The Tyranny of the Minority

We need to spend some time considering the privatization of the public space in this country and what it will mean to our children and to us.Privatization is an ideology premised on the notion that we can take care of ourselves. It’s neither new nor novel, but for the first time in some sixty years it has become predominant. This has nothing to do with the regional tensions that have always challenged our unity as a nation, but rather the new dynamic of citizens saying they want one thing, while as consumers they want another. It has sadly created a form of national schizophrenia that effectively pits us against one another, putting us at odds with the hopes we have for this country.Whatever else it is, the public space is hardly an ideology, but a shared and pragmatic vision that succeeds in putting rigid thinking to one side in an effort to find common ground and collective compromise. It’s an ongoing process that can’t be ideological because it must progress when life itself throws new circumstances and developments into the mix.For decades, Canada extended its opportunity and prosperity through the expansion of this public space, drawing in those normally excluded into a grand enterprise that saw the middle class in Canada mushroom like in few other countries. The yen for privatization was always slightly beneath the surface in those progressive years, but has now emerged in various advanced democracies around the world to mount a serious challenge to the notion of “public” advancement. Globalization has pushed this new form of elitism into prominence, yet it has been the arrival of new right-wing governments that has given it its solidity. In the U.S. it’s the Republican Party; in Canada it’s the ideological base of the present Conservative Party.For two decades average citizens watched these two combatants fight it out with slight interest. But the rise of hard right governments has coincided with the mushrooming of voter anger or disenchantment; in fact, those ruling parties have sought to enhance such collective angst. And the target of that frustration has been the public space itself.This view found one of its most noted champions in economist Milton Friedman, who insisted that, “every act of government intervention limits the area of individual freedom directly and threatens the preservation of freedom indirectly.” Or, as Ronald Reagan put it: “Government is always part of the problem rather than part of the solution.” A large body of Canadians now believes this to be true, yet in the process they are defying the evidence of public dynamic and collective prosperity that made this country great in the first place.We are now entering that difficult phase where the public space is literally being starved by the desire for more and more consumer goods, less and less taxes, and a new powerful political dynamic that confuses individual satisfaction with those benefits that historically came from public liberties. It has become a deal with the devil, and forms what Walter Lippmann used to call the “eclipse of the public.”A number of future blog postings will deal with what this means, but for now it is vital that Canadians understand that the way of life they have known is now more forcefully under assault. Where public freedom once opposed tyranny, private liberty now defies our fellow citizens and enforces an emerging autocracy – the advancement of the few over the many. It has become an assault on democracy, and we must come to see it for what it is. We’ll spend more time looking at the subtleties of this new tyranny and how it manifests itself in the media and in our communities every day of the week. Stay tuned.