The Paucity of Conservative Appeal

In spite of all the moaning and groaning rightwing faux populists make over "leftist elites" or "champagne socialists", the fact remains that conservatism is a very elite phenomena. Conservatives will try all sorts of machinations to broaden their base - appealing to a natural fear of change, appeals to the worst elements of human nature (prejudices against homosexuals, foreigners, or countercultural groups), association with piety, and an appeal to greed ("Do you want the gommit to steal your hard earned money?"). Despite all these attempts to make conservatism popular or at least populist, nothing works more for conservative parties, organizations, and movements than suppressing the vote.

Christian Right

The Christian Right is a movement predominantly (but not exclusively) in America that obscures real issues with religious rhetoric and a hyperactive sense of "providence" - they see (at least in their rhetoric) the hand of divine intervention everywhere. The American Christian Right began in the 1970s as a backlash to legalized abortion and mandatory desegregation in parochial schools¹. The later issue, very crucial in the early days, has been dropped as the movement tries to wash its hands of racism, although issues concerning whether religious schools can legally insulate curious students from post-18th century biology and comprehensive sex education still galvanize the movement.

Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Paul Weyrich built up much of the organizational structure of the movement. Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and founder of the misleadingly named Free Congress Foundation, once said to a group of rightwing religious leaders:

"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."²

The Christian Right can be seen as conservatism in its most popular form - it appeals to the religious sensibilities of certain members of the working and middle classes, predominantly those from the rural sections of south-eastern states. Yet even these conservatives depend on one thing - poor turnout - to influence politics. The de facto cultural and political enfranchisement of minorities and mainstream workers threatens them more than anything - even if these groups tend to be religious and somewhat culturally conservative.

Ironically, many elite critics of grassroots politics like to imagine the Christian Right as the "rabble" which took over the Republican Party from the more respectable country clubbers. Indeed, in his condensations towards Nader, Eric Alterman³ has used the Christian Right as an example of how ordinary citizens can take over a major political party. The analogy is misleading, nonetheless because the empowerment of the Christian Right was influenced by chandelier conservatives like Justice Powel as a way to counteract leftwing populism with a less substantive countermovement⁴. The Christian Right - except for the occasional blue law and perhaps the sex industry - doesn't threaten business interests and can therefore be permitted rhetorical power over the Republican Party as the country club conservatives loot the treasury and sell off government in the background.

It’s staggering how anti-populist the Christian Right truly is seeing how they oppose voter turnout. The key device of the Christian Right has been named the "12.5% strategy"⁵. If only 50% of the electorate votes in congressional, senatorial, or presidential elections and about half that vote in primary elections, then 12.5% of the electorate can have profound influence over the course of an election. Higher civic participation dilutes the influence of the Christian rightists, which is why many (such as Paul Weyrich) support measures that effectively limit the vote. Civic virtue, in short, undermines the civically vicious Christian right.

Conservative Alberta

The Conservative Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta⁶ continually celebrate the super-duper majority they seem to maintain in Alberta. Snide centrists from Ontario and select patches of eastern Canada may even view Alberta or (more egregiously) the entire West as full of politically backward and ignorant ultraconservatives. As appealing as this regional condescension might be, it misses an essential point: the mandate conservatives have in Alberta is very weak when you consider the low turnout.

In 2008, the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta (PCAA) won another landside victory in the provincial elections. Ed Stelmach became the Province’s next Premier and his party won 72 of the Provincial Legislature’s 83 seats⁷. The problem is only 41% of those who could vote did!⁸ Even with the popular vote of actual voters counted, the PCAA only garnered 53% of the popular vote (with the ultra-right “Wildrose Alliance” earning 7% of the actual popular vote). How a government with such a marginal majority can form a supermajority in the legislature works is thanks to structural features of the “Winner Take All” system in Canada which manufactures majorities.

Okay, support for the provincial conservatives isn’t as rock-solid as snide Ontarian centrists might think, but what about the Province’s adoration for federal Conservatives? For 2008, the case with the popular vote indicates the Conservatives won a strong majority of 64.62% of actual voters⁹. But an analysis of the election reveals historically low turnouts throughout the nation that year¹⁰. Only 52.9% of the Albertan electorate voted in the 2008 Federal election¹¹, meaning that only 34% of the Albertan Federal electorate explicitly approved the Conservative Party of Canada through voting.

The strength of Albertan Conservatism appears to be civic disinterest. Any ideology based on such a condition is not secure in the hearts and minds of the people.

