Liberalism - The New Leadership

We have discussed the broad challenges facing liberalism in the coming decades.  The rise of the “comfortable” bent on protecting their lifestyle will pose difficulties.  As the most recent Department of Foreign Affairs report stated, the closing of so many embassies and High Commissions overseas in just the last few years has lowered Canada’s standing internationally.  Poverty of various kinds, and women’s equality remain a pipe dream.  The lack of a community voice at upper levels of government will continue to result in solutions that aren’t practical.  As long as modern media, in its various forms, concentrates on the battle between political opponents and fails to aid citizens in their dialogue with one another, it will offer little assistance.  Others have been mentioned, like the overarching issue of climate change, and all the challenges are abiding and success is not guaranteed.Then there are the more immediate tests directly facing us.  Unemployment is high and will remain so for the foreseeable future.  But it’s in the nature of the jobs lost that the real story is being played out.  While the government tells us that 205,000 jobs have been created in the last few months, it fails to be transparent in saying that these jobs are what the economists call “McJobs” – part-time employment.  We are not being told that 231,000 full-time jobs have been lost in that same period, and there’s no sign they are returning.  Ontario alone has lost over 56,000 of these jobs; Alberta has lost 15,000.  Just this week 600 public service workers were let go, with plenty more to come. Pensions are depreciating.  While all this has been going on, we have compiled a deficit of over $50 billion that will have to be paid off in the next few years.  At the same time the government has plans to spend $10 billion on prisons, even as the crime rate continues to decline.  Another $16 billion will be spent on untendered contracts for fighter jets when many question the need.  The plan to cut another $6 billion in way of corporate tax cuts merely adds to a financial predicament that would challenge the future of any nation.Such immediate and long-term challenges will call for a new way of thinking, of a dedicated new kind of leadership that challenges the status quo and provides a concrete vision for us to recapture our earlier greatness, both at home and abroad.  How will we respond as small “l” and large “L” liberals?At the very least it must call for dedicated actions in our home communities from those of liberal temperaments.  And it will call for people to enter politics for the sake of things bigger than their own egos or ambitions.  This will be difficult, but the times call for such men and women.  George MacDonald was right when he penned: “It is not in the nature of politics that the best people should be elected.  The best people do not want to govern their fellow men.”  There is truth in this, but what if the times demand it?  Plato, in the Republic, counters MacDonald’s reasoning by stating: “Mankind will never see an end to trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom.”  If we require anything to get us through these difficult days and years ahead, it will be wisdom primarily generated from the community level.  If good people of sound liberal disposition fail to embrace this challenge, then Plato’s later observation will surely come true:  “Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”We need wisdom of the humane kind and no more of this “dog-eat-dog” business that is ruining our nation and creating divisions among us that will take decades to repair.  Rapidly disappearing is the idea that a leadership class can play a role in elevating ordinary people to reach for something higher in life; instead, much of modern leadership guides us into a kind of combat that cheapens our national possibilities.  Today’s liberalism should be provoking conversation about what kind of leadership is truly required to meet the aforementioned challenges.  That leadership will have to show itself willing to guide a process in which those who don’t share liberalism’s views are permitted to make their views count.  This has previously been difficult for liberalism in Canada because its past triumphs have caused it to believe that only its beliefs are principled and wise.  Canada is not so homogenous.  For this reason, the views of progressive conservatives and progressive socialists must be accounted for.But if it's true that the only way conservatism or socialism can remain viable in Canadian society is by appealing to the fears and prejudices of ordinary people, then liberalism must step into the breach, challenge such deviance, and attempt to lead people to a more positive and enlightened outcome.A progressive liberalism must produce progressive leaders, and at times this will require it to confront erroneous views of the public and not just reflect them.  This is indeed difficult, since so much of politics today involves pandering to the masses in ways that belittle the public space and discount citizens’ capabilities to hear contrary arguments and become self-empowered as a result.Tomorrow will be the last post on this series on liberalism, but it will all be for nothing if the good, wise and decent people in society don’t just say “no” to our current preoccupation with meanness, but also fail to step up and ennoble the pivotal world of politics.  It was Plato’s hope; it must be ours.