How Canada’s monarchy makes us better republicans than Americans.
What is the fundamental nature of the relationship between Canada a nd t he United States? Imagine having to describe the divided destiny of North America to somebody who lived under the Roman Empire or the Tudors. How would you go about it? We’d explain that the countries are economically interlocked neighbours with different forms of government and divergent histories; after a few minutes, you would surely be asked, “I see that you have not been at war for two centuries, but are you enemies? What stops the greater country from walking up to the lesser one and taking it by force or subterfuge?”
“Patriotic feeling, I suppose. We Canadians would fight for our independence. We do not want to be Americans.”
“But what is the basis of this feeling? Is it a matter of labels? It cannot be ethnic survival; these countries, as you describe them, are each a hodgepodge of many races. The differences in policy sound modest, and could be preserved under an overall political union — indeed, Canada seems to have done this itself with what I think I heard you call ‘ Quebec.’ So it must be attachment to political form. You Canadians love your royal family, and would lay down your lives to preserve your historic monarchy.”
It would be hard to explain exactly what is wrong with this formulation, though it is recognizably wrong. Only a few Canadians are conscious ly passionate about monarchism. We know that our royals are Canadian mostly as a matter of constitutional metaphysics. The serious monarchists are equalled or outnumbered by those who would like us to move further toward an American form of government with a directly elected presidency, having already adopted a written constitution and an American-style judiciary.
When we embraced free trade with the United States, accusations of treason were thrown around haphazardly. The patriotism of any Canadian who merely wanted to sell and buy American things was given the stink- eye by liberal “nationalists” who had just supported a Jeffersonian bill of rights and a Marshallite Supreme Court. Now there are those who want to make a Congress out of Parliament and an official “first lady” of the prime minister’s wife: no one calls them bad Canadians.
Well, they are a little bit bad, in the sense of being negligent, because they are acting on a contradiction they do not see. What it would be hard to explain to a Roman or an Elizabethan is that our attachment to the monarchy is mostly unconscious. Its expression among most of us takes the form of mild contempt for the United States; we feel American government is ridiculous, a half- competent burlesque of Westminster- style democracy. Presidents amass more and more of the powers of an absolute monarch, more of the mythological features of a Sun King; they make increasingly ambitious religious promises to heal the sick, obtain fair weather, cultivate prosperity in the face of chance and accident.
It all culminates in the sinister wizardry of a Donald Trump, who is willing to be explicit about garish gloryseeking. He is method- acting the role of an emperor. The man who has already spent a life building literal golden monuments to himself is taking the established psychological premises of the American presidency seriously: he is running for earthly deity.
And our instinctive reaction as Canadians is that it is in such poor taste. We congratulate ourselves, out of esthetic pride as much as anything, that there could never be a Trump here. And it is true. We really would not tolerate a crass, egotistical, self- glamorizing political leader like Trump. We could not even have a prime minister like Teddy Roosevelt, who shared many of Trump’s features. (Roosevelt had intellectual and military attainments that Trump cannot claim, but both his intellect and his reputation as a warrior harboured large elements of smoke and mirrors.)
This is the weird secret of Canada: having a monarchy has enabled us to preserve what would once have been thought of as republican virtues. I got to thinking of this when I read in The New York Times that the Secret Service wants to put a higher fence around the White House for security reasons. The need is obviously genuine: crazies keep vaulting over the existing fence, which is about 10 feet high. But one official of a planning commission for the District of Columbia observed nervously that the Secret Service kept citing security arrangements for Buckingham Palace as an example of what they want.
“The whole idea, in the end, is: it’s actually a house,” said Eric Shaw, perhaps the last genuine republican in America. “It’s not a palace.” But it goes without saying that he will lose the argument, and that the Secret Service, whose very name would have made the Founding Fathers nauseous, will get its way.
Canada does not bother with palaces; the closest thing we have i s Rideau Hall, whose history, appearance, and location all serve to confirm the point. In Canada we pay relatively little heed to social class — a legacy of having been a colony, with its ultimate rulers (and, until 1949, its literal court of last resort) conveniently offshore. We have left formal titles mostly in the dust while Americans resurrect them frantically: the newspapers bow and scrape to “Sen. Clinton” and “Gov. Palin” long after their brief periods in office.
We manage not to admire displays of wealth in the whimpering, craving way that Americans do; our old money avoids ostentation, and our bankers are practically Spartan. ( We have a few literal lords, but I suspect even my colleague Conrad Black would resist being addressed as anything but “Mr. Black” by a fellow Canadian in Canada.) We accept higher taxes in exchange for state provision of medical care, but when it comes to welfare we honour the Protestant work ethic more earnestly than the republic to the south does, with its food stamps and its endless disability rolls.
This all emerges partly from having an expatriate monarchy that we can drag onto the scene as needed, and can worship and scrutinize from afar. We get the best of both worlds. If we adopted a real republic, the l ong- term path to union with the U. S. would be that much shorter; how l ong could a squeal of “But we’re so much nicer than they are,” a bare assertion of mystical innate superiority, provide a moral basis for independence?
The Romans and t he Tudors would perceive the Canadian genius quickly: they would discern more clearly than ourselves that we have pioneered a truly novel political system — an ultra-practical, constitutionally successful version of the old Jewish temple, with its invisible god secreted in a hidden sanctum. Our domestic political leaders can never be glory- hunting priest-emperor types, as long as there is someone above them, far away, who is called “Majesty” and possesses the regalia of state. This is why, when someone refers to the prime minister’s wife as “first lady,” they are really threatening the basis of our political existence, and should be chastised — even if, I hasten to add, they are writers or editors for other Postmedia newspapers.
PRESIDENTS AMASS THE POWERS OF AN ABSOLUTE MONARCH. — COLBY COSH THE ROMANS AND THE TUDORS WOULD PERCEIVE CANADIAN GENIUS QUICKLY: THEY WOULD DISCERN MORE CLEARLY THAN OURSELVES THAT WE HAVE PIONEERED A TRULY NOVEL POLITICAL SYSTEM.