A Review and Critique of “Multiculturalism in Canada: Constructing a Model Multiculture with Multicultural Values,” Part III
The Best Man
In the course of his discussion, Forbes specifically takes up one of the central terms in the Heideggerian lexicon and that is – “authenticity.” He states that this term is meant to indicate “a genuinely well-integrated person with a secure, undivided identity.” The truly authentic individual is not just an actor playing a social role or someone seeking the approval of others by pretending to be something he is not.” This is a “true self” which is able to “express itself openly and fearlessly.”[1]
So we find ourselves again in the orbit of Heidegger courtesy of Forbes’ efforts to account for Canada’s multicultural regime change. We know that one of Heidegger’s famous formulations is to do with the possible “inner truth and greatness” (Immer Wahreit und Grossigkeit) of certain political phenomena. He introduces this idea in his Introduction to Metaphysics where he discusses the “the encounter between global technology and modern humanity.”[2] This aspect of Heidegger’s thought comes to mind naturally enough in our discussion for one reason at least, and that is the question of Pierre Trudeau’s possible political greatness addressed earlier in this discussion.[3]
In the light of this question there emerges an obvious difficulty in associating the thought
of Heidegger with the political doings of Pierre Trudeau. If we learn anything from Forbes’ book it is that Trudeau stood for nothing so much as cosmopolitan liberalism or the need for the Universal Homogeneous State to supersede all particularistic political forces and atavisms. So from the strictly Heideggerian point of view Trudeau would seem to represent nothing so much as the falsehood and pettiness of liberal technological progressivism.
Such an observation certainly seems reasonable at one level, but it is not necessarily accurate on another. Yes – Trudeau was a kind of “rootless” cosmopolitan internationalist who sought the end of the nation state and of all national insularities. With the Kantian and Hegelian legacies in mind, Forbes’ characterizes the sought after goal of the Trudeauvian movement as something like “Perpetual Peace” premised on the creation of a world that is devoid of any form of seriously limiting human particularity.[4] But for Forbes, the Trudeau Project does not exactly involve the strict exchanging of the world of particularity for the world of freedom. On the contrary the new anti-particularist order which will “eliminate the curse of war among nations and uphold the equality of all human beings” will resemble “A universal system of coordination and restraint.”[5]
But there is a paradox at the core of this question that requires some teasing out. We must certainly acknowledge Trudeau’s almost mindless (we might say) “universalism.” However, at the same time it is also reasonable to suggest that in the actual Canadian context of the time, he was a Canadian “National Liberalist” or a “Liberalist Nationalist.” That is to say that Trudeau spoke as though there was a unique core to Canadian national thinking in the same way a National Socialist might have spoken about Germany in the 1930’s. The difference only becomes apparent when we look at the actual content of that uniquely Canadian national core. If a National Socialist of the 1930’s insisted that the German people had a unique historical destiny to stand for the values of German world power, Trudeau for his part assured the Canadian people that they are totally unique in that under the authority of the Canadian State “all share a set of common values” and are on “an equal footing.[6] On these grounds Trudeau might also be labelled as a “universalist particularist” or a “cosmopolitan nationalist.”
If this case be allowed, then we can say that if the Nationalist Socialists were guilty of “fishing in the troubled waters of ‘values’ and ‘totalities,’”[7] as Heidegger claimed, then in Trudeau’s case we see something like the reverse i.e., even though he totally rejected anything like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s claim that “Nations are the wealth of mankind” he was still guilty of “fishing in the troubled waters of particularism and patriotism.””[8] If the National Socialists were susceptible to the temptation to think “outside the box” of their intense particularism, then Trudeau was equally tempted to think “inside the box” of national particularism.
If we allow for this paradoxical dimension of Trudeau’s thought, his well-known capacity to fight for an independent Canadian position in the context of foreign policy and the continental economy makes more intrinsic sense. Legislatively speaking, Trudeau more than any other Prime Minister until that time pushed things in a socialistic direction. But the source of his greatness, as per Peter Brimelow at least, rests on the reverse side of this purpose. It was rather to achieve a final victory for the people of Canada over all opponents foreign and domestic who might doubt her providential mission to show mankind how it is possible to eradicate human particularity from a fallen world.
Hail Victory!
According to Forbes, many were the “progressive young English-Canadians” who were drawn to the Trudeauvian version of Heideggerian Triumphalism as embodied in his 1962 promise of “Victory” for a new, more “polyethnic” way of Canadian national life. The promise was to make of Canada “the universally recognized model for global functional integration.” If Canadians in every part of the country would only embrace their own true “faith in humanity,” and face the challenge of diversity with grit and determination then the reward for will be the ‘Victory’ defined as “a truly pluralistic state.” When the Canadian community “rejects its nationalistic obsessions” and all of its members earnestly strive for “the most far-reaching and human ideal,” then the Victory that has been promised to the nation will be had. In the giddy springtime of “Trudeaumania,” Trudeau’s pluralist or “Just Society” proclaimed “Onward Canadian Multiculturalist Soldiers, Marching as to ‘Victory.’” [9] When the Canadian Saints “go marchin’ in” it will to the bliss of life under world liberalism and the triumph of the Universal State.[10]
Forbes stresses the point that the idea of multiculturalism “fires Canadians’ ambition to win a distinctive and honourable place in the modern world.” In so strirring Canadian hearts it “rescues them from self-doubt and self-contempt by captivating them with images of fame.” The promise of Canadian triumph and victory overshadows the actual unsureness of what the New Canadian Regime in fact is. This regime can go by many names – “the mosaic, polyethnic pluralism, diversity, cultural relativism, inter-culturalism, the multiculture, the Canadian integration model, the Canadian experiment, the Canadian dream, or even the Canadian social imaginary, the progressive civil religion, or even the purest Canadian Americanism.”[11] But whatever it might be called, Forbes’ point is that at bottom it is all about Canadian Will to Power! “It appeals to the common craving for superiority and in particular to the Canadian desire to surpass Great Britain and the United States in the vanguard of modern, progressive humanity.” It is the bulwark against unqualified absorption into the American “monoculture” precisely because “What democracy has been for Americans, multiculturalism has become for Canadians.”[12]
So the many-labelled concept of Canadian multiculturalism is the special form which national “triumphalism” takes in Canada. It suggests a truly Canadian “Victory over other cultures in the race to develop an ideal modern ethnocultural integration and cohesion system.”[13] It is indeed a “synthetic Canadian creation,” but for all that it remains truly Canadian and might reasonably be described as “a new form of gently evangelical creedal nationalism.” It may well be that Canada has not yet achieved that “final triumph over dangerous cultural and political divisions (which) was the goal proclaimed at the outset,” but this only means that the commitment to ultimate triumph is in need of renewal. There is no other option but to “stay the course” for to slacken off would be to give the forces of bigotry and nationalism a chance to regroup.[14]
The Canadian “Imaginary Republic”
As a student of the Canadian polity, Forbes is obliged to confront the role of John Lennon’s famous anthem “Imagine” in Canadian ethical and political life. John and Yoko Lennon had a special connection to “The Magus of the North.”[15] The remoter ramifications of the Lennon-Trudeau Summit of 1969 are being felt even today if one takes time to consider the building blocks of Justin Trudeau’s essential worldview. [16] The second Trudeau has in effect been committed to the actualization of John Lennon’s anthem “Imagine” even as the great Beatle may have discussed his ideas with the father back in the ‘60’s.[17] The discussion may well have revolved around the possibility of a truly secular world looking towards a Kantian future: “Imagine a world with no religion to kill or die for,” and “all the people living life in peace.”[18]
Forbes ingeniously suggests a radically sinister subtext to Lennon’s international hymn. He says that the anthem describes “the imaginary representatives of humanity, in an imaginary ‘original position,’ calculating the expected costs and benefits of new constitutional rules for an evolving global system.” These universal “reps” may well come to a decision “to scrap some old Western constitutional conventions and foundational beliefs.” They might do this as a means to securing “the more stable peace and more equitable prosperity anticipated for the whole human race.”[19]
According to Forbes, the evidence that there are certain sinister implications to the new multicultural state is to be seen in the positively “Aldous Huxleyite” determination of today’s authorities to be at the forefront of the technological quest for “public safety.” These “powers that be” will “use the most advanced methods to detect and counter ‘hate and ‘radicalization to violence’ among their citizens, some of whom somehow remain impervious to the attractions of universal egalitarian cultural pluralism.”[20]
In the face of all these possible implications of the multiculturalist project, Forbes is prepared to pose the very blunt question: What is multiculturalism “apart from any illusions of national destiny and cultural superiority?” The answer here is that absent the outsized “Idealism” it is in fact quite a mundane affair with “solid practical appeal.” In the end it all boils down to the “sustainable” project of developing “an immigration and settlement program with desirable practical effects …(and) also the promise of future tax revenues to sustain underfunded public pensions.”[21] Stripped of all its world-shaking pretensions and triumphalist rhetoric, multiculturalism is something not that politically interesting whatever its immense moral impact might have been.
Most significantly multiculturalism required shifts in authority from politicians in the ordinary sense to professional, university-trained judicial and bureaucratic “deciders” or “mandarins.”[22] These shifts in authority pointed in the direction of what today we might call the “Deep State.” The “New Order” does see itself as securing “the voluntary acceptance of the new institutions of universal peace and prosperity under construction.” But if there is a certain level of popular recalcitrance here it might find it necessary to use certain “drastic measures” if they be necessary to this end.
While it may be true that experimenting with global cultural fusion and religious synchronization will tend to “favour only gentle ways of encouraging good citizenship,” there is also the possibility that the newly ideologized state might see a time for “extreme measures” to achieve its goals. This would have to be the case if there lingered amongst the population persistent “tensions between historically antagonistic cultures and religions” which issued in their expressing “unreasonable (and) irresponsible dissent” If such a situation should arise then perhaps “a few thousand disruptive ‘witches’ and ‘warlocks’” could be burned at stakes in major cities around the world” during their annual Diversity Day celebrations.[23]
So for Forbes, the multicultural state will be sorely tempted to stifle the older “principled objections” and finally adopt a Draconian form of politics. [24] The new form of state would see this as a small price to pay if the alternative was in fact a “nuclear-chemical-biological catastrophe” generated by national particularism. The use of the modern states’ “policing” techniques to impose reasonable accommodations on its potentially warring factions might in fact “bind all of humanity together in a new way.” Such a binding might be a way to escape “the appalling threat of modern technological—nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare?”[25]
In the light of the sinister implications of the “Hate Hunting State” Forbes leans perceptibly in the direction of the limited government tradition, much as this might run against his deeper value instincts. This tradition insists upon “informed popular consent” as the first principle of politics. This principle must be sustained by the indefeasible right and the ability of all adult citizens “to participate (through freedom of speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, free competitive elections, etc.) in the determination of the laws and authorities under which they live.” In this way the restrictions that must be imposed to secure a peaceful, civilized life “will reflect the common understanding of right and wrong and serve the interests of all, or at least a majority” as they understand them. In other words, under truly democratic institutions the special claims of those who hold political office or who claim some higher authority not actually derived from popular consent are “null and void” and are merely words to no effect.[26]
Forbes indicates that historically speaking there are at least two established political meanings of freedom. One is the idea of collective self-determination provided by democratic government. The other is the personal liberty provided by limited government that respects individual rights under the rule of law. What these two principles come down to when all is said and done is the “abstract idea” that all human beings “are fundamentally equal in nature.” In their essence individuals are never “naturally under the authority of any other human beings.” That which underlies civilized society with its need for laws and authorities, is on this view “a voluntary agreement or contract among all of its members, each assumed to be the equal of every other.” Under this arrangement all relations of superiority and subordination as may be necessary for practical purposes (such as) to maintain order, secure property, coordinate production, regulate markets, restrain the violent and unruly, etc. must be “freely decided, through individual and collective deliberation.”[27]
Forbes is careful to indicate that this social doctrine does not in any way imply that children do not remain subject to the authority of their parents even as domesticated animals are naturally subject to human beings. But with respect to fully matured adults, the equality principle has to mean that all relations of authority can be only conventional. All claims that may be made by persons seeking to establish their natural superiority or divine authorization are totally fanciful. Political authority derives from and is anchored in contract. It is this miracle of contractarian human effort that transforms a group of human beings from their natural pre-political state to that of a civil society. Particular individuals then can be “authorized” by its members to “uphold the society’s norms.” Political authority is not established by anyone’s birth or talents; “only the consent of those subject to it does.” Most importantly those who establish such an authority over themselves cannot reasonably be imagined to be giving it unlimited power. To suggest that they would is as much as to say that “they would be willing to accept tyranny as the price for security.”[28]
Such is Forbes’ view of the bedrock theory of liberal modernity. However, we know that like Tocqueville before him, Forbes is not a “garden variety” liberal. How could he be if his philosophical heroes are George Grant, Simone Weil and Leo Strauss? Forbes may be genuinely concerned to see that the case for liberalism receives its fullest possible hearing. But at the same time we know he cannot possibly accept this case in toto. To be sure, it is hard to see exactly in what precise ways Forbes dissents from the modern tradition of classical liberalism. But consider for example his comment on Trudeau’s “non-discriminatory immigration policy,” which Forbes says necessitated the further reduction and by extension ultimate phasing out of the “lingering reflections of Christianity in Canada’s cultural practices and institutions.”[29] In such a comment we get a hint of Forbes’ more “esoteric” views.
