It may seem perverse to suggest that thoughtful American conservatives might look for inspiration to Canada. But the American Right is at an impasse.
Many conservative voters, and brightest intellectuals, have become disillusioned with the Republican Party’s long-standing combination of laissez-faire economics, aggressive foreign policy and “family values” targeting abortion, gay marriage and other social issues. The Trump presidency revealed that traditional Republican political elites still hold too much of this platform, even as their base rejected it — and them. Meanwhile Trump’s alternative agenda, pitched initially as a rejection of both “globalism” and culture-war issues, collapsed amid blustering incompetence.
Canada is often cast as a more progressive version of the United States: less nationalistic and religious, more accepting of diversity and more generous in its welfare programs. But according to Michael Cuenco, a sharp-eyed young political analyst, Canada offers important lessons for the American Right.
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Cuenco draws on the work of those American thinkers who have most cogently articulated the case for a "pro-worker" post-Trump conservatism, such as Michael Lind, but departs from them in critical ways.
His most original, and provocative, proposal for a new conservatism relies on a heterodox rereading of Canadian immigration policy, which is often cited as a model by reform-minded Americans on the Right. In a two-part series of articles for American Affairs this spring, Cuenco noted that American conservatives have long envied Canada’s “points system”, whereby the majority of immigrants are classed and selected on the basis of their potential economic contribution.
In this way, Canadians can avoid having to make what Americans would describe as a difficult choice between having a robust social safety net or an open labour market, between high levels of immigration or civic peace. But, Cuenco insists, America has failed to recognise that the Canadian system also requires what he calls a “civil religion” — one that is founded on a politically useful untruth.
The “civic religion” that enables this peculiarly effective immigration policy, Cuenco argues, is “multiculturalism”. However, this “noble lie” was told not to facilitate immigration, but to ensure social cohesion by smothering potentially dangerous domestic tensions. Indeed, it was conceived by prime minister Pierre Trudeau, father of the current prime minister, to contain and gradually dissipate the threat of francophone separatism. People insisting on their personal rights or identities may seem to be resisting hegemonic power, but they are really demonstrating that their characters and worldviews have been thoroughly shaped by it. The conservative mission, rightly understood, would not be to bemoan the hidden "religious" dimension of contemporary liberalism or undo false consciousness of its believers, but to better direct that process of shaping.
Against Quebecois claims to being one of the two founding nations of Canada (the French and the English), Trudeau promoted the idea that Canada had always been and must remain a “mosaic” of diverse communities. By emphasising a “multi” rather than “bi” cultural perspective, French Canadians’ particular status could be diluted, and the hegemony of the English-speaking political and economic leadership class (the so-called “Laurentian elite”) secured.
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In Canada — and, one might argue, throughout the Western world — the official political culture of the past two generations has increasingly become a kind of pageant of “difference” in which citizens are solicited to remember the far-flung origins of their compatriots, the important contributions of immigrants, the richness of their “communities” and other such clichés. One might see this sort of compulsory “multiculturalism” as a cynical means for reducing genuine differences in groups’ worldviews and long-standing historical grievances — which have the potential to generate irresolvable conflict — into a pacific dramaturgy where different identities are paraded.
But that’s a good thing, says Cuenco. In his formulation, Canada’s civic religion of multiculturalism makes for a political culture that is “Left in theory, Right in practice”.
There are many contemporary thinkers who wish to overcome the political division of Right and Left, and share Cuenco’s ambition to bring together progressive and conservative critics in defence of the working and middle classes. But Cuenco proposes something more interesting and more radical than a horse-shoe shaped coalition of the discontented.
He argues that the polices and values of one side (the Left) must be placed in service of the ultimate aims of the other (the Right). What we need, he proposes, is a group of elites who both recognise the legitimacy of populist resentment and the need to convert its demands not only into feasible policies but also into the language of liberal and progressive values.
And so Cuenco offers us a new articulation of the classic defence of liberal democratic civil religion proposed by Emile Durkheim, who argued that our form of government promotes human rights as a kind of worship through which we affirm and renew our membership in a national collective — one that is made all the more binding because we imagine ourselves to be autonomous individuals.
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This “noble lie” by which liberal states seem to dissolve themselves into a shapeless mass of isolated individuals — through their emphasis on rights — is in fact the religion by which such states master fractious societies and persevere in being. What could be more conservative?
