An End of an Era?

if you gauge the status of small-l liberalism by the popularity of the current prime minister of canada you'd probably conclude all as well but outside our borders the fortunes of liberal values freedom of speech universal human rights equality of the genders well they've been on the defensive of late joining us now to consider how liberalism can weather these turbulent times we are please welcome back Michael Ignatieff the former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and now the rector and president of the Central European University in Budapest Hungary it's great to have you back here great to be here in what was your studio once upon a time long time you there show here yes I did a show of documentaries Ontario everything there we go well I don't know everything but maybe a little bit you had I do want to start off with this very interesting choice you've made because you had a terrific gig at Harvard University living in a great City Boston when you great baseball team I was just gonna say where you could go to as many Red Sox games as you wanted they're doing pretty well now would you know now you decide to move to Budapest Hungary how come well it helps if you have a Hungarian wife Hungary is a beautiful country or the beautiful language but it's a language impossible to learn it's like the North Face of the Eiger you can't get your hands on anything so it helps to have a Hungarian wife it helps to have a deep connection to Hungary as I do but the University is pretty special it was set up 25 years ago by George Soros Oh Hungarian who made billions on Wall Street and he wanted to set up a university that would defend liberal values defend open society defend free markets free institutions free minds above all free minds and this university is known its 25th year and it has a thousand students from all over the world including 25 Canadians it has an international faculty it's a graduate university and it's crucially it's in Hungary which is a place that is democratic but not liberal and so I've got a job of defending those values in a place where they're kind of shutting down and that was too good a challenge to miss I was like a challenger this is not a challenge even at the expense of missing some Red Sox playoff baseball well I you know the Internet is the Internet and I'm still still watching papi you're you're in a bit of a tickle at least I think you are in a bit of a ticklish spot in so much as on the one hand there's George Soros and what he's done on the other hand is the current prime minister and they're not getting along and you're in the middle of all that how are you negotiating that kind of complicated relationship right now well I think that the first thing you have to do is understand what a university is the university is not an opposition political party it's not an NGO it's not a campaigning organization it's a place that trains free minds and so we get the message over to the government that you know there'll be people in my university I don't like what the government is doing and there'll be some people in my university who vote for what the government is doing my job is to make sure that it's a free safe space so people can say what the heck they want about the refugee issue where the Hungarian government staying in a position that many people disagree with so I am in the middle in the sense that hardly a day goes by without an attack on mr. Soros was born in Hungary who fled during the horrendous extermination of Hungarian Jewry and after forty four five he's a Hungarian patriot the thing that bugs me is that no one's done more for hunger than George Soros but there isn't a day when he isn't attacked by the government inspired media but for the moment Steve they draw a distinction between a free University which is good for the city and good for the neighborhood and Soros and they attack pretty strongly and I'm trying to make sure that they understand that we're not the opposition to the government we're just a university doing what universities have to do so how safe a space is it for you at the moment it's a safe for space as long as I stay smart politically and keep my people understanding what what what to do I mean the point is universities you know the University of Toronto doesn't take a collective position on the wind government or on the Trudeau government or in the Harper government some way universities do so we're not going to do that in Hungary the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban famously calls what you're living in now and illiberal democracy what does he mean by that well it's an interesting concept because he means it's majority rule without rule of law without full freedom of the media without independent institutions of the judiciary and the banking system in other words it's majority rule dominated by a single party that's a liberal democracy and it teaches you something important about democracy that you know I think we're apt to forget which is democracy is not just majority rule it's also all these other institutions like an independent judiciary like a free press that counterbalance the power of majorities so you know what is what is democracy its majority rule counterbalanced by minority rights protection and it's the minority rights protection that are missing or are at risk of being lost in Hungary he's developed a bit of a relationship with Russia's Putin do you know what each of them want from each other at the moment I think they want to embarrass the West they want to poke the noses of NATO and the European Union but let's also remember that and because the anniversary is coming up and many people watching this program will remember October 56 in Hungary when the Russian tanks Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and shot the place out and that is a bitter memory that mr. Orban can't do anything to erase and mr. Putin can't do anything to erase so yeah they cozy up a little but they're doing it really just to provoke the Americans of NATO but in fact Hungarians had a visceral suspicion of a resurgent Russia and their right to do so Putin is not the Stalinist regime Putin is not Brezhnev but any Hungarian with a grain of common sense knows you know when I get too cozy with Vladimir Putin so Putin is or is not a kind of a role model for Orban well that's an interesting question yes and no yes in the sense of majority rule through manipulated elections single party dominance that's what Russia would share and common with the Hungarian model but it's also different I think Hungary is dare I say at a freer place than Putin's Russia I mean one example you know there are no political