May 2009

My Review of Neil Bissoondath’s Selling Illusions

Neil Bissoondath’s book, Selling Illusions, offers an unusual argument for a Canadian book, particularly since a non-white immigrant writes it. Selling Illusions opposes Canada’s official, sacred cow policy of multiculturalism. Generally speaking, Bissoondath’s book is a well-written treatise that discusses a potentially dry subject in clear, jargon-free prose. Nevertheless, his arguments suffer from some surprising weaknesses, borne largely from his inability to empathize with the very people he, ironically, accuses of ignorance and lack of empathy.

I found his analysis and critique of multiculturalism effective. Briefly stated, Bissoondath believes we need to focus more on what makes us the same rather than what makes us different. He argues that the federal government’s policy of multiculturalism is one of the main reasons for our current focus on difference rather than unity. Pierre Trudeau’s 1971 Multiculturalism Act, for example, is devoid of what Canadian society actually is. In fact, it also discourages the articulation of a common discourse: “Multiculturalism has made us fearful of defining acceptable boundaries” (p. 143). It fails to deliver on one of its most important goals, that of going beyond tolerance and into what Michael Ignatieff calls “recognition”. Multiculturalism has “preached tolerance rather than encouraging acceptance; and it is leading is into a divisiveness so entrenched that we face a future of multiple solitudes with no central notion to bind us” (p. 192). The implication of his argument is clear. It is important for a country, even a country like Canada, to emphasize what its citizens hold in common. It is important for Canadians to ask themselves what those values actually are. And it must be acceptable to draw lines in the proverbial sand, beyond which tolerance becomes self-defeating.

Ethnicity, however, is not the basis for a common national narrative. Bissoondath is an unbridled cosmopolitan. He believes that ethnicity is – or should be - relatively unimportant. Racial definitions of homogeneity are old-fashioned and will not work in Canada; he believes that we need a new definition of social cohesion based on shared social norms, not skin colour: "Culture, in its essentials, is about human values, and human values are exclusive to no race” (p. 71). He feels no deeply bound allegiance to his own ethnic heritage, and prefers to affiliate with those who share his social and intellectual values. “I feel greater affinity for the work of Timothy Mo – a British novelist born of an English mother and a Chinese father- than I do for that of Salman Rushdie, with whom I share an ethnicity… Ethnically, Mo and I share nothing, but imaginatively we share much” (p. 105). If Canada is to flourish, it must find ways of identifying the values that Bissoondath holds, a non-ethnic set of principles and beliefs that allow Canadians to develop a unifying “civic nationalism”.

My major problems with Bissoondath’s argument are that his cosmopolitanism is, I believe, overly optimistic, and that he accepts such significant exceptions that he degrades the force of his own logic. I personally agree that History must not be an anchor on the present, but I think he’s wrong to conclude that “shared ethnicity guarantees neither fellowship of feeling nor congruity of interest” (p. 132). Are we willing to give up our ethnic identities so easily? I don't believe so. My reading of history simply doesn’t reflect Bissoondath's argument. In times of strife, ethnicity is usually the single major shorthand that’s used to determine common values and loyalty. And in the absence of other, more deeply felt sentiments, I don’t think we can logically argue ethnicity out of our value system. Indeed, cosmopolitanism is historically one of the first victims of the breakdown in social order; its very existence assumes that ethnic differences have been overcome or minimized. So if strife and chaos leads us back to ethnicity, cosmopolitanism is more a tenuous historical circumstance than a unifying force. Bissoondath goes on to say that all his professional success “has come, in great part, through the refusal to brood over the loss of one language and its cultural baggage and a willingness to fully embrace another” (p. 81). This kind of cosmopolitanism seems unrelenting and uncompromising. And when he argues that “ethnicity’s true value [is] as one of the many elements that inform the way the individual views the world” (p. 212), I think he’s simply naïve. Ethnicity is very real. Even those of us who are skeptical of ethnicity can’t will it away. The second major problem I have with the book is Bissoondath’s rather uneven application of his own argument. Bissoondath tries to avoid insulting “Old Canada” and those who wish to keep Christian and European values at the core of our national vision. But eventually he can’t help himself. Those who support the old Reform Party are “ignorant”. For anybody blocking his cosmopolitan vision of the future, Bissoondath has neither tolerance nor recognition. On the other hand, Quebec’s attempt to preserve its own culture is lauded: “It is obvious to anyone with a nodding acquaintance of Quebec that it is different. It has obligations… and if you have special obligations, then you need special powers to fulfill those obligations” (p. 198). Yet those who are opposed to giving group rights to Quebec, because it damages national unity, suffer from a “colonial mentality”.

