Politics & Power Quote by Leonard Cohen

Cohen frames belonging as a lease with clauses, not a birthright with confetti. “To every people the land is given on condition” takes the language of scripture and contract law and welds them together, turning national myth into something accountable. It’s not just that land can be lost; it’s that possession is morally contingent, always subject to an audit that no flag can waive.

The key move is the escalation: “beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee.” Cohen isn’t sneering at civic law so much as exposing its limits. Constitutions promise process; sovereigns promise protection. Neither can promise innocence. By placing a “Covenant” above them, he drags the conversation out of courtrooms and into conscience. The subtext feels aimed at settler narratives - Canada, Israel, America - places where the story of “we built a nation” competes with the older story of who was displaced, what was taken, what debts remain unpaid. The Covenant can be “perceived or not,” which is Cohen’s quiet indictment: ignorance doesn’t cancel obligation.

Then comes the line that stings: “beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself.” Nations survive on bedtime stories - exceptionalism, destiny, the tidy arc from hardship to triumph. Cohen suggests those dreams are precisely what the Covenant judges. It’s a songwriter’s warning dressed as prophecy: if a country’s self-image is too sweet to include its harms, the land itself becomes evidence. And the condition, implied but unmistakable, is not piety. It’s justice.