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COMMENTARY
November 18, 2009
The rub
Bear with me, gentle reader. I want to return to an old theme of mine, but I want to do it abstractly.Normally a columnist is referring to events plainly visible in the public sphere. The reader may agree or disagree with his "take" on them, be more or less moved by his arguments. Politics are meant to be like this: a bunch of stuff laid out on a table, and we deal. Politics may be more or less visible; better or worse. To use the current example in Canada, Stephen Harper has annoyed and even disappointed me (and it is hard for a politician to disappoint me). This is because to some extent he conned his "socially conservative" constituency, with cautious promises to address several of their "hot button" issues, including for instance same-sex marriage. Now, that constituency is not small, even if mainstream media for the most part act as if it does not exist. English-speaking Canadians are not that much different from English-speaking Americans in their general outlook (again, media to the contrary), and I note that, Stateside, same-sex marriage was recently defeated in a referendum in the very liberal northern state of Maine. It was defeated decisively in liberal California, too, and has indeed been defeated 31 consecutive times, when put before 31 state electorates, with not one victory for the other side. It would certainly have been defeated up here, too, had Canadians been entitled to vote on the matter, but as ever our "progressive" masters in government and the courts decided that we could not be trusted. Moreover, they are basically right about us: Canadians will, in fact, readily agree to be pushed over, for the sake of peace in the family. Once same-sex marriage became a judicial fait accompli, only a tiny minority of the religious types continued to mention the subject; especially in light of powerful Criminal Code legislation (via Svend Robinson's private member's bill of 2003) that effectively equated "homophobia" with "genocide," creating all kinds of scope for the prosecution of people who continued to articulate the received moral views of 20 centuries of Christian civilization. Indeed, Mr. Robinson's Criminal Code amendment, which added sexual orientation to the hate crimes clause that was itself a "progressive innovation," was advanced in anticipation of same-sex marriage. To my view, it was the standard tactic of the Left: to avoid debates they can't win, by assigning false motives to their opponents, and thoroughly demonizing them in advance. Notwithstanding (favourite Canadian constitutional word), all of the above was on the table. Opponents may not have had the ability or the willingness to discuss the issue, with any degree of candour, but what was done was done in plain view. The law was changed without public consent, but it was not changed secretly. Now, back to Stephen Harper, and via him, to my point. On balance, except for his refusal to electrocute himself by pressing the "hot buttons" mentioned above, and a lot of ruinous bail-out spending I can't believe he believes in -- tactical political questions I too readily understand -- Harper has been doing a fine job of what Brian Mulroney was once doing, with little attention, let alone credit, from onlookers. He has been making the federal government more transparent and accessible and accountable in a myriad of small but cumulatively significant ways. This is motherhood stuff as far as I'm concerned: that the people should not have the way their government operates concealed from them, any more than they should have new public policies, with huge ramifications ("same-sex marriage" was a good example) agreed behind their backs then advanced by judicial sleight-of-hand. For that is a way of doing public business that is simply evil. But there are worse evils, and one is the broad area of family law as it has been developing, incrementally, almost entirely behind the scenes. This goes far beyond same-sex issues to touch on every aspect of family life, separation and divorce, division of property, police protections, child custody, the placement of orphans -- everything. Almost everything that happens that is pertinent to these issues, has fallen "progressively" within the mandates of proliferating bureaucracies, established many years ago for specific hard cases, and then generalized. Now here's the rub. Family life is, and has always been, the great balance against state power. The relations between members of a family -- all the relations -- are by their nature intimate, complex, and incomprehensible to outsiders. Tampering from outside is almost always destructive: which is why the state traditionally kept its nose out, except in extreme, specifically criminal cases. But routine, arbitrary, external tampering interferes with the entire organic functioning of a society. It does vastly more damage to people than any visible legislative change. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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