The order of Canada

Hardly more than a generation ago, Canada was a Christian nation, a moral nation of decent, pious citizens, who honoured both God and country, hearth and home. Although the Commonwealth spanned the continent, Canada preserved its moral centre within the deep heart’s core. That country, which endured in various forms for centuries, is now little more than a quaint, fading memory.

In the Gospels, we find an insight that, to Canadian ears, must seem more like a hard saying: “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mk 3:26). Since Canada is no longer a Christian nation (as the late Chief Justice Antonio Lamer famously remarked), we are forced to admit that our country’s unity is the result of a different kind of cohesion: in a single generation, the order of Canada has changed.

But what are the principles that now give order to Canada? In his 2000 Massey lectures, The Rights Revolution, Michael Ignatieff (now a Liberal MP, then a Harvard professor) observed that, in the 1960s, “The old virtues … lost their legitimacy” and “the new virtues – self-cultivation, self-indulgence, self-development – acquired the force of moral imperatives.” In other words, self-sacrifice gave way to self-centredness. In fact, Ignatieff himself concedes that these are “highly contentious values.

Conservative social critics would argue that these ideals are just fancy ways to justify selfishness. So we do and – as our moribund culture continually reminds us – so they are. Indeed, Ignatieff admits that what he calls “the rights revolution, conservatives would dismiss as the permissive revolution.”

Ignatieff notes that the “cardinal vice of permissiveness is wanting rights without responsibilities” and, despite his protestations to the contrary, this is precisely what the upheavals of the 1960s sought. For all of Ignatieff’s rhetoric of revolution, that deep anthropological connection between pleasure and progeny is not severed so easily. The knot that joins rights and responsibilities cannot be untied; it must be cut.

In The Destiny of Man, the Russian existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev wrote: “If there were no child-bearing, sexual union would degenerate into debauchery.” And this is precisely what has happened in our own day. For, when children are seen as the unintended consequence of the natural procreative process, the contradiction between “wanted act” and “unwanted result” becomes intolerable.

Playing the blunt realist, Ignatieff declares: “We wanted freedom and we should stop apologizing for it. We must simply pay its price.” But who really pays this price: the adults who are willfully deceived or the unborn children who are innocently conceived?

The chaos, which results from the licentious liberty of the “rights revolution,” creates the need for an unthinkable solution. The freedom to enjoy rights without responsibilities is a freedom strong enough to eliminate its own consequences, a kind of will-to-power. The disordered behaviour of reckless adults demands an “order” that destroys any undesirable effects. But how is this terrible order achieved? What is the real price of this freedom? Who makes this kind of modern liberation possible?

“Certain medieval legends,” writes the French anthropologist René Girard, depict “a kindly generous man, always ready to lavish benefits on people for little in return … His only request is that one soul, only one, be reserved for him … The demand appears modest, almost minute in comparison to the promised benefits, but the mysterious gentleman will not give it up. If he is not satisfied, all the gifts of the generous benefactor instantly vanish and he vanishes with them.” To pay the price for the way we live, we have given up our unwanted, unborn children. It is fitting, then, that Henry Morgentaler has been nominated to become a member of the Order of Canada, because Canadian society now depends upon the unspeakable “order” that his horrific practice achieves; Morgentaler cleanses society of the chaos that it itself produces. As Girard notes, “Satan is a principle of order as much as disorder.”

In the end, it must be said that Henry Morgentaler is only a deeply misguided man who deserves both our pity and our prayers. Like the benefactor of the medieval legend, he only takes what we are willing to give and gives us, in return, the things we really want. By honouring Morgentaler as a hero, Canada attempts to celebrate the terrible conclusions of its own illicit logic. One of Dostoevsky’s fictional philosophers states that, “Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.” In Canada, starting from unlimited rights, we have arrived at unlimited abuse.

A hidden premise underpins the permissiveness of the modern world: that children are not really part of our world but, instead, are its chief problem. Some time ago, Morgentaler made the incredible claim that he lowered the crime rate. While this claim can be (and has been) contested, one could also say that it does not go far enough. Why should he be so modest? Indeed, Morgentaler has not only reduced the number of criminals, but he has also cleaned the environment, eased the strain on our burdened transit systems, reduced teachers’ class sizes and expedited the tireless task of the Census of Canada. Who are we to deny the devil his due? We need only admit the obvious: after Morgentaler, we are all unwanted children now.

Such a terrible contradiction is, however, not easily endured and the Canadian conscience shrinks from the idea that abortion is the price of its freedom. Canada must, therefore, seek the dignity of a divided house, once again. We must continue to vigorously oppose this debasement of the Order of Canada, without denying the obvious: that Henry Morgentaler has given “order” to Canada. We, however, reserve the right, and bear the solemn responsibility, of calling this order by its name: it is an evil order.

In fact, it is precisely the order of evil.