Why we swing

At one point during the last round of edits for my new book, my editor had a question for me. I know you’re a liberal, he said when we met for lunch in his favourite mid-town Italian; but it’s sometimes hard to tell because you entertain so much criticism of it in the essays. Would you like to defend liberalism or to criticize it? To which I replied: 😬 yes.

Many years ago, when I used to knock on doors for the NDP, I used to be shocked by the fact that some voters change their minds about the fundamental questions of our society, or so I saw it, between electoral cycles. This coding here says this household voted NDP two elections ago, then Lib, this can’t be? Yes, some people betray their own principles, was the go-to partisan interpretation. Yes! That make sense. I also remember being surprised hearing in grad school that most Canadians vote differently on the three levels of government, but that you can chalk under my early ignorance about the, let’s be honest, absurd degree of decentralization of this country.

Of course now in my middle age I find myself a swing voter, and often politically homeless. While I used to despise people who didn’t bother to vote – people have died for your right to vote etc – I missed a couple of recent elections myself. The parties have changed beyond expectation in the last few years, especially federally. Yes the electoral system is a problem too: certain parties seem to have permanent grip on certain seats and there’s no point coming out. Liberals could run a donkey in my riding of Toronto-Centre and it would win. NDP has been hustling identities rather than individuals or programs last two elections, adopting wholesale American culture wars vocabulary; and the Cons have been dithering nationally, chickening out of some hard issues (voting in favour of ‘conversion therapy bill’ that will criminalize psychotherapy and watchful waiting for trans-identified children, really?), indulging their worst instincts in some other ones (defund the CBC? Really?). At the time of the last campaign, a group of people stopped me at the subway entrance pleading for my signature to allow a Communist Party candidate on to a ballot or some debate or other, and I signed. Next day I conclude that the People’s Party fielded at least a handful of decent candidates across the country (Karin Litzcke in BC, that TSO musician who described himself as a classical Mill liberal in Toronto). Here’s the paradox about my voting life: I’m so jaded that I’d listen to what anybody has to say at this point. I’m so weary, I’ve become more open minded than ever.

Is that liberal? It used to be; not sure what it is now, when the liberal democratic spirit travels among the parties with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

What are my politics? In some respects, I’m a hard left, humourless socialist, and worse. Those respects usually have to do with property distribution, income disparities, the commons, access to education, access to justice. I don’t think, for example, that any one individual should be allowed to own a detached house with front and back yards in downtown Toronto – while the non-millionaired half of the city live like sardines in flats within the same 4 square km where densification is allowed. That’s not what cities are for. Are we Rome or are we Houston? Are we an LA suburb or a lively district in Berlin? It’s a clear choice. If you want to live in a city, you live in a decent, often beautiful apartment, you raise your children in said apartment. You know, like more than 90 percent of the zoning-oppressed population of Paris. There are North American cities which have understood this. They’re called NYC and Montreal, and I’m sure there are others. Detached houses carbon footprint is quite something too. And the yellow belt zoning creates the Residents Association society, where only the propertied are active in the civic sphere and only their votes matter (hello Toronto municipal politics). Where the me/mine are the highest values. A society of hunker-downers. A society without the commons.

Also on this side of ideological spectrum, no civilized country should be without national childcare. Come on. Sorry to bring in continental Europe again, but that’s my parish, that’s my village – it’s bizarre for a European to listen to Canadian debates about whether a nationally subsidized childcare is *desired* and *possible*. It’s like listening to Americans pondering the need for a national healthcare system. We’re not sure we should do it, it’d be inconvenient you know, we never had such a thing. Same with conversations about whether Canada should subsidize its arts, or a national broadcaster. Taxpayers money taxpayers money taxpayers money. It’s clearly not working for the economies of Germany and France, all that naïve investment in the arts, right? It’s an investment in vital infrastructure of a society. Why do we fund physical infrastructure, or education, or healthcare?