Bissoondath therefore prefers some forms of unity, but clearly not others. I wonder if most Canadians share his particular definition of the “middle way”.

Michael Ignatieff`s The Rights Revolution: A Review

Here's the first of a series of revamped book reviews that I've published in the past on Chapters.ca and Amazon. They're not meant to be exhaustive, but they have helped me to focus my understanding of the books and my memory of their key ideas. Eventually I will publish most of my older reviews and then add new ones... if I have time to read.

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The Rights Revolution

By Michael Ignatieff

The Rights Revolution is a thought-provoking book, and a praiseworthy attempt to confront the issues of national unity, individual identity and multiculturalism. Nevertheless, it is so riven with contradictions and concessions that it’s sometimes hard to pin down what Michael Ignatieff actually believes.

Ignatieff’s book is an effort to define a conception of civic nationalism based on a theory of human rights. As such, it builds on past books like Blood and Belonging. Ignatieff discusses rights in a particularly Canadian context: his theory of human rights attempts to strike a multicultural balance between group rights and individual rights. Nevertheless, Ignatieff is philosophically a liberal, and in a conflict between the two types of rights, “we should allow individual rights to prevail” (19). Thus, if rights are sought in order to protect the identity of a minority group (e.g. Muslims and Aboriginals), these group rights must not infringe on the rights of its individual members. A “rights culture” accomplishes many things for Ignatieff: rights help articulate and moderate conflict; rights create trust (assuming that both sides respect the rights of the other); rights demand permanent self-questioning; rights help define common meta-values that allow differences to co-exist; right provide a counterbalance to a democratic majority; rights create reciprocities between mutual rights-bearing people; and they defend individual autonomy. Ignatieff therefore places a great deal onto the political centrality of rights, and the discussion of mutual entitlements that they will generate.

One of Ignatieff’s central arguments is that we must go beyond mere tolerance and move towards what he calls “recognition”, which is an “act of enlargement” (136). In such an act, differences should be “acknowledged and welcomed” (87). As long as the majority is also respected, Ignatieff believes that the long term prospect for minority individual rights in Canada is usually towards recognition. For example, in terms of gay rights, he believes their rights will soon be recognized [and were, not long after the publication of this book in 2000]. “Rights equality changes moral culture because groups demand recognition. As they do so, they force sexual majorities toward acceptance and approval… The process will take time and properly should do. But again, it seems hard to imagine that this respect will not follow eventually” (88-89).

There are many frustrating parts in the book. Ignatieff avoids one of the most important questions about rights: where do they come from? From at least Edmund Burke onward, the clash between “inalienable” and “communally derived” rights has been a central debate. But Ignatieff ignores their fundamental distinctions and simply answers that rights come from both sources: “We already possess our rights in two senses: either because our ancestors secured them or because they are inherent in the very idea of being human” (28). And that`s it. He never pursues the essential differences between the two, though he seems to favour “inherent” individual rights. Had he explored the other perspective in greater detail, he might have answered his own question of why liberal “rights talk” ignores social inequality, a collective problem not easily solved by an aggregation of rights-bearing individuals. And had he explored the communitarian view that rights are earned by reciprocation, and ought to be retracted when not advanced equitably, then perhaps he would have seen how individual rights may not be sufficient to create a foundation for a successful polity. By addressing what we are obligated to do for others, in order to help ourselves, Canadians might exhibit greater empathy for others and not simply demand respect for one`s own entitlements. This would certainly broaden the concept of citizenship, and command a greater respect for our country.