Sam Katz Mayoralty

In 2004 rightwing businessman Sam Katz won the Winnipeg Mayoral election – beating out centre-left contender Dan Vandal. Katz won with 43% of actual voters casting their ballets for him¹². This clearly isn’t a supermajority. Furthermore, when one examines all eligible voters, it becomes readily apparent that only 25% of them explicitly endorsed his mayoralty¹³.

In 2006 Katz repeated his feat, winning 61.60% of total votes cast. This feat is still diminished when one realizes that the year had record low turnout – with only 23% of the total eligible electorate explicitly endorsing his mayoralty.¹⁴ Katz’s strongest showing was, in short, achieved when the least people chose to vote.

So, while one may consider Winnipeg rather conservative given its current mayor, when one looks at how much explicit consent has been given, we find Katz ruling on little enthusiasm. When one considers the low voter turnout and notices patterns of particularly poor turnout in poorer areas¹⁵, one must wonder whether a centrist small-l liberal like Glenn Murray is really the best thing the city can hope for. Surely, the effective enfranchisement of numerous groups – the young, the poor, aboriginals, recent immigrants, and the working class – that have showed up to the polls sparsely could truly revolutionize the municipal scene in Winnipeg.

Katz knows this – which explains his hostility to attempts by the Winnipeg Citizens’ Coalition to drive up municipal turnout. This drive – especially if aimed at members of the working poor of Winnipeg – would ruin his chances at re-election. Katz lambasts the work the Winnipeg Citizens’ Coalition as an “NDP driven” “leftwing plot” to “take over city hall”¹⁶. This shows the man’s true colours – that of a plutocrat trying to rule with the minority of the opulent rather than by the majority of the people¹⁷.

Conservatism as Rule by the Opulent Minority

The last few decades have been of increasingly conservative politics and corporate-centred international trade. “Centre-left” parties like the Liberals in Canada and the Labour Party in Britain have become watered down versions of the right to the point where it’s senseless to talk of them as “centre-left”¹⁸. Canada’s policies have shifted from one of counter-cyclical Keynesianism and concern for social welfare to one of concern solely with corporate welfare and securing foreign markets (which has lead to an increasingly militaristic foreign policy).

Protecting the rights of workers is eschewed while the right of corporations to monopolies (patents) is expanding – to our very genomes. Ours is an age of corporate globalization, not civic globalization.

One trend is clear throughout – voter turnouts have gone done and conservative policies have been implemented. Whether the adoption of corporate globalization has triggered the decline of voting or the inverse or some tertiary factor is responsible, one thing is clear: civic apathy isn’t hurting corporate conservatives.

Whether under the guise of a ultra-blue Liberal Party or plain old Conservatives, its clear the participation of the opulent to the exclusion of many others is the sign of a conservative era. Mass political action, otherwise known as democracy, is the antidote.


<sup>ENDNOTS
1. The racial politics of the Christian Right. Retrieved from The Comment Factory.
2. The New face of Jim Crow: Voter Suppression in America. People for the American Way.
Actual footage of the quote can be found HERE.
3. From interview footage in the documentary Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man.
4. The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of Rightwing Extremists. Truthout article
5. See http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/cable-news-who-cares.html
6. Yes, its Association rather than Party. http://www.albertapc.ab.ca/public/data/documents/2292_PC_Constitution.pdf
7. http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/2008-alberta-general-election#results
8.http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/03/05/edm-turnout.html
9. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/
10. http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/historical-turnout.html
11. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/10/15/voter-turnout.html
12. 99 015 (Sam Katz) + 55644 (Dan Vandal) + 34562 (Al Golden) + 23412 (MaryAnn Mihychuck) + 16497 (Garth Steek) + 1986 (Gordon Kirkby) + 801 (Shirley Tim-Rudolf) + 528 (Nelson Morrison) + 453 (Natalie Pollock) = 232 898
99 015÷232 898 ≈ 0.425 Numbers available here: http://www.winnipeg.ca/Clerks/pdfs/elections/2006election/E06Results.pdf.
13. 43*0.588 (the decimal representing the percentage of people voting – with 1 indicating total turnout) ≈ 25
14. .01*0.38 ≈23Numbers obtained from http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/features/winnipegvotes2006/.
15. 'A Very Hostile System in Which to Live': Aboriginal Electoral Participation in Winnipeg's Inner City. This study on Aboriginal participation in Winnipeg elections notes that, due to the general socioeconomic status of aboriginals (as members of the poor or working poor) they tend no to vote, along with other factors.
16. See http://www.unionbug.ca/home/11/176.
17. This mayoral race – ironically enough – Katz is trying to mobilize some (anti-NDP) voters against Judy Wasylycia-Leis. He’s using the typical rightwing strategy of “positive polarization” – demonizing the enemy over key issues to win. I hope that the Wasylycia-Leis campaign manages to register as many new voters from traditionally excluded areas to counter these moves.
Source: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/katz-mobilizes-to-get-out-vote-98489194.html.
18. One may even be sceptical of whether the Liberal Party of Canada was ever “centre-left”. Sure, Pierre Trudeau participated in some economic strategies (not all of that that well thought out) of a nationalistic flavour, but he was quite the exception. Most Liberals have only jeered left when forced to by a strong New Democratic presence in parliament. It may be more accurate to talk of the Liberals as being a dead centre party in the post-war period – practicing the reform liberalism various European parties had run and died on during the polarization between social democratic and conservative parties in Europe. Now, of course, the very blue Liberals ought to be viewed as a centre-right party.</sup>

Vincent Weiguang Li and Moral/Legal Responsibility

A few days ago, a peer of mine commented on how it is “stupid” that someone can “murder without going to jail if they’re crazy”. They were referring, of course, to Vincent Weiguang Li, a man held not criminally responsible for committing murder by reason of mental disorder.¹ I greatly respect my peer but cannot help but judge that style of thinking on the issue as provincial and narrow-minded.

This habit of thought is not limited to my peer, however. A casual stroll across Facebook will reveal similar, but more extreme, attitudes.² Because people are not always serious on social networking sites, I will ignore some of these more fervent requests. Rather, I will try to deconstruct and constructively criticize the much more mainstream mentality when it comes to Vincent Li’s responsibility for the killing of Tim McLean.

The murder was tragic and the details detestably gruesome.³ It was unbearably tragic for McLean’s family. To not feel overwhelmed with passion and anger at such a horrific cruelty one would have to be a sociopath. I know that I would feel quite similar to McLean’s mother and father after such a heinous act. I would not desire the cause of death, a being who would become an abstraction of evil in my mind, to live the rest of his days in an asylum or medicated on the streets. Such a reification of evil, no longer an idiosyncratic or nuanced individual, but the pure symbol of McLean’s death would sicken me. ⁴

But in such a state of pure, and perfectly human, longing for vengeance, I would not be fit make impartial moral or judicial pronouncements. As heartless as it may appear, much more detached third parties are necessary to make a more dispassionate assessment regarding responsibility and appropriate recourse.

Should Vincent Li be held criminally responsible for the death of Tim McLean? “Criminal responsibility” is a concept constructed around the idea that we are dealing people in a more or less coherent frame of mind. That is people with at least partial rationality.⁵ This legal construct is sometimes modified when dealing with environmentally caused (as opposed to hereditarily caused) impairment which are self-induced (intoxication brought on by excessive alcohol consumption). ^{6 7}

But is criminal responsibility nullified by mental disorder? As importantly, is Vincent Li morally responsible for McLean’s death if his mind lacks coherence, as is characteristic with schizophrenia?

One method of analysis is to equate moral responsibility with causal responsibility. Vincent Li killed McLean, it is true. It was ultimately the inter-neuronal impulses in his brain which were transmitted to the motor neurons which physically caused Li’s extremities to appallingly kill McLean. No other physical entity so directly or immediately caused Tim McLean’s death.

Carol deDelley (McLean’s mother) has established the “deDelley Foundation for Life” ⁸ under the premise causal responsibility entails moral responsibility.

“‘Whether you have mental challenges or not, your actions, you need to be accountable for,’ deDelley said during a phone interview. ‘To have no criminal record afterwards really negates the fact that my son ever had a life.’” – Carol deDelley ⁹

“He still did it. Whether he was in his right frame of mind or not, he still did the act. There was nobody else on that bus, holding a knife, slicing up my child.”- Carol deDelley ¹⁰

Carol deDelley is undeniably correct in one point: there was no physiological entity aside from Vincent Li’s body causing McLean’s death. But, in his present state, should McLean be regarded as a rational agent who, in a more coherent state afterwards with a much more chemically balanced brain¹¹, could be held responsible for barbaric acts committed when he was in a more coherent state. Is he even the same person or the same agent when in such a different state?