Then on other topics, like freedom of speech, thought, artistic expression, assembly, you know the old-fashioned stuff, I’m a classical liberal. I don’t enjoy public shaming under any circumstance, nor the rituals of grovelling apologies, statements of purity, statements of allegiance. No compelled speech. I don’t go for ethnic or racial pride whether they come from an oppressed minority or a dominant actor. Ethnic communitarianism makes me queasy. Activist, single-cause journalism too. Good it exists, but we maintain the right not to join. Publicly and proudly hiring someone because of their ethnicity I think is a terrible idea, and every other job ad in the charity sector and the academe specify preferred ethnicity now. I don’t use the concept of ‘race’ if I can help it. It’s a noxious fantasy, invented by Europeans two centuries ago, but adopted by Americans like a state religion and due to their global influence now returning as an important concept everywhere. And in vast majority of cases in the world, the dividing lines are of the national, ethnic, linguistic, regional, religious kind, not of the ‘racial’ kind. We won’t understand former if we adopt the language of latter.

I won’t patronize Indigenous Canadians: they have no more special relationship to the nature, land or sustainability than any one of us. We all go to the same table but the indigenous Canadians go to their own separate table, really? Laws and regulations should not be designed with one separate ethnic group vs all the others in mind. (I can hear now the clicks of the unsubscribe button). One citizenship for all is preferable to legal apartheids. That means one excellent public schooling system as an option for everyone, and weakening the class divide so that kids from unconnected, impoverished families of all ethnicities can stand a chance. Sometimes universal is a nice word, the best words; there’s a set of problems we’re all dealing with (education and growing our potentials, finding gainful as well as meaningful employment, having friends/community, aging and illness, loss of parents).

And on some other issues, you’d probably call me conservative. Ready? I’m very big on personal responsibility. I’d reintroduce criminal responsibility to some cases of crimes due to mental health, drug-induced and alcoholised states. Not one person who decapitates a stranger on a bus or pushes a stranger onto an incoming train should ever see light of day again. (Sorry. But there are options as to how we organize this with least amount of suffering.) There was recently some talk in Ontario about making the accused of sexual assault who committed alleged crimes while drunk out of their minds not criminally responsible. This is quite mad, and I’m sure MADD would like to have a word.

I’m sometimes impressed with this guard of people that used to be known in Canada as the Red Tories. You know, the people who believe that Canada should have a culture, should fund its public services well, that there should be some (well, many; live up to your Tory name!) fetters to capitalism, that Canada should not sell all its resources to the highest bidder, that social trust is a good thing, that we should try to keep it, slow down the progression of moving houses and changing jobs (life as online dating!), be sure that immigrants speak one or the other official language, look at the integration seriously, look at the drug overdose deaths and ask where is all this demand for drugs and alcohol coming from, what is liberalism offering its citizens? it appears to us that it’s only making them miserable… I’m now of course imagining my Ideal Red Tory because they don’t exist in Canada any more. This kind of conservatism has gone silent.

I’d also reduce choice in some aspects of life (hang on, let me make the argument). Do 18-year-olds really have the faintest what combination of courses will make a good BA degree for them? I mean, sure, what I’ve gone through isn’t ideal either – 34 mandatory courses over 4 years for my BA in PoliSci and Journalism in the 1990s Belgrade University – but can we have at least half mandatory courses and half by choice? I don’t get this shopping approach to education. Whatever looks shiny and interesting? OK. Do a dozen of those, here’s your BA.

So there you have it. I may be an elitist but I’m never a snob. I may be a communist but I will fight for your right to express whatever foolish believes you’ve been in the grip of lately. I am a liberal who is keen on the judgy concepts of “good” and “bad” (and sometimes “great”, as in great work of art, and “evil” as in… well, you get the drift). And I think most people are like this. This is why we swing. Yes, we are a bundle of contradictions. But so are the parties. And only sometimes the people who are leading them are serious about the issues that are most pressing to us in our lives. Sometimes none of them will strike us as serious on, say, crucial issues A and B. Other times more than one candidate will. When was the last time that happened? Let’s bring those times back.