9. The Line Forty-Nine
And there, down there, it
lies: the United States of America. Brooding, enormous and greedy, ready to
swallow the Canadian mouse at half a second’s notice.
It is the
empire of our age. Few peoples of few eras have been wanting of an empire to
bitterly oppose or hungrily expand. America, of course, is hardly an empire in
the traditional sense. It does not directly hold down a quarter of the world
through crude force. Most parts of the world have never seen an American
soldier, nor have most seaports hosted – voluntarily or otherwise – an American
warship. The United States does not and has never wielded the near-absolute
control over global trade, finance and commerce that, notably, the British
empire came close to attaining. Most tellingly, the American language is not
America’s. It is an unwieldy Germanised variant of English which through the
power of U.S. popular culture does indeed patter away on the lips of the
world’s youth, but by this very nature does not nor could ever permeate the consciousness
of the global elite. No American television network could attain the near immeasurable
power of the British Broadcasting Corporation, for example.
Nonetheless
America unquestionably exerts unrivalled military and economic power –
“hyperpower” to bend the term coined into common usage around 1991 – and thus grips
the consciousness of humanity, just as all previous empires dominated the
psyche of their unconquered neighbouring peoples. Tremendous strength inspires
all of loathing, respect, fear and admiration; these are not mutually exclusive
sentiments. Indeed the bulk of the spite and hate directed against contemporary
America, especially in the latte-sipping coffee houses of Paris and London, is
merely a sort of envious unrequited love – the frustration of unconsummated
desire the adolescent male vents at the girl who won’t oblige him. It simply
veils admiration for, and deep envy of, American achievement. The European
liberal who trumpets America’s failings and the Arab professor who deplores
America’s arrogance would both of them give their left arm to live in the
country. Even in deep recession – while Wall St. panics, the rust-belt
struggles and Detroit collapses, the queue to enter America stretches across
the oceans. American culture (using the word “culture” in the widest and most
forgiving sense) permeates the homes and minds of the world through television
and film; communication, one of mankind’s most basic impulses, is enhanced
through the provision of famously American technologies. In fact it is through
the very power of modern communication, both broadcast and interpersonal, that
America reaches beyond her own limited borders to embrace the whole of the
Earth. No empire in history has held the imagination of the world as America
does today.
At the time
of writing there would appear to be few doubts that America is in long term
decline. I make no apologies for the conditionality which I attach to that statement,
since predicting the future is invariably dangerous. A confident forecast today
could end up looking foolish and neurotic tomorrow. Recall for example the
American obsession of the 1980s and early 90s, demonstrated in Hollywood films
such as Bladerunner (subtly) and Rising Sun (overtly), of a soon to exist
order in which their nation has been all but swallowed up by the rampaging Godzilla
of Japanese economic might. Washington looked at Japan’s inventiveness and productivity
and felt backward, lazy and insecure. In Television advertisements American
car-industry executives openly fanned nationalist paranoia in this regard to
counter the appeal of Toyota and Honda. Even the optimism of the Reagan-era
could not counter the widespread feeling that American industry could no longer
compete with – much less surpass – the best of the rest. Yet within a short
period Tokyo’s bubble had burst, fading to remote memory like last night’s
nightmare, and with the Soviet Union gone American economic might and
diplomatic power had rocketed to heights previously thought unscalable. So
musings in this twenty first century on the inexorable rise of China and India at
the USA’s expense need to be viewed in this kind of context, thought there are,
nonetheless, important differences. Those nations are expanding their military
infrastructure in a way post-War Japan (or Germany) never did, or could. Both
have a pool of cheap labour so immense it could fuel economic expansion for decades
to come at, crucially, a low overhead. Conversely, neither country has yet showcased
any great capacity for scientific or technological innovation. On the other
hand India has what China does not: the English language, unquestionably the lingua franca of the incoming globalist
tide. The Chinese are overwhelmingly ethnically united and fiercely and
authentically patriotic. The American people have been written off before, yet
have demonstrated an almost unparalleled ability to reinvent themselves and
make a reborn nation. They came through a tremendous civil conflict that could
have buried their nation before its centenary. They survived one of the
greatest economic depressions on record and won the greatest and most terrible war
in human history shortly thereafter. They were defeated in Vietnam and were
spiritually, morally and not far off financially bankrupted by the effort: yet
destroyed the Soviet empire a mere decade and a half later. So all in all as we
paint the likely geopolitical picture of the World a half-century from now we grapple
with variables and historical precedents that are many and complex. We may say
that the two bare facts of Beijing’s military expansion and U.S. dependence on
Chinese loans make current trends deeply worrying for admirers of the United
States; but for now, and through all the noise and speculation, it is a fact
that as I write these words America does reign supreme.
For a child
growing up in Ireland, America was both a world away and an ever present. We
had a vision of the country provided a la carte through the “cop shows” and movies
that blasted incessantly over the airwaves; that, and the extraordinary extent
to which American politics and culture seemed to dominate the nightly news. The
vision of America provided by America was overwhelmingly negative
and tremendously exciting. It seemed to be a world of inner-city squalor and blanketing
graffiti, of extraordinary violence and great humanity. It hosted the never
ending gunfight and the perpetual car chase. Disneyworld was in America. The
animated features – the “cartoons” as we called them, were all American in
origin and character. Sesame Street was in America. Jim Henson’s Muppets were
American. In our house we had a certain obsession with science fiction:
America, and only America, was the place where extraterrestrials would land on
Earth and be protected by suburban children. Indeed the idea of alien
life-forms choosing to interact with anyone except
Americans seemed strange and inconceivable; a long time ago, in a galaxy far,
far away, everyone was American – humanoid and otherwise. American sports were
the exception, they were complicated, slower paced games that baffled and
disinterested us, but even this gaping hole in the triumph could not deflate the
aura. The Americans won all the wars and had the best army. In our early teens
we danced with excitement in the school playground when January 1991 brought war
– the first in my generation’s lifetime – and the certain knowledge that
America’s bombers, missiles, battleships and fighter jets would crush Iraq and
its moustachioed, wicked, foreign-looking leader. The immensity of America was
personified by the skyscraper, the monument to wealth and achievement we
couldn’t actually see but could very easily imagine. We were flabbergasted and
enthralled when an elder told us of helicopters flying beneath him as he had looked
down from the upper floors of Sears Tower in Chicago. Where else on Earth would
such a thing be possible? Even the downsides of America, real and imagined
alike, were mitigated by the popcorn and candy of American optimism. Political
violence in Northern Ireland, close to home, was squalid, dirty and depressing;
random violence on the streets of L.A. or Miami ranged a spectrum from morbidly
fascinating to outright glorious.