By returning to Durkheim and casting multiculturalism as a civic religion, Cuenco also reveals a number of paradoxes on the Right and Left. Thinkers on the Left usually understand themselves as pursuing the transformation of society in line with a substantive vision of equality, as radicals opposed to supposedly dominant ideologies and institutions. Yet these are the very values that have shaped America since its foundation — values which are hegemonic throughout all major political, cultural and economic institutions. From Marxist professors to progressive human resource managers, the Left is a party of order and tradition.
On the Right, meanwhile, conservative intellectuals, particularly those of a populist bent, insist today that America must be saved from the excesses of the Left, which include everything from the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties to the Progressive era of the early 20th century. The views of many (indeed most) living Americans, along with vast portions of American history, and their ideological foundations, appear to such ostensibly America-loving conservatives as unworthy of conservation. A number of venues on the post-Trump right, such as American Mind and American Greatness, have recently called for an “American Caesar” or “Salazar Option” by which a dictator might sweep away America’s supposed internal enemies, and with them, much of what defines America.
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In contrast to such puerile fantasies, Cuenco urges the American Right to see the real conservative potential of the policies and values of the Left. Reducing income inequality and reigning in the tax-evasion of our financial elites would reduce the political power of the latter to shape American media, culture and politics around their peculiar and increasingly racialised understanding of ethics. It would provide capital for programmes of reindustrialisation and infrastructure development that was promised, but never achieved, by Trump in his first campaign. Likewise, reorganising the US immigration system along Canadian lines, coupled with the renewal of a civic religion that gives a progressive veneer to a calculus about the probable economic impact of any would-be immigrant, would soothe culture wars over immigration and national identity.
Success on both fronts requires conservatives to make peace with the state, bureaucrats and experts — and to distinguish their specific critique of our current elite’s depredations from an overly sweeping and inherently self-defeating opposition to the very existence of elites.
It also requires conservatives to learn, as Pierre Trudeau did, to take up the language of the Left, and instrumentalise it towards the end of holding society together — rather than trying to drag it back into a vanished past or impotently raging at its continued disintegration.
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SubscribeI am Canadian. Multiculturism and the Trudeaus have done nothing but harm to Canadian society. We once had a fairly sensible immigration policy. But Trudeau the Younger is a full on woke fool who believes in open borders and believes Canada is a post modernist society with no national identity. Hope to soon see the back of him and his ilk.
I know Canada very well – lived there a lot, have been in every province. Over the decades I watched Richmond BC (Hong-couver) become Chinese where the masses of suburban Ranch Houses, 4 bed, 3 bath have one by one been torn down, and McMansions replace them for Hong Kong Millionaire Migrants.
Canada migration policy in the West is selling citizenship, and the country too, to wealthy foreigners. This is because they have USA between them and Mexico, so can pretend on how enlightened they are…
No sure why selling citizenship to wealthy foreigners is a bad idea – especially in a huge country like Canada.
Because it often turns out to be a financial loss. Some countries find ways to make this work (Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Monaco), but Canada does it badly. Wealthy people have many options and they will make decisions that benefit them. Drug syndicates find these systems very attractive too. The common pattern is to establish residence in Canada, which allows entire families to receive world class healthcare and education for free, while maintaining the primary businesses/wealth overseas. This inflates the cost of housing in Canada and uses public resources without generating tax revenue. Many families had done this for generations. For this reason, the Harper government changed the laws to restrict Canadian citizenship to the first generation born abroad. Also, I would think there is more to citizenship than money.
bang on !
Well, let me give you an example from my “lived experience”. My Vancouver neighbourhood has been (in my view and I am not in the minority here!) ruined by the influx of very wealthy mainland Chinese. A once-thriving high street has been reduced to a desert of sushi restaurants and nail parlours. All the other stores have closed because the sky-rocketing house prices have had an equivalent impact on property taxes and because these new residents don’t buy locally. Moreover, these new residents don’t want to integrate. Many are absentee owners – you can tell because the houses are closed up. Those who do live here don’t mix, don’t speak English, don’t ever get involved in local initiatives. Admittedly, they are very, very rich people – they are very different to the existing middle-class demographic of the neighbourhood. Their motivations to leave China are unknown, but we can hazzard a guess, based on their behaviours, that they are interested in getting their money out of China. Who can blame them? Their presence in the city has had some positives, but also many negatives. In general the creed of “multiculturalism” admits the benefits while silencing the negatives (as xenophobia).