Big Government and the Progressive State
In the light of Forbes’ evident skepticism concerning the new multicultural state it is natural that he should pose the question as whether or not multiculturalism can be “valued for its contribution to freedom.” Does multiculturalism give people more legitimate choices (of belief systems, lifestyles, headgear, restaurants, etc.)? Does multiculturalism refrain from forcing (people) to conform to a dominant culture or ideology? Does multiculturalism recognize people’s right to act on their own judgements of value, in accordance with their own tastes, traditions, and conscience?
Forbes doesn’t directly answer these questions on his own behalf. But he does point out that “some say,” (possibly including Forbes himself), that among other things, multiculturalism leads to the “essentializing” of groups and to the implicit demand that group members “play to stereotype.” Moreover, multiculturalism can lead to “a bigger, more intrusive, more overbearing government that encroaches on basic individual rights (such as freedom of speech and freedom of association) and undermines democratic self-government and the rule of law.”[30] Forbes’ habitual vagueness is at work here, but it is evident that he is on the side of the critics rather than the defenders of the multicultural cause in this particular context.
Forbes is concerned to highlight the political implications of Equity Egalitarianism. Indeed, he says that free and parliamentary government itself could wither in the face of the discretionary authority exercised by the vast administrative apparatus of a “big” government. It is enough that in contemporary times elections tend to be “little more than popularity contests.” There is also the ominous growth of a jungle of delegated legislation and regulatory proliferation “in the undergrowth of which the rule of law could become hopelessly lost.” [31]
But at the same time, Forbes very carefully points to the possibility that “entrenchment of constitutional protections for individual and minority rights also carries great risks” even as it can place constraints on bureaucratic domination. The enhanced rights protections might in due course lead to a conferring of power on the courts and judges, so much so that they end up making “make a mockery of majority rule.”[32]
So Forbes has chosen to highlight the issue of a big, active, and intrusive government and its “becoming oppressive without necessarily threatening established economic interests.” Such a government could “try to impose the majority’s culture on everyone else.” The dangerous propensities of democracy that tend in the direction of this kind of government have long since been recognized over time and a progressive liberal consensus developed that democratic governments should be put under two basic limitations, one of which is neutrality and the other of which is colour blindness. The neutrality principle means that modern liberals and socialists have maintained that “Governments must be kept from favouring either the conformists or the dissenters, (or) modern liberals and socialists.”[33] Neutrality would require that governments not intrude in any of the value controversies that might be raging in their societies about conceptions of the ultimate good. In our times this has evolved into the repression of those who dissent from conventional cultural and political pieties in the name of some higher human obligation.
Forbes wishes for us to see clearly the ways in which the new non-discrimination principle is not like that same principle as understood in former times. Non-discrimination becomes the “Golden Rule” for “discriminating between lawful and unlawful behavior.” Whereas in former times it was thought that governments and indeed society as a whole, should never discriminate on prohibited grounds, these grounds cease to exist under the new non-discrimination principle. It most definitely permits discrimination on the grounds of height, weight, age, citizenship, education, grades, test scores as the case may be. This form of discriminatory anti-discrimination is needed to ensure that privileged members of the dominant group “enjoy no special advantages in the quest for wealth and honor.”[34] So Forbes makes apparent to his readers the high stakes involved in abandoning the classical liberal principles for the “newfangled” progressive principles of multiculturalism.[35]
Forbes himself has been around long enough to observe that after fifty years of the new program some liberals still find it “embarrassing and sometimes even impossible to abandon their old straightforward condemnation of any official use of the prohibited grounds of discrimination.” After such an extended run the “equality under the law” principle dies hard.[36] This is because deviations from the strict rule of non-discrimination is painful for those liberals who have a lingering but more and more watery allegiance to the old ideal of equal justice under the law.
Forbes takes time to pose the question: “Are all egalitarians really on the same page?” Are they all “singing…the same old hymn to the same fundamental democratic value, equality, with the sopranos just singing in a higher register than the tenors, but harmoniously?” Whatever the answer, the partisans of new equality “do not accept the classically liberal idea that ‘society’ is a realm of voluntary cooperation independent of ‘the state’ and that it should be allowed, within broad limits, to arrange its affairs however it pleases. Nor do they accept that some groups, for a variety of legitimate reasons, may make different choices and compete more or less effectively than others for power, income, and status.” Forbes never comes out and says so, but we feel sure that he is evidently not to be counted as a “partisan of the new equality.”[37]
We can infer from the above remarks that Forbes is not really a “hundred percenter” on the doctrine of individual rights. The grounds for making such a claim lie in the fact that when he states that a government premised on the principle of individual rights “does not profess to serve any particular ideal or larger purpose,” one feels a certain ambiguity about the point on his part. He states further that “apart from the ideal of leaving all individuals as free as possible to lead the kinds of lives they think best, individually and in association with others” the liberal state has no purpose whatsoever.[38] One gets the feeling that in this simple statement of the core principle of liberalism Forbes is obliquely indicating his view that holding such a principle to be the absolute starting point for political life is highly problematic to say the least.
To affirm that liberal society must somehow aim at achieving a political telos naturally enough implies that the government of human beings must willy-nilly serve an “ideal or larger purpose.”[39] But in this context Forbes endows the “negative” ideal of governmental non-interference with the glow of freedom or liberty within the purview of “pure” classical liberalism. The principle of individual rights by definition constitutes a confinement the scope of government action to the simply making possible peaceful dissent from community purposes and no further. The rights principle also serves the end of smaller-scale social cooperation based on limited voluntary agreements. “Individual rights make way for such things as enforceable contracts between buyers and sellers and employers and employees for example.” A limited government is a “small” government that “uses its coercive power sparingly, within a narrowly defined public sphere, according to clear laws of general application.” It leaves citizens (or subjects) “free to do whatever they want to do (and can agree amongst themselves to do) beyond that sphere.[40]
Truly liberal, limited government is free from “totalitarian” ambitions and rather sticks to its specifically “limited, coercive knitting” of the community’s social fibers by striving always to see to the “suppression of private violence (and) enforcement of contracts, etc.”[41] At moments Forbes can don an “Austrian” suit and tie and sound to all the world like a Popper, Hayek, Friedman or Mises. For Forbes, Democracy is designed to serve the interests and reflect the thinking of majorities, not minorities, and is likely to deny many legitimate minority demands. Forbes then is a devotee of “old-style common sense” and not of the new ethical demand for “a more equal distribution of recognition.”[42]
The outcome of Forbes meditation on limited government then is a portrait of the tension between individual liberty, freedom of choice and voluntary cooperation on the one hand, and the democratic form of government which tends to “act on popular demands for more equal outcomes and greater economic security” on the other. To be sure there is nothing new in recognizing this tension. Indeed, if “the old conflict between equalizing economic policies and entrenched property rights” should be recalled we see immediately that it has been a staple of western political philosophy for centuries.[43]
So when all is said and done, Forbes envisions the economic “conservatives” or old-fashioned liberals with their commitment to a strictly “negative” freedom under a small government and Bills of Rights as constituting the best bulwark against Equity Egalitarianism’s Leviathan-Bureaucratic State. In the preferred arrangement of these “liberal-conservatives,” or “conservative-liberals,” as the case may be, the great value of voluntary cooperation and respect for property rights, together with the social benefits of the free-market economy should be fully appreciated for what they do for the well-being of the community. On their watch, it will be the duty of the judicial branch to protect the rights of the individual from illiberal threats such as might emanate from redistributive policies and programs fostered by the modern “Leviathan” state. [44]
Religion? No Problem.
