Like friendships and families, nations exist
Our shared histories matter, says Msgr. Hans Feichtinger.
The following is offered in rebuttal to a column by Matthew McManus on March 26 entitled “Why Canada doesn’t need a national identity.”
“The nation does not really exist, but individuals do,” Matthew McManus stated in an article about whether or not Canada “needs” a national identity. Imagine he had said: “First Nations do not exist. They are just an imagination.” Suddenly it sounds so wrong.
Rightly so, because nations do exist. You can belong to them or not. They have borders, either territorial or personal. It is not easy to change nationality. As we learn from everyday language, nations exist and are relevant to people (and, yes, sometimes dangerous).
When it comes to nations and their identity, there is more than imagination. Shared history and tradition cannot be explained away as being only the sum of many individual histories. Canada may know this best precisely because of its bilingual tradition and its respect for First Nations. These nations clearly have legal existence today. Whether you belong to them, or not, is not simply up to the individual.
No one can deny that romantic concepts and imagination play(ed) a role in the creation and the lives of nations. But they are not only imagined. In reality, it is quite difficult to explain how human beings could create imaginations without any reference to perceived realities.
In fact, the individualism McManus espouses may have something to do with how it was ever possible for the allegedly enlightened Canadians of the past to treat the First Nations as they did. After all, nations do not really exist, they might as well be amalgamated into the new greater whole, whatever that is.
Denying that anything but the individual exists is neither harmless nor liberal, and philosophically it is an extreme position. This exaggerated individualism separates the human being from other persons, from human
National identity can also be a great resource for solidarity or for the defence of freedom ...
history and traditions, and from our natural environment. If only individuals exist, then groups, families, friendships cease to exist — at least, everything is all the time up to the individual, who alone exists. Such a view doesn’t foster human well-being because it curtails and diminishes what and who we are, as human beings.
Of course, no one really thinks or lives like that. McManus himself admits that Canada was founded by “the French, British settlers, and Indigenous Peoples” — so peoples did somehow exist, not only individuals. He also credits present-day Canada with offering “the opportunity to look at a variety of options.” That sounds like an aspect of national identity right there.
His argument against national identity is a straw man: National identity claims are declared to be inevitably oppressive and violent, and thus the enlightened Canadian will shun them.
This, of course, is not true. National identity can also be a great resource for solidarity or for the defence of freedom, to name only two examples. Without national identities, we shall soon all be members of the one global clone-army. Are people not watching Star Wars anymore, those most philosophical movies?
Life is complicated, more complicated than one particular school of political thought can cover. I continue to be amazed at how political thinkers, while trying to defend liberty, de facto embrace illiberal views.
The one shade of liberal philosophy McManus seems committed to is not the only form of rational political philosophy, not even the only form of liberalism. One political philosophy is not enough.
If you think that in Canada pluralism and diversity have a place, this must also apply to political philosophies. The particular form of liberalism McManus espouses is not actually shared by many Canadians precisely because it is not able to explain all things about social and political life.
Canada does in fact not “need” a national identity, it already has one. It is secondary whether we are well able to admit that, and express it, or not: Maybe that hesitancy is itself part of this identity — again not necessarily a bad thing.