Saying 'no' to U.S. was very Liberal
By Salim Mansur -- For the Toronto Sun
Beneath the heartfelt expressions of anger, dismay or satisfaction among contending classes of Canadians over their government's refusal to participate in the U.S.-sponsored Ballistic Missile Defence for North America, there is nothing new save the manner in which Paul Martin arrived at his decision.
Much of Canada's history during its first hundred years amounted to an exertion against America in defining the arguments for a country determined to resist the pull of the great republic on the continent.
This was the conservative romanticism of English Canadians attached to traditions connected with Britain, and the French in Quebec, holding to those values of the church laid waste by revolutionary France.
Through these ten decades the Liberal party of Laurier and King, St. Laurent and Pearson, was continentalist of one sort or another, and pessimistic about Canada's future in the shadows of the United States.
The guru of Canadian liberalism and of the Liberal party through the middle decades of the last century, Frank Underhill, observed in In Search of Canadian Liberalism (1960):
"Our forefathers made the great refusal in 1776 when they declined to join the revolting American colonies. They made it again in 1812 when they repelled American invasion. They made it again in 1837 when they rejected a revolution motivated by the ideals of Jacksonian democracy ... They made it once more in 1867 when the separate British colonies joined to set up a new nationality in order to pre-empt expansionism ... It would be hard to overestimate the ... energy we have devoted to this cause."
In other words, to the chagrin of Underhill and his party, Canada was a project born out of refusal to be a part of the progressive liberal history represented by the United States.
But then the same Liberal party that for so long preached the virtues of continentalism, reinvented itself under Pierre Trudeau as the standard- bearer of Canadian nationalism with its anti-American heartbeat.
This Liberal brand of anti-American nationalism became more strident as English Canada, accepting the logic of closer ties with the U.S., supported Brian Mulroney and the Conservative party as they negotiated continental free trade agreements.
For Quebec separatists -- rising in influence to nearly achieving their end -- the lure of independent statehood meant distancing themselves from English Canada, hence the U.S., while gazing across the Atlantic towards France and Europe as the shore to drift towards in search of their linguistic security.
New immigrants
Into the breach flowed waves of new immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America, some from former colonies of Europe, bringing their own loyalties and resentments, and providing numbers to give ballast to Liberal politics just when the party might have been shut out in both English and French Canada.
The refusal of John A. Macdonald and his conservative coalition of English and French Canadians, as Underhill implied, to embrace the United States was an essential element in the making of a country in the 19th century. Their nationalism was old-style patriotic loyalty to traditions they cherished, and they devoted themselves to keeping these alive when republicanism was considered too radical and disruptive.
But traditions conservatives held dearly were hollowed out by history and circumstances in the years since Canada celebrated its centennial year. Instead, we got multiculturalism devised by Liberals to outmanoeuvre both English and French Canada electorally.
To be a multicultural country means to be fragmented, and to have the people pulled in different directions with no common loyalty except what can be negotiated at the lowest common denominator of unstable interests.
Hence what was once the great refusal amounting to nation-building became strident anti-Americanism to bind an increasingly divided country, adrift in its own falsely induced uncertainties by a political party whose sole interest is perpetuating its hold on power, by whatever means and at whatever costs.
Mansur is a professor of political science
at the University of Western Ontario
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Salim_Mansur/2005/03/07/952487.html
By Salim Mansur -- For the Toronto Sun
Beneath the heartfelt expressions of anger, dismay or satisfaction among contending classes of Canadians over their government's refusal to participate in the U.S.-sponsored Ballistic Missile Defence for North America, there is nothing new save the manner in which Paul Martin arrived at his decision.
Much of Canada's history during its first hundred years amounted to an exertion against America in defining the arguments for a country determined to resist the pull of the great republic on the continent.
This was the conservative romanticism of English Canadians attached to traditions connected with Britain, and the French in Quebec, holding to those values of the church laid waste by revolutionary France.
Through these ten decades the Liberal party of Laurier and King, St. Laurent and Pearson, was continentalist of one sort or another, and pessimistic about Canada's future in the shadows of the United States.
The guru of Canadian liberalism and of the Liberal party through the middle decades of the last century, Frank Underhill, observed in In Search of Canadian Liberalism (1960):
"Our forefathers made the great refusal in 1776 when they declined to join the revolting American colonies. They made it again in 1812 when they repelled American invasion. They made it again in 1837 when they rejected a revolution motivated by the ideals of Jacksonian democracy ... They made it once more in 1867 when the separate British colonies joined to set up a new nationality in order to pre-empt expansionism ... It would be hard to overestimate the ... energy we have devoted to this cause."
In other words, to the chagrin of Underhill and his party, Canada was a project born out of refusal to be a part of the progressive liberal history represented by the United States.
But then the same Liberal party that for so long preached the virtues of continentalism, reinvented itself under Pierre Trudeau as the standard- bearer of Canadian nationalism with its anti-American heartbeat.
This Liberal brand of anti-American nationalism became more strident as English Canada, accepting the logic of closer ties with the U.S., supported Brian Mulroney and the Conservative party as they negotiated continental free trade agreements.
For Quebec separatists -- rising in influence to nearly achieving their end -- the lure of independent statehood meant distancing themselves from English Canada, hence the U.S., while gazing across the Atlantic towards France and Europe as the shore to drift towards in search of their linguistic security.
New immigrants
Into the breach flowed waves of new immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America, some from former colonies of Europe, bringing their own loyalties and resentments, and providing numbers to give ballast to Liberal politics just when the party might have been shut out in both English and French Canada.
The refusal of John A. Macdonald and his conservative coalition of English and French Canadians, as Underhill implied, to embrace the United States was an essential element in the making of a country in the 19th century. Their nationalism was old-style patriotic loyalty to traditions they cherished, and they devoted themselves to keeping these alive when republicanism was considered too radical and disruptive.
But traditions conservatives held dearly were hollowed out by history and circumstances in the years since Canada celebrated its centennial year. Instead, we got multiculturalism devised by Liberals to outmanoeuvre both English and French Canada electorally.
To be a multicultural country means to be fragmented, and to have the people pulled in different directions with no common loyalty except what can be negotiated at the lowest common denominator of unstable interests.
Hence what was once the great refusal amounting to nation-building became strident anti-Americanism to bind an increasingly divided country, adrift in its own falsely induced uncertainties by a political party whose sole interest is perpetuating its hold on power, by whatever means and at whatever costs.
Mansur is a professor of political science
at the University of Western Ontario
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Salim_Mansur/2005/03/07/952487.html
