Drinking with Terry Glavin

Last night I went out for some drinks with Terry Glavin at Smuggler's Cove in Cadboro Bay.

We had a great time talking politics, well to be more accurate, talking about the how far the debate in politics has strayed from what are the core issues we should be discussing. Much of what we talked about is how the left is disconnected from core values of human rights. The last few years have seen very disturbing trend among the left in Canada and elsewhere, the people on the left are embracing fascists as allies (the enemy of my enemy is my friend). The left support of groups like Hamas or appeasing the Taliban is at best amoral, but at the heart unethical.

We also touched on the lack of any real solidarity in Canada with people in the rest of the world - Canadians are willing to dismiss Afghans as ignorant brown skinned tribal people that really do not have the skills to act in a civilized manner or govern themselves. The people in Afghanistan keeping telling us over and over again that they want a democracy, that they want troops to support the public against the warlords and fascists, and that they want women to be able to take part in society.

We of course talked about environmentalism and the problems within the permanent professional environmental movement that is more interested in selling doom than seeking solutions. Both of us are enviros from way back, but neither one of is an orthodox enviro.

The current global struggle politically is between open democratic societies and closed authoritarian ones. This is either ignored by countries wanting to do business, or there is a strong streak of appeasement of the authoritarians. We are missing a unified and consistent approach from the open societies. It is time for the UN to insist that the UN declaration of human rights is adhered to by all the members.

While it was great to have a few beers with Terry and talk about these things, how do we change the public debate? How do we engage more people in this debate of what is important in society? How do we move the debate towards hope, solutions and consistent moral/ethical actions? Maybe some more people need to drink with us.....