killings in Hungary government health warning folks I'm not here to defend Viktor or about the Hungarian government some know my job I'm just trying to distinguish between regimes I mean people get killed in Russia for opposing that regime they don't get killed as men yeah they don't get killed in Hungary and so it's important to notice that you know liberal democracy of the kind we have in Canada is being challenged all over the world in China in Russia in Hungary a little bit in Poland in lots of other places but all of these challenges are slightly different and it's important to remember that they are different but all of them amount to kind of having democracy of a kind on the surface but no substance of democracy beneath the surface and it helps I think Canadians to understand that some of the most important parts of our democracy are the bits you don't see like independent judges judges who can't be turned around by money or political pressure by media that allows you know you to do your job nobody's gonna pick up the phone and ring you and tell you what you ought to say here courts that do their job regulators regulators that's a completely invisible part of a democracy people who regulate whether you can do business in this way or that they can't we have problems with corruption in this country but they can't they're not under domination of a political party these are the bits of democracy we kind of forget about but when you go to a place like Hungary and you go to other places where those are the bits that have been weakened you come back with a deeper understanding of what democracy has to be in order to work at all and you know the other thing I just completed some research around the world there isn't a country in the world where liberal democracy is not having a hard time I mean look at the United States I love the United States because I went to love their baseball I love their constitutional tradition but you know do they have regulators that are not being corrupted by big money questions do they have a fully free media a question sometimes when you look at fox media are their courts and their police above all their police when you think about what is a democracy it's a police force that will not arrest you or beat you up because of your race that's democracy well the United States right now I'm not saying it's not a democracy but I'm saying the struggle to preserve liberal democracy is a constant daily struggle and we're seeing it south of the border and we've got our challenges here and and net what's the net story here this stuff really matters this stuff really matters we've got to all be defenders of democracy and the first lesson is know what the heck it is if the u.s. is sort of Story number one and all of what's happening in that presidential campaign in a liberal democracy I'm guessing Story number two over the past year was brags it and I want to ask you about that how concerned are you that that is sort of the first thread in the unraveling of the Europe that you know I think everybody has to have serious concerns about that Angela Merkel was in Bratislava at a recent u summit she said it's in crisis when a not a founding member of the European but a key member leaves and decides after a referendum vote the majority that people say they want out that's a that is a wake up call if there ever was one and they weren't there were they in Bratislava no no no they were they were not there it's interesting this this is a case where yeah I don't need to tell this audience I've often been wrong in politics but I was especially wrong over brexit I just thought they would remain and I think the biggest shock about this was that when after the vote came in they went north to small industrial towns Sunderland in northern England which has received massive EU subsidy they discovered that Sunderland voted for brexit that is despite the fact that in some ways membership in the European Union was good for some of these industrial towns the majority of the population said it comes at too high a price we've lost sovereignty we've lost control what's the larger message here the larger message here is that sovereignty matters nations matter over economic interest in some and over indeed over economic interests you can say to someone if you don't stay in this Union you're going to lose you're gonna suffer in your standard of living people said I'm already suffering what what could be worse here what I care about is is parliamentary sovereignty democratic control Britain for the British and then we get to the darker side of this which is the ways in which it's part of a exclusionary anti-immigrant ante multiculturalism anty anty in some cases decency agenda and all of this is a wake-up call for everybody and it's a wake-up call for liberals because here's the point we've taken for granted that our values human rights democracy open borders migration multiculturalism if we think they're good they must be good for everybody and there's a kind of liberal sometimes the liberal arrogance here which gets us into trouble we've all gotta listen cosmopolitan I'm a cosmopolitan I've lived and travelled in lots of countries I feel at home in lots of places but that that set of advantages makes it more difficult not less difficult to understand people for whom globalization is a threat for whom you know transnational trade pacts are a threat to their jobs and I think above all and and this is even more difficult to say people want control of their borders they want to have a sense that when they vote the votes they they take determine what national policy is the sense of losing Democratic control of your country the sense of losing control of your borders just created a situation which in which brexit won handily and and and so I'm not to your question I'm not I think the European Union will survive but the question the challenge that brexit poses is is once again to liberal democracy can liberals who believe in open borders and tolerance and multiculturalism develop a set of arguments that says the people who are frightened by globalization look we hear you you want a country that controls its borders you want a country that's sovereign over its national affairs you want a country where you feel patriotic pride in your country's accomplishments all that language has to be part of what a liberal small-l liberal I'm out of politics we just saw what a smaller liberal believes in Sheldon I'm gonna pull an audible here let's go to the top of page three this is board number two and this is from daemon linker of the week come from a few days ago underlying liberal denigration of the new nationalism he writes the