than others. Ralph Klein is a better politician than I could have been, had I
been one. Klein turned out to have been abler than most politicians, but then
he had something to work with. Grant Devine had a helping hand from
Alberta’s Lougheed PC’s when he was running to become Saskatchewan’s
Premier. But after he became Premier, Devine had Saskatchewan to work
with and was himself a product of the place, with ideas not radically
different from his opponents in the NDP — just more of the same.
As far as grand schemes go:during the fifties, Tommy Douglas was
inventing Saskatchewan while Ernest Manning was inventing Alberta.
Douglas had been born in Scotland and was educated in Winnipeg as a
Baptist preacher. He was posted to Weyburn, Saskatchewan where as a
young man caught in the Great Depression he became a socialist. Ernest
Manning was born in Carnduff, Saskatchewan and was educated as a Baptist
preacher in Calgary where he began his Depression-era politics with the
socialist ideas of Clifford Hugh Douglas, an Englishman living in Scotland
and no relation to Tommy. (I remember when I was a child I heard on the
radio the “Back to the Bible Broadcast” with Ernest Manning as we drove
back to Regina some Sunday nights after visiting my grandparents in their
hometown of Glenavon, Saskatchewan. “Listen to that Bible-puncher,” my
father would laugh. “He and his Social Credit Party believe in funny
money.”I wondered what that could be.)Who would have thought things
would turn out as they did? Both Douglases would have been surprised, I’m
sure. Perhaps Manning would have expected it, but then people always do
think that they knew what would happen when their plans more or less work
out — they’re silent when they don’t. My father was wrong, Social Credit
had already begun to change before the fifties began.
Elections, which reflect only those ideas that people already accept, do
little to change the culture. But you may ask, Paul, if the socialists were so
good at reshaping culture and acquiring power, why did they fail? (We
should remember that some socialists were good at using military force to
acquire and retain power too; yet they also failed.)As you know, people
cannot repeal the laws of nature, or God. The best they can do is try to
understand and obey them. That’s why airplanes can fly!
It’s not easy to know what’s right:Marx thought he had discovered
the “laws of history” and that the future he predicted was inevitable — so I
wonder, why did people who believed him think they needed to help things
along? Conservatives (who in the nineteenth century would have been the
liberals) always saidsocialism would fail because it is unworkable. Turns
out they were right — maybe in the end theirhelp wasn’t needed either!
