Multiculturalism is a disservice to all Canadians

I am someone who is strongly against having an official policy of multiculturalism in Canada. I also strongly value the fundamental human rights of immigrants and minorities of all types. I also value and encourage open immigration policies which allow talented individuals from all nations to come to Canada to live and work in peace. I believe the philosophy behind multiculturalism as a policy is detrimental to the well being of both minority groups in Canada and members of its majority groups as well. It seems strange to most people that I could be so against a policy that seems to do nothing but affirm the rights of minority groups within Canada, but this discrepancy comes from a misunderstanding of what exactly multicultural policy is.

Multiculturalism is commonly thought to be a rather innocuous but beneficial aspect of Canadian life, and for many years, I would have agreed with this notion. At first glance, it seems that multiculturalism is just the government’s nice way of putting into official policy its commitment to ‘not being racist’, and its commitment to encourage Canadians to all not be racist either. This is a laudable goal, and if this were the case, putting such a goal into official writing would be beneficial to our national character. Unfortunately, multicultural policy in Canada is much more complicated than a simple statement affirming our love of all races and colours; it’s an official policy which critically defines Canada’s attitudes towards the development of our national culture in many powerful ways.

A strict definition of what exactly entails “multiculturalism” is difficult to come by. One way to define the term is to understand it as a philosophy which embraces the cultural distinctness of varying groups within a society in an effort to promote social cohesion through mutual understanding. In Canada’s understanding of multiculturalism, all cultures are considered equal under the law, and all cultures are equally protected under the law from outside interference as well. This may well seem to be interchangeable with the idea that all people and races are considered equal under the law, and that all people and races are equally protected under the law, but this is not the case at all. Multiculturalism, as a policy, holds that all cultures are equal in the eyes of Canadian society, and by extension, denies the possibility of Canada ever developing an over-arching culture of its own. To understand how this is so, we must understand how multiculturalism came to exist in Canada.

As many Canadians know, for the longest bulk of our history, our nation has been dominated by two distinct cultures: French culture and English culture. Tensions often run very high between these groups, particularly in political settings, with much animosity and distrust being exchanged among individuals and organizations across these cultures for generations. In an effort to promote a sense of Canadian unity, many politicians attempted to solve this problem of cultural bitterness. One idea proposed to appease both the French and English cultures was biculturalism: the official recognition of Canada as a nation defined by two distinct, yet equally valued and protected cultures. As biculturalism was deemed to be too non-inclusive of the large and ever-growing minority groups in our nation, the proposed idea quickly evolved into the concept of multiculturalism as it’s currently understood.

When one really thinks critically about the exact definition of multiculturalism and the historical context from which it arose, it becomes readily apparent that there is something quite unsettling about the policy. It arose as a means of ending political animosity between French and English Canadians fighting for cultural supremacy. The only way the government could see to end the fight over cultural supremacy was to fundamentally deny that Canada possessed a culture of its own, by instead redefining English and French cultures as equally important sub-cultures co-existing within Canada. As it stands right now, as of 1988, Canada officially has no culture. Surely there must be a better way for Canadians to stop fighting over culture than to entirely remove the concept of a national culture altogether! As it stands right now, there are no Canadians. There are French-Canadians, English-Canadians, Native-Canadians, Dutch-Canadians and many other types of Canadians which are culturally identified as a sub-culture living within Canada. Why the government would choose to claim that it can actually promote societal unity by defining culture in a separate-but-equal fashion completely eludes me. The United States tried to institute laws which defined cultures as being separate-but-equal under the law. The civil rights movement was quick to recognize the problems caused by such laws, and moved to destroy them.

There is no incentive for us to work together as a nation and to define our own national culture based off our unique demographics. Instead, we retreat to our respective subcultures and branch out only when necessary, and in a manner that shows we are too timid to do anything but tolerate each other. Multiculturalism is a policy of tolerance, and that’s not good enough. Our nation deserves a policy of genuine inclusion. Our goal as a nation should not be to merely co-exist, but to develop - over a period of generations- a culture that is uniquely representative of us as a nation. We have given up on that dream. Not only does multiculturalism preclude the possibility of Canada ever developing a culture of its own, it does a disservice to existing minority groups as well.

As a member of a majority group (English and white) growing up in a Canada defined as multicultural, I can say with some confidence that many of us feel timid and guilty when approaching members of other cultures for fear that we may come off as insensitive to their practices. The problem is that I don’t define myself as white or English, I merely define myself as Canadian. I would love for my culture to be made up of a mix of practices that my ancestors shared, and the practices of the ancestors of all those groups around me! In an unhyphenated Canada, we would understand the practices of everyone in our country and we would be working towards a goal that was in all of our best interests. In a society that promotes true cohesion, we would all be Canadians regardless of our skin colour or our native language, but instead we exist as hyphenated Canadians, defining ourselves as members of specific subcultures. I resent being thought of as white, and English, but with no existing over-arching Canadian culture, and a governmental policy stating that such a goal is not within the needs of Canada as a nation, the only culture by which I can define myself is as English and white. I am perceived as being English and white. I perceive others as being members of their minority culture as well, because assuming otherwise may thought to be offensive. Multiculturalism promotes xenophobia, misunderstanding and fear from members of majority cultures which serve to isolate minority groups in very real ways. As someone who values all races, I find that this is unacceptable.

