The Price of Living a Lie
Theodore Dalrymple’s book of essays, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, contains an essay entitled, How to Read A Society. In it he references the Marquis de Custine, a Frenchman who traveled to Russia and published a series of letters in 1843 under the title, La Russie en 1839. In it, Custine did a remarkable job of shedding light on the heart of what lead to the spread of communism throughout the world.
Dalrymple writes: “Custine grasped that the propensity to deceive and to be (or pretend to be) deceived lay at the heart of Russia’s evident malaise. The maintenance of despotism depended upon this universal vocation for untruth, because without the fiction that the despotism was necessary, that it conduced to the happiness and well-being of all, and that any alternative would be disastrous, the subject population would cease to be controllable.”
As my reading of history expands, I am continuously amazed at how apropos to our circumstances today in Canada, are the observations of our predecessors. Like an old suit that has been kept locked away for decades, it still fits and is fashionable.
The reason for this timelessness can only be the unchangeableness of the heart of man. It is in our nature to deceive and to be deceived and our lives are a constant struggle against our inner nature. As Dalrymple puts it, “the need always to lie and always to avoid the truth strip(s) everyone of what Custine called ‘the two greatest gifs of God – the soul and the speech which communicates it’. If Custine were among us now, he would recognize the evil of political correctness at once, because of the violence that it does to people’s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe but must not question. Custine would demonstrate to us that, without an external despot to explain our pusillanimity, we have willingly adopted the mental habits of people who live under a totalitarian dictatorship.”
I urge us all to keep the words of Custine near our hearts as we listen to Paul Martin lead the chorus of Liberals into an election in which we will be told that only the Liberals can represent all Canadians, that the Liberal Way is the Canadian Way and that entrusting the leadership of government to the Conservatives would be disastrous.
Think about Custine when you listen to Ralph Goodale tell us how terrible it will be if all the tax concessions he has announced, all the support for students and aboriginals and new immigrants, are wiped away by an angry and power hungry Opposition led by the scary Stephen Harper. Think about Custine when you hear Ujjal Dosanjh tell us the Conservatives want to destroy Medicare.
That is all well and good you say, but Custine was writing about Czarist Russia and we live in a democracy. You can’t possibly argue that the hearts and souls of Canadians have devolved to that of a Russian serf? If you have trouble with the comparison (which I don’t) then consider what Custine’s contemporary, Toqueville, had to say about the risks inherent in democracy.
In his essay, Dalrymple looks to Toqueville who “described the future soul of man under a seemingly benevolent and democratic government that willingly laboured for the happiness of the people ‘but chose to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness.’ Such a government would ‘supply [the people] with their necessities, facilitate their pleasures, manage their principal concerns’. [This sounds familiar to us in 2005, does it not?] What would remain but to ‘spare them of all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?’ When this came to pass, ‘the will of man will not be shattered, but softened, bent and guided.’ Men would not be forced from acting; the government would not destroy but prevent a full human existence. It would not tyrannize but ‘enervate, extinguish and stupefy a people.’”
I urge you to consider how like the citizens of Toqueville’s essay, we Canadians have allowed ourselves to become. We have been “bent and guided”, and when it comes to making decisions that affect our culture, we too often leave it to our governments to make the decision for us. Consider that despite all the differences between Canada in 2005 and Russia or England in 1835, our society today does share with those of the past a fundamental human nature.
Ultimately, in a free democracy, our government will reflect that human nature. So consider what it says about that nature if we continue to consent to being lied to, if we do nothing to hold elected officials accountable for their lies.
If we re-elect a Liberal government we will be exactly like the Russian of 1833 who accepted the edict not to look at the palace in which the czar’s father, the emperor Paul, was murdered. The official position of the government of the day was that it was forbidden to recount the story of the death of the emperor.
Every Russian who walked past the palace and knowingly averted his eyes had to know the emperor had been killed there, had to demonstrate his public ignorance of the murder and thus not only assert a lie but also deny he knew it was a lie.
There is today a palace on the banks of the Ottawa River ruled by the modern day emperor Paul, and we know of all the misdeeds that have been perpetrated there over the decades by this Paul and his predecessor the emperor P’tit Jean.