Having acknowledged Forbes’ classical liberal leanings, such as they are, we also have to insist that given Forbes’ extended work on George Grant there is little question that the subject of religion has always to be on his mind.[45] So Forbes must deal with this subject in connection with the multiculturalist debate. He explains that the liberal multiculturalists who have dominated the academic discussion have tended to see religion as “not itself a problem for liberal multicultural policy-making.” As per Locke’s famous Letter on Toleration they conceive of religion as a strictly a “private matter.” And so for these commentators “different religious beliefs and loyalties are no more problematic than different hobbies or favourite dishes.” This “privatization” process is the modern master solution to the earlier problems of denominational strife in Western societies. Since the sixteenth century, Forbes explains, there have been significant advances in the West towards toleration. So much has this been the case, that denominational differences within Christianity have “ceased to be a source of devastating wars and oppressive domestic exclusions and subordinations.”[46] These advances seem to constitute an unmitigated good in Forbes’ eyes. “Goodbye” to the odium theologium and “Hello” to multicultural religious diversity.
Multiculturalism as outlined by Forbes ultimately hopes that all the energy spent on the cause of egalitarian cultural blending and “global functional integration” may indeed be supererogatory. Many observers, even within Canada’s borders, may suspect that a firmly grounded, higher and deeper spirituality, for all its promised advantages and apparent inevitability, is no longer necessary to comprehensive global functional integration and egalitarian cultural blending. Whatever the arguments in favor of such integration and blending, they may well be no more than the manifestations of an “inexorable march to freedom and equality that was the favourite theme, a century or two ago, of ambitious futurologists” in generations past.[47] As such there is actually no necessity for them in the sense of requiring special provisions. The “Wheel of Futurity” will roll down the “grooves of change” to the good of all.
What Forbes is getting at here is that the modern pax religiosus necessarily “waters down” religious fervor to the point where it no longer is effective as what he describes as the “gluey amalgam” providing the basis of “social cohesion.” The principle of religious toleration has played the long-term role of a weakener of the “bite” of the old, “divisive revealed (and organized) religions.” But if the new global-multiculturalist institutional infrastructure is not fully in place as this trend continues, it will have turned out in effect to have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
But “not so fast” Forbes warns. It would appear that this new diversity is generating new “theological” problems that are even more resistant to the classically liberal cures than the old ones.[48] Indeed, the common tendency to treat religion as simply and entirely a private matter seems to be an increasingly “untenable simplification.” In the new situation it might be that “religion” could be a much less misleading word than “culture” when discussing the problematic nature of public diversity at the heart of egalitarian cultural pluralism. Perhaps a “modern civil religion” would be the best name for what multiculturalism in Canada “aspires to be.”[49]
Forbes wonders out loud whether the new world political order envisaged by today’s globalists might require the fostering of a deeper “spiritual” unity than the strict principle of liberal toleration alone can allow. This means that until functionally effective institutions capable of supplying the necessary coordination and restraint to the community gain enough power to ensure peace and prosperity, the older religious values might still divide large numbers of people into “heavily armed camps.” So what is greatly needed for the nonce is something to “glue” humanity together as it sets out on its road to world justice. This will be the newly minted multicultural faith. But the conundrum will always be present – a strengthened “glue” threatens the principle of absolute toleration, and the toleration principle tends to dissolves the stronger compounds of politico-cultural “glue.”[50]
The Schmelzing Pot in Canada, or, Caving in to Incoherence: The Taylorian Solution
Turning to his treatment of that other great figure in the multiculturalist firmament – Charles Taylor – we find Forbes portraying him to be pretty much whistling past the graveyard when it comes to the theoretical difficulties involved in making sense of multiculturalism. Taylor simply “waffles in (the) direction” of a “general norm of equal recognition.” Although Taylor is capable of recognizing that “such a norm might be simply incoherent and might create some serious practical problems,” he nevertheless “caves into this incoherence hoping that it might not be noticed on the level of practice.”[51]
For Taylor people true recognition is that of a true self that should be accorded the recognition its possessor deserves? After all in order to become a true self has had to have gone through Plato’s famous famous periagogue and leave behind his or her their former more artificial self which was preoccupied with banalities and inanities. But to refer to this famous “turn around” necessarily leads in turn the question of perception and classification, as in “that bird is a cardinal.” The relevant meaning in the multiculturalist context has at least as much to do with placement on a scale or ranking of social status in the way that “cardinals are above bishops but below popes.” But allowing this interpretation we inevitably arrive at such questions as “Who sets the standards? Who defers to whom? Who judges whom? Who has authority over whom?”[52] Forbes explains that whatever the inherent difficulties here it will be reassuring to some to learn that recognition will be extended only to those true, authentic selves that are, after all, recognizable selves.” Arriving at final determinations as to personal authenticity will for sure have to be a matter of negotiation, but with responsible professional moralists like Professor Taylor “having a large say” we can rest easy that the recognized “authenticists” will be well deserving of their honors.[53]
One way of dealing with this situation is indicated when Taylor points to the possibility suggested by Hans-Georg Gadamer of a “fusion of horizons” (Horizontverschmelzung) which involves the open-minded study of the actual achievements of different individuals and cultures. Of course, these individuals and cultures are not all equally impressive at first glance, but this does not mean that the desired Horizontverschmelzing might not be produced. It would all depend on the careful examination of any claims for greater recognition by the “relevant authorities somewhere in government or the academy.”[54]
Forbes takes the time to ask what elements will provide the inspiration for the Grosse Horizontverschmetzung – Sittlichkeit oder Eigentlichkeit? (Morality or Authenticity)?[55] In other words, will the main consideration in the coming decision-making concerning awards of merit be the ethical achievements of the candidates or the more traditional and dearly held folkways of the particular culture under review? However this might be these authorities would be able to render “the immediately necessary political judgements of equality after the ‘schmeltzing’ of the troublesome cultural differences had been achieved.”[56]
But until the moment of the “Great Fusion of Horizons” has come, what will be required above all is the practice of “inspired adhoccery.” As an example of this pre-fusionist phenomenon, Forbes’ cites Taylor’s response to the 1989 controversy over Salman Rushdie and his Satanic Verses. At that time, Taylor wrote that it is not the responsibility of theorists like himself to “lay down general rules for the handling of practical problems of identity and recognition.” Instead, the public must trust the “inspired adhoccery” of their political leaders to come up with the necessary measures. Later with their historical hindsight, the theoretical observers as distinguished from those operating on the practical level will “be able to see the contours (of politics) correctly.”[57]