Developing a culture as defined by unhyphenated, monoculturalistic Canadianism is not something that can occur overnight. Major, recognizable European cultures took hundreds or thousands of years to develop as distinct and valuable cultural identities. Canada tried to develop a culture for a long time, and when we decided it was too hard, we gave up and took the easy route, we chose multiculturalism and thus chose not to cultivate our own identity as a nation. When we finally realize that we, as a nation, are doing very real harm to all of our subcultures by encouraging isolationism and misunderstanding, we may try again to exist as a nation, and I hope that this day comes sooner than later. I dream of a Canada where we are all proud to be Canadian. I have no idea what it means to be a Canadian right now, as there is no Canadian culture to speak of, and I have no preconceived notions of what that culture may become in the future, but I feel that we are doing ourselves a great disservice for not even trying to find out what it could be.

Kids need more toys that can kill them

I am by no means to be the first person to make the argument that children should be exposed to more dangerous toys and at younger ages, however, I feel that previously the topic has been addressed from a misguided angle.
When I was growing up (which was not all that long ago) I lived in a household which possessed a large number of dangerous items. What is also interesting to note, is that I also came out of my childhood without sustaining any major injuries and very few minor injuries. A small list of activities of which I partook in during my childhood includes:

• Building and flying gas-powered airplanes
• Working with power tools to create wooden construction projects
• Operating a soldering iron to work on small electrical experiments
• Handling dangerous paints and chemicals to clean and paint with
• Playing lawn darts
• Swimming in natural water formations of various varieties
• Owning a butane torch
• Constructing and launching small rockets with powdered fuel as a propellant
  

It is no coincidence that I was commonly exposed to the preceding items and activities on this list and managed to grow up without any injury. The reason I was able to survive so well was that I grew up in a household that was characterized by a philosophy of education and discipline. Before I was exposed to any of these activities my mother or father would explain to me a list of rules and safety precautions which are to be adhered to strictly while participating in any of these activities. More importantly, they explained to me fully the reasoning behind these rules and precautions. These precautions were strongly enforced in two ways:

• I knew that if I didn’t listen to my parents that there was a slight chance that I could die by my own hand.
• Failing that, my parents were quick to immediately suspend my right to partake in the activity until I respected their safety rules enough to follow them.
  

There was no room for repeated, gentle warnings in activities that can seriously injure you; you either listen, or you do not participate. Now, it may sound hypocritical to you all that I am advocating a system of rigid rules and precautions and yet I claim to hold a political position which holds the maximization of personal liberty as its one core tenant, however, these rules are in place in order to train children how to best use their freedom when they are an adult and are completely free to make their own choices. The external discipline required for these dangerous activities is reflective of the internal discipline that free adults must possess when they choose for themselves how best to conduct their lives. If young adults and adolescents lack a basic foundation of safety knowledge with a real understanding of the consequences of their choices, disastrous events can occur. This is the way our current society ‘functions’.

Children are raised in a safe environment with no opportunity to be exposed to anything dangerous, and thus they gain no experience in dealing with something dangerous or the knowledge of how to protect themselves in a dangerous situation. These young adults are then thrust into the real world with a newfound sense of freedom and none of the protection provided by wisdom or a reasonable foreknowledge of the consequences of their actions. This often results in serious injuries due to such dangerous activities as impaired driving or work-force related casualties. We then, as a society, try to band-aid such situations when these children have already grown up by enforcing strict laws that govern their freedom, or by forcing business and places of work to take responsibility for countless numbers of accidents which could have been prevented through a respect for the dangerous nature of the activity. The solution is to instill our children with a sense of responsibility for their own actions early in life rather than trying to control irresponsibility in young adulthood.

However, this is not to make the claim that parents in our current culture do not try to educate their children on the various dangers of the world, to the contrary, modern parents are quite vocal about informing their children at all stages of life of various dangers posed by all kinds of activities. Children are educated in schools, at home, in church groups, in fire halls and in many other public locations about countless safety procedures and the consequences of not adhering to them. The problem is that children are never given the opportunity to exercise this knowledge in a situation in which they are in control, in which they are truly responsible. We do not give them that opportunity. Children then learn to ignore and forget safety training as we have made it completely and utterly irrelevant by removing any and all elements of danger in their lives. Discipline and safety knowledge are absolutely critical for the successful development of mature and safe adults existing in a free world, but these elements are useless unless provided in a context which requires them.

