But government does still matter. Countries with good government can master globalization; countries with bad government will be its victims. George Grant’s mistake was to abandon faith in ordinary politics and the capacity of his fellow citizens to shape their lives through free institutions. No country may be fully sovereign over its identity, but well-governed countries are more sovereign than others, more capable of mastering change and preserving the vital core of traditions, beliefs and values that give a people their identity. Well-governed countries maintain peace, order and good government at home. They punish crime; they hold their citizens accountable for basic standards of conduct. These successful countries run immigration programs that attract entrepreneurial and able people from around the world to become citizens. Bipartisan political consensus guarantees steady national investment in education and training, in science and technology, in infrastructure, and in the public goods that draw citizens together and help to make them productive. These successful countries knock down the barriers—of red tape, regulation and monopoly—that divide citizens, confer unfair advantages or prevent people from working together.
None of these successful countries is foolish enough to believe that it is a finished creation. They all take their promises of equality, fairness and justice seriously, which means that their leaders know that there are still promises to keep. These countries don’t protect their markets against global competition; they invest in their own people’s vision and enterprise so they can gain footholds in other people’s markets. Above all, these successful countries keep their governments honest and accountable. Trust in government, faith in the people who are elected, belief that public policy can actually improve people’s lives—these are the emotions that sustain the citizenship of successful societies.
Such societies are successful not just because they are prosperous and free, but because their citizens share a sense that they know where they came from and know where they are headed in the future. They are hopeful. They believe in themselves. They believe in the capacity of their people to do great things. They are patriots.
Patriotism—enduring, impatient, non-ironic belief in the promise of the land you love—is the single greatest asset of successful societies. Successful societies struggle with their deficiencies and overcome them through collective efforts of will and sacrifice. Patriotism is the sentiment that makes a people demand reform, change and improvement in their country; patriotism is the source of the impatience and anger that makes abuses intolerable, injustice unacceptable and complacency a delusion.
It is this sentiment that makes us want to be one people. It is this shared feeling that allows us to rise above our differences—English and French, Aboriginal, Métis, Inuit, immigrants from every land—and makes a complex unity of us all.
This unity, never certain, never to be taken for granted, always a work in progress, has meaning for us, but it also offers an example to others. Canadians know as much as anyone about living together across the gulf of great differences; we know how to compromise with each other and yet maintain what is essential; we know how to live with the differences that cannot be overcome. We have some experience in respecting the rights of individuals and yet also protecting the collectivities of language and culture that give individuality meaning. We know something, too, about a national pride that is ironic, modest, self-deprecating yet also robust. We know the difference between true patriot love and false, between love that always respects the truth of who we are, however painful, and the love that devours the truth and replaces it with lies. Most of all, we know—as some other nations do not—that the question of who we are is never settled and that we rise to our best when we allow ourselves to imagine ourselves anew.
From True Patriot Love by Michael Ignatieff. Copyright © Michael Ignatieff, 2009. Reprinted with permission of Penguin Group (Canada).
