Citizenship - The Democratic Death Gene

Almost 50 years ago, economic guru Milton Friedman made an observation that was destined to have dramatic results: “Every act of government intervention limits the area of individual freedom directly and threatens the preservation of freedom indirectly.” Thus began the great campaign to undermine government’s reach and to offer capitalist forces a clear and open field for the redefining of democracy. One of the offshoots of that great transition, intended or not, was the redefining of what it really meant to be a citizenThe age of privatization was upon us, as the belief expanded that private industry could extend our powers farther than government itself. And for a time it appeared to work, as the ability for the average citizen to acquire more products than ever before grew exponentially, as did the standard of living. The citizen learned to double-clutch and shift gears quickly from the role of active citizen to passive consumer. The grand construct of the post-World War Two boom, and government’s vital role in its founding and expansive success, quickly gave way to a world where individual pursuits overtook the collective will of Canada.Much of the justification for the change swirled around the word “freedom” – free to choose, free to buy, free to strike your own path, and freedom to opt out of whatever didn’t suit you. At its root, the entire transformation required the isolation of the citizen from collective forces and this became the rationale for the “new freedom” for citizens.Surveying the ground shifting under foot, political theorist Hannah Arendt fulminated on what this would all mean to the individual and his or her responsibility to society as a whole: “Political freedom means the right to be a participant in government or it means nothing” – a powerful observation that was ultimately ignored. As we shall note in future posts, the public “you,” the one that is responsible for your neighbour and the collective destiny of your own country, fell into decline. Or as both John Dewey and Walter Lippmann noted, it represented the “eclipse of the public.”That’s you, and it’s me. The ideal of individual citizens possessing the power and talent to forge their own destiny is now something almost completely of the past. Faced with the need for a new camping tent, we can just turn to Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire. But where do we turn when confronted by a deteriorating climate, or the chronic shortage of national and local infrastructure, or the inaffordability of catastrophic drug coverage for seniors? Such things are beyond our ability to solve, and as isolated individuals we have no hope of making a dramatic enough change. It’s getting late in the day, with champions – government, industry, citizens – failing to come forward.This entire scenario comes down to what we believe regarding democracy. We have enjoyed its blessings for so long that we’ve forgotten how to fight for it on so many levels. We shout out the words “democracy” and “freedom” when applying them to foreign countries ruled by tyrants. Wherever human rights are trampled we press for the expansion of democratic rule. It’s in our collective DNA because it was how all democratic states got their start: fighting for individual freedoms in autocratic states. The Arab Spring, Libya, North Korea – these call out our efforts to affirm our own ideals.Yet in our own country we’ve chosen to press our case for individual rights and freedom of choice, not on tyranny but democracy itself. We’ve morphed from challenging illegitimate powers used by despots to castigate the legitimate sources of power we have voted on ourselves. Internationally, we still defend democracy by challenging corrupt administrations, but nationally we use it to undermine legitimate authorities. We have entered an age where it’s normal to expect too little from political figures and have stretched it into the even greater danger of expecting too little from public life. We find it difficult to summon up the great collective will to face challenges that are just as great as our parents and grandparents confronted.All of this forces us to ask of ourselves: who are we? If citizenship entails watching over ourselves through political participation in the democratic process, what happens if we no longer find this appealing? Put another way, where is the public voice? As isolated citizens we are losing our capacity to participate in our own future. Is it time for us to become a public again in order to sustain our great democratic traditions in Canada? I suspect so.  There are certain things that only a public can accomplish that individuals can’t, and if we can’t find a way to bring ourselves together, then politics and rampant capitalism will determine our future for us.There are no solutions discussed anymore, just an advanced form of rhetoric. And so our problems multiply because no one wishes to discuss solutions that would put power back into the hands of collective citizens; we either don’t trust it or vested political and economic interests have no desire to cough up their own respective advantages. We stand at a crossroads, confronting the possibility that our own individual selfishness appears to have unleashed some kind of democratic death gene that is eroding our public cohesiveness. Where is the public – not the individual citizens but the gathering of citizens capable of governing their future? It’s time for us to consider whether, in the grand scheme of things, we are on the verge of not mattering at all.