OP-ED: What loyalty really means in Canada’s time of moral confusion

“In recent years, loyalty has become a suspicious word in Canadian public life. To express attachment to one’s culture, values, or historical narrative is increasingly treated as a moral flaw.”

Author: Dotan Rousso

In recent years, loyalty has become a suspicious word in Canadian public life. To express attachment to one’s culture, values, or historical narrative is increasingly treated as a moral flaw rather than a virtue. We are often told that strong identification with a group signals exclusion or prejudice, as if rootedness itself were a barrier to be overcome. This view is mistaken. It misunderstands something fundamental about what it means to be human.

From an evolutionary perspective, loyalty was never optional. For most of human history, survival depended on belonging to a group and remaining faithful to it. Shared norms, mutual obligation, and collective memory were not abstract ideals; they were the conditions of survival. Group loyalty was not a moral excess; it was the mechanism through which individuals lived. That reality did not disappear with the advent of modern liberal democracies. Identity does not emerge in a vacuum. Language, moral instincts, and traditions are inherited before they are chosen. Acknowledging this does not undermine pluralism; it explains how a stable society becomes possible in the first place.

Yet in times of moral confusion, this basic truth is inverted. Under the banner of progressiveness, Canadians are encouraged to treat strong cultural attachment as morally suspect. Commitment is confused with intolerance, and loyalty is portrayed as a refusal to accept others. This framing is false, and its impact is not merely academic. We see it in the hushed debates over municipal holiday displays and the quiet removal of historical figures from the public square. When we scrub the “particular” to make room for the “universal,” we aren’t creating a more inclusive space; we are creating an empty one. We are asking Canadians to stand on a foundation of air.

Consider the irony of Remembrance Day. On this day, Canadians are encouraged to honor sacrifice, continuity, and national memory as unifying virtues. These rituals are widely understood as dignified. Yet, when similar language of loyalty appears outside officially sanctioned contexts, it is often treated with suspicion. The same society that honors collective memory in one setting condemns it in another. This inconsistency reveals not openness, but a deep confusion about the moral legitimacy of belonging itself.

It is entirely possible to respect others and recognize their legitimacy while remaining deeply committed to one’s own identity. Valuing what is “ours” does not require denying value to “theirs.” These positions are not contradictory; they coexist naturally in any healthy society. A culture that demands people abandon their deepest sources of meaning in the name of openness does not produce moral clarity. It produces fragility and resentment.

Loyalty, properly understood, is a moral commitment. It means holding certain values and traditions as worthy of protection. If a group’s identity is challenged by ideologies that seek to erase or delegitimize it, there is nothing un-Canadian about naming that threat and resisting it. Refusing to do so is not tolerance; it is abdication. To stand firm in one’s identity without apology is an act of responsibility. It means protecting what gives life coherence without pretending that all values are interchangeable.

As many Canadians mark Christmas, this is a moment to reconsider loyalty not as exclusion, but as rootedness. In an age that treats belonging as a liability, we must remember that it remains a foundation of human dignity and the bedrock of a confident, pluralistic Canada.

For comments: dotanrousso@yahoo.com