands on government (bold type mine) and aren’t flocking to politicians who claim they can help them,” he says. “They’ve simply given up on Ottawa altogether.”

Although I am not a person given to conspiracy theories, I have written extensively on this blog about both democracy and democratic participation, and long ago concluded that one of the secondary goals of the Harper regime is the discouragement of an engaged electorate, thereby making it easier to push through an agenda in which the role of government in people's live is minimized, one of the chief beliefs of the reactionary right. What better way to pursue that goal than to convey to people, via policy pursued through the very narrow prism of ideology and rabid partisanship, that their voices mean nothing and their engagement in the democratic process is both unnecessary and unwelcome?

Conservative MP Michael Chong, the only former member of Harper's cabinet who has ever displayed real integrity, puts it this way:...if voters have given up on Parliament, it means they have lost faith in politicians to look after their interests.

Part one of this post dealt with causes, and I would argue that Chong's observation is precisely the effect that the Harper regime so avidly desires.

The Dominoes of Democracy

Cause and effect. Sometimes the relationship is obvious, as in, for example, a cigarette left smoldering on a couch and the subsequent conflagration that destroys a house. Other times, to see the relationship requires some digging, some thinking, some connecting of the dots. To its shame the Harper regime, as retrograde and benighted as it is, has proven quite adept at obscuring such relationships. Thanks to this Machiavellian bent, we are all the poorer.

In a recent address to the Alberta Federation of Labour, one that, curiously, was not reported in the mainstream Alberta media, former Tory pollster and strategist Allan Gregg gave another version of his Assault on Reason speech he gave at the opening of Carleton University’s new School of Public Affairs.

Gregg made the following unassailable assertion to the group:

..."effective solutions can only be generated when they correspond with accurate understanding of they problems they are designed to solve. Evidence, facts and reason, therefore, form the sine qua non not just of good public policy, but of good value."

He went on to lament the steady decline of these criteria under the Harper government that began with the elimination of the long-form census, followed by

the destruction of the national long-gun registry, despite the pleas of virtually every police chief in Canada that it be saved. After that, under cover of an austerity budget, there were massive cuts to Statistics Canada, Library and Archives Canada, science and social science activities at Parks Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office, the CBC, the Roundtable on the Environment, the Experimental Lakes Area, the Canadian Foundation for Climate Science and so on.

Gregg notes that these assaults on evidence-based decisions were followed by a multi-billion-dollar penitentiary-building spending spree which flew directly in the face of a mountain of evidence that suggested that crime, far from being on the rise, was on the decline.

Gregg draws the following conclusions:

"This was no random act of downsizing, but a deliberate attempt to obliterate certain activities that were previously viewed as a legitimate part of government decision making," Gregg stated. "Namely, using research, science and evidence as the basis to make public policy decisions.

"It also amounted to an attempt to eliminate anyone who would use science, facts and evidence to challenge government policies," he added.

So, beyond the obvious consequences of flawed government policy that is based on ideology instead of empiricism, what is the effect of all of this?

To be continued later today...

Allan Gregg on Attack Ads

I have written about Allan Gregg on this blog before; probably his most noteworthy recent contribution to political discourse came in his speech to Carleton University’s School of Public Affairs, in which he denounced the Orwellian bent of the Harper regime in its promotion of ignorance in place information and knowledge.

Gregg offers his thoughts on attacks ads in this morning's Star. In contrast to the blood sport that it has become under the Harper regime, Gregg defines politics this way:

For good or ill, politics is the process by which we organize civil, democratic society. It is used to allocate a nation’s scarce resources. Through it, we confer a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Because of it, we are able to represent the wishes of the majority and at the same time protect the rights of the minority. And at bottom, politics creates a state that has the potential to do immense good or infinite harm and, as such, we all have a vested interest that the best and brightest and only those who are motivated by the public good are encouraged to enter public life.

By this definition, the Harper government has abjectly failed the public whose interests and well-being they were charged with protecting and promoting. Gregg readily admits that attack ads do work because they play to people's innate cynicism about politicians. And as I have asserted before, I believe that the additional purpose behind Harper's 'politics of denunciation' is the discouragement of people from voting, thereby allowing the 'true believers' (whoever those benighted souls may be) to have disproportionate influence at the polls.

