The Trap of Tribal Multiculturalism

Rejecting the American principle of a melting pot, multiculturalism without assimilation was proclaimed as an official Canadian government policy in 1971 by then prime minister Pierre Trudeau. No other country had taken such a step before, although much of the Western world has since followed this unfortunate example. Today's wokes take this approach to greater extremes with overt anti-white racism and anti-Christian bigotry.

Justin Trudeau, Pierre's son and a recent prime minister, suggested Canada is a genocide country and the now world's first post-national state with no core identity, whatever that means.

My own experience as a long-ago teenage immigrant in Alberta causes me to regard such ideas with horror. I was a refugee twice: first from the monstrous country of my birth, then from the poisonous clutches of the immigrant community here. I never forgave the tribe for trying to own me, to tie me down and hold me back, to take my own essential life choices away from me, and I never will.

The Individual Under Siege

Multiculturalist policies are pernicious, insidious and perverse. Balkanization of the society on some imported or randomly designated group parameters is these policies' devastating result. This artificial fragmentation has recently been on full display in the vitriolic domestic divisions in Western countries over foreign conflicts such as Israel-Palestine and Armenia-Azerbaijan, with opposing sides' partisans viscerally spouting the most bigoted imaginable slogans and even engaging in violence.

Tribal multiculturalism is by its nature collectivist. It's thus an enemy of individual freedom, an enemy of the Enlightenment notion of civic citizenship. In a cultural, religious or national community, a person is a Volksgenosse, a collectivized tribesman, not an individual. Many immigrant communities are deliberately self-enclosed groups. You could be prescribed all major aspects of your life - what religion to observe, what food to eat and avoid, how to dress, what views and opinions to hold, how to vote, whom to date and marry, how to raise your children. The tribe owns your very soul. Individual choice is removed: nothing important in your life is up to you.

This tribal possessiveness is absolute and underpinned by the most toxic bigotry. I have been repeatedly told assimilation and intermarriage are genocide by other means. If you try to protest, you are reminded that tribal multiculturalism is the government's essential policy: assimilation is supposedly un-Canadian. Because such a totalitarian tribal community wants to own you absolutely, rejecting it must also be absolute. Half-measures leave you tethered. Freedom requires character. Freedom is not free.

Freedom Through Individual Choice

Assimilation is not limiting; it is liberating. It removes artificial shackles but does not restrict you to only the prevailing surrounding culture. All human cultures are products of human genius. Since you are human, all cultures are yours. Contrary to tribalists’ insistence, your ancestors were not you. Only you are you.

The pioneer country in the western North American interior, including Alberta, embodies this ideal: you can come from near or far or nowhere at all, shake the old dust off your feet, and build something new. No one is born with an inherent identity. I am not a member of anybody's diaspora. Barbarians who claim to own me by bloodlines or place of origin are dismissed with prejudice.

Tribal diversity is not our strength, it is our undoing. The only diversity among free people is the diversity of individuals.