Anthony Koch: The commodification of citizenship and the downfall of western civilization
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Consider what we have normalized. We grant citizenship with barely a civic test, no language requirement worth enforcing and little expectation of loyalty beyond tax compliance. We proudly announce immigration targets in the hundreds of thousands while our housing stock lags, our social cohesion frays and public trust crumbles.
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None of this is an accident. It is the logical conclusion of viewing the country as a company, and its population as a customer base to be expanded endlessly, without regard for the cultural, spiritual or institutional foundations that make collective life possible in the first place.
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And yet, we are told this is 'inclusive,' even 'just.' But inclusion without integration isn't unity — it's fragmentation. Justice without memory isn't fairness — it's erasure.
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You can see this everywhere in the Anglosphere. In Britain, national identity has been reduced to bland civic values and royal pageantry, while the actual fabric of Englishness has eroded.
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In Australia, the conversation has shifted from the Dreaming to 'productivity.' In America, patriotism is either performative or derided, depending on which campus or zip code you inhabit.
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And here in Canada, we have taken the worst lessons of each. We have built a society in which the only shared value is economic growth, and even that is slipping away.
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We speak of reconciliation but have abandoned rootedness. We talk about 'communities' but fear the idea of a common culture. We boast about our diversity while shunning any real attempt at unity.
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When people feel alienated in their own country, we tell them to check their privilege. When they long for identity, we call them intolerant. When they worry about the future of their children, we show them a carefully curated graph with some cold economic figures.
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This is not just a policy failure, it's a moral failure. A country is not an economic zone. It's not a human resources department. It's not a project in demographic engineering. A country is a home, a story, a people. It is a chain of memory binding the living to the dead and to those yet to be born.
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