I started out to write a blog article on politics a few weeks ago, but when I started to research politics it turned out I had no idea what politics was - consequently I did not feel qualified to comment. I basically spent the whole afternoon learning about the left and the right, liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, etc. Did you know that classic liberalism is basically what the right (often call conservatives) believe. Labels can be misleading. Generally we lump all politics into a single line left-wing and right-wing, but in reality there are many more dimensions to politics, and most of us deliberately blind ourselves to those other dimensions.
I am fascinated by American politics, perhaps because the stakes are so high the drama is more intense - clearly there is more entertainment value than Canadian politics. I am however concerned by how much American politics spills over and influences Canadian politics.
"[Y]our country [the USA], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.
But to the topic at hand - Politics on Trial. We as a society are often called upon to make some big decisions. Two decisions in particular, how to select our leaders and how to decide on the guilt or innocence of the accused, seem to have dramatically different processes.
Generally in our legal system (I can't use the phrase justice system because laws often trump justice) when someone is accused of a crime there is a well defined process which seeks to ascertain the truth of the matter. Generally it is an adversarial process where there are advocates (lawyers) for each side of the decision, and they are responsible for debate (trial) in front of an audience (the jury) and there is a referee (the judge) to enforces the rules of the debate. We hope that we correctly ascertain the truth when the audience has to vote (often unanimously) on which advocate won the debate.
The debate is quite interesting in that an important part of the debate is the concept of evidence. An important component of evidence is testimony. Testimony is so important that there are clear penalties to witnesses making false testimony. Evidence is so important that there are strict rules on how advocates may behave towards witnesses.
Here's where things get interesting: generally the advocates make arguments during the debate, arguments are what connects the evidence together hopefully to logically and rationally ascertain the truth. Remarkably there are fewer rules that the advocates have to make arguments that are logically consistent, valid, complete, or sound. Logical fallacies may creep in either intentionally or unintentionally. Indeed there is a great burden on the audience to have sufficient critical thinking skills to understand the arguments and even debate among themselves when they deliberate.
The legal system is not perfect, but it has goals, standards and process to help make important decisions.
By contrast, in a democracy where we periodically get to decide on who our leaders will be there are surprisingly few rules or processes to ascertain the truth. While every individual who is accused of a crime has a right to due process, and the accuser bears the burden of proof on revealing the truth - collectively as a nation, province, etc. there is no burden of proof on the politicians seeking office to prove they are the best choice for leading us.
In the past there was often debate, in many forms. Politicians would often strive to make reasonable arguments (sometimes based on evidence) to demonstrate to us (the audience) that they were the most qualified to lead us. Increasingly however I have noticed that rarely is any evidence presented in the political debates. Most arguments are made on ideological beliefs, and increasingly often the arguments are logically fallacious. Even more frightening is the extremist nature of these ideologies, but the basic sad fact is debate is increasingly devoid of evidence.
For the most part we rely on media for evidence and sometimes even arguments and reasoning. The mainstream media has often tried to be fair and balanced, especially during times of elections. There are two trends that are compromising this:
- Increasingly the media is less fair and balanced as it becomes more influenced by profit.
- Increasingly people only pay attention to the media that tells them what they want to hear, and not what they need to hear. This makes mainstream media less profitable and slanted media more profitable.
In the end, we each independently are the only referees. Politics has no process like the legal system to guide us to the truth, and the political debate is devoid of truth, evidence and reason.