For Forbes, the inevitable concern with “Taylorism” has to be the transfer of power out of the hands of, if we are talking in terms of the academic universe, “qualified senior faculty” into the hands of “the political and judicial authorities.” If a particular academic case had to do with Comparative Literature for example,[58] a genuine evaluation by qualified senior faculty conducted along strictly professional lines might not be sufficiently responsive to questions of personal background. What about the famous “ethnocentric” bias of Saul Bellow who said “If there is a Papuan Proust, I shall read him.”[59]
Such an insensitive remark on Bellow’s part, smacks of Eurocentric cultural arrogance to Taylor for sure. But at the same time he is of the view that to award a position on the faculty of Princeton University to a freshly minted Zulu PhD because the Zulu quotient is below their level in the population of New Jersey “would be just as demeaning and unacceptable” as actual discrimination. And for students to be forced to read a Zulu novelist or awarding this novelist a Nobel Prize for literature simply because “it was time for the Zulus to have something to celebrate” would be unreasonable. Such a distribution of honors would be an even more deeply humiliating denial of the candidate’s “difference” than would a simple ethnocentric rejection.[60]
Taylor is careful to make the point that if true or authentic recognition cannot actually be compelled because if it necessarily involves a “judgment of value,” then no strict right to recognition can exist. “If the judgment of value is to register something independent of our own wills and desires, it cannot be dictated by a principle of ethics” and should not be dictated by the socio-political authorities.[61]
But even after seeming to hold on to a standard such as the above stated, Forbes’ Taylor suggests that there are cases where “a norm of equal recognition would have to be deemed unethical” because it would involve inflicting of “grievous wounds” and the saddling of others with “crippling self-hatred…imprisoning them in reduced modes of being, and sometimes perhaps even putting them in their graves.” As Forbes’ puts it, Taylor renders an account of the problem under the terms of which “neither the strictly liberal (“individual rights”) nor the simply democratic (“populist”) styles of democratic politics (are) able to hold the right balance between fairness traditionally understood and the new claims of multiculturalist ethics.”[62] Even if Taylor were so fortunate as to live in a perfected democracy of the kind outlined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Social Contract, he would simply feel it to be a “homogenizing tyranny”[63] and not the fulfilment of the principle of the “consent of the governed” properly understood.
Even if Taylor were to flee to the realm of “grievous wounds” and “self-hatred” intrinsic to the land of “procedural liberalism” in order to escape the “homogenizing tyranny” of purist popular sovereignty it would be for him as if he had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. When all is said and done, Taylor is sure that “a neutral government rigorously enforcing individual rights would be almost as bad.”[64] This form of liberalism would be no true upgrade from Rousseau’s system because in dealing with the politics of difference “it can’t accommodate what the members of distinct societies really aspire to, which is survival.”[65] So for anyone to seek Taylor’s magical and never before seen “balance” is to position oneself between a very hard rock and a very inaccessible place, or, stated more simply, to chase a chimera.[66]
Forbes’ summary statement on all this confusion is to explain that at bottom it involves a particular recipe for giving greater freedom to individuals representing distinct cultures to violate the individual rights of other individuals from non-distinct cultures. Under a liberal democratic regime of equal individual rights “as usually understood,”[67] they would never arrive at such a position of legitimate violation. Forbes indicates the way in which “Taylorism’s” specific divergence from “procedural liberalism” simply and finally stands for the absence of protection of the rights “as usually understood.” His underlying sentiment is palpable here, and the reader senses that nothing that Taylor has said could possibly bring Forbes into sympathy with his claims for “balance-ism.”[68]
Tomorrow Land Babies, or, Swiftian Extensions of the Multiculturalist Rationale
Forbes explains that in the mind-blowing multiculturalist future envisaged by its enthusiasts “those individuals who are able to blend all the conflicting revelations, rights, values, rules, and precedents in exactly the right way, by using Common Sense, Ethics, Imagination, Intuition, Memory, and Reason in just the right proportions” will be very well placed. If these individuals manage to blend all these qualities with a view to establishing the equilibrium of forces they will “enjoy an enhanced authority simply as citizens” and will generate the smooth trajectory into a future desired by all. All the highest conventional governmental authorities, and all those holding the highest offices, “will naturally claim to be imbued with such an ability (and) they will be in a position to present themselves “as the oracles of balance, able to divine, even if not to explain, what needs to be done.”[69]
To make a very long story very short, the upcoming scenario is a “Fantasy-Land.” The multiculturalist “babies” have unmoored themselves from any idea of a standard by which to distinguish between that which might naturally be expected and that which is utterly fantastic. This gives them the freedom to construct a “republic” that has never been seen nor ever will be.[70]
According to Forbes it is worthwhile to examine the significant features of the Canadian multiculturalist “Tomorrowland” because in doing so we may throw “a new and sharper light on the meaning of all the multicultural values.”[71] He is looking to see what might be revealed by pushing the multiculturalist principles all the way to the breaking point. At the least this procedure might “mov(e) the needle” as we go “Forward to the Future.” But at the same time, we should not be surprised if in doing so we find ourselves going “Back to the Future.”[72]
Forbes manifestly does not want to close the door to future changes as this would smack of fatalism and the prospect that there is nothing left to discuss. The multicultural future, he says, may not be realized.”[73] The “Cunning of History” does not necessarily point to a terminus in the Canadian multiculturalist social model. [74]
Administrative Issues Only
So after more or less proving to a demonstration that the multicultural society utterly lacks the wherewithal to deal with a genuine “Clash of Civilizations,” [75] a scene where “hard values” encounter one another in deadly hate, Forbes then proceeds to say of the “Clash” thesis that it is more or less “extremist” and “xenophobic” concept, and as such it is naturally “unsettling” to the holders of “respectable opinion.”[76]
Forbes then appears confident that the most respectable opinion in the western countries remains strongly committed to the values of diversity, inclusiveness, sensitivity, and inclusion.
“Whatever (multiculturalism’s) principles may be, they are commonly thought to be the right and true principles, the good or correct ones, the ones that all respectable people respect.”[77] It follows from this that to evince any doubt whatsoever about multiculturalism’s plans, policies and legislation is to risk one’s welcome in respectable circles. In other words, let us not debate the simple question whether there should or should not have been any immigration at all to the liberal democratic lands.[78] The focus should be on more pedestrian administrative issues to do with such things as “large backlogs of applicants, the eligibility of refugee claimants, selection procedures and border controls and such like. Such matters do not rise to the level of genuine public controversy. But the question nevertheless remains as to whether the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis ultimately undermines the claims of multiculturalism.[79]Let us simply assume from the outset that immigration is not at all a “regime” issue and focus the debate on whether or not the immigration program is bias-free, well-administered and carefully monitored and so on. No sane person could complain about the consideration of these basic administrative policy concerns.
