Democracy demands participation

By Letter to the Editor on April 21, 2021.

Editor:
We experience liberty and freedom as a positive, both public and private. Education for liberty in democracy must be public rather than private. Liberty in public cannot be determined by competition or accumulation, as in wealth. When the market is believed to do the work of democracy, our culture is perverted, and the character of our society is undermined. Liberty is a potential, that must be learned. The effective exercise of rights is based on acceptance of the learning skills of citizenship. Tocqueville declared it the most arduous of apprenticeships. It exists as the core meaning of public schooling in the liberal arts. These are the arts of liberty necessary to the exercise of citizenship in a free democracy. They depend on civic learning, public participation and common consciousness. Max Webber talked about the iron cage of modernity. Today we struggle with a different cage -w more like the African monkey trap. Consisting of an open woven cage containing a nut or desirable treat, where the monkey is only caught by its own unwillingness to let go of the nut it seeks. Is the monkey free or not? All we need do is let go of consumption.
Privatization is more than economic ideology; it distorts understanding of freedom and citizenship. Hannah Arendt was right in arguing that political freedom is experienced by participation in government, rather than struggling against its rules. Privatization makes us less free.
Democracy demands participation. If we are not actively involved in governing our country, we do not believe in and support democracy.
D. Ryane
Lethbridge