Democracy is not a Right

Why are we still squabbling about electoral reform when a majority of Canadians already want it? ~ from Politics Respun


To answer such a question, let us first consider the controlling elite and the Canadian version of democracy. Specifically, the rulers have always made their subjects beg, grovel or revolt before offering a loosening of the democratic strings. And this increased shift toward democracy always comes with a price.

For example, women wanted a vote? OK, fine. But it meant women were now going to have to enter the workforce, become overtaxed, and allow the family unit to suffer in her absence. The two-income family, now doubly taxed to bankroll government, was the price paid for women to be granted their fundamental ‘right’ to vote. This is the magnanimous treatment of the Canadian government toward its free subjects. Yet this factual perspective of Canadian women's suffrage is interestingly absent from our public school texts.

So each time I read about new ways to tally the votes or those voting for, let alone championing, a political Party — a top-down organization that forces its employees, your 'elected' representatives, to comply; an organization that serves the capitalist paradigm and its superstars long before the people — I know nothing is going to change without a price.

Unfortunately, the social collective seems unable to reach, let alone accept, some simple truths about state power. Power begets power. As state power progressively builds up its authority and coercive might, it cuts off legitimate discourse with the people. Eventually the encroachments of the state over the people becomes intolerable. At this time the people discover they have drifted well beyond the threshold of a peaceful solution. They must now fight for their basic inalienable rights. The revolutionary march begins. History is littered with this social pattern and Canadians are not immune from it if we refuse to learn from the past.

We are headed politically in the wrong direction. Varying our course a few degrees or changing our speed is not going to solve the systemic problems we face. We need to fundamentally change our understanding of government and politics. But first we must come to know our role within these bodies: our role as the legitimating force to all acts of state, both good and evil. Blind reliance on the state's propagandized message of our liberal democracy (in words alone) is not just insufficient but extremely detrimental to a better life for all.

As Emma Goldman said a century or so ago, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”. Cynical, yes, but all too true. We either set up a legitimate peoples democratic government, based on the rule of law and decided by the people, or we endure what has been imposed on us.

So far we are enduring and, admittedly, it is far less than what most others endure. Nonetheless, this situation is shameful and an embarrassment to Canadians, particularly when one comes to understand that we suffer less simply because others unseen suffer more.