{"content":[{"text":"Populism and Democratic Decay: \n Will Canada’s Cure be Worse than the \n Disease? \n Ryan Alford* \n Many political theorists consider populism the principal threat to liberal democracy in the \n twenty-first century. They argue that the election of demagogues like Donald Trump prefigure \n a fascist resurgence, which might only be forestalled by an unprecedented reinforcement of the \n constitutional order — one which would limit the civil rights of anyone who disavows its \n premises. This paper challenges the assumptions of those who would limit free speech to create a \n battle-ready democracy. It argues that the lesson of history from the Weimar Republic which we \n must learn is this: the narrowing of the window of acceptable political discourse is the impetus of \n political polarization. In the present, we must distinguish between those who would repudiate \n the tenets of constitutionalism and those who merely spurn the opportunity to align their values \n with those of the professional-managerial class. The paper demonstrates that reactionary \n populism should be considered primarily a challenge to the claims of expertise and virtue that are \n central to the social reproduction and advancement of this class; the rejection of these values is \n principally the result of political changes that disenfranchised the working class. Further \n retrenchment of the speech of those who refuse to adopt PMC values will only serve to broaden \n the inroads for Canadian populism. Despite the danger of this hastening democratic decay, there \n is an accelerating drive to transform the Canadian legal and constitutional order into a battle- \n ready democracy, one which has already manifested within the legal profession. The epistemic \n closure of the legal academy and professions to arguments against that transformation would \n turn the failure to learn the lessons of history into a self-fulfilling prophecy: those who cannot \n remember the past accurately are doomed to repeat it.","bbox":{"left":0.147639,"top":0.119568,"width":0.703787,"height":0.567611}},{"text":"*","bbox":{"left":0.147639,"top":0.749301,"width":0.008207999999999993,"height":0.01765300000000003}},{"text":"Ryan Alford is an Associate Professor at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, \n Lakehead University, a Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario and an \n Adjudicator of the Law Society Tribunal; LLD University of South Africa, MSt \n University of Oxford (Hertford College), JD New York University, MA \n University of Amsterdam, BA Carleton University and author of Seven Absolute \n Rights: Recovering the Historical Foundations of Canada’s Rule of Law and \n Permanent State of Emergency: Unchecked Executive Power and the Demise of the \n Rule of Law (McGill-Queens’ University Press 2020 & 2017).","bbox":{"left":0.196774,"top":0.749301,"width":0.604027,"height":0.14727900000000005}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}