John Lennon’s Imagine- Beautiful Tune, Problematic Message

There is no doubt about the popularity of John Lennon’s 1971 song, Imagine.[i] Rolling Stone, ranked it number 3 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Canadian listeners to the 2005 CBC program, 50 Tracks, ranked it the number one “most essential song in pop music history.” It was played at the close of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Former USA President, Jimmy Carter has said that “in many countries around the world- my wife and I have visited about 125 countries- you hear John Lennon’s song Imagine used almost equally with national anthems.”

Like many others, I find its melody serene and beautifully hypnotic, but the words are something else again. In essence, its message is that we can all live in a world of universal peace and harmony if we simply get rid of religion, countries and private property. In a later interview, Lennon said he did not mean a world “without religion “but one ‘with no denominations of religion’…without this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing”. How we could have no denominations of religion and still have religion is left unexplained, but the lyrics clearly ask us to “imagine there’s no heaven…and no religion too.”

Lennon also once stated the message of the song was “virtually the Communist Manifesto even though I’m not particularly a Communist and I do not belong to any movement.” In one of his final interviews he summed up its message as “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugar-coated it is accepted.” Lennon’s political stance was always that of an agitator , but an agitator mischievously trying to slip one by conservative and conventional people, rather than one who forthrightly stood up for what he believed and worked tirelessly to achieve it.

I have two objections to the song’s message. First, as one who believes that Christianity and patriotism, (rightly interpreted) and the ambition to provide for oneself economically are three of the main forces offering hope for making the world a better place and ourselves better people, Lennon is calling for a world without the things most worth striving for and living for. Worse, I believe, it would open the door to dystopia rather than utopia.

George Orwell, certainly no apologist for organized religion, in an April 1940 review of Malcolm Muggeridge’s, The Thirties, written in the heyday of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, pointed out that the successful effort since the Enlightenment to undermine belief in God and the human soul, however justified by the evils done in the name of religion, had produced results quite different than those anticipated. “For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all; it was a cesspool full of barbed wire. It is as though in the space of ten years we had slid back into the Stone Age. Human types supposedly extinct for centuries, the dancing dervish, the robber chieftain, the Grand Inquisitor, have suddenly reappeared, not as inmates of lunatic asylums, but as the masters of the world.”

Second, even if you find the vision of a world without religion, countries and private property attractive, the words of Imagine are still objectionable. Why?  Because Lennon tells us implicitly that all we need to do to achieve it is to wish for it. ‘’Imagine no more heaven,” he tells us, “It’s easy if you try.” “Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.” Just join me and others in imagining this brave new world, he concludes, “And the world will live as one.”

The attraction of Lennon’s vision, even for those who do not share his rejection of religion, patriotism and possessions is that it is so undemanding. “Imagine a brotherhood of man”, he assures us, and it will appear. That is an irresponsible lie. “There are simple answers”, Ronald Reagan said in supporting Barry Goldwater for President in 1964…”but there are no easy answers.” Imagine is so appealing and has proved, despite its popularity, to be so ineffective in leading us closer to its vision precisely because it ignores that distinction.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., like Lennon, had a dream of universal freedom and brotherhood. However, it differed from Lennon’s in two important ways. It was inspired by, rather than rejecting, Christianity. And those it appealed to had been shown by King’s example that it had to be worked for and sacrificed for, not just dreamed of. Not surprisingly, it is King’s dream which has inspired action towards its realization, while Lennon’s dream remains a fantasy set to a lovely melody we can listen to and sing when we want to lull ourselves with its comforting message that all we need to do to get a better world is to “imagine” it.

[i] The full lyrics of Imagine are:

Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people sharing all the world You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one

The “Fair Elections” Bill

Two followers of this blog recently asked me to comment on the Harper government’s Bill C-23, the so-called “Fair Elections Act.” An open letter on the Op-Ed page of the April 23^rd edition of the Globe and Mail signed by more than 400 Canadian academics provides a good summary of the bill’s major flaws. I support the arguments of its authors and will not attempt to duplicate them here. Today, April 25^th, the government introduced significant amendments to the bill which appear to remedy some of its worst features. What follows represents commentary on the arguments put forward in support of the original bill.

As I read the defenses of the bill put forward by its proponents including Senator Linda Frum and the Minister of Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre, I am struck by how perfectly their arguments illustrate points made by George Orwell in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. “In our time,” Orwell wrote, “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”    

The question-begging used to justify Bill C-23 begins with its title. It is always a warning sign when a bill is given a value-laden title to put its proponents on the side of the angels and its critics on the defensive.

