Artificial Nations

Recently, in the National Post, Lawrence Solomon wrote a very interesting article in which he criticized the two alternatives of withdrawing from any involvement in the Middle East and simply rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies as he put it. His third alternative was apparently to assist in the creation of smaller, ethnically homogenous states as I understand it. But a sentence leaped off the page that resonated in my mind as a much broader perception of the hundred year period from 1850 to 1950.

He said “the Western world has got to take responsibility for the artificial nations it has created.” He was speaking, of course, of the renunciation of colonialism that created such nations as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, and Libya. In each of these entities, he correctly identified that diverse and obviously hostile ethnic groups were confined within the same borders, and ultimately caused a form of radicalization and detachment from tradition and stability, which today is manifest in a strident anti-Americanism. He could equally have said that the creations of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the division and transfer of Prussia to Poland and to Russia, likewise created ethnic tensions which have never really been resolved.

It occurred to me that these perceptions cover a period of time from approximately 1850 to 1950, during which period the European powers abandoned the entities which they had amalgamated and administered as colonies. From a Western Canadian perspective, this particularly applied to the creation of Canada. It was, after all, the amalgamation of vast, diverse areas with conflicting interests, ideologies, languages, and cultures into one country which has emerged as a multicultural polyglot. Today, it reflects the modern version of United Nations chaos. It has, in fact, no identity, no culture, no common language, no flag that reflects any value whatsoever, but compromise, compromise, compromise.

As long as these entities, created artificially and completely without reference to ethnic identity, tradition, language, or culture, are involved in a period of relative prosperity, conflict does not appear to occur, but the Middle East is a perfect example of what in the long run will happen to every multicultural nation.

Canada is, today, an institution created by 19th Century thinking, by a group of colonial officials in London who wished to divest themselves of a vast, administrative nightmare, where for over 4000 miles of territory, they lacked sufficient resources to either police, control, or alternatively benefit. They made the practical decision of delegating all their authority to something “Canadian.” There never was, in actual fact, an entity known as Canada. In the same sense that today’s Syria is made up of conflicting groups, Alawites, Kurds, Sunni, and Shi’ite Muslim interests, there is an overwhelming tendency to impose authority by force, currently demonstrated by Hafez Assad, and in Libya for the same reason previously imposed by the Gadhafi family.

The West, in hope of its stability, had subsidized, supported, and in fact funded dictators like Saddam Hussein, Hafez Assad, and Gadhafi, all of whom they could deal with, much as they did with Egypt’s president, Mubarak, by giving them money. That whole system is coming unravelled today and the biggest area of stability appears to be the absolutely monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the rather polyglot nation of India. Pakistan, it appears, is lapsing into a form of narco-political anarchy.

All of these concerns demonstrate the fragility and lack of stable traditional harmony which a nation deserves and which a nation can achieve.

Mr. Solomon pointed out the success of the South Sudan separation from the north of Sudan. The latter is stridently Muslim and extremely hostile to the West and South Sudan is a proud ally of the West.

In the same way, Canada could be divided into the regions of Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, being three separate entities, the four western provinces being one country with a common language and a common interest in resource production. Only over time could a common culture emerge, by a closer identification with the essential interests of the people living in the region. Canada today is a unique bastion of stability in a world of economic, debt-ridden chaos. Ireland, Europe, the United States, all former areas of wealth and prosperity, are sinking into debt depravity. Canada, on the other hand, supporting its economy essentially by the export of Western Canadian resources, is relatively stable with the continuing ignorance of Western Canadians that the wealth of Canada is being borne on their backs with the taxation they provide being used to subsidize such wasteful enterprise as the perpetual education at minimal cost of Quebec university students.

Gradually, Western Canadians are waking up, and much as the South Sudanese became much better off when they were free and independent, Western Canadians will soon learn the same salutary lesson. The essential ingredients of Western Separatism therefore are as follows:

1.) A realization of the colonial arrangement that created Canada.

2.) A realization of the costs of Confederation to Western Canada.

3.) The political will to do what is legally possible, ratified by the Clarity Act, and upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, which is conduct a referendum for independence in each province of Western Canada, and amalgamate a nation from the provinces so choosing, with a regionally-elected Senate, a common language, common economic policy, smaller government, and constitutional rights of referendum, initiative, and recall.

The foregoing formula will rectify the irresponsible transfer of authority to the government of Canada of 1867, which once done was never possible to correct, change, or rectify, because of the fact its constitution became and was at that time, un-amendable and impossibly complicated.

Our job in the Western Block is to create a new wave of understanding, and a hope for the future by the recognition of the hundred years of irresponsibility that produced chaos around the world from 1850 to 1950, and from India to the Middle East to Canada, set up countries that had no right or benefit to their existence.