But elsewhere in the book Forbes sends a message contrary to the above. He indeed asks whether Canadians will “stay the course” in the long run. Will they stick doggedly to the path on which they have been walking since the 1960s, of “making changes in their society with a view to the better realization of major multicultural values?” In answer to this question Forbes suggests that “It is not inconceivable that Canadians could, in the future, disavow the vision of their future that Pierre Trudeau prescribed for them the 1960s and later.”[80] Such a disavowal might not be “imminent” but at the same time Forbes disclaims any understanding of how likely such a repudiation may be. We suspect he might never himself have been on the multiculturalist train in the first place.[81]
NOTES
[1] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.131.
[2] Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (Yale University Press, 2000), p.213 The “Heideggerian” encounter between modern man and global technology” in the Canadian context would mean more specifically the encounter between Egalitarian Equity Pluralism and the brute fact of human “particularism” or bigotry or prejudice in the form of what Pierre Trudeau labelled at one point “un nationalism retrograde, borne et despotique.” “La Nouveau Trahison des Clercs” Cite Libre 46 (1962), p.16.
[3] See Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1965),pp.416-425..
[4] For Forbes, it is Immanuel Kant who is the “greatest theorist of progressive idealism.” Kant views the historical record as the basis for hoping that one day “the highest purpose of nature, a universal cosmopolitan existence, will at last be realized as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop.” But at the same time Kant was clearly no idealist “in the vulgar sense of someone who has an unrealistically rosy view of human nature.” Kant’s focus was the paradoxical “unsocial sociability of men” which he interprets as the force which “drove them into ever larger and more perfect structures for disciplining and directing the development of their antagonistic natural impulses.” Thus it may be said that the supreme paradox of political science, that Kant finds an empirical basis for the possibility of perpetual peace and justice, in “the endless train of devastating wars and revolutions in the past.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.276.
[5] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.273
[6] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.58
[7] “The works that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism but that have nothing whatever to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the encounter between global technology and modern man)–have all been written by men fishing in the troubled waters of `values’ and `totalities.'” Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p.213.
[8] See Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Nobel Lecture in Literature” (1970) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1970/solzhenitsyn/lecture/
[9] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.257. “Canadian philosophers and social scientists will hold their places as the foremost interpreters of multiculturalism, and all Canadians will finally share a proud political identity and the admiration of decent people everywhere for their indispensable contribution to overcoming the foolish illusions and terrible dangers of an inflamed national feeling. Their ardent patriotism—their willingness to “stand on guard” for Canada, keeping it “glorious and free”- will be clearly justified by their country’s exceptional achievement.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p. xxi
[10] See Timothy W. Burns, “What’s Wrong With a World State?” in Sojourns in the Western Twilight: Essays in Honor of Tom Darby (Ottawa: Fermentation Press, September 2016), pp.179-192. See also Angel Jaramillo Torres “Nationalism, Universalism and Nihilism: Trump’s Politics in the Light of the Strauss-Kojeve Debate in M.B. Sable and A.J. Torres eds., Trump and Political Philosophy: Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, and Civic Virtue (Palgrave-Macmillan,2018), pp.315-330 and W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz “Why a World State Is Unnecessary: The Continuing Debate on World Government” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 44:3(2018),pp.379-402
[11] Multiculturalism in Canada, pp. 272-273.
[12] Multiculturalism in Canada, p. 271. Why the opening for this “reverse” form of patriotism is perhaps best explained by transposing some remarks of George Orwell’s into the Canadian context: “If the (Canadian) people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale…the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible…. the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process of making it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces…The English intelligentsia…form a sort of island of dissident thought in terms of the general patriotism of the country.” England, My England https://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/enflish/e_eye “A young woman observes in the course of a discussion that her country ‘has never been engaged in a major war… English Canada’s self-censorship is so effective that no dreams disturb its sleep.” Brimelow, The Patriot Game, p.123.
[13] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.73.
[14] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.200
[15] See Richard Gwynn, The Northern Magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians Edited (Paper Jacks, 1986). This book has nothing to do with Sir Isaiah Berlin’s Magus of the North (Hodder & Stoughton,1993)
[16] For a dramatic presentation of the differences between the Trudeaus pere at fils see Conrad Black, “On Justin Trudeau’s 50th birthday, the shadow of his father looms large” The National Post, December 25, 2021). https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-on-justin-trudeaus-50th-birthday-the-shadow-of-his-father-looms-large
[17] The famous Beatle and his new bride arrived in Toronto on Dec. 15, 1969 as part of the launch of their global “War is Over!” billboard campaign. A few days later, the couple sat down with Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan to discuss the billboard initiative. And on Dec. 23, Lennon and Ono achieved what seems to have been among their top priority as the leading peace activists of the era – they met the Prime Minister of Canada. Lennon said after the meeting that “If all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau there would be world peace.” John and Yoko had it in common with Pierre and Margaret Trudeau that Varsity Stadium at the University of Toronto was to some extent their “Elysian Fields.” See Susan Pedwell, “John Lennon and Yoko Ono Rock Varsity Stadium” University of Toronto Magazine (September 21, 2015) https://magazine.utoronto.ca/campus/history/john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-rock-varsity-stadium/ and Boris Spremo, “The biggest rally of the 1974 Election campaign so far last night in Varsity Stadium, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his wife, Margaret Sat Together” Toronto Star (June 27th, 1974) https://digitalarchive.tpl.ca/objects/300395/the-biggest-rally-of-the-campaign-so-far-any-party-was-last
[18] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.273.
[19] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.274. For recent critiques of John Lennon’s poem see Robert Baum “Why I hate John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIWk1Bj-d9I&t=55s and Ben Shapiro, “Ben Shapiro Trashes John Lennon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej0NBRwht-w
[20] Multiculturalism in Canada p.98. It seems fair to say that after all these years of laboring on the matter Forbes must have remained “impervious” to the attractions of the multiculturalist option. Consider: “Everything seems to be a re-enactment of the age-old drama. But this time, the cause of philosophy is lost from the start…Thanks to the conquest of nature and the completely unabashed of suspicion and terror for law, the Universal and Final Tyrant has at his disposal practically unlimited means for ferreting out, and for extinguishing, the most modest efforts in the direction of thought…the coming of the universal and homogenous state will be the end of philosophy on earth.” Leo Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” in On Tyranny p.211.
