HEATHER MALLICK

Challenging authority

Joiners are rarely thinkers

May 21, 2007

In a recent speech, Vaclav Havel said he had encountered two types of people during his years as a fighter for human rights, a prisoner and eventually Czech president. There were "those with the soul of a collaborationist and those who were comfortable denying authority."

I’m not sure I trust the accuracy of the quote, which comes from a column by the American historian Walter Isaacson on disgraced CIA director George Tenet’s eternal "desire to please." Isaacson is an awkward writer. Can Havel really have used the word "comfortable?" Nothing is more uncomfortable, surely, in the Soviet-spanned world then and in North America now, than challenging authority. Havel learned this to his cost.

I suspect what Havel meant is that the world is divided into those who automatically follow orders, like Tenet, and those who instantly and instinctively question them. In Laurie Colwin’s funny and wise novel A Big Storm Knocked It Over, Sven, the amoralist, describes his co-workers before the company is sold: "She’s waiting to see which is the winning team before she joins it. She’s the sort of person who is already learning the new national anthem as the invading army approaches. You poor kid. We know you wouldn’t — would you? We know you’d join the underground, or quit, or get fired. Right?"

Yes, that about sums it up, Sven.

Extreme decency

My editor made a wise change in my last column. I had used the phrase "right wing" and he changed that to "the political right." He was exhausted, he said, by the tired expression.

And so am I, and so are you, I hope.

There’s the political left, the right, the extremes of each and the middle. (In Canada, there may even be an extreme middle. They are nice people to have a coffee and a biscuit with.) But I have great faith in Canadian voters. There is a basic fairness in Canadians, a decency and rationality that has nothing to do with extremes.

And this is the essence of the person who refuses to go along to get along. There’s a stubborn voice in such Canadians that says, "This doesn’t seem right to me. I won’t vote for that."

I was greatly touched last week by a letter from a reader, Douglas Davis in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. It was an eloquent tribute to the importance of a good, solid education for young Canadians, and it began: "I agree with much of what you have written, although I am on the other side of the political centre. What governments fail to realize is that funding education is not an expense, it is an investment. Granted, it is a long-term one."

So he and I agree on a matter that I have long been shy of discussing lest I be accused of being an "elitist." I believe education is important for its own sake. It is the basis of civilization. I especially believe in the teaching of history.

I am an elitist. I want people to be well-read, to value books. Here’s my reasoning. Educated people are more likely to deny authority. People who don’t read don’t have an intellectual storehouse to help them think independently. They do what they’re told. They have an endless desire to please those in authority; they don’t know they don’t have to.

For instance, no matter what your political beliefs, if you read Neil Belton’s book about torture, The Good Listener, you will come to profoundly oppose torture. Only a twisted mind could still praise it in the "war on terror," as the ludicrous phrase, now officially abandoned by the British government, goes.

Dodge the lingo

I am going through something of a crisis of the soul right now. I fight very hard for women’s rights, but I do wonder whether it is still useful to call myself a "feminist." I’m actually more of a humanist, since I believe men should have equal rights, too, but the word "humanist" is now used to mean something different.

I am questioning "isms" and "ists." Doris Lessing wrote a small book, almost a pamphlet, in 1987 called Prisons We Choose to Live Inside. She writes that nations should teach their citizens to become individuals to resist group pressures, while admitting that no nation will do this. In a section called Group Minds, she writes that we all live in groups — family work, social, religious, political — and most people are deeply uncomfortable if they don’t.

And that’s when groupthink takes over. This is how Nazism began, McCarthyism, the reign of the Stasi in East Germany, the increasing Stasi-like destruction of privacy in the U.S. and the demonization of "liberals." What happens is that dissidents are crushed.

It is genuinely frightening to be an American who suggests that U.S. policy in the Middle East fuelled the terrorism that destroyed the Twin Towers. It’s not so pleasant for a Canadian, either. But surely it is perfectly rational for anyone of any political belief to suggest that Canada’s efforts (at what?) in Afghanistan are pointless. No? Jack Layton is called "Taliban Jack" for his thought crime.

Never join a group without being confident of your ability to speak up in disagreement. Never follow the talking points or use the phrased mandated by the group in power: "partisan," "embedded," "in harm’s way," "support our troops," "coalition of the willing," "collateral damage" or "enemy combatant." This is Orwell’s Newspeak. They are words intended to conceal meaning, not explain it. I won’t use the word "detainee," for instance. I say "prisoner."

Born to be Word

I know other people fantasize about being Nicole Kidman (famous), or Donald Trump (rich), or Noam Chomsky (intellectual) or J.K. Rowling (best-selling). Me, I fantasize about being two words on the great satirical show The Colbert Report on The Comedy Channel. I see myself as "The Word." Stephen Colbert launches into his anti-intellectual, pro-Bush, pro-war, all-American rant, while beside him, supposedly unseen by him but perhaps emerging from another part of his brain, are printed sarcastic responses to his idiocies. "Yeah, right," says The Word. This creature sits back, smirking. It is snarky, ironic, mocking, devoid of sentiment and utterly subversive.

That’s my fantasy version of myself, eternally in disagreement with the powers that be. You may call this mad; I could not possibly comment. I just know I was born this way.

This Week

The Sopranos is nearing its end, with creator David Chase killing off something that irritated him over the series’ lifespan, the fact that viewers were fond of Tony and the Mob crew. Chase says these men are monsters. He is now making this point agonizingly clear. People aren’t murdered; they are disposed of like meat. Evil roars. The devil twitches his pointy ears. Hell beckons.