Seattle Times / Op/Ed / Robert Sibley, Guest Columnist
OTTAWA - Quebec City, one of North America's oldest cities, was once known as the Gibraltar of America. Established in 1608, it was the gateway to the Great Lakes and the heart of North America; whoever controlled the city pretty much controlled the continent.
Small wonder that its French-speaking population saw its fair share of violence - everything from bombardments by the British navy to invading American armies.
This past week Quebec City was again the spot for shaping national destinies as the leaders of 35 Western Hemisphere countries, including President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, met at the Summit of the Americas to lay the groundwork for a new 21st-century empire - a free-trade zone stretching from Alaska to the South American islands of Tierra del Fuego.
Not unexpectedly, there were those who objected. They believe the would-be trade arrangement will harm democratic principles, threaten the environment and undermine social programs.
To show their concern for democracy, some summit protesters thought it appropriate to turn Quebec City's narrow streets into a battle zone, hurling chunks of cement and ball bearings at police.
We've seen all this before, of course. Violence between protesters and police is now the norm at international economic gatherings since rioters put an end to World Trade Organization negotiations in Seattle in 1999.
Somehow, it is justifiable to destroy other people's property if your cause is pure. This is a dangerous attitude to tolerate because it breeds the conditions that ultimately undermine democracy.
Consider the comments of protest poster child Naomi Klein, the author of "No Logo," a hot-selling anti-business screed, who was most visible for the camera crews at the summit.
She drew an incoherent distinction between vandalism and violence. "Breaking windows is vandalism," she said, implying that it isn't real violence. Tell that to the Quebec City residents who were sweeping up the glass of their broken windows after the protests.
Then there was Maude Barlow, the co-chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, a left-wing civil action group. She blamed the violence on the existence of a three-mile-long security fence - a "wall of shame," protesters dubbed it - that the Canadian government placed around the Summit conference site to protect the gathered leaders.
"The provocation started with that damned wall," she told the TV cameras. "The real violence lies behind the wall." It is a facile claim.
You can infer from both Barlow's and Klein's remarks that any demonstrator who saw the "wall" was somehow excused from the ethical obligation to conduct themselves in a responsible, law-abiding manner.
To be sure, civil disobedience has an honorable history. Martin Luther King used non-violent civil disobedience in his fight for civil rights.
Mahatma Gandhi did the same in opposing British rule in India.
But in both cases they were "disobeying" authorities whose conduct was itself in violation of basic human rights or reflected the absence of democracy.
No such justification can be made by the Quebec City protesters (or those in Seattle, Prague or Washington, D.C.). Canada and the United States are democratic societies in which the rule of law generally prevails. Caribbean, Latin American and South American countries are increasingly democratic.
If so, the protesters, who claim to accept the principles of democratic rule, have no right to disobey the law even when they disagree with government policies.
Violence in the name of political change is not justified in genuinely democratic societies. The Canadian prime minister voiced this principle when he said protesters had every right to "go from one summit to another," but "we will not tolerate breaking the peace."
Indeed, there is nothing so threatening to democratic order as violence being tolerated by well-meaning people for ostensibly worthy ends. If our freedom should be threatened, it will not be by transnational corporations, whose "power" is grossly overstated.
Bill Gates never tortured anyone or broke any windows. As in the 20th century, governments will be the ones to watch.
Citizens who resort to violence when they don't win democratic debates are trying to hijack state power and eliminate democratic debate from human affairs. In doing so they betray an inherent totalitarian impulse.
The essence of totalitarianism is the project of transforming human life by making people conform to some single overriding idea of the just society. But idealists tend to turn violent when they discover that people are unsuitable material for one-size-fits-all social order.
The anti-globalizers are right to be concerned about the inequities of capitalism. But when they use violence to impose their view of the world (ill-informed or otherwise) they reveal themselves as totalitarians, not democrats.
Robert Sibley is a member of the Ottawa Citizen's editorial board.
Copyright c 2001 The Seattle Times Company:
