Democracy is fragile in PM’s hands

Re PM can’t escape effects of Senate spending storm, June 6 A disturbing and unsettling habit of the Harper government is allowing a broad range of right-leaning ideological positions to triumph over historical evidence, empirical data and common sense in many of its strategic social, political and economic plans.

When ideology is made into an operational weapon, or set into a global context, it begins by exploiting the vulnerabilities of those least likely to be able to defend themselves, in addition to overtly attacking those who oppose its doctrines and philosophies.

The Harper government has embraced an ideology dedicated to a gradual, but carefully managed redefinition of Canada’s democratic values and freedoms. Characterized by a resolute, personal control over messaging and a singular management of policy and operational decisions, Stephen Harper’s autocratic style has incorporated a range of positions: wilful suppression or “re-interpretation” of information; attacks on the media and a devotion to a culture of fear, intimidation and secrecy; repudiation of common ground participation or reasoned compromise with its opponents; and control, misrepresentation, narrowing and elimination of scientific, social and financial facts and statistical data through targeted budgetary cutbacks, access limitations, security-inspired censorship and reductions in regulatory oversight.

“Majoritarian democracies,” as described by Milton Friedman, are democratically elected ruling parties that “interpret their election as a writ to do whatever they want in office, including ignoring the opposition, trampling privacy rights, choking the news media and otherwise behaving in imperious or corrupt ways, as if democracy is only about the right to vote, not rights in general and especially minority rights.”

Democracy is at best a temporary gift to those given access to its power. Today, the real accumulating damage to our democracy under the Harper government is that the community of Canada is less and less about a collective “we” and more about a narrowing, ideologically driven realm of limited rights and freedoms, ideas and reforms.

No, we are not yet ruled by the autocratic, tyrannical “majoritarian” rulers like those found in Egypt and Brazil, Russia and Turkey, but the differences are of degree, not of kind. The more we define ourselves through our “Harper-managed” democracy, any right we might claim to its moral or ethical high ground is at best a dream we once had, and now must search for once again. Edward Carson, Toronto