Only you can choose whether to look at the palace with contempt, or to avert your eyes and enjoy the lovely monuments of the halcyon days of the past that grace the grounds of the palace. If you choose the latter, don’t forget to spend a moment in silence at the War Memorial and give thanks to those who died to give you the freedom to make the choice.
Dalrymple writes: “Custine grasped that the propensity to deceive and to be (or pretend to be) deceived lay at the heart of Russia’s evident malaise. The maintenance of despotism depended upon this universal vocation for untruth, because without the fiction that the despotism was necessary, that it conduced to the happiness and well-being of all, and that any alternative would be disastrous, the subject population would cease to be controllable.”
As my reading of history expands, I am continuously amazed at how apropos to our circumstances today in Canada, are the observations of our predecessors. Like an old suit that has been kept locked away for decades, it still fits and is fashionable.
The reason for this timelessness can only be the unchangeableness of the heart of man. It is in our nature to deceive and to be deceived and our lives are a constant struggle against our inner nature. As Dalrymple puts it, “the need always to lie and always to avoid the truth strip(s) everyone of what Custine called ‘the two greatest gifs of God – the soul and the speech which communicates it’. If Custine were among us now, he would recognize the evil of political correctness at once, because of the violence that it does to people’s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe but must not question. Custine would demonstrate to us that, without an external despot to explain our pusillanimity, we have willingly adopted the mental habits of people who live under a totalitarian dictatorship.”
I urge us all to keep the words of Custine near our hearts as we listen to Paul Martin lead the chorus of Liberals into an election in which we will be told that only the Liberals can represent all Canadians, that the Liberal Way is the Canadian Way and that entrusting the leadership of government to the Conservatives would be disastrous.
Think about Custine when you listen to Ralph Goodale tell us how terrible it will be if all the tax concessions he has announced, all the support for students and aboriginals and new immigrants, are wiped away by an angry and power hungry Opposition led by the scary Stephen Harper. Think about Custine when you hear Ujjal Dosanjh tell us the Conservatives want to destroy Medicare.
That is all well and good you say, but Custine was writing about Czarist Russia and we live in a democracy. You can’t possibly argue that the hearts and souls of Canadians have devolved to that of a Russian serf? If you have trouble with the comparison (which I don’t) then consider what Custine’s contemporary, Toqueville, had to say about the risks inherent in democracy.
In his essay, Dalrymple looks to Toqueville who “described the future soul of man under a seemingly benevolent and democratic government that willingly laboured for the happiness of the people ‘but chose to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness.’ Such a government would ‘supply [the people] with their necessities, facilitate their pleasures, manage their principal concerns’. [This sounds familiar to us in 2005, does it not?] What would remain but to ‘spare them of all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?’ When this came to pass, ‘the will of man will not be shattered, but softened, bent and guided.’ Men would not be forced from acting; the government would not destroy but prevent a full human existence. It would not tyrannize but ‘enervate, extinguish and stupefy a people.’”
I urge you to consider how like the citizens of Toqueville’s essay, we Canadians have allowed ourselves to become. We have been “bent and guided”, and when it comes to making decisions that affect our culture, we too often leave it to our governments to make the decision for us. Consider that despite all the differences between Canada in 2005 and Russia or England in 1835, our society today does share with those of the past a fundamental human nature.
Ultimately, in a free democracy, our government will reflect that human nature. So consider what it says about that nature if we continue to consent to being lied to, if we do nothing to hold elected officials accountable for their lies.
If we re-elect a Liberal government we will be exactly like the Russian of 1833 who accepted the edict not to look at the palace in which the czar’s father, the emperor Paul, was murdered. The official position of the government of the day was that it was forbidden to recount the story of the death of the emperor.
Every Russian who walked past the palace and knowingly averted his eyes had to know the emperor had been killed there, had to demonstrate his public ignorance of the murder and thus not only assert a lie but also deny he knew it was a lie.
There is today a palace on the banks of the Ottawa River ruled by the modern day emperor Paul, and we know of all the misdeeds that have been perpetrated there over the decades by this Paul and his predecessor the emperor P’tit Jean.
Only you can choose whether to look at the palace with contempt, or to avert your eyes and enjoy the lovely monuments of the halcyon days of the past that grace the grounds of the palace. If you choose the latter, don’t forget to spend a moment in silence at the War Memorial and give thanks to those who died to give you the freedom to make the choice.
posted by Ben Buan | 11:05 a.m.
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