[21] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.272. Peter Brimelow – “Scratch a multiculturalist and you find and Anglo-American liberal underneath.” The Patriot Game, p.43
[22] Multiculturalism in Canada, p. 261 Timothy W. Burns states that Forbes’ book presents us with “the specter of a government compelling its citizens to pursue (multiculturalism’s) notions of the good – the very thing the classic liberal regimes were designed to avoid.” Timothy W. Burns,” Multiculturalism: Democracy by Experts,” p.123.
[23] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.273. Forbes quotes from Mark Kingwell’s The World We Want: Virtue, Vice, and the Good Citizen “What we need is a new model of citizenship based on the act of participation itself, not on some quality or thought or right enjoyed by its possessor. This participatory citizenship doesn’t simply demand action from existing citizens; it makes action at once the condition and the task of citizenship.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.219 n.2 (emphasis Forbes’)
[24] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.273. Forbes’ ironic allusion to witch-burning is really a not so subtle indication of his actual attitude to multiculturalism – i.e., down deep he loathes and disdains it as a malicious and dangerous ideology which has nothing within itself to innately restrain it from the worst kind of persecutions associated with the Inquisition, Jan Huss, Michael Servetus and Giordano Bruno.
[25] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.274.
[26] Multiculturalism in Canada p.98. Forbes argues that the problem of multiculturalism has little to do with money. He is of the view that Canadian taxpayers shouldn’t get too upset about their dollars being devoted to it. But Richard Gwyn for one observed that Official Multiculturalism was really just “a slush fund to buy ethnic votes.” Quoted in Brimelow, The Patriot Game, p.46. So whether the taxpayer funds involved here be very great or comparatively modest it has to qualify as “waste” or even “corruption” whatever the amount. But Forbes nevertheless insists that “(N)o reasonable person will think that the major issues raised by official multiculturalism have to do with its direct dollar costs.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.49 n7
[27] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.98
[28] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.98.
[29] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.275 n.44.
[30] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.96.
[31] Multiculturalism in Canada, pp.98-99.
[32] Multiculturalism in Canada p.99.
[33] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.99.
[34] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.100. What this means is that “the censorious impulses of those who would outlaw blasphemy, pornography, or disloyalty as conventionally understood” need to be constrained in their power so that the universal right to dissent is not compromised. Ibid., p.99
[35] Forbes’ antagonism to this abandonment helps to explain the submerging of his distrust of modern political philosophy. For Forbes, to self-consciously corrode and degrade the originally classical liberal vision, as is done by so many progressivist, multiculturalist intellectuals is worse than swallowing the whole contractarian case “hook, line and sinker.”
[36] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.101.
[37] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.82.
[38] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.98
[39] “It cannot be denied that of the most important things in life, comparatively little is touched by Parliamentary measures; and it is an admitted principle with us that government must keep its hands off many things which are of vital importance to the life of the nation…(W)e are never likely to assign to the legislature proper such duties as the Greeks would. There will always be an opposition between those who deprecate every attempt to regulate life by legislation, and those who say, “Let legislation do as much for the improvement of life as it can.” Richard Lewis Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Plato (London: Macmillan1968), pp.143-144.
[40] Multiculturalism in Canada, p. 98
[41] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.98.
[42] Multiculturalism in Canada p.139
[43] ” The ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to (security’s) dictates…nations the most attached to liberty (might) resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.” The Federalist No. 8.
[44] As a result of his grand journey along the highways of western thought, Forbes has managed to bring certain things to light about the origins of Canadian political consciousness that have been invisible for those lacking his own wide scope of learning. H.D. Forbes the political philosopher steps front and center when he reviews the early modern theories of popular sovereignty and inalienable individual rights as necessarily paving the way for the remarkable novelty of theories such as those of Taylor, Kymlicka, Barry et. al. (and the practices they “theorize”). Only after such a immersion into the history of political philosophy, Forbes says, can multiculturalism “be properly understood.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.269.
[45] Peter Brimelow notes that the subject of religion is generally “unmentionable” in Canada, along with the fact that Brian Mulroney harbored a “deep antagonism to any right-wing stirrings in an essentially alien party” The Patriot Game, p.278.
[46] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.271
[47] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.201.
[48] “Open immigration and naturalization policies may be creating divisions that will never be bridged.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.265.
[49] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.273.
[50] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.5 “Diversity, inclusivity, sensitivity, and tolerance…seem to define the new kind of society that the proponents of multiculturalism are trying to create, namely, a respectful “multiculture” that will recognize and celebrate every legitimate culture and identity, skillfully restraining their fissiparous tendencies while happily reaping the practical rewards of doing so” (Ibid.,p.4). “(M)ulticulturalism is the policy consequence of the alienation from the majority culture that characterizes leftwing parties in the English-Speaking world. “If you are disaffected from your own culture, you will not approve of its imposition on other people.” The Patriot Game, p.141. See John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses, pp.15-20.
[51] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.140. According to Raymond Aron the “Churchmen” of progressivism allow themselves to fall into the trap of absolutism and then proceed to indulge in a limitless relativism.” See Aron, “The Opium etc.,” p.135.
[52] Multiculturalism in Canada, p. 132.
[53] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.152.
[54] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.140
[55] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.145. Norman Podhoretz illuminatingly discusses the liberalism of Isaiah Berlin. At the end of the day Berlin had not understood the nihilist consequences of the Romantic esteem for sincerity and authenticity. In private “the radicalism and/or barbarism” of the New Left distressed him greatly “but in the pages of the New York Review of Books…(he) regularly accorded (it) the greatest respect and (provided its) most sophisticated intellectual defense.” Norman Podhoretz, “A Dissent on Isaiah Berlin” in Jeffers ed. P.428 and Commentary (February 1999) https://www.commentary.org/articles/norman-podhoretz/a-dissent-on-isaiah-berlin/
[56] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.140.
[57] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.145.
[58] Norman Podhoretz explains that “The universities were) where the assault on the traditions and values of this society comes disguised, under the name of multiculturalism, as an innocent effort to give their belated due to previously excluded ethnic and sexual minorities.” Norman Podhoretz, “Neoconservatism: A Eulogy” in Thomas L. Jeffers ed. The Norman Podhoretz Reader (New York: Free Press, 2004),p.282.
[59] Taylor indirectly responds to Bellow’s saying that “when the Zulus produce a Tolstoy we will read him.” See, Saul Bellow, “Papuans and Zulus” https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/specials/bellow-papuans.html He argues that Bellow made a serious error because “The possibility that the Zulus, while having the same potential for culture formation as anyone else, might nevertheless have come up with a culture that is less valuable than others is ruled out from the start. Even to entertain this possibility is to deny human equality.” (Quoted in Forbes, Multiculturalism in Canada, p.138). Pat Buchanan got into similar trouble as Bellow when he said ““If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?” https://quotefancy.com/quote/1111963/Pat-Buchanan-If-we-had-to-take-a-million-immigrants-in-say-Zulus-next-year-or-Englishmen
[60] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.139
[61] Multiculturalism in Canada, pp.138-139
[62] Multiculturalism in Canada, pp. 138-139.
