Avi Lewis and redefining ‘radical’ |
CHELSEA, QUE.—Long before his convincing victory last week, Avi Lewis, the brand new federal New Democratic Party leader, was widely portrayed as too “radical” for the country, for his party, for the times.
He would doom the NDP to further irrelevance, torpedo the electoral prospects of provincial NDP premiers and party leaders, frighten ordinary voters with his “wild-eyed” ideas and intemperate rhetoric. He would, in his spare time, destroy the fossil fuel industry; “nationalize” everything from grocery stores, to Netflix, to Canada Post; and, if he ever got the chance, reverse the sudden avalanche of money flowing to the ragged Canadian military. Or, as he styles it: the “bottomless money pit for war.”
Most alarming to some, he would name what is happening in Gaza a “genocide” and encourage, overall, a more forthright, morally coherent foreign policy.
Which raises the question: what, exactly, is the problem?
The problem is our narrow definition of radical. It’s a bit like “transformative,” the adjective Prime Minister Mark Carney artfully applied to United States President Donald Trump. That one word contains multitudes.
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So here is another definition of “radical”: encouraging more oil........