John Ivison has a good piece in today's National Post about the Liberals' hollow "consultation process" on abolishing the voting system we've used since the common people were first admitted to Parliament, in favour of one that will make them almost impossible to beat. And if you're worried about this change and the undemocratic, arguably unconstitutional way it's likely to happen, and live in the Ottawa area, you might want to attend the MY VOTE MATTERS Ottawa event this evening at the Ukrainian Community Centre (1000 Byron) from 6:00 to 7:30 and share your concerns.
Well, September 17 gives us an opportunity to celebrate the Edict of Poitiers. I hear surprisingly little cheering.
OK, OK. So it was this 1577 declaration by French king Henri III of toleration for Protestants. Are we happier now?
Possibly not. It came, some say, after the sixth phase of the French Wars of Religion, a brouhaha that went on for some 36 years between 1562 and 1598 and caused millions of deaths directly or through famine and disease. Others deny that these wars, or this war, can be divided neatly into stages because the violence treachery and death just kept erupting despite periodic flowery declarations of reconciliation. Certainly if you look at a timeline it’s depressing how the wars blend into one another, punctuated by this assassination and that massacre ending in the “War of the Three Henries”.
As for the Edict of Poitiers, well, it was issued by the last Valois king, fourth son and favourite of Catherine de Medici which gives you some idea what his word was worth. And in any case the Edict, which arose from the Treaty of Bergerac three days earlier between Henri and the Huguenot (French Protestant) princes so everybody hated one another anyway, only granted Protestants the right to practice their religion in the suburbs of a single town in each judicial district. Not exactly life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Still, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right? And after the “War of the Three Henries” ended with two assassinations (the ultra-Catholic Henri de Guise and then Henri III) the last man standing, Henri of Navarre, becoming Henri IV (the first Bourbon) things apparently got better even if he did have to pretend to be Catholic to become king. It was under him that the Edict of Nantes in 1598 promised Protestants something much more like genuine tolerance and even the freedom to, say, have a job you actually wanted including in government.
Still, we’re back in anecdote territory here, because France was still an absolutist state. Henri IV eventually became a very popular monarch and was assassinated in 1610, after which you got the three eternal Louis (XIII, XIV and XV, holding the throne between them for 164 years) and, uh, revocation of the Edict of Nantes and destruction of Protestant churches, closing of their schools and intimidating quartering of unruly dragoons in the homes of Protestants unless they happened suddenly to, you know, discover the truth of Catholicism. (Louis XIV, who revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 through the Edict of Fontainebleu, boasted that of nearly a million Huguenots, less than 2,000 remained in France a year later; some of my own ancestors were among those who fled to England where their talent and energy was actually welcome.)
We are accustomed to the story of freedom being a story. It has better and worse chapters, heroes and villains. But there’s meant to be a story arc in which in the end liberty prevails, to the point that any claim that can be advanced as furthering the cause of freedom has a strong advantage in public debate in Canada today. But again, where despotism reigns, you don’t have a story so much as a series of bleakly amusing anecdotes about the folly and viciousness of mankind.
Sadly, the Edict of Poitiers is essentially in the latter category. Hence the silence.
“Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”
Mark Twain, “Notebook, published posthumously, 1935” in Joseph R. Conlin, ed., The Morrow Book of Quotations in American History
[podcast title="News and Views with Rob Snow, September 16"]http://www.thejohnrobson.com/podcast/John2016/September/RobSnow160916.mp3[/podcast]
“Life doesn’t wait to be asked: it comes grinning in, sits down uninvited and helps itself to bread and cheese, and comments uninhibitedly on the decorations.” Philip Larkin
Continuing yesterday’s depressing theme, we commemorate today the Grito de Dolores or Cry of Dolores uttered on September 16, 1810. If you are wondering who hurt Dolores so badly, rest assured it wasn’t that. It actually came from a priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and means the “Cry of Pains” and it triggered the Mexican revolt against Spanish rule.
He uttered memorable words. Pity we don’t know what they are. Various versions exist and they conflict, but clearly he spoke of patriotism, rights, religion and freedom. And the crowd rallied and took up arms and got… well… uh… more speeches about freedom.
They also got eleven years of commotion and war followed by independence in 1821. And I suppose they got patriotism; Mexico still celebrates it. But they didn’t get rights. Mexico was a seedy dictatorship until… well… uh… They are trying these days. But the truth is that the rule of law has never flourished there and still doesn’t.
As for religion, they got a variant of it for a while. The “Autumn of the Patriarch” style of government that prevailed until 1910 was heavy on religion as a slogan and was allied to the church, though its actual conduct was not what Jesus recommended in virtually any way. Then they had another revolution and an incredibly bloody civil war that went on for about a decade and killed perhaps 10% of the populace, following which the church was severely repressed including banning wearing clerical garb in public.
Then there’s freedom. Easy to call, hard to run, as the late great Oakland Raiders quarterback Kenny “Snake” Stabler used to say in the huddle. Without a strong tradition of liberty in one’s political culture, without a habit of self-government in the personal sense, political freedom rapidly deteriorates into licence and anarchy followed by a strong man restoring order and relegating rights and liberties to speeches.
The result is lots of cries of pain, fairly monotonous ones in fact, and a sad parade of hopes that are betrayed or simply crumble.
Somehow people manage to keep the patriotism. But it does them little good in isolation. It can even do harm by making them proud of endless disasters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udD1A8EdcmY It’s time to restore traditional Canadian values. Things like liberty under law, strong national defence and traditional social values, from monogamy to self-control and honour aren’t obsolete. They’re as necessary today as they were ten centuries ago and more, and I want my country back. If you do too, please read on.
I’m a documentary film-maker, writer and columnist. As this video explains, I write for a number of publications, appear on radio and create online videos. But it’s all freelance; there’s no salary or benefits. And it doesn’t pay all that well. So it’s your pledges and contributions to our crowd-funded documentaries that keep me in business and feed my family. (And yes, once in a long while give us a vacation too. I’m trying to make a living in the broad sense, not just pay the rent.)
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My latest for The Rebel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K22urM4Etac
The audio-only version is available here: [podcast title="Rebel, September 15"]http://www.thejohnrobson.com/podcast/John2016/September/160915Rebel.mp3[/podcast]