Virgins of Patriotism
On March 11th, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would impose a 25 percent tariff in retaliation against the Province of Ontario’s decision to impose a 25 percent export tariff on the electricity it supplies to northern states, including swing states Ohio and Michigan. Premier Doug Ford’s tariff, now rescinded in humiliation, retaliated against Trump’s tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S.
Ford has been especially vocal in his opposition to the American President and has presented himself as a “Captain Canuck” figure defending the Canadian nation. Like many Canadian politicians, especially those based in central Canada, including the federal Liberal Party leadership candidates, Ford is channelling what he sees as an upsurge in Canadian patriotism in response to Trump.
This apparent upsurge incentivizes grandiose gestures among politicians to parrot themselves as the great leader and guardian of the frightened, angry, and anxious nation who express an histrionic and sentimentalist patriotism manifest as social media slacktivism and virtue signalling, hockey fandom and anthem booing, consumption of alcohol, and Rambo insurgency. Matt Gurney of The Line podcast commented that after years of neglect, Canadians are out of practice in patriotism, calling them “virgins of patriotism now learning the pleasures of the flesh for the first time, and we don’t know how to do it very well.” The spasmodic and clumsy bumbling is evident.
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John von Heyking is a professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge, where he teaches political philosophy. He is the author of Comprehensive Judgment and Absolute Selflessness: Winston Churchill on Politics as Friendship (2018), The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship (2016), and Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World (2001).
