Diversity works when there is a collective mission

Without it, we are "as adrift as an amnesiac wandering the streets"

Photo by Toni Reed on Unsplash

I was listening to a recent episode of the Call Me Back podcast in which host Dan Senor was interviewing Barack Obama’s former chief of staff (and current U.S. ambassador to Japan), Rahm Emanuel.

He’s a rather unlikely advocate for national service in the States and his reasoning should resonate with readers in Canada and in the U.K.

He said that everyone talks about diversity as a strength but that it only works if there is a unifying principle. In his mind, modern Western democracies have lost sight of that commonality and adversaries like China and Russia are not only betting on those divisions, they are encouraging them.

He argued the West needs not only civic education but a civic purpose that would be provided by young people being obliged to join the military, the Peace Corps or engage in acts of public service for six months. “It would be a mission to allow this beautiful mosaic to flourish,” he said.

I found myself in violent agreement with him. Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for the National Post headlined The Decline and Fall of Canada, in which I quoted H.G. Wells contention that the Roman Empire blossomed because of the idea of citizenship, which created a sense of privilege, obligation and a willingness to make sacrifices in the name of Rome. But that sense of collective mission failed as the Empire grew and Rome failed to explain itself to its new citizens. “The sense of citizenship died of starvation,” wrote Wells, in his Short History of the World. “There remained no will for the Roman Empire in the world, so it came to an end.”

A report that came out of the Pentagon earlier this year suggested that America faces a similar lack of will, confronted as it is by slowing productivity, an aging population, a polarized political system, a compromised information environment, the rise of China, an addiction to luxury and an ossified bureaucracy.

All of those factors apply to Canada too. There can scarcely have been a time in the country’s history when the population was more demoralized or divided. It is not all Justin Trudeau’s fault but he bears a significant share of the blame for pursuing wedge policies for political gain. He has offered voters “stark choices” on issues, even calling an election on vaccine mandates where opponents were called “misogynists and racists”. His activist agenda has been aimed at imposing more egalitarian outcomes by government fiat and condemning those who don’t buy into the vision as irresponsible and uninformed.

Yet his Liberal government has bungled the handling of a decades long consensus in Canadian politics that immigration is a net positive for the country. By opening the floodgates to millions of temporary foreign workers and international students during a housing crisis, he has soured many Canadians on the idea of mass immigration.

Trudeau was elected on a platform that maintained Canada has learned how to be strong, not in spite of its differences, but because of them - that diversity is our strength.

But I’m with Emanuel, that diversity has to be wrapped in a national flag and its citizens taught who they are, where they came from and why the world has emerged as it has.

As historian JDM Stewart wrote in The Hub, if the current prime minister has talked about Canadian history at all, it is to apologize for one of the country’s transgressions from decades ago.

Part of rebuilding the sense of collective mission could involve young people being compelled to spend six months in the Canada Service Corps or the Canadian Forces (though the military might be reluctant to nursemaid a bunch of teenagers, and almost certainly is ill-equipped to house and train them).

But that rebuilding effort absolutely requires Canadians school-kids to be taught Canadian history. JDM Stewart quotes the great historian, Jack Granatstein, in his own plea for more history in schools:

“We do not simply exist in a contemporary world. We have a past, if only we would try to grapple with it. History teaches us a sense of change over time. History is memory, inspiration and commonality - and a nation without memory is every bit as adrift as an amnesiac wandering the streets,” wrote Granatstein in his book Who Killed Canadian History?

We need our political leaders to express their pride in their country and to take measures that express that pride. That is not happening right now. Canada is not broken but it certainly feels as if it is adrift.