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COMMENTARY
January 22, 2011
Change of heart
With a candour that was almost charming, Prime Minister Harper told the CBC this week that, "I have spent my political career trying to stay out of that issue." He was referring to abortion. And he added: "What I say to people, if you want to diminish the number of abortions, you've got to change hearts and not laws."Sound advice. It also applies to bank robberies, arson, slave raiding, and parking violations. If you want to reduce the numbers, you've got to change hearts. Fortunately there are no laws against picketing and proselytizing outside places where such actions are being performed. Anyone may legally approach a bank robber for instance, before he has committed his morally dubious act, to discuss it, and discourage him from proceeding. Of course there are laws against bank robbery. Perhaps we live in a society where money is more important than human life. But it is a mystery why we should need any laws. After all, people whose hearts are well-ordered, never rob banks. Harper mentioned the death penalty, too: one of the great "heart changers" of the past, according to its advocates. It was another topic he has apparently spent much of his career trying to avoid. And if the man had followed his own advice, by not mentioning it on television, he might have avoided the chorus of outrage from the opposition, which came down to: "You mentioned it! You mentioned it!" It was genuine outrage: for modern politics is based on not mentioning things. I've been thinking, since Harper did mention it, how many of the problems of government and society we could solve by changing people's hearts. For instance, how we could solve the problem of excessive government, by taking the high ground and refusing to pay taxes. It's an attitude thing, after all, and we could just tell the people at the Canada Revenue Agency that we'd had a change of heart. I think that's why they invented payroll taxes, incidentally. Because when it comes to cash transactions, trust is nice, but the mallet of legal compulsion is more effective. Another item of news this week, was from USA. According to the New York Times, the idea of changing American laws, to allow states to declare bankruptcy, as corporations and even municipalities can do, is gaining momentum. (And with momentum comes respectability.) The problem for each state, that is more like California and less like Texas, is that bankruptcy or no, they have run out of money, and are looking at huge insupportable deficits. By coincidence, this also happens to be a problem across Europe, Canada, Australia, and so forth. Moreover, these are deficits that can only grow, adding to debts that were already compounding -- because states are, by law, locked into extravagant contracts with public sector unions, and lunatic pension schemes. About the only things they can legally cut are the "traditional" services upon which people traditionally depended: police, fire brigades, ambulances and so forth. Which they are now doing. The best you can say is that's good news for smokers. (Huh?) Because states are also legally locked up in debts, whose collateral includes prospective tobacco revenues, from here to eternity. Under such circumstances, they can hardly ban smoking. The "change of heart" that Newt Gingrich and others now propose, and which nice liberal people are starting to entertain, is to stop thinking of states as fully sovereign entities. Let them do what everyone else does, when they can no longer meet their creditors' demands. Wipe out the debt and start again. And leave all the creditors to divide what remains of government assets, at so many pennies on the dollar. Alas, Mr. Small Government may not have considered all the consequences of that. How, for instance, it would bring "state's rights" effectively to an end, and totally empower the U.S. federal government. But let me not pretend this idea doesn't appeal to me. The best part, to my mind, is what it would do to government credit ratings. It would eliminate the very possibility of deficit financing for the foreseeable future. And with that comes much smaller government, able to refocus on the old-fashioned things. You know: police, fire brigades; maybe ambulances. Practically, however, in the real world of politics, we will only see bailouts, until the entire top-heavy system overturns, at the highest sovereign level. Hyperinflation is more likely to come first. But it strikes me there is one way in which we can both help governments, and help ourselves, in light of what is coming. We can't stop paying taxes. But we can stop buying government bonds, as a way to protect our families, while simultaneously helping our legislators "cut to the chase." It is one way in which we could show a change of heart, and I thank Mr. Harper for the hint. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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