tendency of progressives to describe it as nothing but quote racism Islamophobia and xenophobia is the desire to delegitimize any particular istic attachment or form of solidarity B at national linguistic religious territorial or ethnic the more this informs the political moral economic and legal universalism spread around the globe the more they inspire a reaction in the name of the opposite ideals the Western world is living through just such a reaction right now question is why our cultural and national identity is proving themselves to be stronger and in some cases more important than economic interests than liberals expected great question my sense is though that that liberalism has always been a vision of political community we've forgotten that we've thought that liberalism is a kind of Cosmopolitan ideal for everybody but it actually a democracy is a political community people who recognize each other whose whose emotions are triggered by by things like the national anthem by the sight of a maple leaf flag by a by a childhood memory of being up at the lake all the things that make us Canadian are very emotional I think sometimes liberalism of the small-l has been a little indifferent to those emotions but they're what binds communities to and when and when those emotions are denigrated when those emotions are derided as being you know nationalistic for example you can kick up a reaction that you shouldn't you shouldn't be surprised by nobody thinks of themselves as a European do they know people think of themselves as Hungarian or British or French and you know my sense here is that racism let's let's be clear racism is racism and racism is ugly and anti-semitism is ugly you can be against all those things and you should be viscerally against them but at the same time you don't need to be against national pride you don't need to begin ste idea that no nation is going to survive unless it has control of its borders you know that I don't agree with mister Orban's policies about refugees I think Hungary should have taken people in there were lots of generous Hungarians who are prepared to help but he rolled up the razor wire and he rolled up their waser Warren has very substantial support in Hungary because he said a nation has to control its borders Canada controls this borders I came I came through on Tuesday night at Pearson they give me a good check they should give me a good check they should give you know a country that doesn't have border control is not a country and to some degree Merkel and people whose politics I approve of we're a little casual about that they didn't realize how important that is to a sense of political community liberal liberalism that can't defend a political community that is a community with borders a community that says their citizens in here and they're strangers without is not going to be a community for long so how big a challenge does what you've just described posed to the future of liberal democracies around the world well it poses a big challenge if the consequence of what I'm saying is razor wire everywhere I've just been arguing very strongly that the United States for example should be doing what Canada did and taking many more refugees and I believe Europe should be taking in more jeez partly for demographic replacement I mean partly just to keep the show on the road we need new people and anybody who's been to Canada knows that one of the chief sources of our dynamism has been regulated lawful migration from every corner of the world it's the best thing about this place but it has to be regulated it has to be controlled you have to say yes you can come in no you can't if you play with you you don't play by the rules you've got to go out all that basic stuff has to be part of what a liberal believes if we're gonna hold populations through the experiment of multiculturalism by experiment I mean let's remember we didn't change the rules on Canadian immigration until 1965 six it's in your lifetime in mind that this has happened it's been one of the greatest things we've done but you have to keep holding consent for it every step of the way and and consent depends on effective immigration control I suspect one of the things affecting that consent is the fact that it's this is not just a refugee crisis because of the numbers but it's a refugee crisis because of where these people are from the Muslim integration of Europe is not a completely happy story and I wonder how you again small-l liberals compete with what is already a narrative that seems baked in yeah baked in in the sense if you're in Hungary where I'm currently living you know hungry for 400 years defined itself as the southern frontier of Christianity against Islam it's very hard to change that Budapest was occupied by the Turks we have these beautiful Turkish baths in Budapest you got to see them they're wonderful but they're a symbol of Turkish domination of a Christian country and all that stuff when you say baked-in is what we're talking about it's in the psyche of people it's longing yeah and it's it's not in the psyche of Canadians for Canadians Islam as just another faith to be treated with respect but not too much respect I mean you come in and you know we've had recent controversies about whether you can listen to music and you know we've been pushing back and forward on that as we should it's you know it's the majority in this country has a right to set and if the terms into which you integrate in this country same thing in in in Europe but it's it's a more difficult struggle in Europe because the histories are different the one thing I take away that has helped me with my small-l liberalism is to give respect to the idea of different strokes for different folks what works in Canada is not necessarily going to work in Poland is not going to work in Hungary okay different do you want the strokes well though there's a limit and that's a human rights violation and there's no question that the ways in which immigrants have been treated on a southern border in Hungary are violative of Human Rights nobody contest the right of a state like Hungary or Poland or any of these countries to define who comes in and who doesn't but there has been a way in which Hungary has refused any act of generosity and hospitality and and I think that's been damaging to the country and the point if I can just I'm going on a bit here see but there's one point I want to make here I use the word generosity and hospitality the most successful refugee program in the world politically that is the one that had the best support around the world has been the Canadian one and it depends on private sponsorship of by families it