For far too long, the interests of the “vital centre” of Canadian society have been neglected. The term vital centre, while borrowed from American liberal thought, takes on a much different meaning in social conservative thinking. By vital centre I mean the real social mainstream – those decent, honest and hardworking people of whatever class, religion or ethnic background on whom the real perpetuation of our society rests.
Indeed, Canadians today are having trouble reproducing their society physically, let alone in cultural terms. It could be argued that although the people of the vital centre bear nearly the entire real tax burden of our society, the government consistently channels their tax money towards causes, groups and programs on the social peripheries – which has the result of subverting the education system, making a strong and healthy family life all but impossible, and undermining overall social harmony, continuity and cohesion.
Indeed, if one wanted to, one could look at various social groups that are considered “accredited minorities” today and point out: various degrees of imposture upon mainstream society by their “official” leaderships; the recurrent failure of these self-designated “leaders” to honestly consider the real needs and interests of the groups they are said to represent; and the defining of each group and group-interest in an almost exclusively left-liberal context. In some cases, one would also find group definitions that, socially speaking, are palpably absurd or that have socially destructive implications and effects.
Ironically enough, well-organized leadership groups and multifarious minority coalitions allow left-liberalism to “account for” virtually the entire population through its own left-liberal organizational structures. Thus, a presumptive left-liberal majority is formed out of the “minority” groups. This is, in some ways, remarkably similar in form to the way in which Communist party organizations “accounted for” all the social sectors in the Soviet Union (women, youth, labour, etc.) Similar forms existed also in Nazi Germany, where virtually the entire German population was “accounted for” under the Nazi banner.
When one presumptively forms such an overwhelming, left-liberal-oriented majority in our society (easily 95 per cent of the population), not only is the conservative outlook almost fully delegitimized, but also the only way in which the continuing presence of conservatism in Canadian society can be explained is in terms of corporate-capitalist conspiracies, evil structures and ceaseless repression.
It could be argued that the way most of the media define our perceptions of society and its social groupings and structures is largely artificial, obsessed with often-contrived notions of marginality, victimhood, alienation and oppression. It often does not allow persons to see the impostures which the leadership groups of various minority coalitions place upon society as a whole.
Indeed, it is argued that this media-generated outlook has little to do with the real life of our society, as it is actually and practically lived, and is, therefore, rather unlikely to be able to satisfy many of the real human needs.
The media often fail to recognize that it is the stability of community and family life, and the sense of a shared higher meaning in one’s existence, that most human beings desire. To have a sense of real meaning and continuity in one’s own life, and indeed in the life of the society, is far more important than fulfilling various absolute “rights,” some ridiculous formal or economic quotas or abstracted, purely economic “needs.” Indeed, we are in great need of what the brilliant social critic Philip Rieff has called a “sacred sociology.”
Real social conservatives would wish to try to appeal to the real social centre of our society. Real social conservatives believe that it is possible to build a new majority coalition based on the social mainstream – those decent, honest and hardworking people of whatever class, religion or ethnic background, on whom the real perpetuation of our society rests.
Mark Wegierski, a regular contributor to The Interim, is a Toronto writer and researcher.