For all practical, legal, and moral purposes, we should differentiate Li as a physiological entity versus a person.¹² Personhood is abstracted from the numerous mental processes occurring simultaneously within a brain. Personhood implies a given coherence to these processes which I would say is not found when a person is suffering from psychotic delusions. Their personhood, at that point, collapses as does their moral responsibility. The same physical medium¹³, a brain, can generate a series of mental processes that would entail personhood later. Li can, if his mental state is revised through medical and psychiatric help, regain personhood.

My (admittedly technical) response to the claim that Li should be guilty as he caused McLean’s death ultimately rests on this: when under severe hallucinations Li is fundamentally different. He is no longer a (partially) rational agent. This is the purpose of the mental disorder defence.¹⁴ It absolves of responsibility those who are not in a state of mind which constitutes personhood as they commit the crime.

The peer of mine found it stupid that Li was absolved of criminal responsibility simply because he heard (his own) voices¹⁵, which he identified as God’s, telling him to kill McLean. The self-awareness of Li as he committed the act is something I am unsure of. Which parts of his mind were operating and how much self-monitoring or self-awareness occurred? I am not sure of these questions and do not know the neuropsychologists who could give me an answer.¹⁶

What I am aware of is that Vincent Li was experiencing states of psychosis and hallucination, which disordered his mind. It is easy when we are in a sound mental state to assume that someone can easily disregard ubiquitous voices, coming from an authority as revered (at least by any believer) as God.¹⁷ The problem is that someone who lacks the self-awareness and mental self-monitoring to realize the voices they hear are in a state where they have substantially less self-control. They cannot veto more heinous ideas as easily as someone in a coherent state of mind has the luxury of doing.¹⁹

Vincent Li’s schizophrenia and psychosis are not some minor nuisances, which can easily be suppressed with diligent self-control. His mental disorders have severely affected his behaviour and his commitment to what he misidentifies as “God” is quite evident. He brought himself to follow the sun for hours on “God’s” command, an obsessive habit that caused him to be hospitalized.²⁰

The point I am labouring here is that schizophrenia is much more nuanced than my peer or many others would point out. The disorder is difficult to suppress and ignore, it dissolves the rational coherence and agency of an individual, and absolves one of moral responsibility.

Now we come to the issue of who’s at fault. Did McLean “not ever have a life” by the law’s perspective if Vincent Li is absolved of moral responsibility for his death?

In one sense, fault can be assigned to an abstraction. Vincent Li’s manifestation of psychotic schizophrenia is to blame. Under this model, the only proper retribution is to eliminate the schizophrenia. That is another way of saying to medicate and counsel Li into rationality and beyond his psychotic schizophrenia.

But this recourse may very well be too intangible for most. A specific person is not punished, only a temporary manifestation of a dysfunctional mental state. Blaming relatively persistent and rational agents is much more traditional. At best I could see certain situations and institutions as (partially) responsible for this calamity. The system which allowed Li to fall through the cracks or insufficient Greyhound security is to blame here.

Ultimately, though, this incident was a random and largely meaningless tragedy. There is no tangible narrative we may derive from it. There is no one to really blame. It is as disorderly as Li’s mind was during the barbaric killing. Ultimately, cruel chance is all we can blame in this case.