[63] Multiculturalism in Canada, pp.84-85.
[64] “Equity egalitarianism aims to equalize people who are unequal in the view of ‘society,’ using ‘state-ways’ to change ‘folkways,’ countering ‘social’ handicaps with offsetting bureaucratically administered advantages, to ‘level the playing field.’” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.83.
[65] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.139.
[66] “Equity Egalitarianism” presupposes and promotes an ideal of equality that is at odds, not just with “capitalist” equality of opportunity but even runs counter to the equality of results “in the traditional socialist sense.” This because socialism is focused on group shares and group averages and in so doing leaves as much room as anyone could possibly want for unequal individuals and families…. Equity Egalitarianism is not really an advantage to the authentically socialist cause.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.83.
[67] Multiculturalism in Canada, pp.139-140.
[68] “Taylor’s proposal is essentially to polarize the Canadian electorate between the very rich and the merely affluent (supported by the poor and downtrodden) as a way of binding English and French Canadians together more harmoniously.” Multiculturalism in Canada, p.277.
[69] Multiculturalism In Canada, p. 263.
[70] See Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Pres,198) Chapter XV: “Of Those Things for Which Men and Especially Princes Are Praised or Blamed” p.61. Consider “Only when Western civilization has shaken off the shackles of the past and created a new social order worthy of the human dignity of the common man, will democracy and religion be once more realized in human society.” R.H.S. Crossman, Plato Today (London: Unwin Books, 1937;1963), p.187. See Ryszard Lugetko, The Demon in Democracy (Encounter Books, 2016
[71] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.200. Forbes explains to his readers that official multiculturalism “grew smoothly out of the Canada’s (and the Western world’s) liberal and democratic traditions.” This “smoothness” of change explains the New Canada’s less than striking fidelity to the “old ways of thinking and old principles of freedom and equality.” The new expectations associated with the new policies being designed for the management of multicultural society have gradually overshadowed the “mystic chords of memory” that once attached the people to the “old principles of freedom and equality.”
[72] Timothy W. Burns and Thomas L. Pangle summarize effectively what it is that Forbes has done in his overall presentation of the phenomenon of multiculturalism. Forbes, they say, treats us “to what one is tempted to call a series of Swiftian modest proposals, warnings of what the future holds, owing to the anti-democratic and anti-liberal nature of both the theory and practice of multiculturalism as Forbes has unfolded it. The resulting portrait shows the emergence of an Orwellian world of incoherent doublethink.” Burns and Pangle say that this new multicultural order involves experts nimbly managing internal conflicts at home and practicing a bullying imperialism abroad, wherever they can, to export “distinctively Canadian” multicultural values, “to show Canada’s exceptional national identity and to strengthen its unity.” After the completion of their work, “the truth of multiculturalism, all will … recognize, with relief, is Canadian and global monoculturalism.” (“Editors’ Preface,” Multiculturalism in Canada, pp.viii-ix). In his role as reviewer rather than co-editor Burns says: “Forbes treats us to what one is tempted to call a series of Swiftian warnings of what the future holds. We glimpse a future governed by experts who carefully manage “the realistic reforms that could promote the ideal of global citizenship based on multicultural values” and guard against threats to “authentic” openness. The experts control the economy, education, the media, awards, para-judicial commissions, and political life; they operate with steadiness, careful calibration, and discretion or secretiveness…They deftly use police and other security services, equipped with the latest surveillance technology, and with the therapeutic resources of re-education and sensitivity training, to achieve their ends. The resulting portrait has all the droll humor of a series of Soviet-era Russian jokes. “Multiculturalism: Democracy by Experts” Academic Questions, p.125.
[73] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.200. On a simplified view, Forbes appears as a “moderate” or “rational” multiculturalist, but then when he refers to “the hate-filled fundamentalists and reactionaries” his ironic tone gives us cause to think he believes he would be very likely to “fail the citizenship tests of the future.” Forbes’ readers must judge for themselves as to the degree of bitterness embedded in his manifest irony. But it is clearly above the zero level.
[74] Forbes explains that the new citizenship tests will be “simple” in that it will be similar in nature to the tests familiar to university students such as the GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, and GRE. Forbes explains that the citizenship tests of the future will be for “appropriate values and opinions.” But he gives no indication that he will pass with flying colors even though he is a professor of political science. Forbes notes, that those who fail the test, as he could conceivably do, could be offered treatment in institutions of remedial education, perhaps at their employers’ expense. The cost to the employer of this program would incentivize “inconspicuous employer vigilance.” The existence of these “justice deniers” might involve a a potential to weaken the multiculturalist “faith” of others, but it is also likely that these recalcitrants will be reluctant to undergo the suggested re-education. The test would not matter of individual aptitudes or acquired knowledge but rather of beliefs and values. Citizens could be invited to take the test voluntarily, at convenient times and places, perhaps on important national holidays. Scores on the test would show where an individual stood in relation to the nation’s political creed and core values. Those who “passed” could be awarded a certificate of appropriate values and opinions (CAVO) and could perhaps be given a small badge or pin that they could wear, to mark their status. Or perhaps they could be allowed to add some initials to their names such as CO, for “Canadian Opinions,” or FQC, for “Fully Qualified Citizen,” or AO, for “Authentically Open” after their names. But at the same time for someone to perform successfully on the test would not at all result in the conferring of any perceptible honour for those who achieve a passing grade.” Conferring such distinction would smack of something like natural inequality. Rather, the grade would be set low enough to “enable almost all those who took the test to pass.” It would still be valid as a test because its purpose is not identifying “top students” but to weed out their opposite who are “the hate-filled fundamentalists and reactionaries.” These reprobates would naturally be expected “either to refuse to take the test or to fail it. Multiculturalism in Canada, p.214
[75] See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations” Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 22-49.
[76] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.261. See Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann “Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition: A Revaluation” Public Opinion Quarterly 43:2(1979), pp.143-156.
[77] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.262..
[78] The “path not taken” was that of the French-Canadians who went from 60,000 persons at the time of The Conquest in 1769 to about 7 million at the present time, all through “domestic production” one might say.
[79] See Iliana Mercer, “Multiculturalism Elbows Anglo-Americans Out” https://www.wnd.com/2019/11/multiculturalism-displacing-anglo-americans/ World News Daily November 7, 2019
[80] Multiculturalism in Canada, p.200.
[81] At a minimum it is unthinkable to say of Forbes what Norman Podhoretz has said of Sir Isaiah Berlin: “Berlin (is not) the moral hero that his biographer tries to make of him in an effort to cover over the spinelessness that the relativistic core of liberalism, even in its most sophisticated and civilized form, invariably brings out when determined challenges are posed to it, especially from the Left.” “A Dissent on Isaiah Berlin” The Norman Podhoretz Reader, p.434.
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