The uncommon concept of common sense

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This article was published 09/08/2024 (455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To say common sense isn’t very common is not an original observation.

If common sense were more common, we would live a peaceful society with justice and equality for all. We would care for each other in the ways we want to be cared for ourselves when it was our turn to need help. Empathy would be the norm, not the exception.

Everyone would have enough food, clean water, shelter and opportunity — because any other path leads to anxiety, unhappiness and danger for our society. Work would be available and meaningful for anyone who wanted it.

We always would make our decisions with children in mind — whether our own or others — providing and caring for the next generations as our ancestors provided and cared for us. We would each be special and important — but not more special and important than anyone else.

We would respect the privacy and choices of other people, just as we expect them to respect our privacy and choices. We would ensure that our freedom was only constrained by social and cultural boundaries that also guaranteed the freedom of others.

We would all just be humans, not separated by artificial distinctions of geography, race, ethnicity, gender, orientation or age — or by anything that would lead us to forget that we are all citizens of Earth with the same needs and desires as everyone else.

Violence would be a last resort as we followed the Golden Rule, which is both commonsensical and utterly pragmatic.

By now, you must be thinking I poured way too much sugar in my morning coffee. However sickly sweet these sentences might seem, they describe a “common sense” perspective but (alas) not for politics and politicians these days.

While I confess having to look up the word to be sure of its definition, my pretty picture would be dismissed — likely with anger — as being “woke.”

Imagine my confusion when politicians who expect to be elected (or re-elected) proudly attack people who are “woke” as though there is some badge of honour associated with being an advocate of racism, sexism, ageism, injustice and a general overall lack of caring, empathy or basic human decency.

I hope you appreciate the ironies here, because the next federal campaign will include the self-described “common sense” Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre. To continue my confessions, I only know this because of the barrage of robocalls I (and others in Manitoba) received on my personal cellphone before his latest BS (Bumper Sticker) event — “Axe the Tax” — in Winnipeg in support of the Conservative candidate in Elmwood-Transcona.

I rarely get calls on my cellphone. When I do, it often means bad news. So every time it goes off my heart stops until I answer the call, wherever I happen to be and whatever I happen to be doing. You can therefore perhaps imagine my irritation at these recent, frequent, calls, including a recorded message from Poilievre inviting me to the party on behalf of the “common sense” Conservatives.

I hope the people of Elmwood-Transcona use this byelection as an opportunity to send a message, not to the Trudeau Liberals or the Singh NDP, but to the robocaller Conservatives and vote for anybody else. If this is a sign of what they think “common sense” means, they are demonstrating an utter disrespect of personal space, privacy and the boundaries of other people’s lives, making their idea of government anything but “common sense” for most people.

What’s more, given this column actually had its roots in my fuming at the way Poilievre called for a “warrior culture” in the Canadian Armed Forces last month to replace its “woke” culture, you get the further irony. (This diatribe was apparently linked to the appointment of the first female chief of defence staff and the recent federal mandate for all government washrooms to include a tampon dispenser.)

So, if a “common sense” perspective on life, the universe and everything is really what I described at the start of this column, the Conservatives are therefore apparently claiming to be the most “woke” political party in Canada and leader Poilievre the most “woke” of all.

Unless, of course, the sloganeers in charge of the Conservative BS (bumper sticker) bus forgot to look up not only the definition of “woke” but also of “common sense.”

Oops. (Cue the laugh track.)

I would like to hear that the Conservative Party was anti-racist, pro-choice and intersectional in its opposition to all kind of injustice. That it cared not only for all Canadians but also for their children, and — unlike Republicans to the south — even for childless cat ladies.

But the word “empathy” is apparently not in Poilievre’s dictionary. Alone among Canadian federal leaders, his tweet after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump (by a young Republican) harshly concluded: “I am also happy that the suspected shooter is dead. Democracy must prevail.”

Dead men tell no embarrassing tales. That must seem like common sense to him.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.