Description:
The Trouble with Democracy -- Gairdner says -- We now live, says under a regime of "libertarian socialism" in which citizens imagine they have all the rights and their governments all the duties.
Brief description: As a young athlete, Bill competed in the decathlon at the Pan-Am Games in Brazil and at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964, and then in two Commonwealth Games (Jamaica, 1966, and Edinburgh, 1970), in the 400 metre hurdles event. After earning a PhD from Stanford University, he taught English Literature at York University, then pursued a career in business, from which he retired in 1988 to devote his time to writing. In quick succession he produced a string of bestselling books, including The Trouble With Canada, The War Against The Family, The Book of Absolutes, and Canada's Founding Debates -- an historical landmark, DISRUPTIVE ESSAYS: There Are No Safe Spaces in This Book!, His most recent book is The French Traveler: Adventure, Exploration & Indian Life In Eighteenth-Century Canada. Blog: www.williamgairdner.ca Twitter: @williamgairdner
Review Quotes:
"Anyone wishing to restore constitutional safeguards against predatory mobs, social engineering elites and a political system hostile to civil society must realize this: if Bill Gairdner is correct about the intellectual roots of our problems, we will win only trifling institutional victories unless we take the battle onto the field of ideas."
- National Post
In his own words, Mr. Gairdner's book is a look under the hood of democracy. Not just a surface look at things like who gets to vote or analysis of various political ideologies but a detailed look at the component parts of democracy, how they developed and how they interact. It is no small undertaking, but Mr. Gairdner draws liberally on history, psychology and philosophy along with smatterings of literature, sociology and science and is, ultimately, reasonably successful. He certainly generates a good deal that is worth some careful thought.
His title is, perhaps, a slight misnomer in that Mr. Gairdner does not believe democracy is grievously flawed, just subject to a variety of pitfalls. That could be said of much that is worth pursuing in this world. Currently, Mr. Gairdner sees democracy in western countries in the grip of two distinct dangers or pitfalls. One is "collective democracy" or the rule of the General Will initially pioneered by Rousseau and taken to its inevitable end, totalitarianism, in the 20th century by fascism and communism. The second pitfall is ultimate individualism as developed by Mill in "On Liberty" and in our time taken to an extreme Mr. Gairdner refers to as "hyperdemocracy." To my eyes hyperdemocracy is another face of Relativism that is currently falling into disrepute. Mr. Gairdner's answer to these pitfalls is to regenerate civil society. Some years ago Robert Putnam documented the decline of civil society over the 20th century in his book "Bowling Alone." Now, Mr. Gairdner posits the decline was not so much a result of advancing technology or the natural evolution of society as it was a necessary precursor to advancing collective democracy and hyperdemocracy.
All this oversimplifies and fails to reflect the depth to which Mr. Gairdner takes his analysis. Indeed, perhaps he digs a little too deeply: the book is overlong, a little repetitive in places (the Right to Choose was questioned more than one too many times for just one small example) and cannot be read lightly. Although I was not entirely convinced by Mr. Gairdner's treatise I am grateful for the opportunity to scrutinize it. It will, no doubt, be the germ for much further thought and discussion.
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-- Rondo Reader - Amazon.ca, May 30, 2011