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From: word-warriors-bounces@list.web.net
[mailto:word-warriors-bounces@list.web.net]On Behalf Of Murray Dobbin
Sent: January 7, 2006 4:26 PM
To: coc-chaps-l-admin@list. web. net; word-
Subject: [Word-warriors] Be an 'Intentional Citizen'

Be an 'Intentional Citizen'

'Strategic voting?' It's all about outcomes.

By Murray Dobbin

January 5, 2006

TheTyee.ca

Every vote is a strategic vote.

I say that, even though I have attacked the advocacy of strategic voting
coming from the CAW's Buzz Hargrove. But my quibble isn't with strategic
voting. It is really a matter of whether or not you are following a good
strategy. The trouble with Hargrove's call for strategic voting was that
it was just lousy strategy for those with a social democratic vision for
the country. His early election call to vote Liberal, except in ridings
where the NDP had a good chance of winning, ignored the fact that it
simply played into the hands of the Liberals' use of scare tactics to
scoop NDP voters. Last time around, it defeated at least five NDP
candidates who, as MPs, would have given the party the real balance of
power.

The main problem with this kind of too-clever-by-half strategic voting
is that it assumes every voter has perfect knowledge of what is
happening in the election, in general, and in their riding, in
particular. That's a tall order. Most voters, unfortunately, simply
don't or can't take the time to gain "perfect" knowledge. In my home
province of Saskatchewan, for example, the Liberals successfully scared
enough traditional NDP voters into voting for them so that three more
Conservatives won seats. In Saskatchewan, the Liberals were not a factor
except in one seat. People voted strategically (in response to the
Liberals' scare campaign) to keep the Conservatives out -- and instead,
helped elect more Conservatives.

The genuinely strategic voter is what I have called the intentional
citizen: someone who actually strives to think and act as if citizenship
mattered. That is does matter should be self-evident if you examine
popular democracy for what it really is: a centuries-old effort to
achieve some measure of equality in a world whose economic systems, left
on their own, have been catastrophically unequal.

While Americans define democracy as freedom (mostly freedom to do with
their money whatever they choose, that is, property rights) Canadians
have defined their democracy more in terms of equality. That is why such
an overwhelming majority of citizens consider Medicare -- a powerful
example of equality in action -- as the defining characteristic of our
nation. Canadians judge democracy not so much by process and
institutions, but by outcomes: what does democracy, in the end, provide?

Not voting? Not cool

Rule number one guiding the intentional citizen is understanding power,
and in this context that means appreciating that what happens in
parliament actually matters. If you doubt this, ask the wealthy, who
under Finance Minister Paul Martin, received 77 percent of the personal
portion of $100 billion in tax cuts (over five years) he gave out in 2000.

Or the flip side: ask Bay Street if parliament mattered when the NDP
forced the Liberals to postpone $4.6 billion in corporate tax cuts.

Or ask those who benefited from the $4.6 billion in progressive spending
that resulted. These are just recent examples. We tend to forget that
everything that makes this country one of the best places in the world
to live from Medicare, to public parks, we got out of governments.

It's easy to forget. Because we are encouraged to forget it all the
time. It has almost become cool not to vote, as if this is somehow a
principled thing to do. The absenteeism among young people is
particularly high, even amongst those who see themselves as
anti-globalization and anti-corporate. How ironic. The only institution
in the world with the power to challenge corporate dominance is
government. It is government which makes the laws which define what
corporations are and what they can do.

For the last 25 years, most governments in Canada (and all of them at
the federal level) have been willing accomplices of corporations. But
the point is to take government back, not abandon the only institution
that has the potential to actually make a positive difference and
enforce a measure of social and economic equality. The graveyards of
history are littered with people who thought voting was worth dying for.
Were they wrong?

Government bashers

Preston Manning was a master at demonizing government, implying again
and again that politicians (other than him) were corrupt or
self-serving, that government itself was suspect, that it had its hands
in the pockets of "taxpayers'" (not citizens), that "You know better how
to spend your money than government does" and that "A government job
(nurse? teacher? cop? librarian?) isn't a real job." Supported by the
corporate media, business think-tanks, and right-wing academics, this
deliberate campaign to lower expectations of what government was and
could be was extremely successful, so successful that our voter turnout
is now almost as bad as it is in the US. The people most satisfied by
this abandonment of democracy and the right to vote? That's easy: Bay
Street CEOs, for whom democracy is a constant threat to their power and
excess profits.

Another distraction is the protest vote, the "anti-establishment" vote.
It is predicated on the notion that all the traditional parties are "the
same." The problem is, they're demonstrably not the same. In the last
election the progressive protest vote went to the Green Party. But the
notion that a vote for Jim Harris's party is somehow a more principled
vote is dangerously flawed. Even if you believe the party is strong on
the environment and democracy (I argue it's not), if your principled
vote actually gets you less -- in terms of tangible results -- than some
other vote, then those considering voting Green where the NDP, which has
strong green policies, might win, you may want to examine what they mean
by principled.

If it doesn't mean actually voting to ensure that state power is used to
make the world better and greener, then the principle is self-defeating.

The intentional citizen, whether fiscal conservative, environmentalist
or social democrat, is deliberately strategic at election time and that
means three things: being acutely aware of your values and the policies
that reflect them, judging the trustworthiness of the various leaders
and keeping foremost in your mind that parliament, and who actually gets
to vote there, actually matters. It's not rocket science. But it does
mean keeping your eye on the prize and not getting distracted by the
chatter and noise designed to knock you off track.
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