Smug Minority
This is a book about freedom – and the lack of it – in Canada: freedom from useless and often degrading toil, freedom from want and freedom from ignorance. It is Pierre Berton’s thesis, documented by public statements made over the past generation, that a smug minority of business and political leaders has conspired to inhibit that freedom. The establishment, says Berton, has brainwashed the public into believing a series of myths which have no validity in a post-Puritan age. These myths include such old saws as “A woman’s place is in the home” . . . “Anybody can work his way through college” . . . “Satan finds more mischief still for idle hands to do” . . . “Too much security kills initiative” . . . “It’s your own fault you’re so poor.
The author…