The prospect
of actually visiting America was, for most of us, remote. In the Ireland of the
time only the comfortable middle classes could afford the trip, and there were
few of them represented in our North Dublin state school. This enhanced sense
of distance only increased the power of America’s allure. Those who did have
some experience of the country enjoyed enhanced social status. One of our
teachers had us enrapt with tales of his own youthful American experience,
working as a house painter in late 1960s – early 70s New York, an illegal alien
with no right to employment, accepting the tax-free benefits of the under-the-counter
payments his immigration status required. He told us of pay-day every Friday,
and of carefully concealing his cash wages in his socks so as to offset the
supposed near-certainty of being mugged at knifepoint on the subway home. The
New York subway! Trains that ran under the ground! Pushing and shoving at rush
hour, fights and yelling and frustrations; dirt, grime, summer sweat and subterranean
dangers – but no other viable route home. He walked in Central Park, though
well before dusk, and from its Northern end could sometimes hear gunfire from
nearby “projects”. What a world! He told us of leaving New York and heading
West; of the vast ten lane California freeways and of his own terror of driving
on them. Of being pulled over by a motorcycle cop – “just like on TV!” – and
being let off a speeding ticket because of his Irish accent. Of frolicking on a
Santa Monica beach with the beauteous female natives. Of seeing The Doors play live
before a “strung out” crowd, and of his own “experimenting” with various “substances”
– low chuckle, knowing wink – provided by his “connected” local friends. Of nightclubbing
into the early hours in Venice Beach. In time his illicit salary was such that
he could afford weekends away: the stark and splendid beauty of Yosemite
National Park and the great Grand Canyon, then, unexpectedly and very suddenly, the
unhappy but dramatic ending: just returned from a camping trip, refreshments in
a Los Angeles bar in the small hours of Sunday, all the exits blocked for an
immigration raid. His discovery by the authorities and his prompt removal from
the country. These reminiscences he would regale to we his students with head
shaking, wide smiling, hand spreading nostalgia. To us, is was as though this
man had actually spent several years living his life inside an action thriller
– a womanizing, gun-slinging, tyre-screeching, danger-dicing Hollywood blockbuster.
The hold of America was immense – it was a place so much of the mind that at a
certain level we would have trouble accepting that it really existed; America,
after all, was television: and TV wasn’t real.
I first made
it to America in the 1990s. By then, cheaper airfares and relaxed visa
restrictions had made the journey mundane compared to the transatlantic
adventure it would have been as recently as fifteen years earlier. As I queued for
a connecting flight upon arrival at Logon Airport, Boston, I scanned the
colourless airport facility for overt signs distinguishing this New World from
the old Europe I had left seven hours earlier. Initially finding none, I
glanced through the window and saw a line of taxis outside the terminal. This
was my first close-up view of the legendary American automobile: mythically
vast as a ship afloat on water; thirsty and wasteful with those obnoxious,
unstreamlined contours and far-too-wide engine grilles. Testaments in motion to
American corpulence and plenty, and to that peculiar brand of inefficiency born
of ubiquitous wealth rather than incompetence or corruption. Through the innovations
born of their vast one-time industrial base, the Americans became the world’s first
automotive people, and so the mankind’s first truly mobile people – the first
to be free in the most basic, physical sense of the term: American wealth has
underpinned American liberty as much as has been true in the reverse, and
“freedom” as we know is the self-proclaimed American doctrine. But just how
free is the self-proclaimed “Land of
the Free”, we may ask? Americans sing this boast, with great and special
emphasis, at the close of The Star Spangled Banner at the open of every
sporting contest. I have always found such overtly expressed
self-congratulation suspect and fraudulent; frequently it demonstrates that the
very opposite of that being celebrated is in fact the case. Just as we have
outlined Canadian-espoused “politeness” being used to mask a society all of
cold, callous and ill-mannered, trumpeted American claims of “freedom”
similarly warrant close examination. There is to begin with that strange claim
of exclusivity implied by the phrase “Land of the Free” and its derivatives. It
is of course the case that at the time the anthem was written this sentiment,
as expressed, was in large part true. Compared to the despotisms and absolute monarchies
of Europe, Africa and Asia the American people, conditional on their having
white skin, enjoyed liberties of thought, expression, movement, privacy, labour
and life pursuit which, taken as a whole, were simply inconceivable to the vast
bulk of the human race. Yet as the outside world has gradually democratized
over the decades and centuries, American claims to sole ownership of the idea
of “freedom” seem to have only grown in force. Indeed in these early years of
the twenty first century we can probably say that it has now reached the point
of outright delusion, thinking, for example, of the astonishing expansion of
state surveillance powers granted to the U.S. Government through the passage of
the USA Patriot Act in 2001. For most Americans “freedom” has become a sort of
religious incantation to be blurted out dutifully and unthinkingly without a
moment’s consideration as to its meaning, implications and state of well-being
in contemporary U.S. society. Mass detention without trial in September 2001
was required “to protect freedom”. Everyone in U.S. military attire represents
or is fighting for “freedom”. The New Year’s festivities in Times Square
“celebrate freedom”. Even the Superbowl, pains are taken to tell us, is watched
by a quarter or so of the “free” world – and the leader of this “free” world is
presumed to sit forever in Washington D.C. When Paris demurs from U.S. foreign
policy, french fries being served in American restaurants risk becoming
“freedom fries”; I once had the pleasure of eating “freedom” popcorn in
Washington, DC. The perpetual recycling and abuse of so fundamental a concept
demonstrably has sinister undertones. Incantation by its very nature is
impervious to analysis and reality. Whatever the situation on the ground,
Americans, it seems, will be free just as long as they keep repeating the fact of
their freedom back to themselves. This sort of semi-organised, communal
thoughtlessness quite obviously gives great power to those who have periodic vested
interests in taking freedom away – chiefly freedom of expression – whether
those interests be business, governmental, or some unpleasant corporatist
combination of the two. When in 1965 Ralph Nader published a bestselling
critique of car-safety standards, he was ruthlessly hounded by the giant U.S.
automotive sector, primarily by General Motors – they sought to destroy his
reputation and silence his views just as U.S. troops were supposedly defending
the ostensible liberty of South Vietnam. When Oprah Winfrey expressed some
vague concerns about the standard of American beef, she was pursued though the
courts by immensely powerful agricultural interests.[i] McDonald’s
Corporation – America’s parallel State Department – similarly choose litigation
as a weapon against two harmless, hitherto unheard-of critics in Britain.[ii] Television
network MSNBC fired talk-show host Phil Donahue for daring to express some opposition
to the Iraq War... the list could go on. McCarthyism back in the 50s,
McCarthyism of a form today, these and doubtless many other cases demonstrate
the easy willingness with which American commercial, political and governmental
interests will attempt to crush opinions they find inconvenient or threatening.
The point is that such monstrous assaults on free expression could not happen
in a genuinely advanced democracy; by chanting liberty into existence like
doomsday predictions or the flat-Earth ideal, Americans may find in the end that
yelping group hysteria forms a less than stable foundation for national
vindication.
But of course freedom is not
merely a matter of politics or philosophy. It is a wider state of mind marked
by sensations of possibility, anticipation and danger. The feeling of being
free, truly free, engenders the mystery
of adventure and the deep fear of the unknown. The extent to which a person is
allured by the former or lives in dread of the latter is the overwhelming
factor shaping their worldview and informing their life choices.