I agree with you that Canada is a huge country. However, a lot of it is uninhabitable. And, when new people come to Canada they’re not interested in populating the country in a uniform manner – irrationally they prefer to move to the cities!
Are they and their children prepared to to die for their new country? I would suggest courage is more important than money, so did the Roman and Athenians
Selling citizenship is occurring in NZ as well.
Couldn’t agree more. The photo is well-chosen to illustrate the Trudeau brand of “diversity” – reeks of hypocrisy.
All cultures are not of equal value therefore multi culti is silly and dangerous.
In the UK we enjoy the benefits of enrichment.
“In the UK we enjoy the benefits of enrichment.”
Well my old parts of London are not are not so much enritched by migrants, but Colonized. All the people I knew from my school days there have been price gentrified out of their homes, they can not afford to remain where they grew up – But what is really odd is these MENA and Asian and African people replacing them seem not to be very well off themselves, kind of low income a lot. How this happened is a mystry – but it was worked on vast parts of London.
I think Ron was using the term ‘benefits of enrichment’ ironically.
This whole article misses the point that today’s ruling class operates an over/under political formula where the educated use the oppressed as an army to smash the middle class.
What Trump and other populist nationalist politicians are doing is fighting back against the “state, bureaucrats and experts” and their unjust war on the populist nationalist middle class.
And the whole point of “multiculturalism” is to dilute and destroy the nation.
It’s a tribal thing. The tribe of the bureaucrats and experts is the global educated elite all over the world. The tribe of the middle class is the nation. The tribe of the underclass and newly arrived immigrants is the ethnic/religious group.
All Cuenco’s ideas will do is bollix up the nation and the middle class. No doubt that is the whole idea.
100 up votes.
This University post-Modernist philosophy has likely filled his 18 years of indoctrination and barely can speak a language normal people can understand, being so full of the lingo of Critical Theory, intersectionality, Equity, neo-Marxism….
If only he dared to just say that migrants are not equal. Some are very negative, some are great assets, and that the majority of migrants lacking skills and money or well above average IQ, are a net cost, instead of Benefit.
That if we get past the stupidness of pretending all are the same, and get real on who gets in – then everyone could back immigration, and it would be good – not destructive. But no – the Internet is the graveyard of honest word users – so he has to veil everything in obscurity, one which pokes the Right, said so nothing can be used to pillary him, destroying his future.
The above essay is what you get when thought and language must be censored and meanings can be anything, so one says nothing, and so cannot be punished as a Wrong Thinker.
Call things what they are – not the weird dancing about the issue like “The “civic religion” that enables this peculiarly effective immigration policy, Cuenco argues, is “multiculturalism”. However, this “noble lie” was told not to facilitate immigration, but to ensure social cohesion by smothering potentially dangerous domestic tensions.” Would be good – but those days are over I guess. The Universities not fit for purpose.
In my reading as my mind constantly tried to cope with the threads affirms your comment “The above essay is what you get when thought and language must be censored and meanings can be anything, so one says nothing, and so cannot be punished as a Wrong Thinker.” Just a waste of my time.
Your meaning is correct but I think you are wrong in the detail. The middle class are the thinkers, the journalists, the people who are eloquent in speech and on writing. The politicians are feeding the middle class who are using the votes of the oppressed to steer things their way.
“trahison des clercs” was written in 1927 and was first seen when left wing intellectuals supported the USSR ( Webbs ,Laski, G B Shaw ) in the 1930s and then avoided combat in WW2.
The ruling class has changed. Our ruling class today is mercantile and clerical; not aristocratic, land owning and steeped in military and naval service.
Land owning classes depend upon wealth of the country as their assets are not moveable and invariably have generations of military and naval service. Mercantile wealthy have moveable assets and no tradition of military and naval service. For those with a long and glorious tradition of service; the worst disaster is to have children who are cowards and traitors: for the mercantile it is not.This is why landowning families with a tradition of service sent their children to tough boarding schools where they were toughened up with boxing, rugby, rowing, cricket, cold baths and cross country runs. “The battle of Waterloo was won the playing fields of Eton “ said Wellington which meant the toughness and initiative was developed playing sports. At Crecy when Edward III was informed his 16 year old son was surrounded he said ” Let him earn his spurs “. Edward III knew that to rule his son had to earn the respect of the knights. The son became the Black Prince, so it worked.
Now mercantile wealthy do their utmost for the children to avoid hardship
British officers have been leading men of many nations into battle for hundreds of years so we understand culturally differences . Without the Indian divisions we would have lost North Africa and Burma in WW2. Companies or battalions were Hindu, Sikh or Muslim never mixed. Indians were officers from the 19th century onwards and attended British universities.
Actually the most important aspect of a multi-cultural society is to prevent conflict between different groups , say Sinhalese and Tamils, Shia and Sunnis, Shias ( Al Khoei and Al Sadr), Xhosa and Zulus, Ndebele and Shona, Tutsis and Hutsis , etc
A very longwinded way of saying the relatively routine neoliberal argument that immigration brings economic benefits and should be encouraged.
It ignores the counter-argument that has emerged in the last 6-8 years around sovereignty and the need to help citizens first and to protect the ideas and culture that makes a nation (nations having nothing to do with race – but about mutuality of compatriotism).
The issue is that often these are pushed with cartoonish binary arguments that are all or nothing and no middle ground. Reality says balance is needed.
I’m not convinced that ‘nations have nothing to do with race’. Countries may, in today’s world, have little to do with race but surely the main definition of a nation is a reasonably homogeneous ethnic group e.g. the Cherokee Nation.
Multiculturalism is still an experiment in progress and it has yet to be proven that race and ethnicity are expendable and anachronistic aspects of a united country.
American is a nation, but not a race. Britain is a nation but not a race (being drawn from tribes of Celts, Picts, Saxons, Vikings, Normans etc). Switzerland is a nation, but with four languages – avowedly non-homogeneous in language. India is a nation with multiple ethnicities.
The essence of a nation and the nation-state is historical, cultural and political will of people who choose to live together (or you leave to choose a different nationality). Only the far right and far left try to tie nationhood to race, mostly to drive division. Nationality is something we get by birth, but also something we choose as adults.
Nation: a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
What you described in your first paragraph are countries, just as I said. Your second paragraph is simply what you would like ‘nation’ to mean, if you were allowed to determine it and dictionary definitions be damned.
Nation: a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
So exactly what I described. “The essence of a nation and the nation-state is historical, cultural and political will of people who choose to live together” Nothing about race.
Saul, please tell me what descent and history do I have in common with an immigrant to the UK from Somalia?
If that immigrant from Somalia (eg Mo Farah) chooses to subscribe to norms and cultural traditions of the nationality they adopt, then over time they, and their offspring, join with you in terms of descent and history and become part of a shared culture that is British with a mutual history of achievement for Britain.
Britain has welcomed many people who chose to become British or connected themselves to Britain. Boris Johnson is of Turkish, Russian Jewish, American heritage but it’s difficult to see him as anything but British – a choice his forebears, and he, made. Nationality is not about race but compatriotism.
Sure. People integrate into dominant ethnic groups or nations over time by intermarrying. However if there’s too much change, or too many people unwilling to integrate, or no ideology to integrate them then that won’t happen. Identity politics isn’t going to create a nation, but divide it.
You missed “common descent”. You are describing States not Nations.
Note the word ‘or’. America is a nation. As are Canada. Australia. New Zealand etc. We carry multiple identities.
Nationality is not ethnicity, but an ethnic group can aim to be seen as a nation, but equally some ethnicities split across multiple nations choosing different national identities over ethnic unity.
Our nationality is one we are given, but can also be one that we choose.
And the economic benefits are somewhat overstated, after all immigrants get old, have kids, get sick, use the roads, buy houses and so on.
Another day, another picture of Trudeau dressed up. He must be the master of cultural appropriation. Oh the irony.
Then there is the speech he gave regarding the shecovery and shecession.
Holy cringe!An utter nob.
Nancy Pelosi is also particularly enthralled with kente cloth. Go figure. Looks like appropriation to me : )
Research has shown that countries which are more ‘homogeneous’ are more stable, peaceful and experience less crime, the idea being that everyone relates to one another and basically understands the social contract and won’t abuse the system, especially welfare, as they realize they are all in it together. Conversely, the more multicultural the harder it is to achieve (but you do get more diverse restaurant choices!).
best comment i’ve read today.
True, which is why the ‘socialism’ of the Scandinavian countries worked so well in the past. It has started to get wonky, which must be why Denmark is closing its borders more effectively.
In the photo at the head of the article, the expression on Trudeau’s son’s face says it all. At least the kid realises that he looks like a prat.
Diversity isn’t strength anywhere. All diverse nations have internal problems and tribal politics. Identity politics is exactly that.
This essay is hogwash. Intolerance today is dominated by the Left. Observe the rampant anti-Semitism on the UK left and in the USA, the Left’s ‘cancel culture’ takes the prize. Also note that black conservatives in the USA get tormented for not following the tribe; Larry Elder running against Gavin Newsom, is referred to by the LATimes as the ‘black face of white supremacy’. The Left everywhere today has a lot of atoning to do for their goose-stepping & intolerance of others. Folks on the Right are far more tolerant of others but they don’t want the USA torn apart by unconstitutional actions such as open borders and the illegalities of all sorts that occur with an undocumented population. The Right seeks to preserve the country for it’s citizens who work hard to pay for LEGAL immigrants which it’s said costs the government about $133K per head to admit & maintain.
I often complain in the forums that Unherd publishes too many articles describing the well characterized problems that afflict Western society, but publishes too few articles proposing possible solutions to those problems. Today I was happy to read this article that sets forth one proposal for healing at least some of the division in our society. Whether or not the ideas set out in this article are likely to work is less interesting to me than the fact someone had the guts to make some concrete suggestions.
If I understand correctly, the Cuenco articles summarized by the author propose that conservatives adopt the language of the left while still advancing conservative policies. On immigration conservatives should acknowledge that a principal goal of immigration policy is to promote diversity but the diversity should be of the type promoted by the Canadian immigration system where people are selected based on their potential contribution to the economy rather than their ethnicity or gender. It’s assumed that a wide variety of nationalities will be represented among immigrants who also provide high economic value. The glue that will bind the resulting diverse society together is a belief in the secular religion of individual rights, although I feel that religion might be a bit threadbare after forty years of people characterizing more and more personal choices as “rights” that carry no attendant responsibilities.
One thing I’m not clear about is what the author means by “conservatives”. It is the conservatives who must adopt the language of the left, but who are these conservatives? The few examples he provides appear to be right wing extremists, such as those calling for an American Caesar. But such people are few and far between. For me, the term conservative now means everyone who doesn’t embrace left-wing progressive values; it means, for example, anyone who believes in traditional marriage or that biological gender is real. In other words, it means the majority of the Western population. The proposal, then, is for the majority to accept the “great lie” of the secular religion of human rights and allow, for example, extensive immigration based on economic value of the potential immigrants. It is, in effect, an abandonment of any kind of nationalism. I’m not sure if people are really up for that but perhaps they are.
I think the more important challenge to these proposals will come from the left, not the “conservatives”. The Left (by which I mean the progressive left which is driving the left-wing agenda, and, in fact, much of the current political debate) is strongly in favor of open borders and mass immigration, especially if that immigration leads to a higher percentage of ethnic groups not currently well represented in Western nations. They want to dilute the native population. So I’m not convinced the Left will tolerate a points based immigration system.
I’ll be interested to see how Unherd readers react to this article and I certainly thank the author for providing some concrete proposals we can discuss.
Yes, adopt the “language” of the left? Just the language, I guess? It is basically an invitation for conservatives to sacrifice their morals and join a world without integrity.
J Bryant, you are an excellent poster, but I think you take the article too seriously. I see it as a symptom of modern University output, and take nothing from it, but how modern people talking on anything at all must fall into the jargon of self protection by never actually saying what they mean.
PS, I also think the poster above, Christopher makes the real point
“And the whole point of “multiculturalism” is to dilute and destroy the nation.”
That the real purpose of mass immigration of the unsuitable and unskilled – just as automation will take such work, is to destroy the middle class franchise, and thus allow them to be destroyed, allowing the elites to usher in a new age of Feudalism. But then I am a conspiracy Loon.
