It may seem perverse to suggest that thoughtful American conservatives might look for inspiration to Canada. But the American Right is at an impasse.
Many conservative voters, and brightest intellectuals, have become disillusioned with the Republican Party’s long-standing combination of laissez-faire economics, aggressive foreign policy and “family values” targeting abortion, gay marriage and other social issues. The Trump presidency revealed that traditional Republican political elites still hold too much of this platform, even as their base rejected it — and them. Meanwhile Trump’s alternative agenda, pitched initially as a rejection of both “globalism” and culture-war issues, collapsed amid blustering incompetence.
Canada is often cast as a more progressive version of the United States: less nationalistic and religious, more accepting of diversity and more generous in its welfare programs. But according to Michael Cuenco, a sharp-eyed young political analyst, Canada offers important lessons for the American Right.
Cuenco draws on the work of those American thinkers who have most cogently articulated the case for a “pro-worker” post-Trump conservatism, such as Michael Lind, but departs from them in critical ways.
His most original, and provocative, proposal for a new conservatism relies on a heterodox rereading of Canadian immigration policy, which is often cited as a model by reform-minded Americans on the Right. In a two-part series of articles for American Affairs this spring, Cuenco noted that American conservatives have long envied Canada’s “points system”, whereby the majority of immigrants are classed and selected on the basis of their potential economic contribution.
In this way, Canadians can avoid having to make what Americans would describe as a difficult choice between having a robust social safety net or an open labour market, between high levels of immigration or civic peace. But, Cuenco insists, America has failed to recognise that the Canadian system also requires what he calls a “civil religion” — one that is founded on a politically useful untruth.
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