As you cross
the border into the United States from Canada this particular feeling, it has
always seemed to me, undergoes a certain change. Whatever one’s political
outlook, the physical sensation of liberty increases the very moment you negotiate
your entry past the border guards and accelerate down the Interstate. The sheer
enormity of America makes you free! From Buffalo, New York I can drive
unhindered to Key West in the subtropical basement of Florida. From Sweet
Grass, Montana I can roar South all the way to San Diego on the border of
Mexico. Courtesy of America’s magnificent highway infrastructure, the vast web
of freeways blanketing the contiguous forty-eight states, it is actually
possible to make such journeys without encountering a single stop-sign, traffic
light or even, in most cases, toll booth. Between the U.S. customs agents in
Montana and their Mexican counterparts at Tijuana there is not a single
physical impediment blocking your path. Indeed in the vast rural areas of the
American West there isn’t even much traffic to contend with! The ability to
move – independence of motion – is the most primal human impulse outside of
breathing, as a freedom and a moral-right far exceeding in importance
dissenting speech or privacy of thought. And in the United States of America
the ability to act out this right is simply unmatched. The instant you cross
from safe, cosy Canada you know instinctively that you’re in a different place
– that you’re in for a very different experience. Canada may be vast in terms
of its land area but its population is small and its human infrastructure of
roads, pipelines and communications overwhelmingly hugs the U.S. border. 95% of
Canada is inaccessible to 99% of Canadians: they can’t drive there because
there are no roads, they can’t fly there because there are no airports. Even
where they can land on a remote airstrip there’s next to nothing to see when
they arrive except endless boreal forest or that stark rocky tundra, making
virtually all of Canada’s territory appealing only to petroleum engineers,
scientists and a tiny handful of adventurers. America, in marked contrast, can be
explored because it’s been built. In this respect it offers a horizon of
liberty broadened through the simple fact, as a man-made creation, of its own very
existence.
The
fascination of difference increases with its subtlety. So many outsiders
struggle to see any serious distinction between the U.S. and Canada beyond the
facts of the latter having “some French people”, having allegedly “colder”
weather with “more snow” and overall being in some very vague way a “milder” or
“more civilised” version of her American cousin. It takes at least several
months living in either nation, and making frequent cross-border trips, to be
able to outline distinctions beyond the superficial. The U.S. customs agents at
the border check-point provide your first introduction to the American
character. In contrast to their bland, often disinterested Canadian
counterparts stationed close-by (sometimes only a matter of feet away) the U.S.
officers reveal themselves to be markedly different in personal interaction.
Many of them will bark their standard questions in a halting, almost militaristic
way – I don’t doubt that many have in
fact served in the U.S. military simply through their mannerisms of speech and
gait. They are unsmiling and in most cases seem to be in a semi-state of battle
readiness as they stand on the frontier glowering at the Canadians queuing to
enter the great republic. The side-arms they have strapped to their waists
speak to an expectation of some good old fashioned frontier gunplay. They can be
aggressive, or polite, or formal, or less formal, or respectful, or hateful, or
genial but never lethargic and certainly not the blank-eyed emotionless of
English Canada. They reflect the very society whose borders they defend – one
more varied, more authentic, much nicer and far nastier: one all in all more
tangibly real than the place you’ve
left behind. As the doormen let you through, you can almost feel the
constraints of Canada falling away from your shoulders. The American landscape
opens into view. Her countryside is kept and better managed. Her suburbs are
bigger and richer. The downtown cores have sharper skyscrapers and are
startlingly depopulated. The inner cities by contrast are still residential but
also crumbling and frequently dangerous. The outlet malls are vaster and more
welcoming, brightly painted on the outside and often beautifully decorated
within. Such is the imaginative power of American optimism that even the
sterility and boredom of the shopping mall have been vanquished! The fast-food
restaurants are more numerous and, crucially, serve more generous portions –
even obscenely generous portions.
Canadians are never obscene! Drink is tastier and always much cheaper. In fact
everything – every last good, produce and commodity without exception – is
priced in the United States with a reasonableness that borders on charity. Once
you’re on the South side of the border the Canadian dollar in your wallet
transmutes from a spineless, squirming Clark Kent into a rampaging Superman of
consumerism, vacuuming up cheap American goodies with steroid-enhanced vigour.
Earlier we focused on one rather extreme case of Canadian over-excitement in an
American store. But the impact of the USA on Canadian shoppers is fascinating
in a more general psychological sense: on a brief cross-border shopping trip
they get to deal with American retailers from a position of economic
superiority – or at least of imagined
economic superiority – and it is not often that Canadians get to deal with
Americans from a position of strength. Perhaps this is the most important
classification of cross border distinction: the difference of America not so
much as a separate and superior country to observe and enjoy, but in terms of
the fleeting changes it works on Canadians themselves. For a few short hours
they are fatter, happier and greedier as they wallow in America’s freer air and
relative abundance. No need for the restraints of supposed Canadian civility
there! Then, the festivities over, they must return to Toronto, to Hamilton, to
Winnipeg, to Surrey, to Calgary or whatever austere Canadian East Berlin they
had earlier limped out of. Canada is the dreary reality of work, the bedroom
community and the humdrum of constrained mere existence. The USA is the
celebration of free-thinking, free-acting expansiveness and joy.
It is the
American people who give their country its aura of greatness, and this is far
from being as blatantly obvious a point as it may seem. All around the world,
including in many supposedly advanced nations, there are societies shaped and
moulded by elite minorities of media, the arts, government or some combination
of them all. In some places general behaviour is even heavily influenced by
sports personalities. But as you work your way through the towns, counties and
states of America none of these forces predominate. There is nothing like the
foaming obsession with sport seen in Europe or Latin America or, for that
matter, even Canada. The near-universal disdain for politicians is compounded
in the U.S. by a general though varying degree of scepticism for government as
a very concept. Most Americans are impervious to the arts, though their much
remarked-upon susceptibility to popular culture and the mass-consumption news
media turns out to be greatly exaggerated. Even now the norms and behaviours
prevalent within American society retain instead the solid basis of their republican,
frontier settling roots. It comes down to the unspoken doctrine of general
self-reliance – not only as a vision for how individual lives should be led,
but also as a more communal ideal. Post 1783 the American near-, mid- and
far-West had to be settled more or less in the complete absence of a recognised
authority, such as the Crown (as was the case in what became Canada) or even
government in any definable sense. The earliest frontier settlements needed
adventurers who managed to combine fierce, rugged individuality and austerity
on the one hand, with selflessness and a great sense of community on the other,
within their isolated new settlements. The actual combination of these virtues
would appear to be impossible until you consider the great power that
Christianity wielded in those times, and the extent to which it informed and
drove the aforementioned behavioural facets – though the latter pair presumably
much more than the former. Civilisation in the contemporary United States
simply could not have been born into existence in the absence of these traits
and moreover the combination of these
traits. The union of great decency and deep courage the nation was born of is
uniquely American in character; there simply is no other contemporary society,
with the possible exception of Australia, that had to be built by such people
under such circumstances in such a comparatively short timeframe. America’s
Western settlements, later organized into territories and then states, were
born in an environment of technical lawlessness, and even where law came to exist
there was frequently nobody to effectively enforce it. The resulting occasional
outbreaks of criminal violence, added to the greater problems of severe
weather, frequent shortage and sometime opposition from tyrannized indigenous
tribes left the settlers with no choice but to cooperate and co-exist to the
fullest possible extent under the unwritten codes of human solidarity. Today,
while self-aggrandizing Europeans, Canadians and others lecture and pontificate
on the undesirable effects of America’s adventuring legacy – such as the higher
murder rate and the “quaint” suspicion of authority – they overlook an
overwhelming inheritance of human warmth, compassion and kindness that puts the
peoples of just about every other nation to shame. It is simply not the case
that people in other advanced countries take a concern for the welfare of their
neighbours the way Americans do. As a very idea, concern for the well being of a
stranger engages through immediate national instinct the disdain of the French,
the gruffness and ire of the English, the callous frostiness of Canadians and
the stand-back timidity of the Japanese. It is for instance quite easy to
imagine an elderly, infirm person dying isolated, alone and hungry in an
apartment in London, Paris or Toronto. It would be far harder in an American
city: it is very striking that – to examine a measurable pattern – per capita the
American people lead the world in donations to, and participation in,
charitable organizations.[iii]
We in other industrialized countries seem to consider charities far beneath our
very considerable dignities – and donate to them only to assuage our sometime consciences.