“I think you take the article too seriously.”
You may well be right. I very much want to see articles on Unherd that discuss possible solutions to the gradual decline of the West, so I was inclined to give this article a fair hearing. But I certainly noticed that the proposed solution was for the West to accept a significant part of the progressive agenda. No talk of how progressives would compromise in return.
I’m at the point where I’m looking elsewhere for the type of articles I want to read. Unherd is becoming a very centrist publication, almost a coffee table magazine, that seems unwilling to really engage with the most difficult issues. Sad because its coverage of covid last year was outstanding.
Yes, the coverage of Covid last year was outstanding. But firm critics, like Lord Sumpton, have gradually become more silent. As the political leaders follow the people, and vice versa, deeper and deeper into the perceived drama of an in itself not so dramatic virus, common sense is what suffers. Will common sense (and truth) ever recover from the pandemic? Shall we instead have to choose between competing “noble lies”?
Well expressed Brock. Leaders saw the pandemic as a way to consolidate their power and influence – and Boris has never been one to miss an opportunity to do that. But scaring the population became a feedback loop to further control and descent down the rabbit hole – from which societies will struggle to emerge.
Current “progressives” are ideologues, not pragmatists, and so by definition they must adhere to their ideological agenda to achieve their utopian vision. The very notion of compromise is therefore anathema to them. Any compromise from conservatives will be met inevitably with a further push along the road to their utopian goal.
I think you are making the whole thing too complicated with too many definitions. As Mr Artzen says, your posts are great and you are a thinker but…
Historically there is a rebellion of youth every 50 years or so. These rebellions have not always been effective because they have been swamped by everyday life. Today there are three differences:
There is the Internet so that an idea today becomes a global movement tomorrow.
People have huge amounts of leisure time today to get involved in ‘issues of the day’.
More importantly, youth was once seen as boring and stupid. Today, youth is something to idolise. So there are millions of educated 30 and 40 year old people who want to see themselves as young. So they support ideas of the young.
This constant change will continue for ever. We have yet to welcome ‘fat’ issues and ‘pet dog’ issues. Maybe the next 5 years will focus on ‘disabled’ issues. Why not ‘men’ issues? Maybe ‘gender’ issues will just fade away. Most important of all will be ‘old age’ issues (as described by the young), like disenfranchising old people because they will not share the future.
Well, is it civic religion or “civil religion” as you have named it? Some interpretations of religion seem very uncivil in their practices towards certain types of people!
The ideas of ‘untruth’ and ‘noble lies’ sound like a terrible way to run anything. How can a society build on lies?
The article does maybe define this present UK government: Right in theory, Left in practice – CONservative!
There are some good insights here, but some dangerous evasions too. Canada has many problems that can be traced to its destructive post-national and multicultural delusion. The country is dismantling itself, frankly. Most Canadians that I met are shockingly ignorant about their own country and its history. Having lived and worked in both Canada and the United States, I am not convinced that the Canadian immigration system is better. Many educated immigrants in Canada resent being stuck in jobs that they consider beneath them. Educated immigrants from poor countries, where they lived middle class lives, will resent their loss of status and the humiliation of not having their qualifications accepted. And Canadian employers, in my experience, are parochial and protectionist. They value their own credentials to preserve jobs for locals. Moreover, education is a poor indicator of cultural suitability. It is illogical to think that African, Caribbean, and/or South Asian immigrants will adapt better than enterprising Latin Americans who share a closer cultural connection.
“It is illogical to think that African, Caribbean, and/or South Asian immigrants will adapt better than enterprising Latin Americans who share a closer cultural connection.”
Really? And who do you mean by these ‘enterprising Latin Americans? Bankers? Doctors? Or single men with no skills or education or English language flooding across the Southern border in the millions?
Who are these SE Asians? Upper caste Indians? or Malaysian rice farmers? And Africans??? Doctors from Nigeria or Somali truck drivers?
I would say you need to learn to see individuals, and not Identities.
