July 19, 1997

- COMMENT -

Silence of the lambs

by Neil Cameron, Special to the Gazette

McGill law professor Julius Grey recently appeared in The Gazette ("Building Bridges," July 16) with a piece on his favourite theme: the need for Quebec anglos to reconcile with nationalist and separatist inclinations in the French-speaking majority. He deserves some praise for consistency and courage, but not for persuasiveness. He begins with a mangled historical argument. From this he draws a mistaken inference, then uses this inference to misinterpret both the causes and nature of militant opposition in the minority population.

He begins by arguing that the historical case for moderation or intransigence depends on the circumstances: "Churchill was, in retrospect, right to attack appeasement; Cold War hawks were wrong to push toward confrontation." The second half of this sentence is a cloud of fog, since Mr. Grey does not make clear what he means either who qualified as "hawks" or "confrontation." The dominant strategy of the American Europeans in the Cold War over several administrations was not confrontation, but containment, through collective security, nuclear weapons and other high-tech armaments, and resistance to Communist expansion. The strategy was actually disliked by many eastern Europeans as excessively "accommodationist." It was bitterly attacked by the left for half a century, with arguments broadly similar to those used by Mr. Grey. It was also, by the Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher era, a success: it was the most important factor in bringing about the fall of a political system that produced even more mass murder and totalitarian tyranny than Nazi Germany.

What is equally significant about this historical example is what it shows about the formation of public opinion and public policy. Cold War hawks ranged from passionate social democrats like George Orwell and Sidney Hook to dim-witted demagogues and fanatics, but most people who supported hard-line Cold War policies were neither. From powerful political leaders to ordinary working stiffs, they were above all men and women determined that they would not make the same mistakes after World War II as those they believed had been made after World War I. Those on the left disliked this current of opinion because they loathed equating the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, with the Third Reich. In some ways, they were right: even hawkish leaders and pundits understood that the political challenges they faced from 1945 to 1990 were quite different from the ones they had faced between 1933 and 1945. But these differences were less significant than the over-all decision to adopt a hard-line political and military stance.

So while Mr. Grey is quite correct that it is ridiculous to compare accommodation in modern Quebec with appeasement in the Hitler era, he is setting up a straw man and missing the point of his own historical argument. The Quebec of the 1990s does not remind most anglos of Nazis. It simply reminds them of the language discrimination and separatism of the 1970s and 1980s, and the response it received from what even Mr. Grey calls the lamb lobby. Countless militant anglos know perfectly well that most of their French-speaking neighbours are largely amiable and tolerant - in many respects more open and fair-minded than plenty of people in the minority population. Mr. Grey is correct in noting that ethnocentrism has been declining here for many years. It is the interventionist state of the last quarter of a century that has been the enduring threat to anglo interests (and for many purposes, francophone interests as well). What has caused many lambs to turn cannibal is their grim recollection of the extent to which this vast nuisance was accepted, and for some purposes even cheered on, by that part of anglo society that liked to identify itself as the great and the good. If legislated language discrimination had led to the collapse of separatism, the lamb chorus could probably have continued to function at full volume, even given the consequences for individual freedom and business prosperity. But the continuing double whammy has led to an inevitable call for roast lamb.

Mr. Grey's one really major policy proposal is that anglos should abandon freedom of choice in education as "practically impossible" and "undesirable at present." If it is, then why shouldn't the Quebec state at least allow anglo schools to accept a share of students in proportion to the present minority population, using a lottery if flooded by applications? If Mr. Grey will push that, and demonstrate some evidence of success, we will all happily drape him in golden fleece.

- Neil Cameron teaches history at John Abbott College and is a former Equality Party MNA.

- Julius H. Grey is a Montreal lawyer and a member of McGill University's faculty of law.

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Please see William Johnson's answer to Julius Grey

Building bridges 97 07 16