Americans
will bend over backwards to aid a stranger in distress. Some years ago my
father broke down on a major freeway in Los Angeles. Within barely a minute an
elderly Latino gentleman had pulled over in front of my father’s vehicle to see
what assistance he could provide. In any Canadian city, my father would still be
waiting. In downtown Boston a friend and I watched as a girl slipped, fractured
her ankle, and was instantly surrounded by concerned locals. In Toronto she
would have had to limp to the emergency room all by herself; the red-blooded
American Musketeer roars “one for all and all for one!”: Canadians are none for
all and one for one. In another case a friend got lost in the Washington, D.C.
area and stopped to ask another motorist for directions. The man offered to
drive to the desired destination himself and have my acquaintance follow. New
York City, perhaps most strikingly, should be as nastily selfish as any of the other
major world centres. Yet New Yorkers, as Americans, utterly defy the force of
their huge city’s anonymity. Lost on the subway, in the heart of the Bronx?
Locals will crowd around to help you. A few coins short for the bus ride home?
They’ll be dropped into your hand. (Of this I have personal experience.)
Falling easily into conversation with friendly locals at a New York bar, a
friend and I are invited to one of numerous New Years’ parties. A Torontonian
would need to be deranged, drugged or both to invite new people into his or her
home. Crime or no crime, more violence or less, fear of the stranger is
astoundingly absent in New York City and the United States in general; society there
is markedly more humane in consequence. And the effect of American gregariousness
in the economic sphere – its contribution to American enhancement and progress,
has been far reaching and significant, far more so than may appear to be the
case at first glance. It has been arguably the greatest factor fuelling
American inventiveness and ingenuity. Fluidity of social interaction, freedom of American social interplay has
carried into the thinking rooms of American industry and the workplace. It has
carried into the computer software design meetings, into the civil, electrical
and mechanical engineering design and technology-invent sessions; into the architectural
and infrastructural planning debates; the chemical and industrial and
scientific discussions amid spirited exchanges in glistening corporate offices,
leafy suburban facilities and shabby workplace basements. There in the American
social environment, boosted by the essential classlessness of American society,
the American milieu encourages if not positively mandates the vibrant, unrestrained, unembarrassed exchange of
thought and idea. It facilitates the gloriously informal tossing of suggestion
and counter-suggestion and the consequent engendering of a culture of positive debate
in the arena of invention. This leads directly to maximal improvement and re-improvement
of the initial plan, drawing or notion; and so calls into force the vigorous pursuit
of logic, scientific and mechanical truth, resulting in the greatest attainable
degree of general material advancement.
The debates
carry on at home, after hours, in the minds of the creators and the thinkers. In
private thought, the mind nourished by the earlier contributions of the group, private
inspiration occurs. The standard of the following day’s session is enhanced,
still further, in advance. The innovation is improved, the invention
re-invented, the cycle of American genius reinforced. Modern communications, telecommunications,
the Internet. Automobiles and road transportation, aviation and travel. Human mobility
and easy communication: the inter-familiarity and increasing cohesion of the peoples
of the world. Scientific advances, medical advances, pharmaceutical advances, surgical
advances: an improved life-expectancy for hundreds of millions, and a superior
life quality – a happier life, for countless more. Space travel and
exploration, the moon landing and the space station, the frontiers of humanity being
pushed out far beyond the stratosphere. Computing, the microchip and the ease of
technological convenience: more time for leisure, or, for that matter, for thinking
and yet more invention. No area of human activity untouched, an never ending
catalogue of achievement and more achievement all driven forward by the
American character, by inspiration born of the very society in which it has
occurred. Sparks of thought and genius that the free air of America ignites
into flames of achievement and progress, sparks which amid the coldness and
intellectual austerity of Canada and many other countries are liable to be
stubbed out and extinguished on sight! Is it any wonder that Canadian talent
drifts south? Writers, engineers, information technology talent and scientific
prowess? Canadian education can certainly produce – at McGill in Montreal and
at the University of Toronto the nasal drone of the tenured professor delivers,
yet when students of exceptional talent emerge it is the American economy which
stands to benefit, just as the Canadian economy strives to hide – hide behind
its blanket of comfortable complacencies, cosy little cliques and closed little
minds. The easy social manner of the American people is far more than a
behavioural curiosity – a pleasant surprise for first-time visitors to the
country. It is has been vital to the progress and success of the nation. American
warmth has made America great.
A typically American setting, Atlanta,
Georgia sports a comparatively small downtown area surrounded by an unending
sprawl of suburb upon suburb; the spaciousness of the settlements gradually
increasing as you move further away from the centre, eventually fading into
open countryside at a largely indeterminate point. Geographically located in
the heart of the Deep South, culturally the city has long since surrendered its
Southern identity to the waves of migrants from the Northern Rust-Belt who now
dominate society and the economy. American Southern culture may slowly be
evaporating, sucked into the vortex of this its greatest city, but like all
retreating civilisations it is leaving its residual influence. Southern
politics and accents are slowly disappearing but the overwhelming hospitality
remains intact, being passed down from assimilated migrant to new generation in
perpetuity. Shortly after my arrival in the city a friend from Philadelphia
told me how the mere act moving South had turned him into a more humane person
– that within several months of his arrival in Atlanta he would experience
feelings of acute shame at not
behaving in an open and welcoming manner towards strangers. Over time I began
to see his point. I had been sent to the city from Toronto on an extended
business trip spanning several months on and off, and my very first act in
Atlanta bestowed my final recognition of the Canadian malaise. It was to join a
local hiking club in a tentative attempt to start building up a social circle.
When I turned up for my inaugural event – a weekend camp in the hills bordering
Tennessee – I found the levels of warmth and gregariousness almost physically
intimidating. People were almost killing themselves to welcome a newcomer to
their hiking club, to help him put up his tent, to provide him a meal and offer
him a beer. This was emphatically not the sort of company I had become
accustomed to over several prior years living and working in Toronto. As I took
my place by the crackling fire it finally dawned on me that I had, by then,
become utterly Canadianised, in some ways the social equivalent of being
institutionalised – spending so long behind metaphorical bars that the outside
world, the real world begins to
appear overwhelming and even threatening. The point had been reached where I
was now actually afraid of well-meaning
strangers! The dynamics of the situation were unexplainable – ostensibly a
complete assault on logic. Crime free Toronto, I thought as I stared into the
orange flames, should be the informal and neighbourly city. Atlanta, with its
typically high American levels of violence – its weekly festival of shoot-outs,
home invasions and street attacks – should be the bastion of cautious reserve
and wary suspicion. Yet the very opposite was and is true. Anglo-Canadians have
managed to construct that which is surely unique: an ultra-safe, pathologically
frightened society.
We have mused at length on the
causes and many effects of the great Canadian suffocation. Our final task,
possibly insurmountable, is to illuminate some paths to virtue – to seek to inject
the deficient vitamin of spirited humanity into the slow, cold circulation of the
country.
That this
vital ingredient is fundamentally missing from Canada is a thought that comes
to you at intervals, during moments of clarity that usually arrive as you
behold one of the country’s more impressive sights. Such as the two, three
(even four?) kilometre-length trains that lumber through Calgary, Alberta, just
post dawn under a blue frozen sky. The demonic prairie chill, mummifying the
city with its blasts of howl and hate; an endless blanket of snow turned ice,
shackling the streets and sidewalks for as far as the eye can see. Looking down
from your sparsely furnished apartment, twenty floors above, you wonder: you
wonder who, objectively speaking, would want to live in such a place? Frozen
weather and cold and empty souls. Base economic necessity is what brings people
here, you think, and nothing else, but then immediately an interruption: a
slight and gentle rumbling. Your thoughts and negativity halted by a familiar,
friendly reverberation gently caressing the window and making you glance to the
East. A Canadian Pacific cargo train, approaching the downtown core at twenty
kilometres an hour, a dark plume of exhaust rising from its huge diesel belly. Lumbering
towards the city with slow but steady purpose, along that straight line track
at 10th avenue South. Its engine dull, throbbing with understated power;
audible for miles around. Several minutes it takes for the train to pass before
the view afforded by your apartment. A long time it takes to trundle along
until its front cab disappears to the West with the train’s rear car,
amazingly, still not materialised to the East – such is the staggering length
of the entire beast. On and on it rumbles. During this long, extended interval you
come to appreciate the strange Canadian magnificence of these enormous vehicles.
Car after car after endless car of shipping containers being hauled to or from seaports,
following them a trail of blackened, dirty chemical tanks; then the distinctive
green carriages of proud Saskatchewan wheat. Then yet more shipping containers,
Vancouver bound, probably; some now double-decked one atop another. One endless
disconnection of produce, food, metal, good and extract, so long and so huge it
requires another twin-set of engines in its middle to keep the whole wagon-train
in continuous motion. Many of the individual cars are vandalised, lavishly
decorated with a Canadian graffiti that very strangely appears nowhere except on trains such as this. The
organisation of the cargo is at one moment strict and then, a minute down the
line, haphazard – with grain railcars interspersed with international
containers, coal transports and occasional lines of empty flatcars. As,
finally, the rear car swings lazily into view the whole train slows down to
fifteen or perhaps ten kph, giving the impression that the whole contraption
may come to a grinding, squealing halt under the office blocks of downtown Calgary. But on and on it
grinds, on and on it crawls, slowed presumably by a red signal or a sharp bend,
lumbering along in that identifiably Canadian way: slowly with ostensible aimlessness,
but even still steadily; and for all the disjointedness and rust with a sense
of certainty that some way and somehow the destination will be reached, on
time, as promised, as always. There’s no pace, there’s no energy, there’s no
enthusiasm; but grudgingly, eventually, the job will get done. Many years ago,
before I had ever set foot in the country, I read a detailed guide book to
Canada the introductory section of which concluded with the statement I
paraphrase here as best as I can from memory: “If there is hope for Canada,”
the unnamed writer sighed, “it probably lies in the country’s historic ability
to muddle through.” Like anyone with no experience of the country I was baffled
at the idea. Canada? Muddle? One of the wealthiest and most successful nations
on Earth “muddling through?” But after eight years or so living in the country
I now have a special affinity with the anonymous author of those words. As an
insider I can grasp what the outsiders cannot – the depth of knowledge and
experience of Canada that must have underpinned that statement. But those cargo
trains! Truly one of the majestic sights and sounds of the country with those
enormous, lugging locomotives and their iconic braying horns. One of the
positive memories of Canada, to sit alongside Danforth Avenue in Greek-town Toronto
and those busy, friendly restaurant patios on a sultry summer evening, respite from
the social stalemate of the city. Of Maritime warmth and – on discovery I was
not an enemy – Quebecois curiosity. Of the great Trans-Canada highway, all to
myself as I sped East through the plains and then the haunted forests of the Canadian
Shield. Then, those memories of returning. Of re-entering Canada by land from
the USA and experiencing that feeling, entirely inexplicable to this very day, of
pride and awe at what at several times over two decades has been my home, warts
and all; that for all the frustrations and annoyances, the drifting and the middling
this is a fascinating, diverse and complicated country, worth experiencing for
a few short years at least. When all is said and done, Canada’s not half bad.
When you look over at
Waddington, New York, from Morrisburg, Ontario, you can watch the traffic
lights change in America. You stand after dusk by the river’s edge, near a
disused jetty away from downtown, and stare South and slightly West over the
great Saint Lawrence. You have to position yourself strategically to get a view
unobstructed by the islands in the midst of the flow; for my own part I could
see a lit church spire, some moving traffic and a set of signals, unmistakable even
from distance, red then green then yellow and red and green. Two quaint North
American townships, indistinguishable at first glance and second. Identical-twin
peoples separated at birth by a centuries’ old conflict that both, today, are
barely if at all cognizant of. Were these nations a single country – were this an
internal river crossing like the Mississippi or the Ohio, there surely would
have been a bridge constructed by now. But a controlled international frontier,
however inexplicable and ludicrous, mandates a limited number of crossing
points. The closest bridge to the United States is actually 31 kilometres away,
making for a 62 km (39 mile) journey by road over to Wellington, or an 124 km (77
mile) round trip in total. Yes there’s a ferry service, hourly, though restricted
throughout the long and bitter winter. Whether by road or by boat this
separation of Canadian from American has been enhanced and reinforced by the
rigours of post-2001 security. Where once a common driver’s license would have
sufficed, nowadays a passport or other sophisticated, expensive international identification
is required to make the crossing. Many will not bother just for that very
reason. Those who are equipped with
the requisite documentation will find, if they get into the habit of crossing too
often, that the border guards will come to regard them and their activities
with increasing suspicion. There are real restrictions of the ability of the
two communities to interact and integrate. And so here, across this immense though
penetrable river, the unifying trend of globalisation has been reversed, at
least temporarily. The psychological effects of the barrier have in the early
part of the century thus enjoyed something of a rejuvenation: increased Canadian
reserve to the North, steady if more inward-looking American warmth to the
South. The two peoples stare across at each other in vague interest, on occasional
break from their new-born introspection. Out West, where the border runs
through farmlands and suburban parks the proximity of the divide can be even
more startling. The people of Huntingdon, British Columbia and Sumas,
Washington can all but stare into each other’s bedrooms across a fenceless line;
as can those in Douglas and Blaine, or Sweet Grass and Coutts. But to cross that
border you absolutely must go via the authorised checkpoint: a clandestine
nocturnal shortcut across the field could bring with it severe criminal
penalties; in marked contrast to gun running and drug-smuggling, cross-border extramarital
philandering is kept firmly in check – and any intended facetiousness in that
remark is rather undermined by the fact of its literal truth. It is I suppose
one illustration of the kind of bureaucratic quirk and lunacy that is allowed
to prevail when human beings enforce imaginary borders in determined effort to
demark artificial territories.
As creatures
of habit and slaves to our tribes we do not ordinarily demonstrate the ability
to question fundamental concepts, but in the particular arena of nations and
nationalism let us at least give it a try. Here we stand, well inside the third
millennium. In an era of instantaneous communication of global reach, and the
emerging world language – the first in human history. Amid an ever creeping advance
in the range and magnitude of human mobility – that is to say, of mass
migrations. An era, the era in which
we as a species are, in short, getting to know and interact with each other, in
person and over distance, to an extent hitherto unimaginable; the mixing of the
races and the ethnicities, the birth of multi-racial, multi-faith but
unilingual societies and the weakening of the foremost psychological barriers
to human cohesion. In the face of such an onslaught all of mankind’s borders
and national frontiers – our petty little picket-fences – must start to wither
and fade of their own accord. Consider that if a physical Berlin Wall proved
ultimately incapable of holding back the wave of hopeful humanity, then what
chance do virtual fences and thin-air borders stand? If people from disparate
nations wish to be united with prospective employers, electronic acquaintances,
long-lost relatives or Internet lovers then united they will be – for no more
than the price of a plane or train ticket, or of boat passage. If those from
impoverished nations wish to settle permanently in wealthier, more comfortable countries
then the ability of contemporary governments to control this flow is similarly being
compromised – to the extent that it ever existed in the first place. Where migrants
lack the necessary paperwork they will use the false pretext of temporary
tourism to negotiate passage through immigration controls, failing that they
will simply cross into the target country at an uncontrolled point on the
border, either way remaining in their new home for years on end working and
living illicitly. In the final analysis there will be, as there is now, next to
nothing the governments of the World can do, or in the final analysis even should do about this. Beyond a certain
point in humankind’s technological and scientific advancement the enforcement
of border controls becomes an assault on individual liberty, pure and simple –
and if that point has not yet been reached than it soon will be; in a highly
advanced industrial and technological age the movement of peoples can no more
be controlled than the tides of the oceans.
Where once in
enlightened societies national liberty and independence were seen as vital to
if not actually synonymous with personal liberty, the point has now been
reached where the very notion of the nation serves to artificially constrain
the onward progress of mankind. How can we possibly realise our full,
collective potential if the peoples of the world must jump through administrative
hoops and scramble over metaphorical walls just for the mere act of meeting,
collaborating, discussing, planning, thinking, designing and most vitally familiarising in person? For what is the
primary effect that borders (and, ipso facto, nation-states) have if not to reinforce
ethno-nationalist misogyny and intellectually regressive, tin-pot jingoism? Put
a fence between men and they’ll throw stones at each other. Then they’ll start
trying to push the barrier outward to claim more territory for their side. Take
the barbed wire away on the other hand, and they will in almost all cases learn,
in time, to live and strive harmoniously to the cultural and economic betterment
of all. With the concept of territorial exclusivity diluted or vanquished, the major
cause of human conflict disappears.
Borders were first
born of racial and ethnic exclusivity. Their cause was strengthened by
linguistic and thereby cultural distinction. In more recent centuries religious
difference came to make its bloody contribution. In the end the blasted little lines
were even being drawn by political and ideological disagreements. Traversing
this spectrum of rivalries in reverse order we find that the goal of undermining
human division gets steadily easier: Free-market capitalism has done for
communism, for instance; and secularism has eliminated religious distinctions in
the West, albeit with much help from decadence and materialism. But the racial
and ethno-linguistic divides are self-evidently more enduring. The now
wide-open frontier between Germany and France has done little, so far, to blend
away the barriers of speech and behavioural norm. There, as elsewhere, the all conquering,
all-encompassing English language has yet to do its work – though in time it
will.
For all the
negatives of organised humanity – of civilisation – and for all the filthy little
divisions we’ve created and propagated it may well turn out to be the case that
this, the twenty-first, will come be the greatest century in our history. All
going well we will, by its end, be able to look back on the era of the nation-state
– of the “country” in the traditional understanding of the term. We will look
back amused and aghast at the fact that as late as the year 2050 we were still
organising ourselves into these squabbling little entities, butchering each
other over ultimately meaningless differences and constraining the world
economy with infantile rivalries and jealous little trade barriers. Patriotism has
been a filthy business, poisoning the well of human potential to absolutely no
end whatever. The tremendous task now facing the world’s cultural, political
and corporate elite is to convince the heaving mass of billions to embrace the
borderless revolution; for all its economic growing-pains to embrace globalisation
rather than seeing it as a threat. But inherent to such an effort will be an
open and frank acknowledgement of the painful shifts that globalism entails in
the medium and even longer term. While defeat of the border will be hardest in
the third world with its vicious tribal hatreds and rampant religious fervour,
it will actually be in the wealthier nations that the economic impact will be
most keenly felt. As a range of production capacity spanning light
manufacturing effort up to some heavier industry moves overseas to cheaper cost
centres, the once thriving first-world factory town risks becoming a ghost – a
trend already visible in much of the Northern United States and, to a lesser
extent, along the Windsor-Quebec industrial belt of Canada. Industrial decline
in the West entails, for a time, economic and fiscal retrenchment: higher
welfare dependency among the newly unemployed, in consequence a higher burden
of taxation for the middle and higher income strata; that is to say reduced consumption
all round. In short, a stalled or even reduced average standard of living for
the peoples of the wealthier nations, concurrent with millions being lifted out
of agrarian poverty in the developing World as industrialisation there, most
notably in China and India, gathers pace. The bottom line is that unrestricted free
trade (among other things the legal mechanism whereby Western corporations can
import goods without restriction from foreign production bases) has the
potential to cascade the wealth of man like the slow-motion bursting of an
artificially high dam. It will make for the ultimate levelling-out of national
incomes to in the end very significantly narrow the economic gap between the
advanced world and the backward, so undermining still further the rationale for
national boundaries and the artificial division of the Earth into competing,
bleeding nation-states. The pain of the means will be justified by this end.
Such is the world that Canada,
like all countries, faces. Such is the future that her people must start to
come to terms with as we move deeper into this, possibly mankind’s most
exciting epoch. What is particular to the challenge facing Canadians is that
this first stage of globalisation must initially mean greater and greater
integration with one particular nation, with all the affronts to patriotism and
nationalist sensibility directly implied. Post-war, a unifying Europe was and
has been balanced by the roughly equal powers of its four or five major member states;
moves towards greater unity in North America will necessarily leave that continent
even more dominated by the United States than it is already – though only for a
time. The eventual full inclusion of
Mexico, populous if comparatively impoverished, will help to counterbalance
Washington’s influence to some degree. With a geopolitically coherent, less
divided North America in place, such an entity could then move towards the next
stage of the process by implementing fully comprehensive trade and migration
liberalisation treaties with Europe, with an eye to the inclusion of Australasia
and if possible also Japan and South Korea. As the gargantuan blocs of China
and the Subcontinent move towards full realisation of their immense potential it
is inconceivable that the contemporary First World should be anything other
than economically and politically united, cushioning its relative decline
through the still great power of its combined income and collective industrial
capacity.
But in the
meantime, and well in advance of such developments, precisely what do moves
towards greater cohesion within North America entail? They entail first and
foremost an end to the lunatic atavism that the right of human beings to settle
across the continent should be in any way restricted by the antiquated
framework of exclusivist citizenships. A law-abiding Canadian who wishes to
live and work in New York or Los Angeles should have the absolute right to do
so without requiring work permits or immigration visas from the U.S. State
Department; likewise into Canada for the security-cleared American who seeks
work in Alberta’s oil fields or Ontario’s huge automotive sector. The idea that
Americans and Canadians should need immigration paperwork – i.e. government
sanction – to live in each other’s near-identical countries is ludicrously anachronistic
and, as I have pointed out, a clear affront to the principles of liberty
espoused by advanced democratic nations. Labour-mobility agreements work
superbly well within the European Union: there, any citizen of any EU member-state
has the right to live and work permanently and without restriction in any other
EU state. Far from having the sky fall this fluid mobility of labourers, professionals
and their families has boosted the fortunes of European businesses and – far
more importantly – has also enhanced cohesion and mutual understanding among the
European peoples by breaking down cultural and linguistic barriers and
promoting cross-border cultural understanding. The 1973 Trans-Tasman Agreement
reached between Australia and New Zealand similarly allows for the
free-settlement of each other’s citizens in either countries. That agreement
with its welfare-access restrictions and security checks (the terms of the
treaty allow for convicted criminals to be denied relocation privileges) is
probably the best initial model for Canada and the United States to strive for.
The
distinguishing factor of a huge land border presents challenges the Australians
and New Zealanders obviously don’t have in this regard: whatever agreement is
in place criminal elements will continue to ply their cross-border
people-smuggling and drug-running trades just as they do today. This takes us
directly to the second obstacle to greater unity between the Canadian and
American peoples, closely related to the first, and that is the very governance
of the border itself. Historically a confident and open boundary, the border in
modern times has morphed into a closed and patrolled barrier erected by groundless
suspicion, the neuroses of cross-border crime and so-called “terrorism”, and the
paranoid dread of mass migration. For its undoubted inconveniences, the
U.S.-Canadian border has become as a sort of comfort blanket allowing people,
and especially the Canadian people, to hide themselves away from the nightmare horrors
of an imagined, unknown outside world. In the absence of this blanket they see
a future less certain and significantly more dangerous: envisioning a stampede
into Canada of pistol-toting gang bangers, hopeless welfare claimants and
healthcare-system leeches from the American inner city. Conversely all too many
Americans see a borderless continent, in the wider context of full Mexican
participation, preceding the veritable overrun of their country by Latino
peoples and the Spanish language; that, and an army of Islamist fanatic terrorists
marching down from Canada’s large Muslim communities. Pornographic fantasies of
this ilk are demonstrative of what international borders can do to the
otherwise sensible peoples of mature nation states. When the curtain of
division that is the Line Forty-Nine is finally raised, and when peoples’
respective worlds are found not to have ended in the process, a new pragmatism –
a new maturity – will prevail: the realisation that whereas an open boundary will
certainly be breached by criminals and gangsters, a tightly controlled border
will only be breached by cleverer, more ruthless and far more violent criminals
and gangsters.
What is called
for is the complete removal of all customs checkpoints along the U.S.-Canadian frontier,
and the implementation between the two countries of a common external border similar to that created
by the Schengen Agreement in place among most of the nations of Europe. Under
such an arrangement any person arriving at a U.S. or Canadian port of entry
from a third country would have to satisfy the customs and immigration
requirements of both the United States and Canada before being allowed to
proceed. Internally the boundary between the two countries would be completely
open and unrestricted, providing a tremendous boost to cross-border trade and
with it the cause of economic and, vitally, societal integration. More than
that it would stand as a statement: a forthright, open and unabashed
acknowledgement of the inseparability of the two nations, and their
inextricably linked past, present and future with all the shared endeavours,
hopes, dreams, challenges and risks entailed. For the bulk of their early
shared history, the United States and Canada operated just such a boundary.
There is no earthly reason why they should not return to that position; indeed globalising
forces and the inexorable rise of the new Asian powers demands it as a matter
of increasing urgency.
At the end of
an incremental process, and following numerous and transitional phases, what we
will have will be the complete, absolute, utterly unrestricted and
unconditional free flow of people, capital, goods, resources and services
across the U.S-Canadian boundary – that is to say NAFTA with all its exclusions,
caveats and petty little restrictions expunged once and for all. Mexico as a
full participant in this expanded free-trade area though initially not, for
obvious reasons, in the Canada-U.S. shared border or open-migration agreements.
As long as Mexico’s standard of living remains significantly below that of its
neighbours to the North, strict immigration controls must remain in place
between that country and the U.S.-Canada free movement area. Successful globalisation
calls finally for free but, crucially, orderly
and sustainable comings and goings between properly functioning societies –
not stampedes in one direction or another by hordes of desperate people. Then,
in time, as always, the great economic leveller of absolute free trade will do
its work, and once Mexico’s wealth and infrastructure have sufficiently closed
the gap even those restrictions must ease and ultimately be vanquished, and
Mexico and possibly other central American states welcomed completely into the
North American fold. The human impulse to move and resettle is just that: an
impulse – innate and wholly benign. In the final analysis governmental efforts
to halt, restrict or undermine this tendency assault the very essence of our
beings. Eventually such efforts flounder
on the rocks of basic morality, even more than on the grounds of dubious practicality.
And then
Quebec, bienvenue au Quebec, the continent’s French-speaking anomaly. Ahead of
the developments I have described, a third, final and irreversible referendum on
the province’s constitutional status, the option placed before all Quebeckers
being: to remain as part of the Canadian confederation and in consequence move
swiftly into the new global reality; or, choose instead a long but in the very end temporary reprieve for
their distinct language and culture on the continent through the establishment
of a wholly separate state for the short remaining time that nation-states retain
at least some relevance. With complete legislative independence and its own
constitution, Quebec through the mandatory provision of public education
through French, and only through French, could secure the position of the
language in their territory for many generations to come. Far from seeking to delay
or obstruct a third plebiscite, the Canadian federal government should enter
into the debate in a positive and democratic spirit, with the promise of full
co-operation from Ottawa in the event of the separatist position winning the vote.
This would amount to a generous acknowledgement of the fact that
globalisation’s ultimate triumph over distinct cultural heritage will prove far
more painful and traumatic for some groups than it will for others.
