“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

– W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

As another election slouches towards Ottawa, the Conservative Party’s communications machine warns voters that if we don’t give the blue team a majority of the seats in Parliament, a ‘coalition of losers’ will step forward to steal power. From behind the red door there comes much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This piece is not about the current election. Instead I’m fantasizing, ever hopeful, of a more representative parliamentary democracy marked by stable coalitions and civil alliances between a new generation of smaller, grassroots-oriented political parties.

This is coming partly out of my frustration with the shallow narcissism of the dominant parties. But it’s also well past time to admit that the Canadian federation is too diverse (regionally and otherwise) to be properly represented by highly centralized single entities. As evidence I’ll point to waves of support for the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party, and to the success of Danny Williams’ Anyone-But-Conservative campaign.

I will illustrate by talking about spaghetti sauce. In a TED talk given a few years ago, Malcolm Gladwell told the story of food scientist Dr. Howard Moskowitz. Dr. Moskowitz made his name doing market research  for various food companies (Ragu, Nestle, Pepsi, etc.) which were looking to develop new products. He set up focus groups and taste tests to investigate the appeal of different variations of pasta sauce, mustard, and so on. And he gathered lots and lots of data. Here is a link to Gladwell’s 20-minute lecture.

Gladwell likes to pick noteworthy case studies and then extrapolate. In this case, Dr. Moskowitz argued that the existing food industry practice of offering customers only one or two options — ‘the perfect spaghetti sauce’ — was completely out of touch with the wide distribution of preferences which his research was uncovering. Instead of clumping around a single supreme flavour, preferences tend to cluster instead around multiple points — spicy, cheesy, extra chunky,  light, extra tomato and so on. Dr. Moskowitz’s research is the reason, Gladwell says, that mass-produced food now comes in six different varieties and 36 different sub-varieties.

If you’re extracting socio-political wisdom from gustatory preferences, as I am, the terms to focus on are ‘horizontal segmentation’ and ‘clustering.’ The idea being that our preferences are divergent enough that being stuck with a choice of red or blue (or even orange) is unsatisfying and limiting. Instead, we would be better engaged and more accurately represented by a series of smaller, more specialized parties which would maintain their autonomy when forming ‘big-tent’ coalitions.

We might have political parties which are smaller in scope than the theory-of-everything parties we have today. Political parties whose platforms are developed and renewed at grassroots-oriented conventions. Some would be regional parties, an acknowledgment of the tensions inherent in Canadian federalism. Others would be parties with narrow but deep policy expertise — perhaps a hammer-and-windmill party concerned with turning blue collar jobs into green jobs. Perhaps there would be parties to represent marginalized or scattered communities such as aboriginal nations, seniors, or the working poor.

Call this a conception of representative democracy which borrows a little more from direct democracy. None of the parties would be rich enough to employ significant numbers of backroom operatives – rainmakers and spin doctors. With less room for the professionals, the parties once again become the domain of amateur organizers and volunteer canvassers. Only this time you wouldn’t need to be a member of the landed gentry to participate.

With the theory-of-everything parties losing ground to more specialized grassroots parties, the electorate would no longer be subjected to the simplistic narratives which are now considered vital to developing a party’s brand. At its annual policy convention, a party focused on urban affairs would hold in-depth discussions to establish a nuanced position on municipal transit projects, without having to waste time developing empty rhetoric on how it would regulate industrial activity in the oil sands.

The realist asks how these glorified citizen’s committees could hope to govern. Perhaps with one medium-sized party recruiting several smaller parties into a formal coalition. Perhaps with a much stronger commitment to the independence of individual members of parliament. There would be no backbenchers, because each MP would be a member of several multi-party caucuses — the aboriginal rights caucus, the western caucus, the francophone caucus, and so on — with varying influence on each. We’d need a few hundred damn fine parliamentarians.

There would presumably be a need for parties which could organize and manage the governing coalitions and opposition alliances. I can see the traditional parties re-inventing themselves to serve as the solid core of fluid big-tent coalitions. The new reds, blues, and oranges would campaign primarily on their leadership skills — the ability to bring the boutique interests together. I’d argue that this has already become the Liberal Party’s strongest (only?) pitch to voters. It just needs a generational update.

It could happen, a few decades from now. Other parliamentary democracies are much further along than we are, both in terms of necessary structural conditions (variations of proportional representation) and in terms of the electoral success of paradigm-shifting political parties (the Greens in Germany, for example).