Ignatieff contradicts and equivocates to the point of distraction. He starts with the central Canadian perspective that the “essential distinctiveness of Canada itself lies in the fact that we are a tri-national community” (124-125). Then he concedes that “Canadians from [non tri-national] communities refuse to accept the very concept of Canada as a pact between founding races… This concept seems to accord no place to them.” But then concludes, very optimistically, “Most of them can accept that original inhabitants may have claims to territory and language that are withheld from newcomers” (130). The potential for multi-tiered citizenship is never acknowledged or explored. He also believes that the “criticism most often advanced against a civic nationalist vision of national community is that it is too thin. It bases national solidarity on rights equality, but neither rights nor equality make sufficiently deep claims on the loyalties and affections of people to bond them together over time…Clearly, rights are not enough” (126-127). But then he concludes, because of our lack of ethnic unity, “This is essentially why Canada has no choice but to gamble on rights, to found unity on civic nationalist principles” (129). Finally, he argues that the “precondition for order in a liberal society is an act of the imagination: not a moral consensus or shared values”. Then he concedes that “Imagination only carries us only so far…” (138), but flips back and argues that the “entire legitimacy of our institutions depends on our being attentive to difference while treating all as equal. This is the gamble, the unique act of the imagination on which our society rests” (139). By the end, it is difficult to say where Ignatieff actually stands on many key issues. Ignatieff seems skilled at identifying and analyzing problems, but not so skilled (or perhaps willing) to defend a particular solution or point of view. If this is how he acts as a politician, then ``flip-flop``-itis seems to be a much more appropriate criticism by his opponents than his lack of residency.

So, Ignatieff’s book explores some significant issues, but it never provides the clarity and resolution that he thinks “rights talk” offers.

Inequality Makes Us Ill

Inequality makes us ill. And depressed. And violent

Across all the Western democracies, there is a consistent pattern in which outcomes worsen as inequality increases

BY WILL KYMLICKA

A Review of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Allen Lane, 331 pages

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090515.wbkspirit16/BNStory/globebooks/home

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Will Kymlicka, a noted Canadian scholar on politics and multiculturalism, has provided a well-written and thought-provoking review of a book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Their book addresses a topic - inequality - which remains on the fringes of economic and political discussion, even though I believe it's at the center of our current economic malaise.

Kymlicka discusses Wilkinson and Pickett's point that inequality is not just a moral issue. It has real human costs and tangible impacts.

... Once a country reaches a per capita income of around $25,000, there is simply no correlation between levels of national wealth or health spending and levels of health and human development....

...So what explains why some countries do better than others? A growing consensus points to the quality of people's social relationships, whether in the home, the neighbourhood or at work. In some societies, these relationships are toxic, putting health-damaging stresses on individuals. In other societies, these relationships are supportive, helping individuals deal with life's challenges.

However, Wilkinson and Pickett argue that these different factors are all symptoms of a deeper issue — namely, inequality. Among wealthy countries, Norway and Japan do better than the United States or Switzerland because the gap between rich and poor is smaller. Among less affluent countries, Spain and Greece do better than Portugal because they have less inequality.

This is true of rates of infant mortality, illiteracy, obesity, mental illness, incarceration, homicide, drug use and teenage pregnancy (although not, interestingly, of suicide). Similarly, as inequality rises, social trust and social mobility decline while violence increases. This is true not only between Western countries, but also within them. For example, if we compare the 50 states of the United States, these indicators are worse in states with greater inequality....

...The result is an impressive body of evidence, presented in an easily digestible form, which is highly relevant for debates here in Canada. Polls show that most people believe that inequalities have grown too large in recent years, and this book will surely reinforce that sentiment. Many of us feel that the growing level of inequality is unfair, and harmful to a sense of shared citizenship and community cohesion. But as Wilkinson and Pickett show, it is also harmful to our health....

