Liberalism, Rhetoric & Hope

So there's this guy. He's perhaps the most effective orator I've encountered in my 4 years of political activism.

Everyone who has stayed in politics for very long has stumbled across someone who was or is a source of personal inspiration. Someone who is an icon for their personal political idealism. These people and their words are the thing that help us keep our head up.

The triumph of the political process is when these men and women of personal inspiration become sources of collective inspiration as was the cases with men like Pierre Trudeau and John F Kennedy. My dad, for example speaks of Trudeau as a man who gave him a sense of what Canada was and who inspired him to hope for the future.

The point of my mentioning this is that when I was relatively new to politics I heard a speech from this guy and his comments resonated with me in a profound way. He put words to things I already believed about Canada and Democracy and Liberalism and he gave me enough hope to hold onto my idealism in the midst of the worst abuses of the leadership campaign. At the time he was running to be president of the party (a bid in which he was unsuccessful).

His name is Akaash Maharaj. He lives in Toronto and I just learned that he has been keeping a blog lately. One that is as well written as he is well spoken. This is a man whose story is profoundly Canadian and I hope that one day he enters the fray of elected office in the Commons or in Queen's Park. I'd encourage you to take some time to acquaint yourself with his website and perhaps even send him an e-mail.

I realise that cynicism is in vogue and that hero-worship is particularly unbecoming in our age but we need heroes and we need vision and I for one am committed to pointing out both these things where I find them. Let me finish with a quote from Akaash, who expresses something I have believed all my life in words for more enchanting than I ever have:

I was raised in the belief that each of us is nothing if not a living memorial to the men and women who came before us. If we are to be deserving heirs to their sacrifice and worthy stewards to the generations to come, we have a duty to leave the world a better place than we found it.