The Three Eras of Canada's Democracy or How We Got to Where We Are Today.

I first voted in the 1968 elections when Pierre Trudeau and Trudeaumania led the liberals to a massive majority and I've watched Canadian democracy evolve, not always in a good way, ever since.

I've witnessed three political eras in my lifetime.

There was an Era of Rights and Freedoms, the years of Diefenbaker, Pearson and Trudeau.  Some might not realize it but Diefenbaker was a true champion of human rights.  Pearson brought Canada to the world stage as honest broker and peacekeeper.  Trudeau, of course, patriated the constitution and left us with perhaps the most important legislative enactment in our country's history, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  That was the zenith of liberal democracy in Canada.  It truly was our Golden Age.

Although few of us grasped it at the time, Mulroney ushered in the Era of Neoliberalism in the guise of free trade and the incremental surrender of national sovereignty to the forces of market fundamentalism.  The era of neoliberalism represented the years of Mulroney, Chretien and Martin.  Neoliberalism became our orthodoxy until it was even embraced by the New Democrats.

The third era is upon us.  It is the Era of Illiberal Democracy marked by the rise of the authoritarian state and the ascendancy of the state over the individual.  This is Canada under Stephen Harper.

I don't single out Canada for criticism.  Illiberal democracy is spreading fast throughout the world.  We are just following suit.  It's marked by a general shift to the Right, a skewing of the democratic restraints on government, and the emergence of new power structures.

Ignatieff recast the Liberals as Conservative Lite with his endorsement of a "muscular foreign policy", petro-statehood, and his unbalanced support for Israel.  Layton and Mulcair likewise embraced neoliberalism as they abandoned the Left and Blairified the NDP.

Harper has left no shred of doubt that he holds liberal democracy and especially the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in contempt.  He has sought to flout the Charter over and again, only to run afoul of the constitutional guardians, the Supreme Court.  They alone, not our opposition leaders, have ensured we have something left to fight for.

Illiberal democracy is evident in the workings of the authoritarian state.  It is manifest in voter manipulation and fraudulent elections.  It is the vehicle for rising inequality.  It is masked in secrecy and deceit.  It is the modern surveillance state.  It is the advancement of corporate interests (i.e. pipelines) over the public interest (i.e. action to thwart global warming).  We're even seeing the early onset symptoms of a permanent warfare state, outsourcing much of our foreign and military policy to another nation.

This is where we are today, the era of illiberal democracy.  Left unchecked it will worsen and our democracy will continue to be degraded.  We only have to look at America's "bought and paid for" Congress and its corporatist Supreme Court.

How to get back to real democracy is the puzzle.  It certainly cannot be achieved with Liberals as Conservatives and New Democrats as Liberals.  We cannot even the political keel under that reality and the country can only continue to list to the Right.

I fear the only antidote is progressivism, genuine bare-knuckle progressivism. Liberals need to restore their near-dead progressive wing.  New Democrats have to curb their centrism and return to their indispensable role of anchoring the Left and becoming the conscience of Parliament.  Who even speaks for labour any more?  Mulcair?  Spare me.

If we don't realize where we came from, everything great that we had accomplished, where we are today and just how we got here, we become party to ensuring the perpetuation and expansion of illiberal democracy in Canada.  We have a choice but we take it for granted at our and our children's peril.  Our freedom hangs in the balance.

Britain's Norman Legacy - One Thousand Years of Inequality

I first became aware of the Norman impact on Britain post-1066 when I learned of its effects on the English language.

Normans, effectively Vikings or Norse from France, settled in as a dominant socio-economic layer atop Saxon England.  They claimed the best of the best - of everything.

The Saxon peasant may have raised chickens but it was his Norman lords who enjoyed "poultry" (poulet).   The Saxon peasant herded cattle but his lord feasted on "beef" (boeuf) and veal.   Sheep from the field became "mutton" on his lordship's table.   Modern English is laced with these traces of Norman dominance over its Saxon people.  They all seem tinged with the elements of affluence and power (indict, jury and verdict for example).

An item in today's Guardian goes beyond linguistics to show how the Norman legacy remains prevalent in modern British inequality.

According to the author Kevin Cahill, the main driver behind the absurd expense of owning land and property in Britain is that so much of the nation's land is locked up by a tiny elite. Just 0.3% of the population – 160,000 families – own two thirds of the country. Less than 1% of the population owns 70% of the land, running Britain a close second to Brazil for the title of the country with the most unequal land distribution on Earth.

Much of this can be traced back to 1066. The first act of William the Conqueror, in 1067, was to declare that every acre of land in England now belonged to the monarch. This was unprecedented: Anglo-Saxon England had been a mosaic of landowners. Now there was just one. William then proceeded to parcel much of that land out to those who had fought with him at Hastings. This was the beginning of feudalism; it was also the beginning of the landowning culture that has plagued England – and Britain – ever since.

The dukes and earls who still own so much of the nation's land, and who feature every year on the breathless rich lists, are the beneficiaries of this astonishing land grab. William's 22nd great-granddaughter, who today sits on the throne, is still the legal owner of the whole of England. Even your house, if you've been able to afford one, is technically hers. You're a tenant, and the price of your tenancy is your loyalty to the crown. When the current monarch dies, her son will inherit the crown (another Norman innovation, incidentally, since Anglo-Saxon kings were elected). As Duke of Cornwall, he is the inheritor of land that William gave to Brian of Brittany in 1068, for helping to defeat the English at Hastings.

My early introduction into the language question left me convinced that Britain remains a foreign-occupied country.  This piece erases all doubt.