Editorial

0 JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES 0 Editorial Editor Associate Editor Editorial Board Advisory Board DENIS SMITH BERNARD R. BLISHEN MAURICE J. BOOTE ROBERT D. CHAMBERS LEON DION M. G. HURTIG KENNETH E. KIDD W. L. MORTON PHILIP STRATFORD T. H. B. SYMONS MELVILLE H. WATKINS ANTHONY ADAMSON CLAUDE T. BISSELL DONALD G. CREIGHTON KATHLEEN FENWICK DAVID M. HAYNE JOHN HIRSCH JEAN PALARDY CLAUDE RYAN B. D. SANDWELL RONALD J. THOM REVUE D'ETUDES CANADIENNES Redacteur Redacteur adfoint comite de redaction Comite consultatif Although the crisis of the advanced countries is dominated by the American agony, each of the industrial nations of the West is undergoing essentially the same turmoil of values. Each from its own experience contributes variations on the major theme; each speaks to some degree in its own language of the crisis and the means of overcoming it. After the complacent era of liberal ascendancy and self-confident American leadership that followed the Second World War, we have passed through disillusionment into the present, potentially creative stage of radical reassessment of social philosophy. It is a period of great confusion, in which old and comfortable assumptions and alliances have been broken, and new ones are still unformed. In Canada, where the spectrum of political ideas is wider than in the United States, it seems easier to give philosophic positions their traditional names than it is south of the border. We are engaged in a debate over the alternatives to liberalism, and are still inclined to put these alternatives into the categories of conservatism and socialism. On one side stand the various representatives of the new left, and especially now the Watkins group, speaking very much in the language and tone of the Regina Manifesto; on the other side stands W. L. Morton in his essay in this issue of the Journal, arguing for the possibility and crucial importance of a philosophy of conservatism; in the middle stands George Grant, resigned before the overwhelmJournal of Canadian Studies 1 ing dominance of American liberalism. But when contemporary critics of liberalism are examined in detail, the distinctions between them grow fuzzy, and their respective difficulties are sharpened . The traditional names, used to describe tentatively emerging political stances, can easily promote confusion rather than enlightenment; and yet no other names can easily replace them. The spectrum to which the names once applied seems to have been shattered, and the kaliedoscopic fragments have not yet settled into a fresh and comprehensible pattern. The liberalism which has failed involved a belief in the benevolence of the free market, adjusted by the state only at the margins for the sake of welfare and equity; a belief in free political institutions through which the common good would be defined and protected by a similar market process of political competition, negotiation and compromise; and a consequent overemphasis upon the existence of consumer choice and individual freedom, and underemphasis upon the realities of power and monopolistic control. For a century the failure of liberal politics to live up to its billing has gradually been growing clearer, until now it shouts its inadequacies from below the 49th parallel, and declares them more quietly from within each other liberal nation. Commitment to a fictitious free market and to economic growth justify the maintenance of a vast military industry by the United States and its associate states. Imperial adventures abroad are excused by deceitful appeals to liberal prejudices. Poverty and appalling social inequality until recently have been hidden or explained away in the rhetoric of equal opportunity . The accelerating destruction of the environment has occurred because progress has been measured on the morally neutral scale of the gross national product. Ethnic and racial minorities have been excluded from the mainstream on the liberal assumption that integration (which has often been impossible for them) must be the price of citizenship. Everywhere in the industrial world the liberal position is under attack, and the social elite that 2 was its carrier is more or less gradually being displaced. But the attack is still instinctive, the result of a feeling that solid ground is crumbling beneath us. In this condition of instability there is a sometimes frantic search for philosophic footing. On some practical...