To many people, democracy is too much bother. Can you just imagine how much it annoys Donald Trump? Democracy requires openness and honesty, effort and consideration, rights and freedoms. And democracy continues to grow and evolve and expand. It recognizes the equality of the sexes. It recognizes our shared responsibility for our country, our environment, our peace and good government. It recognizes that the person who pushes a broom has the same rights as the person in the corner office. They have the same opportunities to education, to health care, the same public services, and access to their politicians.
And yet in Canada we proclaim this democracy, our equality, our feminism, fairness, and our rights and then set the royals of another part of the world above us. It is a sham, perpetrated by those afraid of change.
But democracy should be accepting of tearing down the barriers to change.
Should Canada have a handsomely paid and housed Governor General as nothing more than a ceremonial figurehead? Why are we continuing such an archaic and outdated practice? And should we continue to countenance the provincial Lieutenant Governors? Are they not just carry-ons from a long-forgotten colonial past?
Canadians want to remember their country’s past. They want to remember it, honour it but be able to change it. It is like the gated homes of the rich and their footmen guards that are no longer needed in this day and age that we continue in our vertical condominium castles for the very rich.
The news media continue to titillate the impoverished with the vulgar consumption of the very rich and to what ends, we do not fathom? Are we to pull a forelock as they are chauffeured by in their limousines?
The danger of public elitism is ever with us. From the Prime Minister we have his elitist choices for the useless and annoying Senate of Canada. It is an useless appendage to our parliament. And do we have to be told to whom to bow through the elitist Order of Canada? We can have their deeds speak for them not by a selection of the elite.
Democracy ignored is democracy denied. Democracy left to the elites, promotes elitism. Democracy neglected is in support of tyranny. We have choices in this life. We should choose them well.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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