We have met the enemy

Good old Pogo. I used to love reading my youngest aunt's stash of Walt Kelly's comic books even though I was too young to really appreciate them at the time.

His wisdom still rings true today. In today's Sun column (Tory would have been sitting prettier under MMP), Christina Blizzard points out a number of trends that threaten democracy - the biggest one of all being voter apathy. First she explores the very different results that MMP would have delivered to Ontario had it been in effect during the last election.

But the way that referendum was thrust on us in a similar manner that FB-funding was announced, left voters with little time to properly sort out the issues in a rational process.

Fear-mongering and paranoia overcame the debates. Personally, I ended up being against MMP and have no regrets on that score, but it was a difficult process trying to sort out the various ramifications of a very complex question. Little information was given to voters before the election. Similarly, John Tory's fatal flaw was to spring FB-funding on us as a campaign platform that allowed the opposing side to run with the fear-ball all the way to the goal line.

Blizzard interviewed Peter MacLeod, of Queen's University's Centre for the Study of Democracy, and received this observation:

"The recent election wasn't a contest of ideas, it was a monologue about one bad idea. Yet Ontarians had no way to tune into a different conversation," he said.

"There was no space for a discussion about any number of issues -- mainly because we've created a political culture where ideas and issues have themselves become dangerous," he said.

"No wonder so many people simply change the channel or pull the plug."

( . . . )

But back to Churchill. He also noted the best argument against democracy is "a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Many potential voters in this province simply sat home Oct. 10. Voter turn-out was a pathetic 52%.

"We may have voted down the referendum, but we're getting perilously close to voting down democracy too. A 52% turnout isn't much of an endorsement and yet I can't believe this is what people want," MacLeod said.

So we can blame the powers-to-be for not educating us enough on the relevant issues and we can blame the fear-mongers for taking advantage of our naiveté.

Or we can start taking responsibility for ourselves and stop letting the nanny-state do our thinking for us.

That means making a real effort to learn about the issues from a variety of sources. It means objectively assessing the pros and cons. It means caring.

And it means getting out to vote.