The culture war being waged in the United States is destroying that nation from within. Aaron Wherry writes that Erin O' Tolle has embraced the idea of a culture war. The idea goes back to British writer Goodhart's book, The Road To Somewhere:
In short, Goodhart posits that the traditional politics of left and right, liberal and conservative, are now overlaid by a "larger and looser" distinction "between the people who see the world from Anywhere and the people who see it from Somewhere."
According to Goodhart, the typical Anywhere is a well-educated professional living in a large city away from where they grew up. They generally vote for left-of-centre parties. They are mobile, embrace change and take "egalitarian and meritocratic attitudes on race, sexuality and gender and think that we need to push on further."
They do not entirely accept the idea of a borderless world but are individualist and internationalist in disposition and "are not strongly attached to larger group identities, including national ones." In Goodhart's words, "they value autonomy and self-realisation before stability, community and tradition."
The average Somewhere, he says, is less well-educated, earns a lower income, comes from a small town or a suburb and is more grounded in a specific place. "They do not generally welcome change and older Somewheres are nostalgic for a lost Britain," Goodhart writes. "They place a high value on security and familiarity and have strong group attachments, local and national." They tend to vote for conservative parties.
These Somewheres, Goodhart adds, "accept the equality revolution but still value traditional family forms and are suspicious of 'anything goes' attitudes." They are not authoritarians, he writes, but they "regret the passing of a more structured and tradition bound world."
Attitudes toward immigration, Goodhart says, "have probably become the single biggest litmus test of Anywhere/Somewhere difference and over time have come to stand for more general attitudes toward social change and whether people feel comfortable with and feel they benefit from it, or not." (Canada, he notes, is a "partial exception" to the rule that "large scale immigration" is universally unpopular.)
The Anywheres, Goodhart argues, have been dominant in culture and society and must now be more conscious of how their fellow citizens from Somewhere are feeling.
Stephen Harper picked up Goodhart's idea and passed it on to O'Toole. O'Toole is positioning himself as a spokesman for the Somewheres and he accuses Justin Trudeau of being a tool of the Anywheres:
"While this prime minister seems to think that every Canadian can simply work on their laptop from the local café," O'Toole said Monday, "that is not reality, nor is it what Canadians want. Conservatives are here to fight for those who build things in Canada, those who get their hands dirty and take pride in doing a job well before they come home for the night."
To burnish his credentials among those who "get their hands dirty," O'Toole said that his first job in high school was dishwasher and short-order cook. He did not mention that he went on to become a corporate lawyer in Toronto and in-house counsel to a major multinational corporation (Procter & Gamble).
Asked in September whether he saw himself as a populist, O'Toole said he was simply "trying to address the hopes, aspirations and concerns of Canadians." But nearly every politician in the history of civilization would say they were doing more or less the same thing.
Populism is more usefully defined as an ideology that suggests society can be divided between the 'pure' public and the 'corrupt' elite. It is based in conflict. And O'Toole seems willing to embrace the idea of a fundamental clash between middle-class Canadians and the elites, between the Somewheres and the Anywheres — or at least to accuse the Liberal government of working to make sure there are a lot more Anywheres everywhere.
The Liberals claim they represent the same people. So who are you going to believe?
Image: arpacanada.ca