<sup>ENDNOTES
1.The mental disorder in Li’s case is schizophrenia.
2.The 9,101 strong “Death Penalty For Vince Weiguang Li” being a particularly vociferous and somewhat frightening instance (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28038647493). “Death Penalty For Vince Weiguang Li” had to disclaim members from directing personal death threats against Li because of liability issues (impersonal death threats, that is advocacy of drastic reform to the criminal justice system, is happily permitted, though). More disturbing and indicative of the “two wrongs make a right” vengeance mentality is the thirteen strong (as of Mar. 15, 2009) “Let's Decapitate Vince Weiguang Li!!!” (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=b653c8b024d32775301009a42f8aef63&gid=26548761363).
3. While I will not restate them here, the uninformed on this matter may find such details in “Please kill me, accused pleads” written by Joe Friesen on August 5, 2008 for the Globe and Mail (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080805.wbus06/BNStory/National/home).
4.Vincent Li’s status as a symbol of evil, rather than an individual, is nicely attested to by a witness of the murder’s account. "I don't know what I'd do if I ever saw him [Vincent Li] again, because he's just such a scarring image on my mind, that even seeing an image in the paper hurts." (http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Beheader+criminally+responsible/1356476/story.html)
5.I refer to “partial rationality” as all humans make many non-rational and sometimes grossly irrational decisions. Any study of cognitive neuroscience or Public Relations and advertising would surely confirm this. Instances of this can be found at http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2007/01/psychology-of-bias-why-republicans-win.html and Adam Curtis’s “The Century of the Self” (2002).
6.The rationale for this omission is that actions initiated when a person was in a partially rational frame of mind which afterwards lead to situations which cause criminal violence by an irrational individual are ultimately that more or less rational individual’s responsibility. This omission works as most individuals of fiery temperament should be informed enough to realize how their actions will be impaired in fiery situations if they intoxicate themselves. As for whether other, less obvious, self-induced environmentally factors (lets say prolonged dim lighting turns out to be correlated with severe aggression but few know), that is open for question.
7.This is a bit more nuanced, I admit. Whether a defendant’s mental state was altered by intoxication sometimes comes into play, with the “Intoxication Defence”. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives sufficient background on this (http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010725).
8.Hitchen, Ian. “Bus victim's mom to speak at vigil” (http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/bus_victims_mom_to_speak_at_vigil-40343952.html). Winnipeg Free Press. February 26, 2009.
9.Hitchen, Ian. “Bus victim's mom to speak at vigil” (http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/bus_victims_mom_to_speak_at_vigil-40343952.html). Winnipeg Free Press. February 26, 2009.
10.http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Beheader+criminally+responsible/1356476/story.html
11.As precipitated by the counseling and medications he will receive under psychiatric care.
12.This differentiation is somewhat akin to Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance”. When analyzing complex systems (like human beings) he finds it useful to distinguish between the physical stance (level of physics and chemistry), design stance(level described aptly by biology), and intentional stance(in which we attribute abstract notions like “beliefs” or “desires” to abstract entities like “rational agents” (persons). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance
13.Here I am treating the brain as a physical medium or machine and the mind as the operations it performs. Personhood is regarded as the sum total of these operations.
14. I should grant that not all “mental disorders” or variations in mental functioning should excuse one from moral and criminal responsibility. Only when the rational coherence of a mind is inhibited should a disorder exempt one from responsibility. William Cottrell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cottrell), for instance, conspired to commit eco-terrorism. Once arrested, his defence lawyers attempted to absolve him of responsibility because he had “Asperger syndrome”. The lawyers entailed Asperger syndrome made “knowing right from wrong and understanding consequences difficult”. This is not an acceptable defence, as many with Asperger’s have superior moral development compared to the statistically average individual (especially pertaining to social justice). See Tony Attwood’s “The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome” page 40 for details. In general, a condition like Asperger’s or High Functioning Autism should not absolve one from responsibility given that the mind frame of someone with the condition tends to be just as, if not more, rationally coherent as the statistically average individual’s.
15.Schizophrenia is a condition in which the sufferer mistakes their own internal monologue for external voices. Page 250, note 7 in Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained (1991).
16. The psychiatrist Yaren is open to the possibility that Li was not self-aware of the act. Expressed in vernacular, Yaren said "It may be he's blocked it [aspects of the killing] from his consciousness . . . that it's just too awful for him to contemplate,".
17.Vincent Li was going through a psychotic episode where he heard “God” (some component of his mind) telling him to kill the evil doer. How self-aware or coherent he was as he (unwittingly) followed his own advice is unknown. My educated guess is that he was rather impaired. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Beheader+criminally+responsible/1356476/story.html
18.This may be technically incorrect. Schizophrenics are actually so self-awarethat they mistake their own internal mental processes (themselves) for objects and actions in the external world. This is what an article, “Schizophrenia, Consciousness, and the Self”, by Louis A. Sass, PH.D. and Josef Parnas, M.D. and published in the Schizophrenia bulletin indicates (abstract present at http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/3/427 ). One should note, however, that the result is the same. Their self-awareness is functionally impaired if they mistake awareness of the self for awareness of the external world. I will continue to use “reduced self-awareness” when describing schizophrenics, simply because their self-awareness is impaired by mistaking it for the external world.
19.Not to say that it is utterly impossible. Schizophrenia varies between individual cases. Most with the disorder are more likely to harm themselves rather than others(which still evidences the impaired self-control and self-awareness that accompanies the disorder). http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010555 John Forbes Nash, a brilliant mathematician, for instance, managed to train himself to ignore the internal voices and think rationally. http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/reality/brilliant_madness/index.shtml Sadly, not all schizophrenics are highly talented mathematicians with hyper-developed occupational rationality that is transferable elsewhere. Let’s not also forget that it took Nash years to overcome his schizophrenic auditory hallucinations.
20.http://www.thestar.com/article/595800</sup>