We seem to have borrowed this disreputable tactic from the Americans. When George Bush brought in legislation in the wake of 9-11 to allow the U.S. Intelligence services to carry out previously illegal wiretaps, searches without warrants, and the detention of persons suspected of terrorist sympathies without charges, he called it the Patriot Act. By implication, anyone who criticized the bill’s infringements on civil liberties guaranteed under the U.S. constitution was unpatriotic.

Similarly, by calling Bill C-23 the “Fair Elections Act,” the government brands its critics as defenders of unfair elections, while asserting that the current Elections Act and those who administer it allow, if not encourage, “unfair” election practices.

The “euphemism” and “cloudy vagueness” employed in defence of the bill are on a similar level of intellectual dishonesty. For example, the bill prohibits the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada from encouraging and enabling eligible voters to cast their ballots. Senator Frum claims that this frees them from a “conflict of interest,” because otherwise they would be tempted to allow ineligible voters to vote in order to increase voter turnout. This is equivalent to arguing that, although the police have a mandate to prevent crime, they should not be allowed to engage in crime prevention programs because doing so will tempt them to under-report criminal activity to show that their efforts have been effective.

Not to be outdone, Minister Poilievre claims that the voter ID provisions of the bill are “common sense and reasonable. For example, it makes the reasonable request that people show ID when they vote.” What the bill does in fact is to make it more difficult for eligible voters to identify themselves and their address by doing away with the practice of having one’s identity vouched for by a neighbour or relative and the use the of the voter cards issued by Elections Canada to prove one’s address. So it is “common sense” and “reasonable” to demand voters show ID with proof of their address, while making invalid existing cost-free means of enabling legitimate voters to meet that requirement.

Similarly, the bill increases penalties for election fraud, but refuses to give those prosecuting and investigating this crime the ability to compel witnesses to potential fraud to testify. Without such testimony it is very difficult to successfully prosecute such practices as systematically directing supporters of other parties to the wrong polling location. So, in the name of “fairness,” the Harper government proposes to do nothing to ease the prosecution of exactly the kind of fraud the Conservatives were accused of engaging in during the last federal election.

In the past, amendments to the Elections Act have been developed through all-party consensus which drew on recommendations from elections officials charged with the responsibility of administering it. In drawing up and defending the “Fair” Elections Act, the Harper government has ignored suggestions from other parties and elections officials and gone out of its way to undermine the motives and credibility of those officials in order to restrict their mandate.

To any unbiased observer it is clear that, for the government, Bill C-23 had two purposes. The first was to use the fictional spectre of mass impersonation of voters through vouching to justify making it more difficult for eligible transient and low income Canadians to vote. Why? Because the Conservatives believe such people are unlikely to support them. The second was to continue to deny Elections Canada officials and the police the powers they need to effectively investigate the kind of vote fraud their party was accused of attempting during the last election. Those purposes were clearly indefensible; necessitating tortured justifications for the bill which illustrate all the characteristics Orwell identified 68 years ago.

The “First Inning” of
the Toronto Blue Jays 2014 Season
Baseball has the longest season of any of the major professional sports- 162 games. So far the Toronto Blue Jays have played just 19 games; winning ten and losing nine. If we consider each 18 game segment of the season as an inning, the Blue Jays are barely in the top of the second inning of their season. What can we say about them at this early stage of the season?
So far, as befits their overall record, the Jays have shown both encouraging and discouraging signs. Their starting pitchers have thrown four shutouts, although knuckleballer R.J Dickey has been ineffective. Their defence has been positively outstanding and some of their key hitters- Melky Cabrera and Jose Bautista- appear to be in midseason form. The return of Jose Reyes at shortstop and as leadoff hitter following a hamstring injury should improve both the infield defence and the offense. On the other hand, the relief pitching has been woefully inconsistent, squandering late inning leads by putting on base-runners via walks and then giving up key hits. Key hitters like Canadian third basemen Brent Lawrie and first baseman Edwin Encarnacion are still struggling and left-handed DH, Adam Lind, who started well at the plate, is currently on the injury list.
Expectations were low for the Blue Jays coming into the season. They had 74 wins and 88 losses last year and were rated 24th among the 30 major league teams by Sports Illustrated in that magazine’s 2014 preview issue. It projected them to finish at 73-89 this year, placing last in the tough American League East division. Since they currently hold the second wild card spot in the American League, a fair judgement at this point is that they are exceeding expectations, although they need to get better hitting and relief pitching to be considered a contender to break their string of nineteen consecutive seasons outside the playoffs.