MUSINGS and other writing by Mark Kolke

 

No community can rest on laurels.

 

No government is constituted upon a single principle.

 

No civilization can survive and thrive peacefully without citizens having equitable diversity of values and competing interests.

 

The United States is undoubtedly having one of its least peaceful ever transitions of power.

 

Boots on the ground.

 

Is it dangerous, insurrectionist, and seditious?

 

Yes, not like second-guessing actions of cornered animals, but close.

 

About laws.

 

About order.

 

Something more important, I submit, than questioning any regime’s legitimacy, more useful than disdainfully kicking verbal dirt on a defeated president leaving his spotlight ~  asking what reasonable people should do, with not enough parsing what emotional and unreasonable people will do.

 

Since ancient Athenians originated democracy, it outshines other constructs most of the time. What recent events underscore; democracy is not textbook-simple.

 

At best, it is civil.

 

At worst, gritty.

 

Sometimes bloody.

 

Canadians should neither shrug nor be smug. We’ve had disaffection, character assassinations, insurrections, riots, and killings.

 

Yes, we’re generally polite.

 

Don’t forget our heroes of confrontations, politeness cast aside, intrepidly preserving democracy: Famous Five, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Louis Riel, Nathan Cirillo, Kevin Vickers, Romeo Dallaire, front-line patriots in wars, pandemics, and peacekeeping. Every time we are in trouble, we trust their fealty. And lest we forget Confederation’s fathers who dreamed/willed/negotiated our country into existence.

 

Peacefulness is not the foundation of democracy and civil society; instead, it’s a worthy and tantalizing, volatile and sometimes unstable by-product.

 

Freedom is the right to be free.

 

But it isn’t free; it comes at a cost – and often an expensive one in money, credibility, and lives.

 

Nation-building is never finished.

 

Nor should it be.

 

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