|
Apparently
we're not supposed to discuss moral issues during an election
campaign. Which only leaves immoral ones, I suppose. Or
perhaps amoral.
Would it be wrong to ask why? Once, politicians feared
the taint of immorality. Now they fear the taint of morality.
It's not completely clear to me whether they're trying
to persuade us that they don't know right from wrong or
just that they don't care. But they do seem determined
to convey that in any event it's not going to matter;
when politicians in any party are caught holding moral
views they hasten to assure us they wouldn't dream of
acting on them.
It's
not completely clear what a moral issue is either. A headline
in Monday's Citizen said "'Moral' issues blow Liberals,
Tories off track," and the scare quotation marks
suggest the headline writer wasn't sure. At first I thought
it meant sex, since the story started with the topics
of abortion and gay marriage. But then it threw in the
death penalty, so we had the end as well as the beginning
of life. And when it added bilingualism into the mix,
I became completely confused.
Then
I derived inspiration from marijuana. Indirectly, I hasten
to add: I read a news story about a Fraser Institute study
by economist Steve Easton arguing that if marijuana were
legalized governments could rake in a cool $2 billion
a year in taxes. As indeed they might. But I'd rather
see the issue discussed primarily in terms of whether,
first, the community is morally justified in using force
to protect people from harming themselves and, second,
if it is, whether marijuana meets the threshold test for
sufficient harm to trigger intervention. My opinion is
no and no, so I would legalize it. You need two yesses
for a principled ban on the stuff. Yet Anne McLellan,
who opposes legalization, recently said the suggestion
of counselling women on abortion "as if we are children,
as if we are not able to make our own decisions about
our health and our bodies, is to me, at the beginning
of the 21st century, profoundly disturbing and, dare I
say it, very frightening." Let those women seek to
inhale pot smoke into their own personal lungs, or just
agree to work where there's second-hand tobacco smoke,
and see how much Ms. McLellan respects their right to
make decisions about their health and their bodies at
the beginning of the 21st century.
How do you reason with such people?
Then
it struck me that the Fraser Institute study was speaking
precisely the government's native language by putting
aside principle and dangling a sack of cash in front of
it. At which point I saw that what unites the banned "moral"
issues is negative: None allows politicians to attract
support from a broad spectrum of likely voters by promising
boodle from the treasury.
They require debate on what's right or wrong rather than
what's lucrative.
Not fun. Even the Conservative Party is campaigning on
spending promises even more lavish than those of the Liberals,
claiming they've detected a huge bag of money in Ottawa
that the Liberals are dishonestly hiding because they're
meanies who don't want to spend. Which frankly insults
my intelligence as well as my morals. But this campaign
is not about me, it's about directing the last available
tax dollar to the last available suburban swing voter.
Please
don't think I'm one of those dolts who considers wealth
immoral. When people talk about mere money or mere things
I wonder how long they think they'd last without mere
food, mere water or mere air, a material mixture of some
78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, nearly 1% argon and traces of
other chemical elements made of shabby protons, neutrons
and electrons. Jesus said man did not live by bread alone,
not that he did not live by bread. If you think combining
material substance and moral purpose was a silly way to
design the universe, you'll have to take it up with a
far higher authority than me. My concern is whether the
material things will be put to good use or bad. And so
I'm all for people being paid what they have earned. (I
wish everyone who doesn't think it should happen to doctors
could be forced to earn their own living exactly as they
would require medical professionals to earn theirs.) But
I'm against people taking money they haven't earned, whether
through armed robbery or through politics. You see, I
think it's wrong. Evidently that's the sort of question
we're not allowed to discuss. Which suggests an uneasy
conscience about how the discussion would go if we were.
John
Robson is a writer and broadcaster based in Ottawa.
Copyright
John Robson
|
