Identity politics aligns with diversity, and it is emphatically not our strength. Identity politics is a flight from commonality and unity.
The celebration of Canada’s 150th should be an excellent time to mildly parse a few of our national values, as the current phrase has it. Particularly the elevation of “diversity” as the king and signature of our ways and being.
Justin Trudeau is fond of the aphorism that diversity is our strength. That’s far too much to claim. There are many things, processes or ideas that could equally claim the same predicate. “Education is our strength” could easily be seen as an even stronger motto. For is it not true that a good education seeds the mind for the healthy tolerance that enables diversity in the first place?
A healthy economy being our strength is another very defensible observation. What is more likely to sharpen social and political tensions than a failing economy? For the most current illustration of this obvious point, look at Venezuela, where its collapsed socialist economy pushes the country to the edge of civil war.
Or we could equally say the land is our strength. Its beauty, resources, scope and range of Canadian nature, combined with our sense of communion with the land, counts as something inexpressibly but undeniably special. Even the Liberal party has saluted the land as a patriotic bond. Not to score political points on our anniversary day, but did not the Liberals run a whole election campaign—that of 1972—on the very motto, “The Land is Strong.”
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