A borderless North America
entails, thirdly and finally, recognition of the fact that where economic
integration goes, fiscal unity must eventually follow. In Europe we have seen
significant problems both caused and exacerbated by the attempt to fit national
economies as divergent as Greece, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands under the
umbrella of a single European currency. The lesson of the early years of the Euro
is clear: that an international currency cannot work smoothly with great
variances in productivity, per-capita GDP and their underpinning cultural norms;
in other words, when implementation of the currency is a political imperative wilfully
oblivious to economic realities. Yet by no stretch of the imagination does such
divergence in economic performance and profile exist on the North American
continent – North of the Rio Grande – even today. The gap between the
wealthiest and poorest U.S. States and Canadian provinces would not be
immediately observable to the naked eye; from Alabama to Oregon, on up to the
sub-arctic and back across to Ontario and the East Coast the same fundamental
infrastructure of life – housing, transportation, communications, utilities –
prevails at much the same level. Whatever the economic gaps between Prince
Edward Island and California or Mississippi and Alberta, they are clearly very
minor by global standards. With all restrictions on cross-border trade and
liberty removed even these relatively minor variances will be narrowed in time
though never, of course, eliminated entirely. Under full free-trade and the single
economic entity it ultimately mandates, the steps towards fiscal unity will
fall into place almost naturally. Increasingly it will come to be seen as
absurd to have two currencies in operation within the zone, floating in value
against each other and so hobbling trade with the uncertainty of medium to long-term
fluctuations and the bureaucratic overhead required to monitor and plan for
them. Even as I write there are powerful arguments for at least pegging the
Canadian dollar to its greenback cousin at a given value of perhaps 85 to 90
U.S. cents. From there the logical step of a new currency, the New Continental
Dollar (NCD), would be a comparatively straightforward matter of introducing
the banknotes (if paper currency still exists), and converting the electronic
bank accounts. It would be the introduction of the Euro minus the culture
shock, political upheaval and sometime street riots. For much of its history
the Canadian dollar has been tied to (or if not hovered at or around) one U.S.
dollar in any event. A single means of exchange between the two nations would
merely be a formalised recognition of what at various points in the past has
been deemed simple economic good sense.
Looking backwards, and looking
forwards, you come to find yourself confronted with the great failing of logic.
That is that when followed to its own conclusion it can cease to be accepted as
rational and may come to be deemed nonsensical. It can collapse through man’s
simple unwillingness to face up to unpleasant or unfathomable outcomes. The
very idea of borders disappearing and “the country” as we understand the concept
gradually fading to obscurity is so baffling to so many that it is with
hesitation that I’ve chosen to outline the trend here. And trend it certainly
is, from Coal and Steel to the EEC and the EU; in parallel NAFTA then CAFTA; GATT,
the World Trade Organisation and beyond. But even these are merely political and
bureaucratic developments. If it were not for them other institutions and
treaties would have fallen into place for the simple reason that they could not
not have fallen into place:
fundamentally it is the industrial, scientific and technological advancement of
the human race which is moving us all on to a post-national World. Formal
international recognition of this fact and its consequences invariably plays
catch-up to the globalising reality on the ground.
A
post-patriotic system self-evidently threatens people’s sense of tribal
identity, one of the foundation components of their very sense of self. In
Canada there are doubtless many who balk at globalisation and the deeper,
sweeter marriage with the United States it must initially entail. The hard
philosophical question these people face is this: why should Canada in its present form and situation have a future
at all? It showcases ignorance of what little past it has and in direct consequence
is barely interested in its present; its answer to its problems is a sigh and a
shrug and a keep-on-walking. I mentioned that many Canadians leave for America
and never come back, and that many immigrants to Canada ultimately depart.
Under an open-border system both of these trends would be accelerated, initially,
and possibly to a great degree. The contemporary ongoing issue of Canada’s
“brain-drain” Southward could increase to economically dangerous proportions, this
in turn having the effect of forcing Canadians to ponder and then consider
addressing the awful complacency of their lucky-country existence. It will
bring them to accept the usually unacknowledged truism that a great many people
will never be content with a merely
comfortable life – and that the thinking, creating, inventing and entrepreneurial
classes especially require an environment that is challenging – and in ways
even unpleasant – so as to push them to the very limit of their abilities. Such
a period of self-reflection could serve to remedy the underlying Canadian
issues, and brings us directly to one of the great ironies of globalism: that
in a peculiar way it will actually save some of the societies it seeks to
replace. Trade will obliterate conflict, decadence will be stalled by upheaval,
Canadians will find vigour and vitality. The increased flight of talent from
Canada that globalism will initially
cause will force cultural change in the idea-fearing strait-jacket of Canadian
business and industry. Straightforward commercial imperative will see to this. From
there the change will be driven: from the cubicles, the factory-floors and grey
offices of Canada a new spirit of enterprise, thought, spirit and argument will
hopefully seep, oh so gradually and oh so slowly, onto the streets and out to
the suburbs of this great and sleeping nation... and what a strange effect a
sleeping nation can have on a person! As I look back on my years in Canada,
different cities at different times, I cannot in all honesty say that I have
ever been truly content – never truly satisfied or fulfilled, never without that
overarching feeling that something in the nation is just fundamentally missing.
And yet with small recollections and enduring fascination I always seem to miss
it whenever I’ve moved away. Its physical grandeur and surprising diversity. Its
love affair with weakness and it need for mediocrity. Its polite ethnic
divisions and strange, laconic unity. What an utterly baffling country!
Maddening and majestic all at once. Utterly civilised and viscously inhumane; wallowing
in ignorance but by most standards rich. The muck-and-sweat patriotism of the
old world absent: a major cause of the Canadian disease, yet a tremendous advantage
in a future that looks harshly on nationalism.
Canada. I
lived there once and left with no wish to return, but return I did, only three
years later. Canada: I lived there twice, then thrice, left swearing to not return yet did; in my absences never quashing
the certainty that I’d be back, yet again,
through the mandates of destiny and the passage of time. Perhaps I should
depart once more, and delay the next return for a decade, so that I may judge
with objectivity the changes, if any, that the full-birth of the new era will
have wrought, and will still be bringing. But what do I see, in the meantime – for
what do I hope as we Canadians sit here now? I see that as the winds of
greatest change roar into the quiet Canadian garden they will destroy some that
is good but much more that is bad. In their wake they will leave a new land, not
“Canada” as such but something that could still be called Canadian for a time –
and it will be different, and for the most part improved. It will be a place where
Canadians thrive and succeed in the new global reality, relishing its challenges
and meeting them with energy. Where innovation runs to the last and is never
forestalled by complacency; where genius is unrestrained by comfort. Where zest
is really for life.
Where the
dread of thought has been vanquished: by a rebirth of the Canadian mind. Where
opinions are expressed; respected and not feared. Where power is challenged, the
politicians are questioned and freedom is valued.
Where the
dreadful disdain has gone and where the people think for their fellows. Where the
cold flicker of the human spirit has become a flame of pride and warmth.
Where the human
imagination does reign supreme, and where fear has been dislocated by courage:
it is a place, at the last, where Catherine and William Lloyd-Jones lie buried
forever in the deep dark depths of frozen Lake Ontario.
[i]
Oprah accused of whipping up anti-beef ‘lynch mob’, CNN online, 21 January 1998 (http://edition.cnn.com/US/9801/21/oprah.beef,
retrieved 4th August 2014)
[ii]
McLibel: Longest case in English history, BBC News Online, 15th
February 2005 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4266741.stm,
retrieved 4th August 2014)
[iii]
World Giving Index 2013, Charities
Aid Foundation (UK)