Where's Canada?

This video doesn't do what I expected it to do, viz. explain Canada to the Americans. There's nothing in here about the Canadian character, its flaws and virtues. It is a tribute to what a great friend Canada has been to the USA. But that is a valuable message for Canadians, an antidote to their reflexive but far from universal anti-Americanism (though it's mostly in eastern Canada, an Albertan recently told me). As a message to America, its value is simply in reminding Americans that Canada is there and more important to America than they think it is.



NBC broadcast this during the winter Olympics.

Anti-colonial Canadian Past

Dinesh D'Souza has published a brilliant analysis of the President's worldview and political agenda entitled, "How Obama Thinks" (Forbes, September 27, 2010 [yes, it's how magazines date things]). His thesis is that, "the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States"

Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."

Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.


Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"

What came immediately to mind for me upon reading this was...Pierre Trudeau and the Canadian politics of the 1970s. Canada was said to be a "branchplant economy." This anti-colonial view of the world was the governing view in the Liberal Party as well as in the universities, or certainly at the University of Toronto where I attended. Hence, Trudeau gave us our national oil company, PetroCan. "It's ours!," the commercial told us.
Things have changed since then. They had to. The state became far too top heavy to be economically sustainable, and so governments began slashing budgets. (Did it begin under Jean Chretien, of all people, with Paul Martin as finance minister?). It has certainly proceeded apace under Stephen Harper's leadership.

D'Souza (the new president of The King's College, by the way) points out the absurdity of the President of the United States taking this approach to the world, especially in the world as it is developing today.

Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.


But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

At the same time that it published "How Obama Thinks," Forbes.com also published its list of "The Best Countries for Business." Canada is ranked fourth in the world. The United States has slipped to ninth. Canada is not only prospering, but doing so at the expense of its elephantine American neighbor to the south. It is doing this not by protective state control of the economy, but by the same free enterprise that (among many other factors historical and geographical) gave America its competitive edge. The North American Free Trade Agreement helped. It also helps that there is now an anti-colonialist in the White House hamstringing Canada's competition.

Dominion Day Forever

To all my friends in the Great White North, happy Dominion Day. (American friends, "white," here, refers to snow. Don't get upset.)

Canadian Flag, the Red Ensign, 1957-1965

On October 27, 1982, Parliament changed what I grew up celebrating as Dominion Day to "Canada Day." Liberals peddled the idea that "dominion" suggested "under the dominion of Great Britain." But it was nothing of the sort. Canada became what was called in the British Empire a dominion on July 1, 1867. It meant a self governing nation under Her Majesty's rule.

I have always viewed the name Canada Day with disdain. It is completely unimaginative. It has no content. It doesn't instruct the citizen in any way. I suspect that was the point. Celebrate Canada, giving that word whatever meaning you choose. That actually summarizes what the country has become in the last 40 years.

If the word "dominion" was just too utterly intolerable, they might have called it Confederation Day. That, after all, is what the day was always called in French Canada. It has historical reference, reminding the country of the great drama of how the country came together. It directs people to learn about the Fathers of Confederation, like Sir John A. Macdonald, their virtues and their statesmanship.

A CBC webpage reports that the bill changing the name of the day was passed by means of questionable legality. "Aside from its controversial content, the bill drew criticism over the manner in which it was passed in the House of Commons. It was voted through in five minutes with no debate, by the scant dozen members in attendance." The constitution at the time, the British North America Act of 1867 (which, in an Orwellian move, they have retroactively renamed the Constitution Act of 1867) required a quorum of 20 for Parliament to act.

Though I am now an American citizen, Canada is still my heritage, and July 1 will always be Dominion Day to me.

Patriotism and Sports Pride

It was a strange providence that the Lord timed my oath of citizenship to coincide with the Vancouver Winter Olympics and, at the end of that, the great hockey showdown between my new country and the old country. It stirred up some surprising sentiments.

What was also suprising was that my Yankee wife "supported" the Canadian team for the gold medal, even though she is fiercely patriotic. She caught some jesting grief for this from a friend or two. The next day, a student confronted me over where my heart lay in the contest with Canada, making it clear to me before I answered that this was the litmus test for the sincerity of my solemn affirmations at the naturalization ceremony. So the two of us gave some thought to the relationship between patriotism and internation sports competition.

