One of the advantages of a Westminster-style parliamentary system is that election dates are not fixed, so that the Prime Minister can take advantage of perceived opportunities to win majorities when they arise. It must be very tempting to Mark Carney to call an election as soon as he can, as the Elbozos are still waving their arms and chanting his praises for “standing up to the Bad Orange Man”. His latest notion of trying to add Canada to the European Union as some sort of “associate member” is also popular among people who think that Canada should be more like Europe (the Venn diagram of Elbozos and Europhiles is almost a perfect circle). On X, Jay Currie stares into the abyss of yet another Liberal majority government with a renewed electoral mandate:
The Prime Minister of all the Canadas is prepping for his Davos 2.0 speech to the European Parliament on the 17th when, apparently, he is going to propose that Canada become some sort of associate member of the EU. God help us.
The developed world can be thought of as two camps: the progressives and, for want of a better term the nationalists (could be traditionalists but that is only one strain within the nationalist camp). The supra nationalist institutions, EU, UN etc are progressive to their core.
Progressives see borders as barriers to progress, believe diversity is strength, see international action as the only way to defeat the horror of “climate change”, want international controls on speech, technology and public health.
For progressives individual rights, the rule of law, property are all barriers to the greatest good for the greatest number. Citizenship is an antique concept best left in the 20th century.
Most importantly progressives see the state, rules and regulations, a constantly refreshed “New World Order” and managed decline as both beneficial and inevitable. Arc of History and all.
Nationalists begin with the tiniest unit in society, the individual, and take that unit seriously. What rights does an individual have? If you start there you automatically circumscribe the power of the state. You also set the state’s direction.
Taking individual rights seriously creates a state in which individuals matter, there their voluntary associations beginning with families, matter. “The greater good” is no more than a suggestion when it comes to protecting individual rights.
The Europe of the EU came out of the ashes of a world in which individuals were subjects rather than citizens (with the notable and sporadic exception of post Revolutionary France) and the concept of individual rights was fragile at best.
The progressive intent of the EU was to treat “Europeans” as interchangeable economic units whose value was locked to group identity and which must be prepared to share the burdens imposed for the greater good.
Nationalism was seen as regressive as was patriotism and the insistence that individuals had rights which over rode the “common good”. After all, the horrors of WWI and II were the products of patriotic nationalism.
The progressive European project worked quite well for the first twenty or so years when Marshall plan aid funded the rebuilding of Europe and membership in the EU was relatively restricted. Expansion and mass immigration strained the Community.
Part of the reason the EU worked quite well in the early years was that its goals were relatively modest, a trading bloc with harmonized economic regulation left individual countries to work out their social, legal and rights structures.
As with any progressive institution the modest goals of the early years were gradually replaced with “ambition”. The 1985 Schengen Agreement eliminated hard borders within the EU. The European Convention on Human Rights harmonized the rights of Europeans.
Part of the progressive ambition was the creation of a hitherto unknown entity known as “the European” superficially similar in concept to “the American”. Questions of nationality could be submerged as this new entity stepped into the world.
For the progressive camp the “European” was a giant step forward into a post national future. As indeed it was for a tiny minority of bureaucrats, academics, journalists, financiers and other members of a self appointed cognitive elite.
People who objected to this grand homogenization of the nations of Europe were obviously frightened of the inevitable future because, well, they were not well educated and, entre nous, not too bright.
For the “Europeans” the great cause of the 21st century was laid out in Rio in 1993 when a conference convened by Canadian Maurice Strong sounded the alarm about “global warming” currently rebranded “climate change”.
Now there was a global threat demanding a supra-national response where the “Europeans” could assume a leadership role by…well, by shipping all of their heavy industry offshore and building very expensive windmills and mandating electric cars.
To no one’s very great surprise the Europeans have managed to de-industrialize and regulate themselves to the point of actual poverty. Fortunately, it was all for the global greater good so the Europeans could congratulate themselves.
Not content with climate virtue, the Europeans (though not the regressive nationalist yobs) took it upon themselves to welcome millions of migrants. An act of humanity and also shrewd as the Europeans had given up having children.
Of course, the idea had been trial-ballooned recently to get Carney-friendly headlines ready in advance:
