Author: Jon Siemko

Former Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper outlines the thesis of his book Right Here, Right Now.

Let me begin with this: In our contemporary world, there are, as British journalist David Goodhart describes it, those who can live “Anywhere,” and those who live “Somewhere.”Imagine you work for an international bank, computer company, or consulting firm. You can wake up in New York, London, or Singapore and feel at home. Your work is not threatened by import competition or technological dislocation. You vocally support all international trade agreements and high levels of immigration. You are one of those who can live Anywhere. There are a lot of those people. But there are a lot more completely unlike them. Let ’s say you’re a factory worker, a small-businessperson, or in retail sales. Your work has been disrupted by outsourcing, cheap imports and technological change. Your children attend the local schools and your ageing parents live nearby. Your social life is connected to a local church, sports team, or community group. If things go badly at your company, or if policy choices by politicians turn out to be wrong, you can’t just shift your life to somewhere else. Like it or not, you depend on the economic policies of your national or state government. When it doesn’t come through for you, you’re not happy. And when it ignores you entirely, you get angry. It’s easy for Anywhere to dismiss these concerns. But the Anywhere’ faith in global solutions and multi-national political bodies is founded more on fantasy than fact. The fact is, the critical functions of laws and regulations and monetary and fiscal stability, among other things, are provided by nations, not global institutions. The nation, with all its flaws, is a concrete reality. ..