“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” – Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, “On Bullshit”, pp. 55-56.

The ironic truth is that a debate focusing largely upon the validity of census data is comprised of so much bullshit as to make the debate itself invalid. Witnesses and Parliamentary Members at committee hearings, columnists, and even those who write letters to the editors of our vestigial newspapers have decided that the this issue – more than most others – demands that all concern over truth and falsehood must be abandoned if the debate is to be resolved favourably.  The debate has turned even serially honest thinkers, writers and speakers into at least second-class bullshitters for the purposes of either backing or opposing the Conservative government’s decision to make completion of the long form census voluntary; to repeal laws that impose penalties of fine or imprisonment for failing or refusing to fill out the long form census and remit it to government.

In the hope that participants might choose to stop bullshitting, and instead state clearly what they want, why they want it, and who they think ought to be footing the bill for what they want, I provide, below, a short-list of seven of the most salient and high-profile bullshit submissions upon which decision makers are likely to rely due to pressure from their constituents (who are the intended victims of all of this bullshittery).   I conclude with a succinct description of the real issues that the bullshit arguments are designed to bury or obfuscate.

Bullshit Submission #1: “The fact of the matter is that we [made the decision to make the long form census voluntary] on a principled basis, that we wanted to balance off the interests of those Canadians who are worried about this with the desire [of users of the data] for more and more data.” – Conservative MP Tony Clement, Industry Minister, at the July 27, 2010 meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as the “SCIST Hearing”).

This claim is bullshit for at least two reasons.  First, the Conservatives clearly are not acting on any “principled basis”.  A principle is a fundamental truth of general application.  For example: “Government must use coercion only to prevent the violation of individuals’ lives, liberty, and property” is a principle.  At the SCIST Hearing, Clement represented that “…we should encourage people and use non-coercive methods if we want data from them and that’s simply our position”.  This is, in my view, was a wording (i.e., “non-coercive methods”) deliberately chosen to lure the sympathies or loyalties of those who think that government ought never to use force other than to defend every person’s own life, liberty, and property.  It is a wording chosen to suggest, falsely, that Conservatives have a principled objection to government coercing the governed with respect to acts and omissions that harm nobody.   But, as even the Liberal MPs on the SCIST panel were quick to point out, the Conservatives are not consistent on their allegedly “principled” stance against coercive methods.   Most damaging to the Conservatives’ claim to principle is the simple and painful fact that the Conservatives are proposing that fines and imprisonment continue to be imposed with respect to those who refuse to fill out the short form of the census (not to mention the fact that the Conservatives have no qualms about threatening Canadians will fines and imprisonment with respect to refusals to file income tax returns).

Second, it is now clear that I was called upon by the Liberals to be a witness at the SCIST hearings on July 27th.  It is equally obvious that I was chosen because of what I wrote on both the Western Standard’s Shotgun blog and on my own blog on July 17, 2010 (the general thrust being that the decision to make the long form voluntary was little more than an attempt to bring “libertarians” and other objectors who oppose government coercion into, or back into, the Conservative fold).  It is similarly obvious that the Liberals chose me as a representative of “libertarians” or others who are the targets of the Conservative pandering to which I referred in my July 17th post.  Finally, it is obvious that, having presented me as a representative of that target group, they wanted the public to believe that, if such a representative says his group is being pandered to, his group is indeed being pandered to.

What is most interesting, however, is that, despite the fact that I wrote that I agree with the Conservatives’ decision to make the long form census voluntary, not one of the Conservative MPs on the SCIST panel asked me any questions.  None of them took the opportunity to bolster the Conservative claim to acting on “principle”, by asking me a question to which I could respond that making the census voluntary is quite a principled thing to do.  None of them took the opportunity to appear friendly to a freedom advocate well known among Objectivists, libertarians and other individualists in Canada; none risked the appearance of being allied with, or of being of similar mind to, a reasonably well-known opponent of government coercion.  All of the Conservative MPs on the SCIST panel avoided that opportunity like the plague.  The message to all lovers of liberty: ‘we want your support, but we do not actually share your commitment to individual freedom, and we certainly wouldn’t want to be seen allying with you in public’.  So, ask yourself: if Conservatives do not want to appear to be supported by, allied with, or of similar mind to principled opponents of government coercion, how can their claim to holding a principled opposition to government coercion be anything but utter bullshit?

Bullshit Submission #2: Only 50 or so people have called the privacy commissioner to complain about the census, so the actual number of people who object to filling out the long form census is being immensely over-stated.

This line of argument was offered up primarily by Liberal MP Dan McTeague, during the SCIST Hearing. The argument is bullshit for numerous, somewhat obvious reasons.  Two biggies follow.

First, the violation of ones privacy is a concern for only a fraction of the estimated 19% of Canadians who would not fill out the long form census were it voluntary (note: the 19% figure is a result in a poll conducted by IPSOs pollster Darrell Bricker, who testified to the SCIST Hearing).  I, for example, do not regard it as a well kept secret that I am a middle aged Caucasian male: anyone with could easily find that out.  I do not regard it as a violation of my privacy for people to look at me, so I do not regard it as a violation of my privacy to write down, in a census form, that I am a middle aged Caucasian male.  And I have no fear that the census will tell the government something “private” about my money: it already gets that information from me yearly via my tax return.  Because I have no concern about such alleged “privacy”, I have absolutely no reason to call a Privacy Commissioner.

As any politician debating the voluntariness of the 2011 census should try to remember or to discover, in the lead up to the 1996 census, the public was outraged that it was to be denied the opportunity to identify their “Ethnic Origin” as “Canadian”.  Political pressure led to the inclusion of “Canadian” as a response.  They objected then – as objectors do now – to a government that doles out special barriers and disadvantages, and special privileges and advantages, to different Canadians based upon their “ethnic origin”.  A large – perhaps the largest – proportion of Canadians upset with the mandatory long form these days similarly are upset not because of privacy issues, but because they want a government that is blind to issues of race, sex, religion et cetera.  They have no reason to call a Privacy Commissioner when what is bothering them is collectivism.

Second, among those objectors whose concern is the violation of their privacy, we may rightly expect to find individuals who are distrustful of or who fear government.  Survivors of the Holocaust who were targeted because of their race, religion, profession, income, et cetera; those who – like former StatsCan head Ivan Fellegi – have left countries because of governmental tyranny; or – as the SCIST heard from a witness – Inuit living in the remote north: all have reasons for fearing that the government will use such information against them.  Mr. McTeague would have us believe that people so terrified of government would actually contact the government’s Privacy Commissioner to complain about the government’s census.  For people having such fear of government, that is like expecting them to stand outside of Parliament with a sign saying “Shoot me, loot me, I’m your enemy”.  A government body can say all it wants about how it will maintain the anonymity of complainants, but can anyone permanently terrorized by the abuse of governmental power and information rationally be expected to trust that a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner will not put them in the government’s cross-hairs?

The bottom line: the argument – that the number of complaints made to the Privacy Commissioner demonstrates few people care about census penalties – is bullshit.

Bullshit Submission #3: Nobody has ever gone to jail for refusing to complete the census.  That people go to jail is an “urban myth”.  Therefore, the government’s decision to eliminate penalties for non-completion of the long form census is a response to a crisis manufactured by government.

Bullshit arguments of this sort have been made most prominently by NDP MP Charlie Angus, and by Liberal MP Marc Garneau.

The essence of this bullshit argument is that that, because the imprisonment penalty is never actually imposed, nobody is harmed by it, so there is no reason to repeal the penalty.  This line of thought has at least two possible interpretations.

One interpretation is that the penalties have no effect on anyone.  If that is the case, there is no rational reason for opposing their repeal, so the argument is bullshit.

The other interpretation is that the effect of the penalties is nothing more than to create sufficient fear of imprisonment that non-consenting Canadians will be coerced into completing the long form census.  If that is the case, then it is false that Canadians are not being harmed by the imprisonment penalty: fear and coercion are harm.  It is because of that harm – because of that violation of ones liberty – that, if a stranger were to appear at your door and say, in a threatening manner, “Tell me your name, or I’ll forcibly take all of the money from your wallet”, he could be charged with a criminal offence.  As with the first interpretation, the implication that the law harms nobody is bullshit, so the conclusion drawn from that bullshit – that the penalty should not be repealed – is also bullshit.

Bullshit Submission #4: What we advocate is a mandatory long form census, not penalties.

Arguments to that effect have been made most prominently by Statistical Society of Canada President Don McLeish, and by former Toronto Dominion Bank Chief Economist Don Drummond (now Chair of an Advisory Panel on Labour Market Information), both of whom were witnesses at the SCIST Hearing.  See also a (typically) bizarre media release by the Green Party of Canada.

Sexual contexts aside, one cannot suck and blow at the same time.  In law – and I say this as a lawyer – “mandatory” means: if you do not comply, your liberty or property will be taken away to one extent or another.   There is no other meaning for “mandatory”, if we are speaking about a law.  The argument is bullshit because – if pressed to take a stand on whether or not all penalties for non-completion of the long form census should be repealed – those making this bullshit argument ultimately state that at least some form of penalty (i.e., fine or imprisonment) must remain.  In other words, the people spouting this bullshit argument want their audience either to remain ignorant of the existence of a penalty, or to hold a false belief that things mandated by law do not necessarily involve penalties or coercion of any sort.

Thanks to the cross-examination done by Conservative MP Mike Lake (who should have been a litigator, and probably deserves a promotion…perhaps to Tony Clement’s position), the argument was exposed to be bullshit both when made by SCIST Hearing witness Don McLeish and when made by SCIST Hearing witness Don Drummond.  Their testimonies – and their faces – must really be watched to get the full feeling of their discomfort with giving an honest answer to Lake’s questions, but here are the exchanges in question (without changing the meanings of the questions or answers, I edit out parts of the questions and answer that are not directly on-point).  First, the cross-examination of Don McLeish:

Lake: “Should your daughter…be threatened with jail time or a fine for not wanting to answer the question ‘How much house work did you do last week?’ ”

McLeish: “…My Society has not taken a position on what the penalties associated with non-compliance with the Statistics Act should be, because that’s not really our expertise.  That’s a government decision.”

Lake: “Your association does advocate for penalties though.” (Note: McLeish was testifying as a witness opposed to the Conservative government’s decision to repeal penalties associated with non-completion of the long-form census).

McLeish: “No.  My association advocates that the voluntary long form of the census be mandatory as it has in the past….In my personal view, they should not be threatened with jail time, in part because it’s never happened and it’s a red herring in this debate; in part because [the magnitude of the penalty is] all out of proportion [to the nature of the offence]…The word ‘mandatory’ is important.  I submit that the level of fine associated with it, which is under government jurisdiction, is much, much less important”.

Next, Lake’s cross-examination of Drummond, who was also testifying in opposition to the Conservatives’ decision to make the long form census voluntary.  Lake gives Drummond essentially the same question he gave McLeish, namely: should a person threatened with jail time or a fine for not wanting to answer the question ‘How much house work did you do last week?

Drummond: “If the problem is the threat of jail time, remove it, you don’t need it.  It’s not used.”

Drummond having dodged the issue of fines with his answer, Lake moves in for the kill, asking Drummond whether a fine should be imposed were a person not to answer a long form question about the amount he has spent upon water.

Drummond: “The fine itself is not the issue.  There’s a notion in Canada that filling out the census is mandatory.  I don’t think people look at the fine.  The fines are not invoked very often.  I don’t think that’s the notion.  The right notion, which people have understood in Canada, is: it’s mandatory.  And the vast majority of Canadians do it.  And I don’t think they do it because of the threat of a fine…”

Lake: “So, you’re saying we could go without fines then?”

Drummond: “The fines probably have to be there on paper, but I think they’re not really the central issue.  If people understand that this is a benefit and it’s part of being a Canadian citizen, then they would fill it out whether there’s a fine or not.  They won’t pay attention to the existence of the fines.”

Lake: “Isn’t that a voluntary system, then?”

Drummond: “The fines are there, on paper, so it’s not a [does not complete his sentence, for obvious reasons.  He instead switches to] It’s more of an attitude, and it’s a promotion of [public duty, personal benefit].”

Lake: “Okay, so that’s basically the approach that the government has put forward, and that sounds like the same approach you are talking about”.

Drummond: “No…I think that you need some measure of – on paper, at least – hopefully not used very much, but certainly not jail.”

When subsequently questioned by NDP MP Claude Gravelle, Drummond states: “I think the most important thing is the question: ‘Is there a sentiment that it’s part of your civic duty to fill it out or not?’.  I think the fines and the penalty are irrelevant, relative to that.”

Again: one cannot suck and blow.  When McLeish and Drummond say they want completion of the long form census to be “mandatory”, even they are unwilling to deny that “mandatory” requires the continued existence of a penalty.  Had they been so willing, they would actually be witnesses supporting the Conservatives’ decision.  In short: the above argument – an argument made by numerous opponents of the Conservatives’ decision – is bullshit.

Bullshit Submission #5: “I would fill out the long form census if it were voluntary”.

IPSOs pollster Darrell Bricker testified to the SCIST that 19% of people he polled would not voluntarily fill out the long form census, and that 80% would do so.  A good proportion of those saying they would fill out the long-form census in a voluntary system are clearly bullshitting.   These poll respondents expect us to believe that although they are barely more than 50% likely to find it worth their while to take 10 minutes to walk a block and place a single check mark, to answer a single question (i.e., the ballot) once every few years, they are somehow 80% likely to answer 50 or 60 questions comprising a 40 page long-form questionnaire asking them about their religion, their “race”, and – for all intents and purposes – whether they are regularly having sex in their home with someone who is not their spouse.  They are the same people who promise themselves they will start dieting and working out tomorrow, and who buy year-long gym memberships to work off the Christmas goose, only to quit by the end of January.  We all like to believe that we will take the time to do things like vote, and take voluntary government polls. And, when asked, few of us want to admit – to ourselves, and much less to others – that we just do not think voting, or census-completing, or gym membership buying will ultimately end up giving us anything of value.  In the immediate term – when we really do not care whether or not our answer will turn out to be true – a significant percentage of us will answer to a pollster that, yes, we would answer a voluntary long-form census.  We will take a “tomorrow’s another day”, wait-and-see attitude with respect to the issue of whether or not we are bullshitting ourselves and others (knowing full well that we will, by that time, have forgotten that we were polled).   The claim by a good proportion of the 80% – that they would answer a voluntary long-form census – is bullshit.

Bullshit Submission #6: If we were to get rid of the jail term, and leave the fine in place, that would be a good compromise.

Noteworthy sources of this bullshit proposal are numerous, but clearly include Don Drummond, as indicated by his testimony, above. [UPDATE: on the afternoon of July 29th, NDP leader Jack Layton made this very same bullshit proposal to the Prime Minister as a "compromise"].

This argument is the perhaps the oldest bullshit in the history of tyranny.  That it is bullshit is probably best demonstrated with an example.  In 1986, it was illegal for most retail stores in Ontario to open on Sundays.  To challenge the constitutionality of the ban in court, then London bookstore owner Marc Emery opened his bookstore contrary to the ban.  At trial, he was fined $500.  He refused to pay the fine.  The government’s response: imprisonment.  He remained in jail for four days, until the general public contributed the money to pay the fine.  The lesson: there is no such thing as a fine that does not necessarily imply the availability of imprisonment as a penalty.  In other words: the notion of a penalty that excludes the implication of imprisonment is bullshit.

Bullshit Submission #7: “What Canadians are witnessing in the census saga is the temporary triumph of ideology over reason…The Statistics Canada fight is not the usual clash of competing political visions, of left against right, of Conservatives against progressives. Rather, this is a fight about rational decision-making that requires the best fact-based evidence available against a reliance on ideological nostrums that scorn facts and reason when they stand in the way of those nostrums.” – Direct quotation from Jeffrey Simpson’s July 23, 2010 column in the Globe and Mail.

Noteworthy sources of this bullshit argument include not only Jeffrey Simpson, but also NDP MP Charlie Angus, and Bloc Quebecois MP Richard Nadeau (who, in the SCIST Hearing, kept insisting that the central issue is one of science and of the validity of census data, rather than one of whether or not it is morally right to penalize a person for refusing to complete and remit the long-form census). UPDATE: Josee Legault used Bullshit Submission #7 in her July 30th, 2010 column in the Montreal Gazette.

This argument is not only bullshit, but hypocritical bullshit.  The fact that evidence exists, and that it is accurate, does not mean that the evidence is relevant.  A person’s belief that one ought not to eat an apple each day does not necessarily imply the existence of an ideology that makes one wilfully blind to the fact that apples are red.   An alternative implication is that the colour of an apple has no bearing on whether or not one ought to eat an apple every day.  Similarly, the (pretty much undeniable) fact that making the census voluntary will introduce sampling bias that will narrow the usefulness of the census does not necessarily imply that it is wrong to make the census voluntary.  The effect of voluntariness upon the usefulness of the census is a matter of metaphysics and epistemology; a matter of what IS.  Given what IS, the question of what the government OUGHT therefore to do is a question of ethics and politics, not of metaphysics and epistemology.

“Ideology” is a matter of ethics and politics, not a matter of metaphysics and epistemology; it is a matter of what OUGHT to be, not of what IS.  Even if both sides of the debate were to agree that making the long-form census voluntary will cause sampling bias that will narrow the usefulness of the long form census, it is no more and no less “ideological” to argue that the government therefore OUGHT NOT to make the census voluntary, then to argue that the government therefore OUGHT to make the census voluntary.  In other words, everyone who has an opinion about whether the government OUGHT to make the census voluntary and of narrowed use has an “ideology”.  It is utter bullshit to say that “ideology” has trumped “reason” if one believes the government OUGHT to make a decision that narrows the usefulness of the census, but that “ideology” has nothing to do with it if one believes that the government OUGHT NOT to make a decision that narrows the usefulness of the census.

In short: no matter which side of the debate argues that their opponent’s stance is an example of ideology triumphing over reason, the argument is utter bullshit.

Conclusion

Lying beneath all of these bullshit arguments is a rather simple debate that nobody wants to have in public: Should the government distribute wealth and political influence to individuals in accordance with each individual’s race, sex, religion, nationality, mother tongue, income, wealth et cetera, or should the government be blind to such individual differences and stick to the business of defending the lives, liberty, and property of all individuals, irrespective of their race, sex, religion, nationality, mother tongue, income, wealth et cetera?  In other words, those complaining about being forced, under penalty of fine or imprisonment, to pigeon-hole themselves into man-made collectives see the issue as a matter of individualism versus collectivism; as a matter of government as keeper of peace, order and good government among adult Canadians, versus government as daddy of a Canadian family that shares wealth equally, regardless of which individuals earn it.

Those collectivists opposing the lifting of penalties for non-completion of the long form census also see the issue as a matter of individualism versus collectivism.  However, they do not want anyone to know that that is the issue in question.   They are happier obfuscating the ethical-political issue with yammerings-on about the metaphysical and epistemological issue of the effect of voluntariness upon the validity of census data (which is, in reality, a non-issue, because it is simply true that making the census voluntary will introduce sampling bias, thereby making the census a picture of the nature of people who choose to fill out the census, rather than a picture of the nature of the entire Canadian population).

This debate is not happening for one reason: the majority of both Liberals and Conservatives want to be treated as children of a collectivist daddy government.  They are, in other words, on the same side of the real issue involved (i.e., individualism versus collectivism).  However, there is nonetheless inter-party disagreement about making the long form census voluntary because, unlike the Liberals, the Conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too.  To individualists – many of who, for years, have misguidedly treated the Conservatives as allies in a war for individual freedom – the Conservatives want to be seen as defenders of rugged individualism.  The Conservatives want individualists to believe that, if the Conservatives only had a majority, there would be a big anti-collectivism, pro-individualism revolution.   However, to the majority of Conservatives – who are not pro-individualist but who are pro-theocracy types; ‘cops can do no wrong’ types; ‘bring back the good ole’ days’ types; ‘gimme the common sense, dumbed-down Homer Simpson version’ types; and so on – the Conservatives want to appear as the defender of the status quo; the “natural governing party”; a party that twiddles with the fine tuning knobs of government, but that never touches the big dial.  Thus the bullshit Conservative use of the words “principle” and “principled” in the context of a decision so utterly unprincipled (e.g., long form census voluntary, short form census mandatory) that even Conservatives can hardly keep a straight face when they use such words.

So here is what is going to happen.  If the Conservatives fold on this issue, it will prove a lose-lose for them electorally: they will have lost this tussle over the census, and will be seen by the pro-individualists, to whom they implicitly are pandering, as cowardly turn-coats; as lacking the desire, will or courage to stand up for individual freedom; and as having lacked any viable plan for proposing and delivering their long form census decision to the public.  The mooching egalitarians will continue to point to income disparities between those who produce more and those who produce less, blaming such disparities on racism, sexism, and any other collectivist ism they find to meet with general public’s disgust.  The mooching researchers and central planners will continue to stick the taxpayer with a good part of the cost of their research, most of which will be research devised to support claims that there is a problem that government ought to fix, at taxpayer expense.  Producers will see less and less wisdom in assuming the risk and burden of producing and, in increasing numbers, they will jump on the moocher-looter bandwagon instead of continuing to pull it.

If, instead, the Conservatives dig in their heels, the public will simply grow bored of reading about the issue, and lefty writers who continue to carp on about it will have their readership rolling their eyes (to the general public, this whole issue is totally fringe, so dwelling on it makes any writer look out of touch).   When the voluntary 2011 census rolls out next year, the left will again start writing columns about the voluntary nature of the census: some will write that the Harper government has made it worthless; others will implicitly campaign that it is in every moocher’s and looter’s interest to fill out the census, and that it is every Canadian’s “civic duty” to fill it out.  Response rates will be much lower than 80%.  The general public will get its first true datum – response rate – concerning how many Canadians think the census is something they should be paying for and spending their time filling out.   As a result of a low rate of public interest in filling out the long form, the public will be much more willing to agree that it’s time to get rid of the long form census altogether.   An actual, non-bullshitty debate about individualism versus the collectivist purposes of the long form census might actually be held and debated on its merits.  And, if opponents of a mandatory long form census (Conservative or other) remain in power until 2016, there might no longer be a long form census as soon as 2016.  As I wrote a few days ago, the long form census – a weapon used by racist egalitarians and other collectivists to make the government take more money from those who earn it, and give it to those who do not – will be destroyed.  It will be somewhat harder for the collectivists to blame differences in wealth and income upon false claims of racism, sexism and the like.  The collectivists will have to fall back on being more truthful; on saying that they simply want what others have earned, and are willing to beg, steal, and vote to get it.  The mooching researchers, academics, businesses who use data of the kind collected in the long form census will start paying for the data they get, like everyone else does.  And those of us who want our freedom – who honestly believe that they are members of only one race: the human race – will have won a significant battle against collectivism, though certainly not the war.

Pursuant to the instruction of Industry Minister Tony Clement, on June 28, 2010, Statistics Canada announced, in part, that:

The 2011 Census will consist of the same eight questions that appeared on the 2006 Census short-form questionnaire. It will be conducted in May 2011.

The information previously collected by the long-form census questionnaire will be collected as part of the new voluntary National Household Survey (NHS). This questionnaire will cover most of the same topics as the 2006 Census, but will exclude the question asking for consent to release personal census information after 92 years as this is only required by the census. The NHS questions will be made available by the end of July.

The National Household Survey will be conducted within four weeks of the May 2011 Census and will include approximately 4.5 million households. (emphasis added)

The one somewhat unconvincing reason given by Clement for the government’s decision to make the long form optional was explained in a July 13, 2010 media release by Clement which stated, in part:

The government does not believe it is appropriate to force Canadians to divulge detailed personal information under threat of prosecution. For this reason, we have introduced changes for the 2011 Census.

The rationale for objecting to lifting the mandatory completion of the long form are numerous. According to the CBC, the long-form of the census includes questions about religious affiliation every 10 years (2011 being the next such year) and religious groups complain that they need the data to deliver programs and services and to track changes the “religious landscape”. The Star reports that Canadian Medical Association journal needs long-form information for health care planning. In short, a good number of private associations like getting free data, and are quite happy to have the federal government threaten Canadians with fines and jail time in order to get it.

Others, not focusing upon the use to which census data is put, complain instead that taking a gun from the heads of those asked to fill out the long form will undermine the quality of the data. For example, the Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner, and a host of statisticians about whom he writes, express concern that:

…the switch from a mandatory to a voluntary form will bias the data in many ways and increasing the number of households that get the long form won’t correct the biases. It will just produce more numbers. That are biased. And not comparable with past census data.

Toronto Dominion Bank senior economist Drummond has complained that if the long form is optional, white middle-class individuals will submit a greater percentage of the long-forms, leaving minorities, aboriginals and the very wealthy under-represented in the data. He says that, eventually, the data would be useless.

Implied in such complaints is an underlying belief that the data collected with the long form should be used by government. So, what exactly is the nature of the data that so many are clamouring for, and to what purposes can a government put such data?

In 2006 – the year in which the most recent long-form census was sent out to Canadians – talk radio host Robert Metz described in great and illuminating detail the questions set out in the 2006 long form, which he refused to file. Metz is the founder of the pro-free-market Freedom Party of Ontario and a long-time opponent of the census. In his account (which is a must-read for anyone weighing in on the issue of continuing to force people to fill out the long form), he explains that the long form of the census divides Canadians into discrete collectives distinguished by race and wealth:

None of the census questions relate to any proper function of government or of its proper relationship to the citizen: the administration of justice, maintenance of an objective court system, or the function of the military. They’re all about genetic make-up and wealth redistribution.

Many opponents of the plan to make the long form optional take the position that the long form does not take too long to fill out. Others, like Liberal Party industry critique Marc Garneau argue that:

“…no one has gone to jail over the census, at least as far back as 1981. Only about 50-60 people are charged over each census, with about six having to pay fines”.

Metz’s account anticipates that argument, and responds as follows:

But again, fines and jail sentences are a secondary issue, particularly when rarely enforced. The real significance of Canada’s Census lies not in the seemingly senseless questions being asked, nor in the threats of penalties directed against us, but in what we are being told about our collective future. Sadly, if the racists and other collectivists who design and administer the Canadian Census have their way, Canadians can expect a continued reversion from a productive society — which survives by consensual trade in which wealth is earned by productivity — towards an uncivilized jungle inhabited by warring tribes forced to segregate and divide themselves according to a genetic code.

Now, before the reader rebuts that Metz, an unflinching advocate for individual freedom and free markets, might be misrepresenting the purpose of the collection of such data, consider the statement issued last Tuesday by Armine Yalnizyan, an economist with the collectivist Canadian Centre for Policy Initiatives:

The long form is a critical tool that helps business, communities and governments decide where you need your money…

Without this information, we are all punching in the dark. Without this information, we cannot properly allocate our resources. The people who will pay most dearly are those who are already most vulnerable: the poor, aboriginal communities, recent immigrants and racial minorities.

Yalnizyan essentially agrees with Metz about the intended use of the data is to redistribute wealth to collectives distinguished by race. To conclude that those not getting “our” resources (i.e., government subsidies) thereby “pay”, it is necessary first to assume that the money taxed out of the pockets of those who earn it is, in fact, money that is owned by, and owed to, Canadians collectively. Characterizing collectives of individuals defined almost exclusively by race as those who “pay”, Yalnizyan confirms Metz’s summation that the collectives in question are racial collectives; that the census is a tool to impose and facilitate tribalism (a state of affairs in which government governs not individuals, but collectives distinguished by race, sex, nationality, et cetera).

Whether they realize it as explicitly as does Yalnizyan, the opponents of making the long-form optional are condemning not merely privacy and the freedom not to provide information, but also the individualism and free markets that the long form data is ultimately intended to undermine. Whether the opponents want unpaid-for data or consistent statistical history, their objections are in the service of the most vile form of collectivism – racism – and of that well-known toxin to any economy, central planning.

It would give me great comfort were I to believe, as Liberal Party industry critic Marc Garneau somehow does, that the Harper Conservatives are motivated by a desire to put an end to central planning:

By attacking the census, this government is throwing us in the dark on immigration-related issues. They’re doing the same for aboriginals, visible minorities and the disabled, and for those arguing for the need for pay equity…That’s what the Conservatives’ endgame is here -to permanently hobble the government’s ability to enforce legislation and deliver social programs aimed at our most vulnerable.

To be sure, the economic case against the practicality of central planning is as damning as the moral case against it (the immoral being the impractical, such will always be the case, in the long term, as knowledge grows). But, alas, I do not share Garneau’s belief that the Conservatives are using privacy concerns as a cover story for a secret agenda to end central planning. The painful evidence is everywhere about us that the Harper Conservatives have no particular affinity for free markets, and no particular opposition to central planning. Billions of dollars borrowed by the federal Conservatives to bail out or nationalize private companies – after having campaigned against such deficit spending; cuts to the rate of the inherently single-rate, less invasive GST instead of to the progressive rates of income taxes; soccer-mom hand-outs at taxpayer expense; quiet and countless transfers of billions across little community groups like Youth for Christ of Langley, BC: all stand as the best evidence that the Conservatives’ only agenda is to do whatever it thinks it needs to do to stay in power.

Moreover, such Conservative actions have been backed also by Stephen Harper’s unequivocal condemnation of free markets; a condemnation not made in public to lefties and righties alike, but to a closed-door conservatives-only audience in 2009 at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. In that speech, he condemned liberals for thinking government to have a role in all economic decisions, and condemned “libertarians” for thinking government to have no role in economic decisions. Like so many on the left, his argument was founded upon the falsehood that the west’s economies are free markets, and that it was the alleged free market – rather than fraud, credit inflation and government mandated loans to the uncreditworthy – that led to the current economic crisis. Playing second fiddle to no Keynesian, Harper made it clear he thinks individuals are all irresponsible children that need governmental parenting from cradle to grave:

Now, I know the libertarian – and I am sure there are a few in this room that define themselves that way – the libertarian says, and it’s a perspective that I have a lot of sympathy for, let individuals exercise full freedom and take full responsibility for their actions.

The problem with this notion is that conservatives know from experience that people who act irresponsibly in the name of freedom are almost never willing to take responsibility for their actions. I don’t speak *just* of individuals who may have ruined their lives through drugs or crimes or whatever, but look at Wall Street, the great free-enterprise financial institutions who wanted so much freedom from government regulation. They were the first in line for government support when the recession hit. And now I read, I read yesterday, that now some of them are saying they don’t like that this government money may limit their freedom.

These are not the words of a closet capitalist. They are the anti-capitalistic (i.e., anti-free-market) words of a man who, first and foremost, likes the Prime Minister’s chair.

It is true, in my view, that the Conservatives do not at all care about the quality of the data collected in the long form of the Census. And I would quite agree with any leftist who said that the Harper Conservatives, in fact, have no real need or desire for census data: I sincerely doubt they will use it to identify spending priorities, and I suspect that the only reason they did not announce scrapping it altogether was to ensure that the various people wanting free data (including Conservative-friendly religious organizations) could not argue that they have been deprived of it (they are left, instead, making sleep-inducing technical arguments about statistical accuracy, and other things that few voters care about).

Though it pains me to say it, the decision to eliminate the mandatory completion of the long form is not founded upon a secret Conservative agenda to end central planning. It is, in reality, nothing more than an effort to feed a bit of red meat to that slender, politically homeless demographic that nowadays finds itself so uncomfortable associating itself with a Conservative Party so bent upon managing the economy, pandering to the more radical religious elements, and setting itself up as a hand of god that will deliver us from such evils as the decision to smoke a bit of cannabis. For years, the conservatives have dangled the carrot in front of that constituency, winking and smirking – but never voicing – a false promise to deliver a pro-free-market, pro-individualism revolution. The mandatory long-form is a long-term gripe of that constituency and making it optional – without eliminating it – is only the latest half-hearted attempt to maintain whatever party loyalty there remains among those who cherish individual freedom and capitalism.

I do not think the Conservatives will gain or maintain much loyalty among those who cherish freedom and capitalism, but neither do I think they have much to lose by taking the step they have taken (unless they commit the cardinal sin of, again, reversing themselves to fend off the Liberals and other collectivists). Nonetheless, making the long form optional accomplishes something more important for conservatives and non-conservatives alike. I anticipate relatively few people will volunteer to spend their time filling out an optional long-form census and, if that ends up being the case, the Conservatives will at least unintentionally have struck a blow against that most destructive and dehumanizing form of collectivism, racism.

In the comments section of the blog post about the Rahn Curve, I essentially ‘promised’ a video response. The argument below may be a bit more precise, but I did in fact prepare a video in which I opine extemporaneously upon the same subject discussed in this post. For those who would rather watch and listen than read, I include that video response below:

There should be little argument that the Center’s video is being presented by an organization that wants the world to view it as advocating individual freedom. Were that not the case, I sincerely doubt that the “Center for Freedom and Prosperity” would bother mentioning freedom, and would instead call itself something like “The Centre for National Prosperity” (a name that would be more fitting). In the video, the Center’s spokesperson is Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist who is both a founder of the Center, and is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute. The Cato Institute takes its name from Cato’s Letters, which the Institute describes as “…a series of libertarian pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution.” The Cato Institute states that its mission is: “…to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace.” In short, the video is presented by entities that wish to be regarded as advocates of individual freedom.

The purpose of the video is informed by the fact that those providing the video wish to be regarded, in doing so, as advocates of individual freedom. Accordingly, the arguments set out in the video purport to be arguments in defence of individual freedom (hence, of capitalism). So let us turn to the content of the video for the purposes of determining whether the video’s message strengthens or undermines the case for individual freedom.

The video gets off to a bad start. The “Rahn Curve” graph does not disclose what, exactly, is being plotted. The X axis is labeled ambiguously as “Economic Performance”, and the Y axis is labeled just as ambiguously: “Size of Government”. That ambiguous labeling, together with such narrative as “But you the viewer only need to understand one thing”, suggests that the producers of the video are not very concerned with having viewers actually understand the curve, so long as viewers accept the curve as economic proof that government is currently too big. With not too much googling, one can find for oneself the units that the Center thought should be replaced with ambiguous terms. Values on the X axis (which the Center labels “Economic Performance”) are actually: Percentages of Annual Growth in GDP. Values on the Y axis are (which the Center calls “Size of Government”) are: Percentages of Annual GDP that is Spent by Government”.

Mitchell tells the viewer that “economic performance” is maximized when government spending (a.k.a., the “size of government”) is somewhere in the range of 15% to 25% of GDP. He goes on to deliver the video’s take-home message: because U.S. government spending is in the 35% to 40% range, the Rahn curve demonstrates “…that government is too big, and this is reducing prosperity”.

As an aside, I should add that, given that that which is spent by government must first also be taxed by government, it should not be surprising that the Rahn Curve has the same shape as the Laffer Curve. Yet the Rahn Curve is presented to the viewer as though it is a second piece of evidence that there is a right size for government.

There are numerous problems with the Center’s use of the Rahn Curve as a basis for advocating individual freedom. First, consider the implications of an alleged freedom advocate advocating the maximization of annual growth in GDP. GDP growth is not a measure of the increase of any particular individual’s productivity, but of the increase of the productivity of a collective entity: the country, or nation. Because the Center is advocating the maximization of GDP growth as a desired goal, it is implicitly advocating for the interests of a collective (the country, the nation), whether or not such a goal is in the interest of a particular individual. In other words, the Center is necessarily advocating in favour of what utilitarians and other collectivists are prone to calling “the greater good” (“greater”, as in: “of greater importance than the good of any one individual”).

One cannot seriously expect to found the advocacy of individual freedom upon maximization of something that designed to serve “the greater good”; the good of the collective. When one uses the economic benefit of the greater good as the basis for arguing that individual freedom is desirable, one instantly undermines the cause of individual freedom. Every instance of individual freedom that leads to an economic result in which the collective does less well than it otherwise would have done but for the individual freedom serves as an argument against individual freedom. Does the use of marijuana, or alcohol, or opiates decrease growth in the collective productivity of the country? If so, then the result of alleged individual freedom advocates holding up collective productivity growth as a desired goal implies that some of the revenue spent by government should be used to force individuals not to use such substances. The violation of liberty is thereby held up as somehow being consistent with, or even necessary for, the defence of individual freedom.

Second, the assertion that there is an ideal size of government, together with the assumption that the size of government is properly measured by spending as a percentage of GDP, implies that it is ideal for the government to grow – more precisely, that it is ideal for government spending to grow — as GDP grows. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity having as one of its aims greater productivity, the Center is, ironically, advocating the continuous growth of government (assuming the economy continues to grow). So, if one starts with the libertarian notion that “the best government is the government that governs least” (i.e., that smaller government is necessarily more compatible with individual freedom than is bigger government), one is left with the self-defeating spectacle of libertarians implicitly arguing for ever-growing government; a growth allegedly serving “the greater good”.

Worse, the Center provides us with not even an attempt to explain why productivity growth leads to a situation in which government needs more money. If one individual’s efforts increase the productivity of the country, it does not follow that that productivity increase causes a state of affairs in which defending life, liberty, and property becomes more expensive. The notion that government spending should increase as a percentage of GDP is a welfare statist conception, founded upon the notion that so long as the percentage of wealth stolen from the public does not change, there is no harm done: the amount of wealth transferred from the increasingly productive to the under-productive or non-productive can increase as the economy grows. Such wealth redistribution, being accomplished by a gun pointed by government at the head of every producer, is neither an incentive for production nor consistent with the role of government in a free society: defending every individual’s life, liberty, and property.

Third, government spending is, itself, an ambiguous concept. There is simply no way that “government spending” per se, is necessarily good or necessarily bad for productivity growth. Law enforcement is not, per se, good or bad for productivity. For example, the supposedly ideal 20% recommended in the video could be spent on defending every individual’s life, liberty and property. Trade requires that a person’s property not be obtained without his consent so, clearly, if government pays officers to ensure that nobody obtains another person’s property by such means as theft or fraud, productivity will be higher than were government to allow thefts and frauds to occur. But productivity will be undermined if government uses exactly the same amount of money to pay officers to force stores or factories to close on Sundays or religious holidays, or to seize the property of milk farmers who sell milk directly to consumers instead of complying with a law requiring them to buy quotas and sell their milk only to a milk marketing board.

As another example, the government can spend $1.8M Canadian tax dollars to pay a year’s salary to approximately 6 Canadian judges who will try and convict murderers, rapists, and thieves. Alternatively, the government can spend that $1.8M Canadian tax dollars to buy a painting comprised of three vertical stripes (“Voice of Fire“). The arrest and conviction of criminals will facilitate productivity and trade, but the purchase — by a non-productive entity such as government – of three lines on a canvas, will not increase productivity. To the contrary, the government’s purchase of the painting may well reduce productivity by taking money out of the hands of producers (i.e., taxpayers) who would have used the money as capital with which to facilitate more valuable production.

Fourth, in a political context, individual freedom means: not having ones life, liberty, or property taken without ones consent. Individual freedom is not a reference to government using force (i.e., laws, backed by guns) in an attempt to maximize the increase of the collective productivity of the country’s inhabitants. Individual freedom is not a reference to government using force to increase tax revenues and government spending when the country’s productivity increases. Individual freedom does not refer to government using force to redistribute wealth from those who produce it to those who do not. All such uses of force in the economy are instances of the very coercion from which the government is supposed to be protecting individuals. They are instances of the very crimes for which the government rightly arrests and imprisons people. They are evidence that the government now regards itself as being above the law.

The whole notion of “smaller government”, similarly, has nothing per se to do with individual freedom. Individual freedom depends upon the quality of government, not the quantity of it. Individual freedom is not a function of how big or small a government is, per se, but of how effective government is in defending every individual’s life, liberty or property; how effective it is in ensuring that no person is deprived of his life, liberty or property without his consent. A small government that does not defend life, liberty and property is less desirable than a big government that limits itself to doing so. Therefore it makes no sense to assert that there is a given percentage of GDP that the government should take and spend (i.e., it makes no sense to advocate that there is a right size for government based upon economic figures). A government’s expenditures will properly depend upon such things as how much crime there is; how many thieves, rapists, and murderers there are, et cetera. A largely moral and peaceful society with a given GDP will be much less expensive to govern than a largely immoral and violent one with the same GDP.

Now, if neither the alleged size of government nor the quantitative arguments of economics has anything to do with individual freedom, why do many libertarians spend so much time calling for “less government”? Why do libertarians base so many of their arguments upon the attainment of economic goals? The answer to both questions is rooted in the fact that economics deals not with the qualities of things, but with the quantities of things; it deals explicitly not with right and wrong, but with more and less. And, because economics deals with quantities instead of with qualities, an economic argument gives libertarians a rallying cry to attract individuals whose qualitative opinions about government differ greatly, or are even in opposition.

For example, quantitative economic arguments in support of “small government” allow libertarians to attract religious anti-abortionists who want to take away government’s ability to fund abortions, while also attracting anti-religious pro-choicers who want government to stop funding (or to stop providing tax breaks for) religions that oppose a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. The result is a libertarian group that claims to advocate individual freedom though its members cannot agree about whether doctors who provide abortion services should be protected from those who bomb abortion clinics, or whether such doctors ought to be given the death penalty.

The libertarian’s conscious or unconscious attraction to economics is founded upon the hope that if you give people common quantitative conclusions with which they can agree, they will voluntarily stick their heads in the sand, or keep their mouths shut, with respect to the qualitative commitments that make their fellow libertarians their political enemies. And so we have libertarians who rally behind the anti-abortion Ron Paul, a proponent of Austrian economics, joining with libertarians who rallied behind – and continue to praise – pro-choice libertarians like Murray Rothbard who, similarly, was a proponent of Austrian economics.

In discussing libertarians, I do not imply that I restrict my criticism – concerning the use of economics to justify individual freedom, or to bring people together despite their substantive opposition – to libertarians or members of Libertarian parties. The same misguided attraction to economics imperils other political parties. For example, in a recent interview of blogger Andrew Lawton by Libertas Post, Lawton took the libertarian position that health care should be entirely privatized. Lawton is anti-abortion and he considers himself a “social conservative”. Yet he told Libertas Post that “at the end of the day, I think the most important issues that we have to work on as conservatives are the issues that we agree on, which are economic issues”. Like the big L libertarians, the big C conservatives attempt to use economics as a no-conflict zone between warring factions who somehow think it desirable, for electoral ends, to work together though their desired governmental ends are mutually exclusive.

However, unlike libertarians and Libertarians, conservatives and Conservatives do not seek to be seen as advocates for individual freedom, and generally do not hold themselves out to be such. Accordingly, trying to unite people with economics does little to undermine the case for individual freedom when it is conservatives who engage in such folly. If anything, it undermines conservatism.

In contrast, when libertarians – holding themselves out to be proponents of individual freedom — use economic arguments to bring together individuals who oppose one another on qualitative matters (e.g., anti-abortion vs. pro-choice), each instance of disagreement on such fundamental qualitative matters — among alleged advocates of individual freedom — serves to convince the public that “individual freedom” itself is itself an ambiguous concept; individual freedom itself is undermined.

The prospects for individual freedom would be undermined even more were libertarians — having been drawn together by economic arguments — somehow to win the reigns of governmental power. Returning to the abortion example, when conservatives disagree about abortion, and decide upon a “compromise” law in which women are free to have abortions in the first five months of pregnancy, but in which abortions conducted thereafter are punishable by imprisonment, the wisdom or insanity of the law is attributed to conservativism or to a Conservative party.

In contrast, were a governing libertarian party — a governing party that claims to be comprised of proponents of individual freedom — to adopt the same 5-month law for abortions in order to accomplish the same comprise between its anti-abortionist and pro-choice membership, what would that tell the onlooking public? It would tell the public a range of falsehoods: that “individual freedom is not absolute”; that compromise is, per se, a virtue, and is necessary; that “individual freedom is good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice”; that, ultimately, any argument in favour of individual freedom is flawed; that advocates of individual freedom are “naive” and should be ignored. In short, even were it possible to use economic arguments to unite de facto political opponents to win an election, the winning of the electoral battle would only serve to undermine the cause of individual freedom.

Nothing I have said about economics should be interpreted as a condemnation of economics itself. To the contrary, economics explains a great deal that should be known and that can help producers and consumers make wise choices. However, in a free society, economic choices are made by producers, who trade their respective values consensually. If the economic aim of a government is a free market, the government can ignore economic arguments altogether, and simply ensure that all trades a mutually consensual. Any other economic aim pursued by government (e.g., increasing government revenues and expenditures as the economy grows so as to maximize the productivity growth of the country), with or without economic knowledge, necessarily will involve using force to coerce individuals to part with their values non-consensually.

Accordingly, in a free society, economic arguments are of no use to government except for the identifying instances where an individual’s life, liberty or property is being taken without his consent (e.g., arguments about the nature and effect of fractional reserve banking, monetary inflation, the use of gold as money, et cetera). Any economic argument in favour of government having an economic aim other than a free market serves not to defend individual freedom, but to undermine it.

However, Blatchford writes (or, on radio, speaks) her opinions on non-legal matters (e.g., matters of politics or culture) at times and, in that capacity, she is decidedly weak. Those of her opinions I have heard or read are of the Joe six-pack “it just seems to me” or “I feel” variety, rather than being the result of a applying any consistent and coherent set of philosophical principles to the facts of a matter.

That weakness did not stop her from flashing her press credentials to take an unwarranted swipe at unpaid blog writers who attended and reported upon G20 protests and who think that they deserved to be treated with the same dignity and respect as paid reporters. Indeed, that weakness, in the face of the relative quality of the opinion pieces being written by some bloggers about the G20 mess, may well have given her reason to take such a swipe. In her column last Saturday, which ran with the headline “Self-anointed G20 ‘journalists’ should get real”, she whined that:

…just as you are not a physician or a lawyer merely because you say you are, much as you may want to believe it so, neither are you a journalist because you and your friends say you are or because your “writings” appear on a website.
[...]
But let us not pretend that these [bloggers who attended and reported on the G20 protests] are working journalists or that they are the equivalent. They aren’t, for the most part.

Their work isn’t subject to editing or lawyering or the ethical code which binds, for example, the writers at The Globe. The websites on which they appear don’t belong, as do most reputable newspapers in this province, to the Ontario Press Council, a body which hears complaints against traditional journalists and publications.

Ah yes, the mournful call of the 21st century newspaper writer. With news aggregators and google news making editors neither necessary nor desirable, with blogging infrastructure available for free to all, and with opinions being like a**holes (“everyone’s got one”), paid writing gigs may soon be a thing of the past. Blatchford, still clinging to one such gig, apparently is left unable to resist including, in her self-admitted and obviously “random thoughts”, some snobby sour grapes about unpaid bloggers and vloggers.

It would have been fine for Blatchford to write that those who work for newspapers sometimes get access to places that others do not because such paid writers are, in a sense, pre-screened. Some stranger writing as “Raging Banana” is not someone who, by merely being a writer of a blog, should be trusted as much as Christie Blatchford not repeatedly to yell “No Justice No Peace” at a political party dinner function, or to snap photos of the athletes’ private bits at the end of a game in the locker room. And one is rather unlikely to take a violent run at a world leader at the G20 if one is writing for a national newspaper. If one is writing for a newspaper, one has little chance of remaining employed if one acts in such a fashion, and such an anti-wingnut check and balance does not burden the unpaid blogger.

However, to the detriment of the many fine bloggers who are not wingnuts, Blatchford instead made the argument that she and other paid writers are somehow a cut above those who do not get paid to write. One who is paid to write for the Globe and Mail, Blatchford implies, thereby gains the status of a journalist, even if one writes little more than insulting nonsense. Conversely, she advises, bloggers – no matter how good their work – are not journalists; they produce not writings, but mere “writings” (in quotations). As a writer of “opinion”, the declaration of such a ridiculous credentialist standard for being a journalist puts Blatchford’s own credibility into question.

A writer of opinion, to qualify as a journalist, should know that a thing is what it is regardless of whether it is recognized to be such by a law, a bureaucracy, a guild, or an association. Obviously, there were physicians before there were whole colleges comprised of physicians, and before said colleges issued official declarations that someone is a physician. There were lawyers long before there were law societies (try to imagine a society comprised of nobody) that issued licenses to exempt the licensees from punishment for daring to sell informed opinions about the law. Likewise, there were journalists before there were press councils and schools of journalism (unless nobody was ever qualified to be the first teacher of journalism, which would explain a lot).

Blatchford’s obviously self-serving swipe at bloggers and vloggers puts her firmly into the Wizard of Oz school of thought:

SCARECROW: You promised us real things — a real…brain!

WIZARD: Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth — or slinks through slimy seas has a brain! From the rock-bound coast of Maine to the Sun…. oh – oh, no — – ah – Well, be that as it may. Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning — where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts — and with no more brains than you have…. But! They have one thing you haven’t got! A diploma!

Presented by the Wiz with a Th.D. in “thinkology”, the scarecrow proceeds to recite Pythagoras’ Theorem, as though the diploma gave him the ability to do so.

In my view, the quality of Blatchford’s opinion writing would not suffer were she no longer to work for a newspaper that was a member of a press council, were she not to have the teeth taken out of her writing by timid or partisan editors (assuming her writings sometimes are toothy), and were her diplomas (assuming she has at least one) somehow revoked by the institutions that issued them. However, if I am wrong, Blatchford is but a few scraps of paper, and one notice of dismissal, from singing along with the Scarecrow.

The men are not in an Arabic country. They are not in a European city. They are in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, and the police arresting them are bound by the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Readers of this blog will know that I do not believe in anything for which there is no physical evidence. There is no evidence supporting the existence of an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient being. A belief in such a being is a matter not of rationality, but of faith.

So, in what I consider to be an ideal free society – in a society the laws of which are wholly consistent with reality, reason, and rational self-interest – is the conduct of the Dearborn police a proper response to the conduct of the four men? My answer is an unequivocal “No”. This case provides a brilliant example of why governance must be strictly rational; why a government must entirely ignore claims based upon faith if those who have faith are to be free; why “freedom of religion” requires secular governance.

In the absence of people willing to provide for his needs, a man’s survival requires that he choose to think, and that he thinks logically about the evidence provided to his senses about the nature of reality. If he lands on a desert island, he must locate water and make it drinkable; he must locate food and obtain it; etc. If he is to survive, he must not be deprived of the values (e.g., the food and water) that he has created or obtained by means of his rational thought and action. He must hold his own life – not his death – as his highest value; his own happiness – not his misery, suffering, and poverty – as his highest purpose; and rationality – not wishing and praying – as his only effective means of achieving his purpose. And, if a man is to survive amongst others, he must not be deprived of his control over his values: nobody must be permitted to take his life, to restrict his liberty, or to take his property, without his consent. Accordingly, to ensure that he is not so deprived of his life, liberty, and property, he chooses others to defend his life, liberty and property from others who would take such things without his consent.

The result is not that he necessarily thinks rationally, survives or achieves happiness. The result is that he is free to think and act rationally so that he can maximize his chances of surviving and achieving his own happiness.

It is not the government’s role to force him to think rationally, to ensure that he survives, or to ensure that he achieves his own happiness. It is not the government’s role to force him to abandon reason and simply believe in and obey – as a matter of faith – the alleged word of an alleged god; or to require him to sacrifice himself for others. In a free society, governed rationally, every man is free to live a life according to the beliefs he holds as a matter of faith so long as he does not deprive another person of the person’s life, liberty, or property without the person’s consent. And, so long as the man of faith does not end another person’s life, restrict another person’s liberty, or take another person’s property without the person’s consent, he is free to profess his faith, and to persuade others to discover and share it.

Should the police have attended where the four men were distributing the Gospel of John? Possibly, in defence of the four men: if anyone was preventing those four men from offering their booklets peacefully to oncoming individuals – and I do not know of any evidence that the men were being so prevented – then most certainly. And, in such a case, the proper response of the police would be to use force to prevent everyone from attempting forcibly to prevent the men from doing so…whether or not the wrongdoers were yelling “Allahu Akbar”. Otherwise, the appropriate decision of the police would have been to do nothing at all.

Within one minute after the peaceful arrival of two Canadians at the Niagara Falls constituency office of Canada’s Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, a police officer arrives on motorcycle. He says he has been called to the scene. He asks that the video camera recording him be turned off. When the camera person refuses to do so, the officer – shockingly – asserts that the camera filming him is “interpreted as a weapon”.

Clearly, it appears the officer has been called by the constituency office of Canada’s Justice Minister, because he was not called by the two Canadians attempting to visit it. He knocks on the locked door of the Justice Minister’s constituency office. The staffer unlocks the door that she had locked when she saw the two Canadians approaching the office in their car. One of the Canadians – Jacob Hunter – says he will not remain outside the office, because – being a taxpayer-funded office of a member of Parliament – it is a public space. The police officers turns, smacks a video or phone device out of Mr. Hunter’s hand, presses him back by the throat area, then sweeps behind Mr. Hunter and slaps on the cuffs claiming – falsely – that Mr. Hunter has assaulted him.

Who is Mr. Hunter? Mr. Hunter is a Canadian opposed to the prosecution of people who use Cannabis. Mr. Hunter uses Cannabis pursuant to a Canadian-government-recognized license to do so. He has, in recent weeks, sat peacefully and quite legally in the constituency offices of one or more elected members of Parliament. He has, in those offices, quite legally rolled marijuana cigarettes (though he has been polite enough not to smoke them indoors). He has done so to protest the extradition of anti-prohibitionist Marc Emery to the USA (Justice Minister Rob Nicholson surrendered Emery to the USA unconditionally on May 10, 2010), and to oppose violations of the liberty of Canadians in general.

Why did the police arrive only 1 minute or so after Mr. Hunter’s car pulled into the parking lot of Mr. Nicholson’s constituency office? How could they possibly have responded so quickly? I leave the answers to such questions to whatever sound, honest and diligent minds remain in Canada’s journalistic community.

Why did the police officer do to Mr. Hunter what he did to Mr. Hunter? Why did he pretend that Mr. Hunter had assaulted him, as a pretext for arresting Mr. Hunter?

Why does anyone pretend that things are not getting as bad as they are getting under the Conservative government?

I write this not as a socialist: I am a capitalist. I write this not as a bleeding heart: I seek justice, not mercy.

And just as the tens of billions currently borrowed each year by Conservatives is not capitalism, the throat-clenching grasp of police urged by our government to de-humanize and bear false witness against Canadians is neither justice nor mercy. And, apparently, it is on-call to respond, at a moment’s notice, to the Justice Minister’s staff.

Free speech? We’re on the razor’s edge, my fellow Canadians. And that implies that we’re also upon the razor’s edge between freedom and oppression.

Please watch this video, and share it with the media and with your friends.

Rahim Jaffer, abortion, the Toronto Gay Pride parade – these three issues have recently involved the Conservative government in heated debate. There is a common thread to these seemingly unrelated issues. They all illustrate what happens to a conservative government when it increases, rather than decreases, the size of the state.

I agree with Flanagan’s if-thens (i.e., ‘if they hadn’t been funding such things, this scandal would never have arisen’), but Flanagan errs in identifying the “size” of government as the problem. That argument is essentially the libertarian one, derived from anarchist Henry David Thoreau:

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all” (from “Civil Disobedience”)

There are all sorts of people, with conflicting philosophies, who call themselves “libertarian” and who band together with others who call themselves “libertarian”. What they all have in common, to one extent or another, in certain ways or in others, is a desire for “less government”. Yet, though many libertarians gleefully chant that “That government is best which governs least”, many intentionally stop short, and blank out with the rest of what Thoreau said: “it finally amounts to this” – no government at all. Thoreau was correct: if less government is better, that necessarily implies that anarchy is best.

Tom Flanagan is no anarchist. Like other libertarians, he has mis-identified the essential issue. Ask yourself whether you would say one gram is “too much” or “too little” when it comes to “the stuff in your bowl”. If it is a gram of stew, most hungry people (who like stew) will say one gram is “too little”. If it is rat poison, all but the suicidal will say one gram is “too much”. The essential issue is not how much is in the bowl, but what is in the bowl.

If government is properly defined (e.g., loosely: a group of citizens authorized by the governed to use force and the threat of force to prevent persons from taking any other person’s life, liberty or property without the latter’s consent) then one can start talking about how much government is too much government. However, if “government” means nothing more than: “a group of citizens authorized by the governed to use force and the threat of force to ensure compliance with laws made in a duly elected legislature”, then talk of “too much” or “too little” government is meaningless.

The Conservatives’ problem is not a matter of quantity, but of quality. Like all Canadian ‘governments’ before them, the Conservatives fancy it to be the role of government to use force to prevent individuals from making ‘bad’ decisions – or to force them to make ‘good’ decisions – even when those decisions do not involve the violation of anyone’s life, liberty, or property (e.g., merely self-destructive acts, like using drugs to avoid facing and dealing with ones own responsibilities or problems). In other words: the Conservatives have assumed a parenting role, instead of assuming the peace and order role that they ought to be assuming: defending every adult individual’s freedom to make, for themselves, both good and bad choices that do not involve non-consensual conduct.

In the cases of Jaffer, Abortion, and Pride, the Harper Conservatives took property from those who earned it – without the consent of those who earned it – and gave or loaned the money to those who did not earn it. That is the very sort of conduct for which a government imprisons people. The gang we have now – like all of the gangs we have gotten since 1867 – masquerading as a government, in reality fancies government itself to be above the law.

In the end, the issue isn’t “less government” or “more government”. As always, the political issue is consent. Specifically, the Conservatives are taking money from people who earn it, and without the consent of those who earn it, and handing the money to those who did not earn it: they are stepping outside the role of government, and into the role of organized criminals. Accordingly, the Conservatives’ more fundamental error is one of identification: a failure to identify the nature of a “government”, and to distinguish it from the nature of “elected criminal organization”

First, the lion’s share of people who want religion mixed with government – a minority in Canada – are *already* voting conservative. McDonald’s book won’t give any social conservative voter more ballots.

Second, Nicholls’ description of Harper in the 1997-2002 period (when Gerry says he knew Harper), is pretty much the description that anyone would have given Harper in that same period:

During all the time I knew him, he never displayed an ounce of zealotry. He never even talked about religion. He did, however, talk a lot about the intersection of religion and politics. And his views in those days would probably shock Marci McDonald.

Harper did not have much affinity for social conservatives. He viewed them as “culturally isolated” and a dwindling political force in Canada. That’s why he also believed a conservative political party would be successful only if it talked less about social and moral issues, and more about economic and fiscal issues. In other words, he was a libertarian.

But alas: people change. Religion in particular tends to become more attractive to many people when their children are entering their teens and making scary choices (Harper’s eldest lad is that age, and Harper has expressed concern that his children will increasingly come into contact with drugs in their teenage years). Religion is also more attractive to people once they are entering the last third or quarter of their life (Harper is 51). Harper is a member of the Alliance church, and is a church-goer. Harper fits the demographic.

Of course, I cannot know why any particular stranger – I don’t know Harper personally – chooses to hold on to any arbitrary (i.e., not founded on physical evidence) belief. I have observed, like many others, that some people just can not deal with the reality that you only get one shot at life. Such a person, considering his mortality, considers also that his life is not the one he wanted and hoped for when he was younger. To cope with the disappointment – disappointment that, for many, is crushing – he holds onto a belief like a lifeline: that he will have a non-physical afterlife in which existence in infinite, effortless, and blissful. And it is precisely because that arbitrary belief functions as a lifeline that it is regarded by many as the greatest of sins to cause such a person to lose his faith. It is equated with murder: death by reality.

But I digress. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Harper’s belief in a God, or the influence of religion in his decision making because….

3. If it barks and wags it’s tail, you can call it a cat all you like, and it won’t change the fact that it’s a dog. Before Harper was in power, he called for an end to corporate welfare, for lower taxes, et cetera. But by 2006, he was barking and wagging like a liberal. Call him “libertarian” cat all you like, but his government has cranked up the deficit to unbelievable levels, bailed out (even bought out) private businesses, declared war on a Canadian culture that doesn’t share his professed desire to prohibit marijuana use (“because it’s bad”), and expressly condemned libertarians and libertarianism. And he has expressly said that his conservative policies are “tempered” by one of his three values: faith (the other two being family and – oh p-lease – freedom).

For some, apparently, faith in the notion that a socialist is actually – somewhere deep down inside, eventually, in spirit, etc. – a “libertarian” is itself a belief that, like a belief in the afterlife, is held onto so as to cope with the fact that there is no libertarian party in power, and no party currently in power that has any plan of any sort ever to govern as libertarians. Libertarians, too, have their faith-based lifelines…which is why libertarians and social conservatives belong together.

Me: I’ll stay grounded on earth. Gravity is my only lifeline, and it’s the only one I want or need.

A case in point: the commercial media in Canada this week are abuzz (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, etc.) about a new book by Marci McDonald titled “The Armageddon Factor”. The subject of the book is the nature and degree of influence that end-of-days Christian organizations increasingly have upon or within the Conservative Party, and upon the governance of Canadians. The Harper Conservatives have been shaken by the book, essentially alleging a conspiracy theory – involving CBC and other left-friendly entities – to make Conservatives look bad (note the sort of admission that is implicit in such an objection). Yet evidence is certainly piling up quickly, with a number recent developments pointing to a conclusion that the governing Conservatives are indeed consciously, though incrementally, attempting to re-make Canadian culture in the evangelical Christian image.

Just last week, the Conservatives surrendered Canadian publisher and cannabis culture advocate Marc Emery for extradition to the USA for selling marijuana seeds (an offense for which one is rarely charged in Canada, and which typically results in either a $200 fine or some community service…the same offense, in the USA, carries a maximum penalty of death). They also announced that they were cutting off federal funding to the Toronto gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender Pride parade, but not because of any principled opposition to government funding of parades or culture: Conservative MP Tony Clement said that 19 new events will be funded instead. And just last Thursday, a large gathering of pro-life/anti-choice religious folk gathered at Parliament Hill, encouraging the governing Conservatives to reopen the abortion debate and ban abortions. This latter development gave rise to a debate on this morning’s John Oakley radio talk show (640 AM, Toronto) featuring religious conservative panelist Charles McVety who, with respect to the waging of a “culture war” on the issue of abortion, said boldly “Bring it on!” (McVety is referred to over 100 times in McDonald’s book, and is regarded by some as a danger to the Conservative Party because he is so explicit about the connection between Christianity, religious policy / theocracy, and the Conservative Party). However, McVety arguably is a day late and a dollar shy: introducing his government’s “anti-drug strategy” at a Salvation Army headquarters in October of 2007, Stephen Harper explicitly declared his government to be against “a culture” that has “romanticized” drug use (subtext: a culture that thinks it wrong to imprison people for using drugs). And, on a recent youtube interview, he declared that “drugs are illegal because they’re bad” (somehow missing the fact that although drinking gasoline is bad, gasoline production, sale, and possession is not illegal).

It is important to note, however – as I did in Part 2 of my “The Principle of Pot” movie (released on April 21, 2010: you can view it here) – that the culture that the Conservative government opposes is not merely a culture of pot smokers, but a broader culture of non-smokers and smokers alike that believes – in principle – that individuals should be free to make peaceful lifestyle choices without facing punishment or discrimination by the government. Such being the case, one would expect any individual or group who claims to advocate individual freedom should be first in line to condemn the Conservative party’s marriage of religion and governmental policy-making. Yet libertarians – who claim to be advocates of individual freedom – have been among those condemning the condemnation of the mixture of religion and state…on the grounds that condemnation is wrong. The basis of the libertarian defence of that lethal mixture: the notion – founded upon libertarianism’s implicit moral subjectivism – that tolerance is a virtue.

In a recent exchange on facebook, one such libertarian posted the following in response to my having posted this article on my facebook wall:

“In a free society, those of all view points have to be allowed into public life and debated rationally to the benefit of the public. These exposes strike me as yellow jounalism. Enflame prejudices, douse debate. And you have to be careful as someone who holds on to the idea of an objective good. It makes one more prone to restricting what one take as threats to their values.”

I initially replied as follows:

Without objective good, freedom cannot be a value. I don’t regard tolerance as a virtue: it is a vice. I don’t tolerate pro-tyannical views: for example I do not quietly tolerate Naziism…I condemn it. Likewise, I don’t tolerate the view that government should punish those who violate some alleged god’s commandments. And so long as we are lulled into believing that tolerance is a virtue, those who value their freedom will tolerate its absence.

Moral condemnation does not imply the advocacy of making immoral conduct illegal. The whole point of freedom is that individuals capable of reason should be defended from those who would use force to prevent them from thinking independently and making choices that deprive nobody else of his life liberty or property without his consent. The purpose of government is not to ensure that one makes moral choices, but to ensure that nobody obtains another person’s values without the person’s consent.

The same libertarian having written, in a separate but related wall post that:

…the marijuana activist war on the federal Conservatives is misplaced. The past Liberal government proposed C-8, signed the treaty that made it easy to extradict Emery without consulting Parliament, and approved the American investigation of Emery. This isn’t partisan. It’s about the proper role of the Government of Canada.

the libertarian rebutted:

The question is condemnation how? By directly addressing the claims of the vicious and demonstrating their falsity or simply falling back on existing prejudices against them as McDonald does?

I responded thusly:

“…condemnation how?”.

The question of what exists is an issue to be debated with reference to physical evidence, using a strictly logical process of thought/analysis. What the Conservative Party “is” is a question of fact. We can know what the Conservative Party is by listening to/reading what its representatives and membership say, and by observing what it does. Stephen Harper, its leader, has told the membership that “for Conservatives, it can’t be just about freedom” and that for conservatives it has to be about “policies that ensure” that people make “good choices”. Taking him at his word, and observing that his party just introduced S-10 and washed its hands of Marc Emery, such that he’ll now face cruel and unusual punishment for perfectly consensual behaviour, it is obvious what the Conservative Party “is”.

The question of whether a person or party “ought” (i.e., good) or “ought not” (i.e., evil) to do something is a question of that branch of philosophy called “ethics” / morality. Every “is” implies an “ought” or an “ought not”: a political party either (a) ought to pass S-10 and surrender Marc, or (b) ought not to do so. In other words, it is either good or evil for a political party to pass S-10, and it is either good or evil for a political party to surrender Marc to the USA for what he did.

When you are evaluating the actions of a political party, that evaluation is necessarily a decision about whether the party ought or ought not to be doing what it is doing: whether the party’s actions are good or evil. Similarly, when you are evaluating the nature of a political party, that evaluation is necessarily a decision about whether the party is a value or a disvalue; whether the party is good or is evil.

