What does it mean to live beside an eroding democracy? As this
powerful and timely book argues, that is the question that will shape
the next generation of Canadian politics.
As a congressional speechwriter in the United States, Rob Goodman
watched firsthand as a rising authoritarian movement disenfranchised
voters, sabotaged institutions, and made a coup thinkable for the first
time in living memory. Now, as a political theorist who makes his home
in Canada, he has an urgent warning for his adopted country: The same
forces that have upended democracy in America and around the world are
on the move in Canada, too. But Canada can protect its democracy by
drawing on a set of political, cultural, and historical resources that
are distinctly of this place.
In Not Here, Goodman outlines four such resources. First, the
rejection of the dangerous idea of one "real" Canadian people. Second,
the refusal of political charisma and founder-worship. Third, a
relatively strong social safety net that empowers neighbours to see one
another as equals. And fourth, Canada's longstanding search for
independence from the great power with which it shares a continent.
Today, that great power is a democracy in decline, and so asserting
differences from the United States matters in this generation in a way
that it has rarely mattered before. Canadian difference is not a
curiosity, a luxury good, or a vanity item: it is a democratic immune
system.
Laying bare the historical roots of contemporary politics, and making an
urgent case for action, Not Here is a roadmap for safeguarding a
democracy under unprecedented threat.