Here is part of my WORLDmag.com essay that came of it:

I have suffered a few aspersions because, though I am now an American citizen, I nonetheless felt an affinity for the Canadian Olympic hockey team, and even thought it was right that they should win the gold medal. Someone went so far as to suggest that the direction of my allegiance in this contest was the test of my fidelity to the oath of citizenship I took. But patriotism, the healthy love of one’s country, has nothing to do with international sports.

...[I]f a patriot is one who loves his country and seeks what is best for her, then he may withhold his cheers for an unworthy national team, and even direct his cheers elsewhere if he thinks his country’s victory in that case would be bad for the national character. So why turn against the U.S. hockey team?

...An Olympic gold for the United States in hockey would have encouraged a belief in manifest destiny that does not bring out the best in this exceptional people to whom, on firmly held principle, I have chosen to join myself.

Read the whole provocative thing: "Patriotism is not Boosterism."

Canadian Winter Olympic Warmth

This is touching. I don't doubt a word of it. Brian Williams of NBC found that his Canadian hosts were really nice. And he's been around! The other side of it is that he writes as though this is his first experience in this English-speaking country of 35 million people immediately to the north of the United States, and America's biggest trading partner.

After tonight's broadcast and after looting our hotel mini-bars, we're going to try to brave the blizzard and fly east to home and hearth, and to do laundry well into next week. Before we leave this thoroughly polite country, the polite thing to do is leave behind a thank-you note.

Thank you, Canada: For being such good hosts. For your unfailing courtesy. For your (mostly) beautiful weather. For scheduling no more than 60 percent of your float plane departures at the exact moment when I was trying to say something on television. For not seeming to mind the occasional (or constant) good-natured mimicry of your accents. For your unique TV commercials -- for companies like Tim Hortons -- which made us laugh and cry. For securing this massive event without choking security, and without publicly displaying a single automatic weapon. For having the best garment design and logo-wear of the games -- you've made wearing your name a cool thing to do. For the sportsmanship we saw most of your athletes display. For not honking your horns. I didn't hear one car horn in 15 days -- which also means none of my fellow New Yorkers rented cars while visiting. For making us aware of how many of you have been watching NBC all these years. For having the good taste to have an anchorman named Brian Williams on your CTV network, who turns out to be such a nice guy. For the body scans at the airport which make pat-downs and cavity searches unnecessary. For designing those really cool LED Olympic rings in the harbor, which turned to gold when your athletes won one. For always saying nice things about the United States...when you know we're listening. For sharing Joannie Rochette with us. For reminding some of us we used to be a more civil society. Mostly, for welcoming the world with such ease and making lasting friends with all of us. 

Taken from "Brian Williams: Leaving Behind a Thank-you Note."

Hockey and Natural Law

Canada beat Russia 7-3 in Olympic hockey. The natural order is affirmed. After beating Slovakia (should that be too difficult?), they will go on to play (it is safe to assume) the USA for the gold medals.

We Americans seem to master everything we touch (sadly, that doesn't include me). But Americans, as far as I can tell, have little interest in hockey. We have three big sports: baseball, basketball, and football. Around here, I don't see any excitement for the New York Rangers. Yet there we are in Vancouver at the top of the game, besting and rivaling those who give it all their national attention. Granted, many on the team play in the NHL. (That's the commercialization of the Olympics. I was inevitable.) But how do we get so many Americans who are good enough for NHL competition, unless they are Canadians who have adopted American citizenship?

Canadians do nothing but play hockey and wonder why Americans aren't socialists. They lose at politics, but they should win at hockey.

Becoming an American Citizen

After living in this country for twenty-five years, I have finally become an American citizen. It has been a long journey and I am happy to have finally landed. But the journey has been a complex one, not just administratively, but psychologically and intellectually. Your country is more than just where you live, and a legal relationship to a government. It's tied closely to who you are, more closely than you realize until you leave it.

For many of my years of alien wandering I was on various non-immigrant visas: student visas, temporary work visas, a religious worker visa. It was only once I married an American (a woman I would have married even if doing so would have forever barred me from citizenship) that I was able to get an internationally coveted “green card” three years later. After 9/11, many ex-pat Canadians applied for citizenship. The events of that day moved them to step forward and embrace what they suddenly could see was precious them, and yet which they were taking for granted. ABC anchor Peter Jennings and White House speech writer David Frum were two of these. As for me, my green card was still in process when the twin towers fell. Three months later, I was sitting in the INS waiting room in Des Moines waiting for my green card interview. The TV monitor was screening the newly released video of Osama bin Laden rejoicing as he watched his hellish plans unfold on television. As he was striking a stinging blow against this country, I was deepening in my commitment to it, legally and emotionally.