I consider Gregg as one who knows of what he speaks. The 'brains' behind the 1993 campaign ad ridiculing Jean Chretien's facial deformity, he must have at some point experienced a Damascene conversion, no doubt facilitated by the Harper regime's relentless practice of politics that bespeaks a depraved indifference to the health of our democracy, of which attack ads are only a small part. Gregg now seems to be spending much of his time trying to atone for those past mistakes, and today's Star article seems very much a part of that process of penance.

So I will leave the final word with the former pollster:

... those who believe that this (the public good) is “what politics are really about” have a responsibility to draw attention to its virtues and not just its shortcomings.

More From Allan Gregg: In Defence of Reason

Pollster Allan Gregg, now spending much of his time offering critiques of the Harper regime and its dangerous demagogic inclinations, has written a followup to his talk “1984 in 2012: The Assault on Reason.”

Writing in today's Star, he discusses public reaction to his speech, which essentially went viral, and offers some thoughts on where we can go from here in channeling our dissatisfaction with the dangerous anti-intellectual approach to government embraced by Harper and his acolytes.

I encourage anyone who wants better for this country to spend a few minutes with his ideas.

A Q&A With Allan Gregg

Many thanks to Accidental Deliberations for providing information on this Q&A with Allan Gregg, a good companion piece for his Assault On Reason article/speech. This Hill Times article on Gregg's thesis is also worth perusal.

The Assault on Reason

Yesterday I wrote a post on the important role education plays in the development of critical thinking skills, skills that are crucial for anyone who aspires to being something more than a puppet of government and corporate propaganda. Unfortunately, as I noted, current education reforms under consideration in Ontario will undermine the building of those skills.

Last evening I read an excellent article by Allan Gregg, essentially the speech he gave at the opening of Carleton University’s new School of Public Affairs.

Using Orwell's 1984 as his framework, Gregg offers a disturbing analysis of how the Harper government is in fact enacting the very practices that Orwell warned about in his novel. For example, Ignorance is Strength, a well-known oxymoronic slogan from the novel, seems to be one of the chief strategies at work in the Harper formulation of public policy; the elimination of the long-form census, the muzzling of scientists, the dismantling of research stations and the substantial reduction of workforce at the Library and Archives of Canada are but four very disturbing examples.

I cannot recommend his piece strongly enough. Although somewhat lengthy, it is well-worth the read for anyone who recognizes the vital role that an informed and reflective citizenry plays in a healthy democracy.

And ours is without question a democracy whose health is under threat; in my home province of Ontario, for example, young Tim Hudak begins the process of trying to rebrand himself, a rebooting whose success without doubt will be dependent on the voters' collective amnesia and short attention spans. Federally, of course, the Harper regime seems intent on giving corporate profits supremacy over sound environmental protection, just one of the many challenges posed by a government contemptuous of its citizens.

A Labour Day Reminder

On this Labour Day, as we reflect on the current dire situation facing many in the workforce, it might be useful to spend a little time with this video in which Allan Greg Gregg talks to journalist Chris Hedges about his book, The Death of the Liberal Class, which exams how the corporate class has gained its dominance thanks to the desire of the 'liberal class' to share in its power. It is a book well-worth reading.

Last Night's CBC At Issues Panel

As I do most Thursdays, I watched last night's At Issues Panel on the CBC's National News. As usual the panelists, Allan Gregg, Chantal Hebert, and Andrew Coyne had a lively but respectful discussion, this time on the many issues undermining the credibility of the Harper Government.

Allan Gregg made a disturbing suggestion; even though the issue of Harper's contempt for Parliamentary democracy has been especially manifest this week through House Speaker Miliken's two rulings, plus the fact that the Conservatives tabled demonstrably false cost estimates for the purchase of the F-35 fighter jets, he doubted that such will resonate with the public. He opined that the concept of Parliamentary democracy, so regularly violated by the Harper Government these past few years, may not mean much to the public, since nothing the Government does seems to be reflected in public opinion poll results.

That, plus the George Carlin video posted yesterday, got me thinking about the vital role that critical thinking plays in an informed and vital democracy. In the past I wrote fairly extensively on the topic, and if anyone is interested in either my thoughts or links on the subject, they can be found on my other blog, Education and Its Discontents.