Kymlicka responds that there are many issues that help determine social stability and community health:

[I]t's not just income inequality that matters, but also the nature of the labour market, the stability of people's jobs and housing, the strength of community organizations and so on.

Moreover, there are many sources of status anxieties in modern societies — such as racism or homophobia (or attitudes toward beauty) — that are only indirectly related to income inequalities. So, income inequality seems a very crude measure for the almost infinitely complex array of status hierarchies in our society, and the link between the two is something of a black box in the book.

Kymlicka then concedes that many of these problems, though not a necessary outcome of inequality, usually do arise in unequal societies if other mitigating factors do not appear.

The authors would probably respond that, whatever these complexities, the data show a clear tendency for income inequality to generate worse health outcomes. So for practical policy purposes, we should just focus on inequality.

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So here we have another argument in favour of tackling inequality. It has real and debilitating effects. We are not made stronger by inequality; as a tendency, it retards and constricts, and is a real threat to our belief in the equality of opportunity. Moreover, equality in this sense is a relative concept that bespeaks of our social nature. Unlike the Fraser Institute, which argues that equality should be measured in absolute terms, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that social interaction defines equality in relative terms. It's cold comfort, and largely irrelevant, that a poor person in Chilliwack is surviving on the same caloric intake of a person in Haiti. Social trust, social mobility and violence are realities that make sense only in social terms, with the people who live in our own community or nation.

Elections Do Not Equal Governments

My brother made a great point in a recent letter to the Georgia Straight. Though we may vote on the basis of party leader, we don't actually vote for a premier or a prime minister. On election night, we vote for a local representative who will ostensibly represent our riding's interests in parliament or the legislature. In an important sense, election night is really about 308 simultaneous elections federally, and 85 provincially. When those different elections are tallied, the party leader with the most support from the elected members takes the seat as the head of government. That is the essence of parliamentary democracy. In other words, there is a fusion of the executive and the legislative, insofar as control of the legislative branch (usually the lower house) gives you power over the bureaucracy. If you want to vote for your head of government directly, you'll have to move to the United States.

Unfortunately, "legions of politically illiterate British Columbians" (and Canadians in general) were incensed when, in 2008, the Liberals and NDP proposed a coalition to take over from Harper's minority Conservative government. Anti-coalition types, mostly Conservative, argued that they didn't vote for Stephane Dion, the leader of the Liberals. (They also said relying on the BQ was treasonous, forgetting that the Conservatives under Harper had proposed such an arm's length alliance with the BQ in 2004.) The argument against Dion, however, showed that many Canadians were under the mistaken belief that, since they didn't vote for Dion, he couldn't become PM. Actually... nobody voted for Dion, except for a majority of voters in the riding of Saint-Laurent/Cartierville. Moreover, not a single person voted for him (or Harper) qua prime minister.

So of course Dion could have become PM. It's not up to voters, whether we like it or not. In our indirect democracy, it's up to the members of parliament, whose support is required for a government to stand. That's why our parliamentary system is a "system of confidence". Even in Canada, in the early 1920's, the Liberal Mackenzie King was our prime minister even though the Conservatives had more seats. King had the support - the confidence - of the Progressives, and that's all that mattered.

Another distinction that helps clarify the situation is to understand the difference between government and election. The two are not necessarily symmetrical in a parliamentary system. This is the logical outcome of a confidence system. You can have more governments than elections, because you might have different coalitions - based on the results of one election - as confidence shifts and changes. Here's a case in point: since World War Two, Canada has had more elections than Israel or Italy, though many fewer governments. Canada has had 20 elections (starting in 1949), Israel has had 18, and Italy has had 17. The difference is our electoral system. We use the first-past-the-post election system, which tends to create artificial majorities (or limited coalition options) and therefore more stable levels of confidence. Israel and Italy use various types of proportional elections, which tend to elect more and smaller parties, and therefore less stable government coalitions. But the system of confidence remains in all three parliaments, because that's what we mean by parliamentary democracy. If Canada isn't used to a lot of coalitions, it's because of our election system. But that does not affect the reality that confidence from the sitting members remains central to who becomes prime minister.

