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by Fred Kirby 28 June 2004 I recently received an email containing the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Not the classical one where the ant works hard all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he is a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold. No, this one is about social democrats putting the social democrats in the role of the grasshopper while those who play the ant’s role is not identified but presumably refers to others, conservatives usually. It is an unfortunate parody that has been around for years cropping up at least once in every election. It might be clever if it was not based on inaccurate history and, more importantly, reveals a dearth of ungrudging magnanimity. As long as there has been modern democracy there have been social democrats striving to make democracy work for all. They were radical thinkers for their times. It was not coincidental that many of the original social democratic party in Canada, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) were Christian ministers motivated by the Social Gospel. The first leader was J. S. Woodsworth, a Methodist minister. Another founding member was Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister, who became premier of Saskatchewan in 1944. The CCF came into existence through the action of western farm organizations, pioneer trade unionists, and followers of the Social Gospel. In the Great Depression during the dirty thirties, hard working farmers, note the irony with the Ant story, were losing their farms, their way of life, to the banks. Ordinary people, through no fault of their own, found themselves with no jobs and could not feed their families. Single men found themselves in camps little better than prison work camps. There was no laughter and no dancing, just despair and heartache among large numbers of ordinary Canadians. It was the CCF who brought social issues and social remedies into the public debate. Tommy Douglas, as Premier of Saskatchewan, brought in medicare during the 50’s. The CCF’s continual advocacy brought us the social net and health system that makes us distinctly Canadian. When the CCF renewed itself and became the New Democratic Party in 1961, its basic principles remained the same – peace, social justice for all and employment for a living, not subsistence, wage. Does that warrant ridicule? And remember this. Every great moral philosopher and every founder of our major religions have been champions for social justice. Even Adam Smith, who argued for free enterprise, did not agree with the corporatism that dominates to-day and wrote a book on ethics stating the need to keep reins on enterprise and maintain balance. Working for a better world for all doesn’t get one a lot of money but it is a noble goal and it does not make you a grasshopper.
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