My affection and high respect for America went much further back than 9/11, back to my first entry into the country in 1985. Though originally I came here not to stay but for doctoral studies in political philosophy, I was aware from the start that this was no ordinary country. I remember arriving in Boston, riding the T along Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton, thinking, “Wow. This is where it all happened. These are the people who transformed the world.” Occasionally, an American classmate would ask me why a Canadian would want to study American government. I would ask them in turn why a Gaul would want to study politics in Rome, or a why a Dane would cross the channel to study British government. The United States is one of the great civilizations of the world, and is the great guarantor and hope of liberty in the world, over against the constant encroachment of tyranny (Iran, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, etc). I have always appreciated this, even as an undergraduate in Toronto.

A Canadian's migration south to America is only partly a matter of border crossing. Despite the similarity of the two countries, leaving the one for the other with full-hearted commitment requires several significant changes of orientation.

A wake up moment came in perhaps 1994 when I was returning to the States after a Christmas or summer visit with my parents. At this point, I had my Ph.D. and was teaching at a college south of Boston. The border guard asked me the usual question: "Where do you live?" I puzzled, and explained my Canadian address--Ottawa, where my parents lived--and my Massachusetts job and address. (As a Canadian, I must have an address in Canada, right?) He matter-of-factly responded that people usually "live" where they work. I was quite struck by that. I thought, "Oh my! It's true. I live in the United States. I don't live in Canada anymore. The United States is my home." I realized that I was no longer a Canadian who was doing stuff in the United States. I was functioning like an American who occasionally visited family in Canada. That is a jarring realization.

I also found that I was thinking less and less like a Canadian. When I first arrived at Boston College for graduate studies, I did not believe in rights, or at least not with an American-style fixation on their fundamental importance. I certainly saw no grounds for gun rights. It's hard to find a Canadian who does. And even property rights I thought should be suspended if the government believes the public good requires it. I slowly came around, however. It was my study of the American founding and of philosophers like John Locke that convinced me. I saw that the principles on which America is founded support liberty and human dignity. I came eventually even to see how Christian those principles are, and that they are not just pleasing, but also true.

Despite my deeply patriotic, spirit of '76, immigrant's love for this country, there is a Canadian heritage in me that is unshakable and good, and not just the way I say "out" and "about." There's my old world conservative temperament, and my reflexive disposition to obey rules. If more people had both of those qualities it would be a better world (I humbly suggest). And of course, like all Canadians, I'm nice. There is a sense in which I will always be Canadian in the same way that Mel Gibson will always be Australian. As a friend in high school told me when I was going through an infatuation with all things Greek, "You can't change your ethnic origin." It sort of applies. The Canadian marrow in my bones is a tie to Canada that will never loosen, much less break, and of course I am very happy with that too.

Hello Canadian State Run Inefficiency

So we're closer to health care reform. When the Democrats secured the sixtieth vote to support the bill that they jiggered together, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) proclaimed, "We stand ready to pass a bill into law that finally makes quality health care a right for every America, not a privilege."

Where we stand is several steps closer to Canada. What does that mean? Here is a Canadian television report on Lyme disease. Sufferers come to America where "they know what they're doing." Watch both segments (12 and 7 minutes). It is stunning how bad things can be in a state run health system. Perhaps it is not so stunning.

David Leggett, in Part II, is an old friend of mine. Here is the account from the print story of his plight with Canadian doctors.

David Leggett used to love the outdoors. He was a healthy, active, family man who enjoyed camping trips with his wife and two daughters. His job as a high school principal came with a long summer vacation -- the perfect time to enjoy Canada's vast stretches of wilderness.

That all changed in July 2004, after camping in a provincial park near Sudbury, Ont. "We were out hiking and then one day I couldn't hike anymore and my knee ballooned up. I felt really, really strange. I had no energy," Leggett recalled.

By October, Leggett was too ill to work. After doing some research on his own he suspected he might have Lyme disease -- but his doctors told him that was impossible because it was too rare in Ontario and it didn't exist where he had been camping. They were wrong.

These days Leggett spends his time lying in bed, unable to get up to eat or even bathe himself. Most of his Canadian doctors continue to insist he is not suffering from Lyme disease, even though a blood test from an American lab came back positive for Lyme.

