Category: Politics

Anyone who serves the public learns how to manage upset customers.

When someone says you hurt them, do not argue. Listen. Apologize. When people are angry, upset, or heart-broken, you must stay silent. Offer support.

There is no other rational response.

Of course, listening has limits. Threats, yelling, or swearing must end the conversation, with help from security if necessary.

Truckers Freedom Convoy 2022

Doctors and nurses deal with upset people every day.

We allow room to express and grieve, even if we do not like or value the content. We embrace expression and limit inappropriate behaviour.

Politicians and journalists should do the same with the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy.

There is only one rational response: help the people speak.

Facilitate peaceful protest.

Hear them out.

Be ready to limit bad behaviour — with force if necessary.

Win or Lose — You Choose Your Own Fate

The only way to win the moral high ground in the face of protest or complaint is to help the aggrieved party.

If the aggrieved party refuses help, you win.

If they refuse to talk or negotiate, you win.

If they become violent or irrational, you win.

If you attack the aggrieved party, you lose. You become a combatant, not a leader.

If you slander the aggrieved party, you lose.

If you try to twist their message, you lose.

If you argue, you lose.

If you refuse to meet and speak with them, you lose.

Let them speak. Even better, help them speak! Amplify their message.

If they speak nonsense, it makes your position stronger with the larger audience.

If protesters speak truth, you win support having helped expose the truth and changed your own mind in the process.

You win either way.

The strength of your argument or the righteousness of your position does not matter as much as your response.

If you attack, slander, dismiss, or silence your enemy:

You. Will. Lose.

Force will be your only option remaining, and that is all people will remember. No one remembers the justice of your cause.

Can Anyone LEad us?

Many Canadian elites have shown an unexpected level of incompetence, in response to protest.

The Prime Minister chose to attack the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy 2022. Listening was beneath him. He slandered instead of showing compassion. He refused to meet. Trudeau only listens to those he likes.

Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP, did the same.  Many individual MPs hurled insults. The media made us dizzy with spin.

This response eliminates any winning option.

It does not matter if the upset party has no case. You lose the larger crowd if you do not listen.

Even if the larger crowd leans your way, you still risk losing its support — your attack creates martyrs of the minority position.

Of course, listen with limits. Do not tolerate violence or bad behaviour.

But if you refuse to listen and foment frustration instead, the larger crowd watching may turn against you, if they haven’t already.

Losing the Convoy Narrative

The elites may have lost the larger crowd already.

Thousands of regular people have gone to see the Convoy for themselves. They find a happy celebration. They sing and dance and play soccer in the street. They wave flags and exchange high fives. People hand out free hot food on every corner.

Close family and friends return with pictures and videos of a moving, patriotic event. I now have dozens and dozens of first-hand reports from people I trust: this is not a violent protest.

There is only one rational response — only one positive way forward. Let’s hope a leader rises up to guide us there soon.

 

“Hey Doc … so should I get the booster or what?”

He had just recovered from COVID — for him, a mild flu in a fully vaccinated man. Public Health advises boosters. Docs have been warned to avoid saying otherwise.

The average person is smarter on many things than most elites allow. Patients know vaccine mandates make less sense at the end of the pandemic than they may have at the beginning.

Good today, Bad Tomorrow

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised truckers at the beginning of the pandemic and encouraged all Canadians to do the same. Now he calls truckers a “small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.”

Stop for a minute.

This sounds like a dream come true. Trudeau should cheer. Welcome the fringe. Get them to the capital, ASAP. Show the world the nonsense of their fringe views.

“Fringe” Views vs. traditional liberalism

JS Mill argued we should welcome views we oppose. Let people speak — they will prove the stupidity of their position without you having to say a word.

But Trudeau is not a traditional liberal. He is a modern man, intolerant of those with whom he disagrees. His ideas are true and righteous. Others are fringe, ignorant, or maleficent — “unacceptable”.

The illiberal elite slice society into good and bad, sheep and goats. Intolerance is just. We must not tolerate evil. Herbert Marcuse, philosopher, called it “repressive tolerance.”

Masks and Mandates

“Excuse me, Dr. Whatley. Should we wear N95 masks for this patient.”

Of course. Yes!

We need gown, gloves, goggles, and N95 masks. This patient may have been in contact with someone who just tested positive!

But so could any of the last ten patients.

We wore regular masks for them. Many of the those patients — all potential ‘contacts’ — wore cloth masks … or surgical masks soaked through with dirt, snot, and who knows what.

Reason and Fury

For almost two years, a crowd of doctors have pounded the COVID drums. Their fury swells as severity wanes. They alone are right. They are protectors of healthcare. Do not talk about cancelled surgeries — COVID counts are all that matter.

Reason fails in the face of illiberalism.

Indeed, liberalism depends on reason too much. It forgets about emotion.

“Once at the center of the study of politics, emotions have led a shadow existence for the last three decades [since 1970], with no place in the rationalistic, structural, and organizational models that dominate academic political analysis.”

(see Passionate Politics – Emotions and Social Movements)

Truckers Freedom Convoy

Sunlight improves almost everything. The best way to keep something festering is to cover it up.

Letting people talk has been an essential ingredient to the success of parliamentary democracy.

Absolutely, it has been messy and confusing. But it has delivered incomparable human flourishing. No other approach comes close.

Canadians are finally speaking up. Smiling. Waving flags. Joining together.

If the truckers freedom convoy is wrong and misguided, the error will show through immediately. There is no reason to worry. No need to be upset or irritated with them. Truth will prevail.

But if this movement has a point to make, we should listen. Even if we disagree, we should tolerate the difference in opinion. Silencing difference never turns out well.

I hope the truckers freedom convoy brings out the best in what it means to live in a free, parliamentary democracy. Society is only as good as those who get involved.

Photo credits: Freedom Convoy, Snopes: Did it set a world record?

Canadian medicare teeter-totters between two kinds of liberalism: classical and modern. We will never improve until we inject new ideas.

Inside the right-of-centre political parties, the classical liberals fight with the philosophical conservatives for supremacy.  For the last two decades, the classical liberals have won.

If we want medicare to improve, we cannot keep using the same tired ideas. I suggest the right-of-centre political parties need to draw on classical liberalism plus conservatism.

This article published in The Hub explains what I mean and offers a concrete policy problem to start the discussion.

Enjoy!

Shawn Whatley: How to get Canada off the health-care teeter-totter

Liberalism works when you are healthy but fails when you fall ill.

Classical liberalism emphasizes autonomy, individual freedom, and free markets. These ideas have fuelled centuries of wealth and prosperity.

Modern liberalism, in contrast, pursues central decision-making and equality of outcome. Despite similar names and obvious differences, neither type of liberalism provides arguments for everything patients need.

When classical liberalism fails in patient care, it creates space for modern liberalism. Modern liberalism then applies central decision-making which creates inefficiency and bureaucracy. This in turn creates a call for efficiency, deregulation, and policy based on economic liberalism.

This seesaw creates a policy teeter-totter with each type of liberalism pumping furiously at either end.

The failure of liberalism cannot be solved by more liberalism. Only a coalition of classical liberalism plus conservatism will allow Canada off the health policy teeter-totter.

How Liberalism fails

Successful ideas explain reality and suggest solutions to life’s messiest problems. Political ideas fail when they do not reflect reality or cannot explain human experience.

Given liberalism’s dominance in Canadian politics, we should ask how it performs for patients. Does it make sense when patients need it most? Classical liberalism delivers advanced technology, therapeutics, and almost magical cures, but can it deliver care to patients?

Classical liberalism fails to fit patient care in two areas. First, it fails in trauma and acute care. Car crashes and strokes often create dependent, comatose patients. Free agents lose control, and agency passes to a third party.

An unconscious patient is not a rare or special case of information asymmetry, common in professional relationships. Unconsciousness is not a theoretical gap market thinking can overcome; it is an infinite and insuperable knowledge gap. And it occurs hundreds of times each day across Canada. …

Continue reading at The Hub.