My comment was in reference to the points-based system in Canada which favours the highly educated regardless of their country of origin (a bit like the H1B system in the US). Using your examples, Nigerian doctors would likely qualify for the Canadian immigration stream but Malaysian rice farmers wouldn’t. I was distinguishing it from chain migration and family unification (which tend to predominate in the US). I was discussing official policies and wasn’t referring to irregular immigration (I make no apologies for people crossing borders illegally). These systems work on the basis of their set criteria (and cannot appreciate individual qualities). Both policies have significant downsides. My point, and you and many others may disagree, is that education is not always a good indicator of whether an immigrant will integrate well into a given society. An American with a high school diploma, for instance, will probably adapt to Canada better than someone with a PhD from country X. A working-class Portuguese immigrant in France will probably adapt better than someone from further afield. This, to me, is just common sense.
I agree in part…. I think there is a similarity of culture and values between some in the US and Canada. I think it is stretching it to include Latin America?
This is relative. A difference of degree, I think.
I live in South Africa and had an ‘English’ (i.e. from England) upbringing and schooling. The same books, sports, law etc. I would argue that I have loads more in common with Canada than do Latin Americans.
I would agree, of course
“Moreover, education is a poor indicator of cultural suitability.” That’s a very important insight and is always overlooked in the debate about immigration.
It all sounds great until you realize US has 3000km border with Mexico which brings constant flow of illegal immigrants. Without controlling that flow, you can’t have a meaningful immigration policy.
US immigration policy is now determined by people traffickers.
There is a difference between a ‘New World’ country that has been built on deliberate immigration from a multiplicity of cultures, some of it against the will of the individuals concerned, in fairly recent history, and a European country that has developed its own culture over centuries with small groups of refugees and other immigrants being absorbed and being expected and, until recently, entirely willing, to fit into the host culture.
American ‘diversity’ ideology attempts to impose the first model onto the second. It is neither desirable nor relevant.
Spot on.
How can an article about “conservatism” spend so much time on what the Trudeaus believe and stand for? They are anything but conservative, and have been very damaging to Canada. It’s also somewhat ahistorical. For most of its history Canada was more conservative than the US; it was after all founded by French Catholics and British Tories, both reacting against liberal America. And in the past conservatives have generally been happier about respecting multiple cultures than liberals have been; for example it’s the latter who tried to impose national state school systems with common programmes.
“This “noble lie” by which liberal states seem to dissolve themselves into a shapeless mass of isolated individuals — through their emphasis on rights — is in fact the religion by which such states master fractious societies and persevere in being. What could be more conservative?”
Hmm. Maybe that’s working in Canada and possibly the USA, but in the UK the very obvious purpose of multiculturalism is to fracture societies in such a way as to destroy the consensus power of natural majorities, leaving only a collection of minorities with opposing interests, and therefore requiring a large, powerful and well-paid army of left-wing bureaucrats to administer society at every level on a permanent basis.
Yes.
Trudeau promoted the idea that Canada had always been and must remain a “mosaic” of diverse communities.
Yes, but under the umbrella of a shared, agreed, set of axioms and associated values coded within law etc. Such is cultural pluralism, not ‘multiculturalism’.
This appears to be more discussion about the ‘rights’ of the political and idealogical minority to impose their preferences. Most westerners agreed several generations ago that democracy was the fundamental solution and the minimalist examples we have seem to support that hope. State sponsored multi-culturalism, diversity and all the other ‘enforced preference’ concepts undermine & reverse democracy and would be struck-down or ridiculed in real democratic constitutions … but our modern-day masters are equally determined as their forebears.
Eyes closed, deep in religious ecstasy and mystic contemplation, the Trudeau family clearly have big things on their minds. I wonder what prayer they are incantanting at such a profound moment?
Oum Shaanti! Om, money, money, money….
We do not need the government to tell us who we should associate with. If they kept out of our affairs everything would just work out. It is when they interfere in areas that are none of their business that it all goes wrong. They never learn.
This is nonsensical. Multiculturalism merely creates a vacuum looking for a new dominant culture. The journey towards that is, as we are seeing now, at its most fractious. How does this person think culture is created in the first place? It’s created by homogenous, unified groups over long periods of time. It’s why the French are distinct from the British and the Germans, despite being separated by the thinnest of geographies and within France there are regional subcultures – Parisiens, Bretons and the Marseillaises, and so on. The nation state unifies disparate subcultures through signifiers like language, flags, anthems and myths. Surely this should be obvious to anyone claiming to be an academic ???