When a service becomes a "right," instead of a "good," and as a consequence becomes a service of the government rather than a provision of the private economy, you can expect its management to be politicized, its consumers to be impoverished, and its development to be stunted. But you can expect misery of one sort or another to follow when you use something for a purpose other than God's design for it. God instituted government to punish evil and praise what is good (I Peter 2:14), not as the instrument to provide all manner of human goods from schooling and health care to opera companies and baseball stadiums.

Truly historic health care reform would free up the present monstrous system, so that it is not tied to employers but carried by individuals, purchasable with pre-tax income, and open for purchase across state lines. Go would see greater innovation, not less as you will see under anything that the Democrats pass. American citizens would be more in control of this important aspect of their well-being, not less.

here is Mr. Leggett's blog where he discusses the lyme disease problem in Canada. He writes, "Personally, I have a number of friends who are medical doctors. They care very much about all of their patients, including those that they might suspect of having lyme disease. The problem is systemic. Even if a doctor really wants to do everything possible to help a patient who is exhibiting early symptoms of lyme disease, the tests aren’t accurate, an eager medical response often brings an investigation from the provincial college of physicians and surgeons, and the general medical support infrastructure isn’t conducive to an informed and timely response."

Memorial Day: To Mark Their Place

This is the great poem I learned as a boy each Remembrance Day in Canada. I reproduce it here for Memorial Day.

Second Battle of Ypres, 1915

 

In Flanders Field
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Memories of Canada

Another Dominion Day has come and gone. It is what foolish people tell us we should now call "Canada Day." The folks at The New York Times who wish that Canada would absorb America, and not the reverse, featured statements on their op-ed page from eleven Canadians on what they miss about their country ("Our True North"). Most of it is grumping about America by politically leftist Canadian expats.

Rick Moranis simply despises everything associated with whatever remains of British North America.

David Rakoff, an author, misses all the free stuff from the government. Perhaps I misread him. Perhaps it’s the moral superiority of having a government that treats its citizens like men who still live at home, and whose mothers still cook and clean for them. The generous welfare state. Other than that, he misses a particular mint that you can’t get here. A great nation indeed.

Sarah McNally, a bookstore owner, misses Canadian literature (which of course she can read in the United States). She says there is a national conversation in CanLit that you don’t see in American lit. But that's because Americans know who they are. Canadians are constantly in anguish about their identity. But if you reject your founding principle, i.e. British North America as a unique and noble project, an interminable identity crisis is sure to follow. It is interesting that, despite the superior worth of this literature and its importance to Canadians as a people (supposedly), she says that it “probably wouldn’t exist without government support.” What does that indicate about the sustainability, or even the reality, of Canada as one people? All the same, the government tells Canadians who they are supposed to be and what they’re supposed to like. I don’t miss that.

In a likely unintended political faux pas, Lisa Naftolin, a creative director, expresses her fondness for a Britishism, the “u” in color. She likely understands holding onto that "u" as an act of defying American cultural imperialism. What she doesn't see is that for the last fifty years and into the foreseeable future, Canada has three, and only three, models from which to choose for its identity: America North, British North America, or post-modern Euro-North America. Led by its left-wing intellectuals, Canada has chosen the Euro-model, and so is following (though not mirroring) Europe in its economic, moral, spiritual, and demographic problems.

Musician Melissa Auf der Maur, after mentioning cheese and pâté, recalls fondly the Canadian cultural mosaic in contrast to the evil American melting pot. The concept of the cultural mosaic as a national virtue was invented by the Trudeau government as a way of defusing the French-English conflict. In the 1970s, my high school taught us this like a catechism. They told us that we are not two nations, but a blend of many nations. As result, however, we became no nation. Americans are more of a melting pot because they have noble and ennobling principles worthy of embracing: political, economic, and religious liberty. It has nothing to do with ethnic food, traditional clothing, and folk music all of which people are free to cultivate and, much to everyone's enjoyment, they do.

Sean Cullen, a comedian, misses hockey highlights, “the height of civilization.” It is said that Canadian culture can be summarized in two words: hockey and beer. Perhaps an overstatement.

Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker (I should have known that a man named Malcolm could not have been born in the U.S.A.) misses the “true” account of the American regime and it’s founding history. According to this view, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and John Adams were just “ungrateful tax cheats.” The revolution had nothing to do with the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence. Isn't it strange that such a hoax could produce such an energetic and world-transforming nation?

Kim Cattrall’s career as an actress is finished. All she did was remember childhood games on beached logs, and failed to make any political point about global warming, acid rain, American economic imperialism, or anything like that.

