Table of contents

From the Magazine Editor

We begin working on the magazine editions months before they go to print. In June, I wanted to call this the “Almost Democracy” issue, an idea that made perfect sense to me and absolutely no one else.

We began planning before Amy Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers, among other journalists, were arrested outside the 2008 Republican National Convention, seemingly for doing their job.

We began researching long before the Canadian election was called and the Canadian media started going through the motions of political coverage with little regard as to how such attention might insult the intelligence of Canadians, before anyone started to ask why we’re having an election in the first place.

We began editing way back when we were just talking about a recession and not a crisis, back when John McCain was all for debates, anywhere, anytime.

Within the span of a couple months, “Almost Democracy” has become redundant. Let’s talk about democracy.

Google “obama tocqueville” and five of the initial 10 hits will offer you a free essay. You won’t get the same results with “mccain tocqueville,” but I take this as good indication that at least some high schoolers are asked to evaluate the current campaign through the writings of the 19th-century philosopher. Even today Tocqueville remains one of the greatest authorities on democracy in America, which is why so many presidential candidates, and Presidents, quote from him.

Here’s the kicker that so many fail to mention when they use Tocqueville as a great authority: when Tocqueville left France for his year-long road trip in America, he was all of 25 years old.

It’s in this spirit that we’ve tried to approach the issue: for all the times you’ve been told that young people are apathetic—that you’re unengaged, you’re uninformed, you’re lazy, or you’re selfish—we wanted to talk back. Nowhere in these pages will we chide you for not voting. If you do choose to vote, that’s great. But there are lots of well-informed reasons why a person would choose not to vote in Canada, and we didn’t want that blame game to become our focus. “The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens,” Tocqueville wrote. “Functions”: plural.

Were Tocqueville transplanted to Toronto circa 2008, one of the first questions he might ask is “How’s your associational life?” For our Democracy issue, we thought about putting a ballot on the cover, but went with a rugby game instead. In her feature on intramural sports, Sara Quinn checks the health of one aspect of U of T’s social capital.

The other side of the coin is our evaluation of democracy at U of T, examining our school’s highest governing body, the Governing Council. A team of reporters have put together a history of why so few students sit on GC. Theoretically, we’ve elected them. Does it matter?

The questions Tocqueville asked of democracy are the ones we’re still considering today. In Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Liberty seems pretty awesome. Andrew Louis’s profile of University of Toronto hackers Citizen Lab examines what exactly freedom of speech means, and whether the Internet is enough of a catalyst to create worldwide change.

For his own take on democracy in America, Jordan Bimm infiltrated the Republicans Abroad for one night, and lived to tell the tale. Canadian Republicans do exist, and Jordan’s report offers some of the best insights I’ve seen into this presidential election from a Canadian perspective. Period.

One last thing about Tocqueville: he wasn’t afraid to betray at times just how lost in the woods he felt. “Where are we?” he wrote. “Has every other century resembled our own?” Like a student of history faced with the undeniable present: how soon is now?

Sincerely,

Jade Colbert
Magazine Editor