At bottom, the case for Canada has always been a moral one. A nation is, before all else, a moral community, a body of people who, though unknown to each other, still care about each other's fate. We never quite manage to extend this concern to humanity at large; the nation is the largest act of empathy of which we are yet capable.

Such a collective state of mind may be hard to sustain, but a workable federation is impossible without it. It is not achieved through gooey profusions of sentiment, but in the institutions of the nation, in the words and deeds of its leaders, in all a habit of discourse that instills in citizens a reflexive sense that they are members of a single self- governing body.

This does not demand that we forswear all narrower allegiances, only that we keep sight of what we have in common. It is not the idea of identity - ethnic, sexual or other - that makes identity politics so crude: it is the insistence on the primacy of one identity above all others. Each of us belongs to many groups. To reduce all these to one is to indulge in an endless game of rock-scissors-paper, as rival claims to identity trump each other in turn.

The liberal idea of the individual is not then, as caricatured, opposed to community. It is the route to its attainment, the common denominator in which is resolved all the many group distinctions that divide us. The individual is the currency of the universal.

Yet for years it has been the fashion to deride this as a simplistic liberalism, ill- fitted to a complex society such as ours. In place of our uniqueness as individuals, or our common humanity, we have become obsessed with the group; disdaining the universal ideals of liberalism, we have embraced the relativistic conceits of particularism: that what is true for one group cannot be true for any other; that every group is an exception to the rule.

Instead of a firm unity of principle, we have leant upon the fragile truces of adhockery, from the notwithstanding clause to special status. Indeed, we have made an exception of the country itself, celebrating our inability to bind ourselves to the ideals that others live by as a virtue - part of our unique identity - rather than a failing.

We see now what all this flexibility has bought us. We have so undermined the moral architecture of the country that when one timber is removed, the whole structure collapses. We try to speak of Canada to Quebec, and find that we are mute: we have cut out our own tongues.

We ask Quebeckers to accept the continued authority of the federal government, even as we are offering to dismantle it. We want them to remain a part of the Canadian nation, yet we concede there is no common national interest that would justify a vigorous federal power.

We beg to make amends for having imposed a constitution on Quebec that was ratified by 72 out of its 75 Members of Parliament. We thus ask Quebeckers to continue sending representatives to a body that we ourselves have just said does not represent them.

We argue points of principle with Mr. Bouchard, when we have long disowned principle as our guide - to the point of mocking the rule of law itself, as it applies to a secession bid - preaching pragmatism and power politics as the only virtues. Having invested our entire nationhood in little more than being different from Americans, we have nothing to say when Quebeckers respond: we're different from you.

We are reduced to the vapid threats of the No side: Vote No or your mortgage will cost more. Or else bribery: Vote No and we will give you more powers. Canada, it seems, is to be prized only for what can be extracted from it.

Let federalists have the courage to put the case for federalism: a real federalism, not this wrung-out rag they now trail before Quebeckers. Let them make the moral argument for Canada, not just the practical. Let them say: It is a better, finer, nobler thing to love Canada - not the land or the people, but the idea - than to seek only the dumb contentment of huddling together with our own kind.

To love Canada is to love something larger than, something other than ourselves. It does not flatter us in our little local identities. It challenges us to transcend them. Against the vulgar communitarianism of identity politics, it stands for a truer brotherhood, rooted neither in homogeneity nor diversity, but humanity: in human rights and humane values. It is the vessel into which we pour our best selves.

We must be bold enough to proclaim the moral grandeur of Canada. If not, we cannot hope to succeed, whatever the referendum may hold.