The main obstacle is the belief among Conservatives and Liberals that ruddy-cheeked majority governments frolic just around the next bend. Perhaps they do. As long as outright wins seem achievable, party hacks will keep spinning the Liberal-Conservative revolving door, and parliamentary maturation will have to wait.

Because I went to school in the Liberal heartland of Toronto Centre, I know many baby Liberals who dream of the greatness which lies beyond gopherdom. I know they are sincere in their beliefs, but I fear that too many care too much about winning. It’s hardly their fault, with elections presented as contests for power and influence, and Evan Solomon on the squawkbox every day talking about fortress Toronto and battlegrounds and the latest polls and strategic test balloons and it’s all so EXCITING.

So let’s look ahead, ever hopeful, to a future in which no party has the slightest hope of forming a majority government. A future made possible by some form of proportional representation, when veteran MPs smile indulgently as young Ottawa tour guides parrot on about about the arcane notion of party discipline.

[This is the second of three pieces on the ethical footprint of cultural treasures.]

The British Museum refuses to repatriate the Parthenon marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and other trophies from its colonial past, but can offer no satisfactory moral justification. It’s not the only high-profile museum to make a living off other peoples’ genius, and Part 1 was a rant against this widespread practice. I promised to play devil’s advocate in Part 2 — and I will — but first I’m going to have a little more fun poking at the scab with a stick.

Let’s be clear: no one is starving to death because half the Parthenon is mounted on a wall in London. Instead, a lot of people who get paid to be sophisticated are making weak, Euro-centric arguments about why they should get to hang on to all their treasure.

In Part 1 I mentioned that several former colonies met in Cairo last year and released a joint statement demanding the return of their cultural treasures. I’ve just come across a mission statement released in December 2002 by the other side — the big museums which are refusing to give up the disputed artefacts. Here are two segments from the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums:

“The international museum community shares the conviction that illegal traffic in archaeological, artistic, and ethnic objects must be firmly discouraged. We should, however, recognize that objects acquired in earlier times must be viewed in the light of different sensitivities and values, reflective of that earlier era. The objects and monumental works that were installed decades and even centuries ago in museums throughout Europe and America were acquired under conditions that are not comparable with current ones.”

and

“Over time, objects so acquired—whether by purchase, gift, or partage—have become part of the museums that have cared for them, and by extension part of the heritage of the nations which house them.”

There is something strangely refreshing about a diplomatic ‘fuck you’, which is what this is. No insincere political correctness and no affectations of white guilt. The charming and sick-inducing thing about Old Money is that it doesn’t realize it’s supposed to at least pretend to feel guilty about how it made its money.

Just to be snarky on a Wednesday evening, I’ll translate each section out of diplomatic language:

“Don’t be so difficult. Back then stealing from dark people wasn’t such a big deal. Everyone did it. Honestly, the guys from Delta-Tau-Chi would run off and steal a few mummies whenever they ran out of beer. It was hilarious. Dean Wormer doesn’t let us do that anymore, but the stuff from the old days complements the furniture really nicely. You should come over one day and see for yourself. But wear a tie, and get some new shoes.”

and

“The Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone belong in London because they have become part of the heritage of the British Empire and the European Enlightenment.”

Delightfully upsetting.

***

But now to play devil’s advocate. This means providing one (1) argument supporting the contention of the British Museum and its allies that all the valuable stuff should stay exactly where it is. Okay.

The strongest argument against the British Museum’s position is the moral one. By profiting from the fruits of aggressive imperialism, the Brits have violated an old maxim: Thou shall not steal. But the Greek government doesn’t get to make this argument because of another maxim which I’ve just made up: If thou art thyself a thief, then thou canst not complain if thine stuff is stolen by someone bigger and badder.

The Athenian city-state which built the Parthenon was an aggressive naval power which extracted tribute and subservience from its so-called allies, and attacked and enslaved others. The Parthenon is glorious and impressive largely because it was a huge financial investment in the glorification of an empire. All the money for the marble and the stone-masons had to come from somewhere, just like all the slaves who presumably did the actual work of building the thing.

So it’s sort of sad that half the Parthenon hasn’t touched Greek soil in almost 200 years. And it’s genuinely sad that most of our history is about powerful people killing and taking from less powerful people. But when it comes to the Parthenon marbles, the Greek government can’t really complain about modern British imperialism because the temple was itself a monument to ancient Athenian imperialism.

As promised, one (1) counter-argument. Admittedly, this wasn’t so much an argument in support of the British position as it was a pox on all their houses. Surprise!

[Come back for Part 3, where I will pontificate further about the ethics of romanticizing monuments to ancient tyranny.]