Danger and discipline ought to be presented together. Children will then learn real strategies for exercising their responsibilities as free, rational adults later on in life. This can be best accomplished by safely playing with their parents using toys and activities that require a mature respect for their danger, and an understanding of the proper way to deal with that danger.

This blog will offend you

It has become painfully apparent in my life that whenever I talk about politics with anyone, I am put immediately into a box. This does not particularly bother me, as this is an easy method for understanding people; we categorize complex patterns and distill them down to their most basic elements in order to understand. My problem is that in our culture there are generally only two boxes into which one can be placed politically, neither of which I identify myself with. The only two identities that we as a political culture are able to immediately identify with are termed 'conservative' and 'liberal'. So ingrained are these ideas in our society that often it is assumed that any one person's beliefs will surely fall somewhere neatly between the two extremes on this spectrum of political thought characterized by this overly simplified ‘liberal-conservative’ dichotomy. I assert that this view of political identification is narrow-minded and that it is possible to approach modern politics from entirely new angles. In order to understand how someone falls out of this traditional spectrum, we must first understand what the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' are most often taken to mean. In very general terms:

• Liberals value the personal liberty of the individual to make their own choices in a social context, and as a group strive to create public economical institutions which are supported by community effort (most often, through taxes or other democratic, governmental means) which allow individuals to pursue life with a sense of security and safety
  

• Conservatives traditionally differ from liberals in that they are not as focused on the personal rights of the individual, but instead move to institute well-intentioned paternalistic laws (eg. Prohibitions on abortion, gay marriage, church and state conflicts etc) and are defined as being pro-small government, and thus, more financially reserved and pro-free market than their liberal counterparts.

In extremely simplified terms, one can look at liberals as "pro-human liberties, pro public economic and social institutions" while conservatives can be though of as "pro-paternalism, anti-government and pro free market". As an example of how ingrained these concepts in our society, imagine that you knew someone who told you that they believe "homosexuals should have the right to marry", we might then reasonably assume that they would certainly support socialized medicine or the establishment of a welfare state. Conversely, if someone were to tell you that they were a pro-life believer we might also assume that they must support free market policies such as privatized health care or the elimination of aid to foreign governments. Remarkably, the correlation of these assumptions seems to be very accurate in people who consider themselves to be politically active in our culture.

How it came to be that economic thought became so intertwined with the creation of social policies is unknown to me, but it does almost always seems to be the case. By separating these two seemingly unrelated concepts of economic theory and social policy, we can create boxes of political thought which are entirely separate from the traditional conservative-liberal dichotomy. I exist in one such political box, though I have yet to ever be properly placed in it over the course of a discussion. This box is that of libertarianism.

An exact definition of what libertarianism means is not widely agreed upon, but generally it can be taken to mean that one believes in the maximization of personal liberty for all individuals. Libertarians support laws and policies which allow individuals to make their own choices much as liberals do, but financially, the believe in the right for individuals to have freedom from government interference as much as possible, which results in a conservative-style ,free-market model. In extremely simplified terms, libertarians are socially liberal but financially conservative. Many libertarians would support gay marriage while simultaneously supporting capitalistic goals such as the abolishment of a minimum wage. In this model, restrictions imposed by the government, either financial or social, act as a limitation of personal freedom, and are thus undesirable. Liberals support the financial infringement of personal freedom as policy through taxation and socialized spending, while conservatives support the social infringement of personal freedom as policy through paternalistic and prohibitive laws. It is really a simple philosophy that rejects both of these traditional models and embraces one defined by a respect for the natural freedom of individuals.

Libertarianism bucks the predictable model for political discourse, and thus it is difficult for many people to understand. This is why I predict that this blog will offend you. Many of you will find yourselves agreeing with someone whom you perceive to be a fellow liberal/conservative until I state something which you find utterly repulsive; something that the other side might say. That is a problem when our modern political discourse is characterized by such polarization and animosity between the two political extremes: when someone possesses beliefs which are different from your own, it is easy to cast them as evil, wrong and ignorant. I predict that liberals will perceive a conservative bias due to them being more aware of pro-conservative financial ideals in this blog. I also predict that conservatives will perceive a liberal bias due to the pro-social freedoms I espouse. I predict that either side will find the things they disagree with more shocking and memorable than the things with which they do agree.

I do however wish that you consider the libertarian perspective, not because I love you, not because I care about you, but because I respect you. I respect your freedom to choose and to decide as human beings. As human beings, the only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to reason, and if we sacrifice that ability, if we short change our innate right to freedom, we sacrifice that only thing which makes us human. I, as a libertarian, fight for your absolute freedom from governmental, social, and financial restriction so that you can be free to make whatever choices you deem fit for your life as a human being. I don’t have to like you to respect you, and you don’t have to like me to realize that you deserve that freedom. Fight for it. Buck the trend of traditional politics, and fight for what you deserve! Get mad as hell and say that you’re not going to take it anymore!