Mel Hurtig Lives!

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Sept 2018

RE: Protecting our culture essential to fighting off ‘Americanization.’(The Hamilton Spectator, written by Heather Mallick.)

Mel Hurtig was a vocal and active Canadian nationalist, and Liberal,  big on Canadian culture and notoriously anti-American.  John Crosby, MP, famously dismissed Hurtig as an "encyclopedia peddler"  Hurtig was publisher of The Canadian Encyclopedia.

The political left in Canada can’t seem to keep its moral imperatives straight.  I put it down to weak-mindedness.

Yesterday, we were treated to the ‘Canada is a cultural salad bowl’ argument, and the moral imperative was for the government to make the salad more diverse faster.  To inspire the world.  What it meant to be Canadian wasn’t answered and is unanswerable, since no one component of a salad is the essence of being a salad.  A salad is a mixture of things, not a single thing.  If there is some domestic Canadian culture, it is merely one component among many, of no more value than any other.  Perhaps even less treasured than any other.

Today, the moral imperative is for the government to protect “our culture” against Americanization, in the NAFTA talks.  What culture would that be?  If “our culture” is a salad, in which every component is of equal value to any other what does it matter if the salad takes on a greater American flavor?  Unless, in the hierarchy of cultures, American culture is ranked even lower than the domestic Canadian one, while all other cultures are ranked higher.  The lowest ranking of American culture in the salad calls for an explanation.

That explanation is found in money.  The benefactors of Canada’s cultural industry stand to lose if American business take over.  Can you imagine if Fox News took over the CBC, it is asked?  One can only dream, and it would be awfully tough for the tired faces presently on CBC.

There is no reconciling the salad bowl idea with protection against adding another component or from one component becoming disproportionate - except through the common idea of the ranking of cultures.  A process yet to be explained.

Mel Hurtig is dead, but his ideas occasionally emerge in spastic fits on the left.

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