I hear so often how “multiculturalism” is a benefit but has failed in the “west” particularly the USA and the UK. Is Canada now the only hope for “multiculturalism”, or is there a more successful example? I’m not a fan of monoculture but can someone provide a good example of a “balanced” migration?
A monoculture usually has one language, one religion and one law for all. Multiculturalism can never work because a range of separate laws would be required. The ideal is a multi-ethnic monoculture like Great Britain where:- Britons, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Vikings, Jutes, Normans, Welsh, Scots, Huguenots and Jews blending into a ‘balanced’ monoculture.
In the US we’ve had multiculturalism from the very beginning. We’ve become more and more diverse as the decades rolled on. Why are we so fractured? Because, it’s all a lie. It’s all about equity now, which means we the peasants will all be equally poor, while the cultural and political elites enrich themselves, and pretect themselves behind their gated neighborhoods and cushy jobs.
i respectfully disagree. all immigrants had to pay their dues and fit in with the prevailing anglo culture. many changed their names to fit in. it’s only been in the past 40-50 that we’ve started to bow down to other cultures.
What we in Britain need is less multiculturalism.
What we desperately need is a return to the liberal Anglo Saxon Judeo/Christian culture that we enjoyed prior to Thatcher.
People from other countries do not embrace our culture or in the main integrate into our society. The result is the polarisation of our society where the minority group living in London is white Londoners. The huge majority of the population of, for instance Leicester, are Asian.
The Tebbitt test was how many of those supporting Pakistan at cricket are 2nd generation British. The answer is most thus proving that multi culturalism is a myth.
No thanks.
If a migrant moves from, say, Bangladesh (annual per capita carbon footprint 0.66 tonnes) to Canada (annual per capita carbon footprint 15.69 tonnes) they are accelerating climate change. Canada’s social cohesion is dependent on its economic success, which in turn is based on trashing the planet.
I really tried to follow the “argument” of this article, since many of the words and phrases were interesting ones, which I like discussing. However, there was no intelligible reasoning – just a verbal mishmash. The values of the Left “must” be placed in service of the ultimate aims of the Right. Gobbledy-gook. A pity the noble University of Chicago has sunk so low in its academic integrity.
What a marvelous idea, bringing in talented People of Color as immigrants — importing an overclass. Especially when whites are so uniformly viewed as racists, oppressors and colonizers that the most educated foreigner looks down on us, even the nice Brahmin radiologist fresh from the culture that invented “untouchables.”
What could possibly go wrong?
And it’s good for the economy!
I have a different idea about multiculturalism. Let’s treat immigration as a policy, not a commandment, and judge that policy by its fruits since 1965. I believe such a test would lead Americans to pause the social experiment called massive Third World immigration for a decade or more.
Once the faucet is turned off and the flood is dried up, let’s see how “multi” we want our culture to be.
This article was not worth the time it took for me to read it. Maybe the author should move to France.
Non, merci. We have enough of our own problems! 🙂
The problem has to be stated simply so everybody understands it. The problem is that Progressives in general, and Democrats in particular, are an anti-constitution party. They want to transition from the rule of law to the rule of “experts.” Democrats think government by “expert” bureaucrats is superior to government by the consent of the governed. Democrats think the people are too stupid and ignorant to give informed consent to be governed.
It’s time to stop being polite about this. Democrats are not in favor of democracy or the rule of law. Democrats want the rule of “experts,” unlimited by any Constitution or rule of law. Democrats find checks and balances tedious at best.
The implication of the rule of “experts” is simple. “Experts” change their minds constantly. The rule of “experts” is chaotic. Remember, Harry Truman famously wanted to hire a one handed economist.
The rule of law is far more stable, and provides the business environment that entrepreneurs need to invest.
Democrats want to debate policy, not process, because they want to destroy Constitutional and legal processes. Policy debates are like a magician’s misdirection. While you’re debating policy, Democrats are destroying the Constitution and the rule of law with the hand you’re not watching.
Republicans should put the question to people directly. Do you want a Constitution and the rule of law, or the rule of “experts?” That’s the choice you’re making.
Multiculturalist need to appreciate Anglo-Saxon culture and what it has contributed to the world. Methinks Multiculturalism is overrated.