The Mining Industry Gets Its Comeuppance

One of the most ideologically strident industries in Canada, and certainly its whiniest, is the mining industry. It recently suffered a well-deserved loss in Canada's Federal Court, which ordered the industry, and its pals in the federal government, to fully disclose the industry's pollution output. Canada's mining industry did not have to report "the pollutants present in the tailings and waste rock" in the national survey on pollution (the NPRI). Amazingly, the federal government fought the full disclosure, apparently at the behest of its mining friends. Read the full story at cbc.ca:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/04/24/court-mining-pollution865.html

The Red Cross Torture Report

Mark Danner is well known journalist and professor of journalism at Berkeley. He has written dozens of articles for the New York Review of Books, and has, in my mind, provided the definitive reportage on the Serbian massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica.

His latest article is a thorough yet blistering summary of the "ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen 'High Value Detainees' in CIA Custody", otherwise known as the "Red Cross Torture Report". We may be tired of the issue, as it's been a focal point for criticism of the Bush administration since 2001. However, Danner may have written the definitive summary again, and I think the question of torture will continue to haunt American politics for many years to come. The current debate over the release of the Bush torture memos, a possible South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, and possible war crime charges against Bush-era politicians, will ensure the past continues to inform (and deform) the present. Plus, the descriptions of torture, especially the waterboarding and beatings against plywood sheets, is too gripping to ignore. After reading Danner's article, it's almost impossible to believe that America hasn't crossed some irreversible, unrepairable moral divide. The rank hypocrisy of American foreign policy has never been more exposed.

Here are some excerpts from his review:

... An awareness of this history makes reading the International Committee of the Red Cross report a strange exercise in climbing back through the looking glass. For in interviewing the fourteen "high-value detainees," who had been imprisoned secretly in the "black sites" anywhere from "16 months to almost four and a half years," the Red Cross experts were listening to descriptions of techniques applied to them that had been originally designed to be illegal "under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Conventions." And then the Red Cross investigators, as members of the body designated by the Geneva Conventions to supervise treatment of prisoners of war and to judge that treatment's legality, were called on to pronounce whether or not the techniques conformed to the conventions in the first place. In this judgment, they are, not surprisingly, unequivocal:

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment....

... One fact, seemingly incontrovertible, after the descriptions contained and the judgments made in the ICRC report, is that officials of the United States, in interrogating prisoners in the "War on Terror," have tortured and done so systematically. From many other sources, including the former president himself, we know that the decision to do so was taken at the highest level of the American government and carried out with the full knowledge and support of its most senior officials....

...Mr. Abu Zubaydah commented that when the collar was first used on him in his third place of detention, he was slammed directly against a hard concrete wall. He was then placed in a tall box for several hours (see Section 1.3.5, Confinement in boxes). After he was taken out of the box he noticed that a sheet of plywood had been placed against the wall. The collar was then used to slam him against the plywood sheet. He thought that the plywood was in order to absorb some of the impact so as to avoid the risk of physical injury....

... Torture has undermined the United States' reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals [because torture=inadmissable evidence], instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice. That limbo stands as a kind of worldwide advertisement for the costs of the US reversion to torture, whose power President Obama has tried to reduce by announcing that he will close Guantánamo....

... The only way to defuse the political volatility of torture and to remove it from the center of the "politics of fear" is to replace its lingering mystique, owed mostly to secrecy, with authoritative and convincing information about how it was really used and what it really achieved. That this has not yet happened is the reason why, despite the innumerable reports and studies and revelations that have given us a rich and vivid picture of the Bush administration's policies of torture, we as a society have barely advanced along this path. We have not so far managed, despite all the investigations, to produce a bipartisan, broadly credible, and politically decisive effort, and pronounce authoritatively on whether or not these activities accomplished anything at all in their stated and still asserted purpose: to protect the security interests of the country....

The full article can be found at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22614. Here is a video of Mark Danner talking with Bill Moyers: