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Books we're reading this month
The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror by Michael Ignatieff (Penguin Canada, 2004)
Michael Ignatieff is a smart guy. There's no question about that. However, his most recent book proves him to be debilitatingly naive as well. He attempts to plot a course that will allow democracies to steer safely through the threat of terrorism without the crew having to abandon ship and lose its democratic nature. Ignatieff's solution is what he calls the "lesser evil" approach. Essentially, this is a middle path between rigidly protecting our rights and freedoms at all costs and abandoning them altogether for the sake of stamping out terrorism. He argues that we must allow the government more power in order to pursue its foes, but that we should never forget that these powers are temporary and still morally wrong--they're just less evil than the terrorists.
Ignatieff seems to feel that the United States has gone too far, endangering its democracy with measures like the Patriot Act. However, Ignatieff's fundamental flaw is that he believes this to be an honest mistake by leaders who sincerely have the best interests of their people in mind and no ulterior motives. Quoting from great philosophers of the past, Ignatieff seems to exist in a make-believe world where people like George W Bush and Paul Martin are well-read intellectuals who debate the pros and cons of their actions by citing passages from John Stuart Mill or John Locke. This premise is absurd and renders Ignatieff's book useless since no politician will ever come within fifty yards of it. Our captains of democracy abandoned ship a long time ago.
--Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org> |
Dark Ages Ahead by Jane Jacobs (Random House Canada, 2004)
A book with no subtitle promises to get straight to the point, and Jacobs does not expend one spare word doing exactly that in this slim volume. Her warning is stark, her clarity about it is stunning, and her conclusions, like those of all committed democrats, leave all readers imagining there is a higher calling, and its time to get to it.
Jacobs' antagonists are two-fold: provincial governments that have stubbornly sustained a paternalistic control over the taxing and spending powers of municipal governments, and urban traffic planners who, as a profession, have utterly failed at the task they were given. Jacobs names names and goes after them with the big and well oiled guns that only decades of dedication to studying her field of inquiry bring. She writes the way we all wish we could, and has a brain the size of a house.
--Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org> |
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