The other day I happened to have commercial dealings with a guy whose name and accent made clear he was from Russia. So here’s what I told him about the invasion of Ukraine: nothing. Not because I don’t care about Ukraine. I do, on humanitarian and strategic grounds. The reason I didn’t give Boris what-for (and don’t use his real name here) is that he’s not Vladimir Putin, RT, or “Russian.” He’s Canadian.
Our official policy of multiculturalism somehow managed to make judging people by ethnic origin sound virtuous and inclusive. And lately we’ve redefined “inclusion” to mean “exclusion,” especially of anyone who doesn’t use PoC or “person of colour” not as a physical description but a metaphysical one. But we shouldn’t.
What do you really know about “Boris” other than he grew up under Putin’s rule? Nothing at all. Except he probably knows more jokes about VVP and his particular brand of tyranny than you do.
Obviously, Canadians with different backgrounds bring different information and have probably been exposed to different perspectives. And I speak of this guy not for him. But growing up under tyranny, like growing up under alcoholism, can have all sorts of different effects, from shunning it to embracing it to ignoring it. It’s that free will thing again. And free will has no nationality or skin colour. Just as there’s no way to tell by looking at Leslyn Lewis that she must be progressive because she’s black and apparently that undefinable thing called a “woman.”
Nor can you tell much about me by knowing I’m of Scottish descent. Sure, I find parts of my heritage funny and parts inspiring. But others were best left in the auld country including the “cuisine,” because as Thomas Sowell said, culture is a working tool not a museum piece. Do you really suppose I’m against breaking up the UK because I’m personally an English-Scottish union by derivation?
Now da or aye, there is one thing you can tell from someone with a foreign accent. They chose to come here, or their recent ancestors did. And it’s a fair bet that they didn’t uproot themselves and move to a strange land because they thought everything was peachy back home. Instead somehow, alone with their thoughts, they concluded that this “Canada” was a place where the better parts of their heritage would have room to flourish while the rubbish could be left on the village midden heap or whatever your great-grandparents called it. (Admittedly some come here thinking it’s a soft job and easy to overthrow.)
Now if you want my opinion on the invasion of Ukraine here, beyond a Coolidgesque “I’m against it,” the fact that it is driving various Nordic nations out of feigned neutrality into NATO recalls Margaret Thatcher’s apt “There Is No Alternative,” in this case to Western civilization. And if I could address “Russians” collectively, especially those who’ve bought Putin’s cock-and-Nazi stories about Ukraine, I’d tell them the same.
I know a fair bit about Russia and admire many of its cultural qualities, from tenacity to biting political humour. But since at least Peter the Great there’s been a disastrously ambivalent attitude toward the West, fascinated yet horrified, determined to imitate it only in order to defeat it then remake it. And it’s time to come in from the cold, like individual Russians who come here to make a life for themselves under our very real if threatened freedom.
In making this pitch I would concede, indeed emphasize, that Western civilization has very real problems. Particularly one its critics frequently point to, including the Slavophiles who are Putin’s true intellectual forebears: a tendency toward decadence that erupts below as self-indulgence and at the top as the sort of self-loathing that saw Ryerson University rename itself Toronto Metropolitan University.
It’s classic case of destroying because you cannot create, underlining Chesterton’s point that many radicals flee a real past full of examples and ideals they cannot live up to for an imaginary future where their feeble qualities might hypothetically be key virtues. But Western civilization is built on the faith that our constant, very disruptive quest for truth will end by finding it.
It’s why you find a lot more guys named Boris moving here than guys named Bob moving to Russia. And frankly, if you worry that our constant questioning of all truths and tearing-down of all traditions necessarily ends with mass hedonism and elite nihilism, well, Russia certainly hasn’t escaped either by keeping one foot in and one out.
It’s not just Boris, of course. It’s Fatima, Harjit, Li, Maria, Jock, and any stereotypical ethnic name you can think of. They come here from far and wide, with all sorts of baggage. But not with hyphens branded into their skin. Those things are un-Canadian.
