Civitas Presidential Address
John von Heyking
May 2, 2014 – Toronto
Welcome, everyone, to the 18th Annual General Meeting of Civitas.
It is unlikely that our Founding Directors – many are here tonight envisaged how far conservatism in Canada would come when they
founded our society. As many of you recall, conservatism was in
rough shape in the 1990s, both in terms of electoral politics and
conservatism’s capacity to advance its ideas.
Look where 18 years has taken us. Conservative-leaning parties dot
the electoral map of this country and, thanks to many in this room,
conservative ideas don’t just help to shape political debate, but they
drive the debate.
Civitas started as a bedraggled band of errant knights, quixotically
roaming the barren landscape and surrounded by the triumphalist
forces of liberalism. Now we are a major metropolis – in Latin, a
civitas – equipped with vibrant neighborhoods of the different varieties
of conservatism: Burkeans, Hayekians, Thomists, Smithians,
libertarians, Voegelinians, Straussians, social conservatives, thinktanks, academics, journalists, activists, politicians, lawyers, and people
who are none of those things but are simply engaged citizens who
wish, as our website states, “to promote and deepen understanding
through the exchange of a wide range of political, economic, social,
religious, cultural and philosophical ideas concerning the principles and
traditions of a free and ordered society."
We each inhabit an individual neighborhood – a little platoon – of this
“civitas,” but we all come together each year because we recognize
that beyond our individual neighborhood exists the greater good of the
Canadian polity. Thus, our name, “Civitas.”
Before coming here I reread some of our founding documents,
including the minutes of the founding meetings and the mission
statements. In addition to the expressed need for having a society
like ours, one of the main themes in these documents is the
importance of “conversation.”
Sure, we’re here to listen to speakers, to learn new ideas, see old
friends and meet new ones, as well as to advance our agendas and
causes.
But I think “conversation” is the best way to describe what we do and
what it means what conservatives do best. Neither lecture nor
disembodied social media, but real life, face-to-face conversation.
These days we witness a lot of left-wing causes imploding because
their side arrogantly claims “the debate is over.” We all know that
proclaiming the debate over is a sign that one’s position is weak, and
the louder such proclamations get, the more obvious those
weaknesses are to all.
Politics is about opinions and is inherently pluralistic. The conversation
is never over and I think we conservatives are at our best when we
recognize and advance this.
Winston Churchill wrote wonderful essays on the British Prime
Ministers and statesmen who were his Victorian predecessors, as well
as his senior colleagues and political friends: the Earl of Rosebery,
James Chamberlain, Henry Asquith, F. E. Smith, and Arthur James
Balfour.
Of each of them he assessed their moral character as well as their
political skill primarily according to their conversational skills and their
friendships. Indeed, each of them was an outstanding
conversationalist, and this made them good friends and good
politicians. He judged them on how well they treated their friends,
especially when political differences came between them.
As good friends, their skills at conversation embodied the
quintessential activity of friends – living together and conversing, as
Aristotle says it is. Their conversable friendships enabled them to
treat others as friends first, and as political opponents as well as allies
second. The mark of a civilized man was to give priority to friendship
over partisanship. As we know, politics is not the most serious game
we play as human beings.
But their conversational habits also made them effective politicians.
We misread Churchill if we simply view these gentlemen – and his
ideal – as a bunch of stuffy British aristocrats drinking whiskey and
puffing cigars at one another.
Churchill knew that in conversation, our minds become more supple
and deepen our wisdom. We learn to listen and we learn not simply to
assert our own views, but also to see how our views fit together with
those of others. We learn to appreciate that fitting-together, but we
also learn patience to bear the vexations when our views do not fit.
Conversation is where we learn that “nature never draws a line without
smudging it” and that we need “flexibility of judgment and a
willingness to assume a somewhat humbler attitude” toward life.
Conversation is the habit of a society capable of parliamentary
democracy.
Conversation is thus a political virtue as well as the prime virtue for
our group.
For this reason I’ve invited one of our founding directors and by many
accounts the “godfather of Canadian conservatism,” Tom Flanagan, to
speak to us tonight about free speech in the age of the Internet. Most
of you know that he got his knees whacked after making some
comments at my university last year. In their moral panic, various
friends and allies wished the conversation to stop.
Tom, here you are among friends.
Now he’s back, bigger and badder than ever, because he knows the
conversation must go on. No longer “persona non grata,” please help
me welcome Tom Flanagan.