depends on the generosity of Canadian families and a one-to-one relationship between a Canadian family or a Canadian community and and refugees and that tells you something really important it tells you as a liberal that liberals tend to think of this whether a refugee has a right of asylum in a country as a matter of Rights the Canadian story tells me something subtly but importantly different it's a relationship of a gift not a right hospitality is a gift Canadian families are saying come on in we want to make you a gift of the most important public good there is in the world namely life in this country but we are going to decide who comes in and if you come in you're gonna shape up with Canadian values and the Canadian program and that been tremendously successful the language of the gift turns out to be much more successful politically than the language of the right and that's a huge and complex message for liberals is because we don't like the language of the gift because the gift is discretionary I'll take you see but I'm not gonna take that guy the language of the gift has all kinds of moral problems with it but it turns out to be the language that moves Canadians to make this gesture that the whole world has taken notice of I hear you and I don't want to get you mired in domestic Canadian politics today but the reality is that you know the Conservative Party is having a leadership race right now and one of the candidates Kelly leach is essentially running on I think something very similar to what you just said which is we're gonna screen you to make sure you you enhance and you embrace our Canadian values before we let you in it sounded to me like you sort of said something like that just now I I'm not I'm not gonna be put in that box I didn't mention screening I was saying something very different I think they're human rights legitimate human rights limits on screening people should be assessed on the basis of need on the basis of their identity proving who they say they are that is no fraud no deception but screening them for values all my all my liberal hackles actually go up and I don't want to enter it their leadership campaign and I'm off shore now and I don't want to go there and I think I am saying something different I'm saying that the the the thing that citizens insist upon and all the bull democracy is they have some say in who the gift is given to right and that the gift is a reciprocal relationship in which the person who's been accept who accepts the gift accepts an obligation of some kind to live by Canadian norms and ninety-nine point six percent of the time that's been the story of Canadian multiculturalism and it's a it's a sudden you know me my name is Ignatieff out you know you're not act did I get here you know I got here because the gift worked we were given the gift and we've tried to repay it you're on Twitter and I follow you and you got something better to do apparently not here's in our last couple of minutes I do want to I'm not going to drag you into Canadian politics as you just mentioned keep saying you're not doing yes here comes the question go ahead Sheldon let's put this up here here's a tweet from Michael Ignatieff not that long ago when he said Stephen Harper begins a new life after politics life's good after politics I wish him well my first thought when I saw that tweet was that's a very classy thing for you to say about a man who basically spent millions of dollars trying to destroy your reputation during an election campaign in your own country so am I allowed to call BS on that with you Michael Ignatieff and say you can't possibly really really feel that way as you've suggested in that tweet well let me challenge you back I got beat I got beat by a pretty superb political tactician and strategist I didn't like mr. Harper personally but I respected him I respected him as a political opponent whatever you think about him and that be for Canadian historians to figure out his legacy he was a pretty superb ruthless relentless political tactician and he beat me fair and square or not so fair not so square my point but he beat me but he beat me and I just think it's it's a bad thing in life and in politics to brood and be grim and resentful I did that tweet not for Stephen Harper I did that for myself it's very important to put things behind you it's very important not to carry grudges I think that some of the things that he authorized to be said about me the problem is that some of the things he authorized to say about me lowered the tone of Canadian politics and set a bad example for the future of Canadian politics but that again is for Canadian voters to to to think about and reflect upon because one of the things about liberal democracy is there ought to be some rules about what you say and what you don't say there ought to be some rules to keep the conversation the combat the combat because politics is come about to keep the combat civil one of the things that Canadians I think are rightly proud of in our country is that the combat is pretty civil and I think there were moments when mr. Harper broke those rules but but having said all that I think it's crucial in life not to hold grudges and I I do wish him well in the sense that it's an it's an amazing accomplishment to be Prime Minister for 10 years it's amazing accomplishment to take a party that's a kind of rag bag a bunch of guys who aren't ready for prime time and wheeled them into a governing party I also think as a liberal and we've been as a capital L liberal this time for just a second we've been in power for a lot of the country a lot of the century and and we're in power now but you don't have a healthy democracy unless you have a really vigorous strong competitive opposition and he created a strong competitive opposition competitive enough to throw us out of office all of that's an achievement I don't like it because it came out of my hide but it's an achievement and I think that you don't want to have if we're going to have civil politics let's be civil we wish you well trying to prevent Hungary from becoming a more illiberal democracy and maybe nudging it a little more towards the liberal democracy that I know you wish it were and maybe still could be Michael Ignatieff great to see you again here at Evo thanks so much hydrazine helped Evo create a better world through the power of learning visit t v-- org and make a tax-deductible donation today

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 4,546

Rating: 4.0588236 out of 5

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, Michael Ignatieff, liberalism

Id: wA-SzxaGxCA

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2016