Keep in mind, I’m not implying any sort of childish correlate, like a devil that temps one to do evil, or an angel that encourages one to be good. I’m simply saying that the proper word to refer to something that is a disvalue is “evil”.

If your aim is to survive and pursue your own happiness on this earth, in this life, then your highest value is your own life, your highest purpose is your own happiness, and your only effective means of achieving your happiness is rational thought and action: a logical process of thought about that for which there ultimately exists physical evidence. In such a case, rationality – thinking for yourself, making your own decisions, obtaining life-giving values by strictly consensual and productive means, being honest with yourself and others, recognizing and accepting the facts facing one instead of evading them with delusions of evil ghosts and benevolent fairies – is your highest virtue.

If your aim is to win a place in a supernatural heaven, after you die, then living on this earth in this life is not your highest value. If you believe there is a big white-haired omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent entity that requires you to obey all he allegedly says, rationality is not a virtue to you: obedience is (incidentally, the meaning of the word Islam is “obedience”). And if that white-haired thingy tells you that dying on a cross for the sins of your brothers is the epitome of good, then death is your highest value.

I choose life, on this earth: the one that I can prove exists; the one that is neither arbitrary nor false. And, for a person who has chosen to live and to pursue his own happiness, ones own death is the greatest evil, the sacrifice of values/happiness etc. to others is what one must avoid, and obedience is a vice.

To a person who loves his/her life and wants to live it and pursue his/her own happiness, those who hold up ones own death as the highest value, misery/suffering as ones highest purpose, and sacrifice as ones highest virtue, are evil. As such, they are perfectly harmless so long as they do not attempt to prevent you from pursuing your own happiness, on this earth, in this life, by rational means. They are merely like lemmings, whom one can watch as they gladly [jump to their deaths]* and wait for an afterlife of unearned, effortless, after-life bliss.

I can easily co-exist with a person who lives as Jesus did. But when an evil person or entity uses force or dishonesty to deny you the freedom to making rational choices – to think independently and make peaceful choices for yourself – that is a person/entity who is fighting against your ability to live and to fulfill your highest purpose; it is a person who is demanding obedience and suffering; it is a person that is trying to force you, ultimately, to live according to his self-destructive, irrational and delusional code of morality. Such a person has gone from being like Jesus, to being like the Pharisees, or Pontius Pilate, or the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross.

Jesus concluded: “Forgive them father for they know not what they do”. When it comes to the Conservatives, Harper, and Nicholson: that’s BS. They know exactly what they are doing, or else they are in self-denial: “Forgive us lord, for we know not what we do…and please don’t tell us”.

“…condemn how”? By way of moral condemnation. By way of analogy. The conservative government is – as a moral evaluation – evil, by the standard of any person who chooses to live, to pursue his own happiness in this life on this earth, and who lives a rational, hence peaceful and purely consensual life. Condemn them as Christians now condemn Pilate and the Pharisees because, brother, that is exactly the role they are playing.

*NOTE: A request for latitude: FaceBook postings are hardly the stuff of well edited argument, in the original posting, I spoke of people gladly lighting themselves on fire rather than of people jumping to their deaths. And, incidentally, lemmings do neither.

In stark contrast, the Quebecor-owned Sunmedia newspaper chain – a chain that historically supports Progressive Conservatives provincially and Conservatives federally, no matter what the policies of those parties might be at the time – is today running columns the apparent function of which is to take the focus off of the governing Conservatives, and to place it on Marc Emery himself. In each case, the point of the exercise is to lower the reader’s opinion of Emery so that people will pay no attention to the Conservatives’ failure to defend Canadian freedom and sovereignty. Each column takes an approach somewhat akin to suggesting that a rape victim had it coming because she wears low-cut blouses and doesn’t go to church on Sundays, all to take the focus off of the fact that the main suspect is a church minister.

In a Toronto Sun column titled “Why they call it dope“, Christian Conservative columnist and talk-show host Michael Coren takes a particularly low-brow approach. Specifically, he has written an article that pretends to be about the harmfulness of marijuana use, but that is actually nothing more than a vehicle for ad hominem attacks on those who use marijuana or those who oppose marijuana prohibition. Coren’s command of gutter language is quite impressive, and his use of it exceptionally boorish. In a column comprised of only 524 words, Coren uses all of the following words to describe those who use marijuana or who oppose marijuana prohibition: pothead, selfish, silly (x2), wrong, foolish, naive, callow, high, indifferent, lazy, underachievers, lacking memory, sexually impotent, confused, having poor judgment, unhealthy, escapist, pompous, self-rightous, moronic. In case you are not doing the math, that is a full 4% of the words used in Coren’s screed. Words not found in Coren’s article include: government, Conservative, Harper, Nicholson, rights, freedom, sovereignty.

In Sunmedia’s London Free Press “news” paper (it hardly contains news anymore, but it is reportedly useful if you are looking for coupons to clip), in a column titled “Marc Emery’s pet cause is Marc Emery“, former editor Larry Cornies takes a different approach. Specifically, he refers to a number of things Emery has indeed done, but removes any of the context that would allow a reader to decide why Emery was doing what he was doing over the last 30 years of his life in activism. Having left the whys unaddressed, Cornies thereby leaves himself the latitude to make a wholly unwarranted claim, nowhere supported in his column: that “…the overriding perception is that the most important cause in the mind of Marc Emery is Marc Emery.” The rational among my readers will immediately notice the Ellsworth Toohey nature of Cornies’ conclusion: it speaks about an alleged consensus, rather than about a demonstrable reality. I wrote the following letter to Cornies, as a result:

Larry:

Re: Marc Emery’s pet cause is Marc Emery

“But the overriding perception is that the most important cause in the mind of Marc Emery is Marc Emery.”

That was an inaccurate and mean conclusion to a decidedly myopic version of Emery’s history. If you haven’t already seen it, I invite you to watch “The Principle of Pot” , my Marc Emery documentary, recently released on youtube (Part 1 here, Part 2 here). Emery did indeed make himself the focus, especially with respect to the marijuana issue, but you have entirely missed his purpose in doing so. It was not an ego trip. It was a deliberate strategy based on sound observations about the nature of the majority of people in our society.

From 1980 until 1990, Emery’s message was that individuals have a right to their own life, liberty and property. By 1990, he had decided that people, essentially, are too busy to think about and adopt abstract political principles. So he changed his strategy.

Emery stopped speaking about individual rights. Having researched the history of individual freedom, he discovered that virtually every advancement in individual freedom was the result of someone intentionally breaking a law. The point was, in each historical case, to have the people observe government punishing a person who was harming nobody (or, at least, nobody but himself/herself). Emery observed that when the governments do that, the public condemns the government for being a bully, and the government repeals the law.

Freedom Party being a party founded upon, and continuing to advocate, individual rights, Emery left Freedom Party. He broke censorship laws and urged everyone to follow his example: pick just one oppressive law and break it. He left London because he found that, although people admired him for his efforts, they would not follow his example: they lacked the courage or will to break a oppressive laws in efforts to have them repealed.

While in India, Emery considered other historical examples: civil rights movements. These differ from the break-a-law-change-a-law efforts of others. The essence of a civil rights movement is that it is a collective of people commonly oppressed by a given law. Normally, those civil rights movements are based upon the unchosen: sex, skin colour etc. Emery’s innovation was to apply the same strategy to a collective defined not by unchosen characteristics, but by the fact that they had already chosen to break the same laws: the laws that prohibit the growth, sale, or possession of cannabis. He chose marijuana prohibition precisely because it is the instance of the violation of individual rights that has led to the greatest number of people being imprisoned, fined, expropriated, separated from their children, etc.. Emery chose to fill the role that two of his civil rights inspirations – Ghandi and King – had filled with respect to their collectives: like them, Emery chose to bring the collective together, to give it a voice (Cannabis Culture magazine), and to give it the money it needed peacefully to fight back (via court challenges and political campaigns). He sold seeds both to violate-the-law-so-as-to-change-the-law, and to raise the necessary funds for the collective that he brought together, organized, and gave a voice.

Having decided that it is not possible – at least in the short-term – to change peoples’ minds such that they believe themselves to have individual rights, he tried a different route: winning their sympathies, their loyalties, and their hearts. And, to do that, he needed to conduct himself in the way expected of a predominantly altruistic society (a society that regards the self-sacrifice of Jesus as the ultimate example of virtuous conduct): he needed to be a self-sacrificial person, sacrificing himself so that marijuana users could be freed from the governments/laws that oppressed them.

The results are everywhere to see. Emery is the go-to-guy, world-wide, with respect to the marijuana prohibition issue. Millions of people both know who he is, admire him, are loyal to him, and recognize him as the leader of a civil rights movement: the movement of those who refuse any longer to be punished for the choice to put something into their bodies; the choice to make decisions for themselves, rather than allowing the government to assume the role of parental authority.

If the “overriding perception” is that Marc Emery’s cause is Marc Emery, your job – if you are a columnist – is not merely to serve as a mirror, telling us what ignorant beliefs exist, but to explain to people that they are mistaken in their beliefs, if so.

Moreover, the relevant issue for Canadians is not what is in Emery’s mind, but what the Conservative government has put into its prison cells. To leave out of your article any mention – any moral evaluation – of what the government is doing to Emery, and why it is doing it, is disgraceful. I suspect that the “overriding perception” concerning your article is that – like another Sunmedia article published today and written by conservative Michael Coren – you are attempting to take the spotlight off of the oppressive conduct of Canada’s Conservative government, and to blame one among its millions of victims. If such a perception is accurate – and only you can know – you should be ashamed of yourself.