Tim Long, a writer for “The Simpsons,” misses Canadian snow, but he has to throw in a jab at American health care (which people travel from around the world to use, by the way). In the end, he has one of the best reflections.

When I was a child, it wasn’t unusual for my 15-minute walk home from school to begin under clear skies and end in a blizzard. I remember once, when I was 8 years old, stumbling into my house, my hair covered in powder and my eyelashes frozen together, and screaming, “Why do we live here?!” My mother took my face in her warm hands and said, “Because it’s where people love you.”

Bruce McCall, a writer and illustrator, and A.C. Newman, a musician, miss certain foods. For Newman, it is Dai Ching bean curd or bean sprout chow mein, unobtainable in their familiar perfection outside Vancouver. McCall misses the Coffee Crisp chocolate bar, and he supplies a delightful appreciation and history of the confection. These are honest men. Aside from friends and family and particular terrains, food is what people really miss from their homelands. The rest is mostly political trumpeting, which in this article is all from the left.

I see my family from time to time. My friends have grown up, become family men, and set off on divergent paths. The familiar places have all changed. Toronto's downtown is more crowded, and the University Theatre where I worked as a blue-jacketed boy is gone. Georgetown isn't 1971 anymore. There's no going back.

But I miss Toronto fish and chips. Tender, flaky Halibut encased in thick, crisp, golden batter. Greasy, floppy fries. Also fresh, baked Whitefish from Lake Huron. Yum. Heaven, though its glory and chief delight is Christ himself, is nonetheless described as a banquet. I pray that the feast involves these Canadian delicacies.

But as for this world, with eyes turned now toward the fourth of July, I am grateful to be in the land of liberty and I would not have it any other way.

Your Children Will Arise and Turn You In

In an earlier post, "Life Under the Regime of Science," I shared this MasterCard "Priceless" ad to which Jonah Goldberg in The National Review drew my attention. It features a child instructing his father in how to shop in an environmentally responsible way. But the father is not asking for the advice. The cute child is presented as wiser than his young, unshaven, slightly goofy looking father who we are supposed to believe is clueless and careless. "Making dad a better man: priceless."



A reader in Ottawa, Canada, alerts us to a similar ad that was aired in our neighboring country to the north where individual liberty is viewed as a dangerous notion among those who think only politically pure thoughts.



Mr. Glennie shared these insights:

In Canada here, there are `public service announcements' that feature the `scientist' / TV host / environmental nut David Suzuki.

In this spot, Suzuki is seen sitting (in a treehouse, apparently in the middle of the night) with a group of children, who are letting him know how they are `reducing their carbon footprint.'

Then, one of the children whispers to Dear (Leader) David: `Jimmy's parents don't believe in conserving...'

Beyond the obvious question as to why a 70-year-old man would be in a treehouse at night with a group of children unrelated to him, it shows the totalitarian mindset behind present-day `environmentalism'.

After all, the lad isn't informing on "his own" parents, but those of someone else.

It is startling that neither Suzuki, the producers of the spot, nor yet the energy company that subsidizes the production cost, would have stopped to think about these things.

There is an interesting little detail they throw in. When one of the children addresses him respectfully as Dr. Suzuki, he interrupts and insists that she call him "David," and then the conversation continues. Why would Powerwise* take this extra step in undermining adult authority among children? (This "Call me David; Mr. Suzuki is my father" attitude is common enough as it is.)

*According to their website, powerWISE is funded by the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, Ontario Power Authority and local distribution companies.

Coup d'Etat in Canada

 

Because no one in America reports on what is happening in Canadian government (perhaps because it is not wise to know much about our number one trading partner, the vast nation immediately to our north), I take up the responsibility myself. This account comes from a friend in Ottawa (look it up on a map).

At first, it seemed to me that what the opposition was doing was perfectly democratic. No one has a parliamentary majority, and as long as the province of Quebec keeps electing MPs from the separatist Bloc Quebecois, it is unlikely anyone ever will. So whoever can form a majority coalition runs the government. If the Grits (Liberals) can duct tape something together, they are entitled to do that.

But this Canadian correspondent (whose identity I am concealing so as not to expose him or her to charges of thoughtcrime) explains how it is not that simple.

*************

I don't know how much news you have had of what has transpired in Canada. It would appear that we have a reprieve for a few weeks and perhaps common sense will yet prevail, by the Lord's grace.

We had a general election in mid-October, the results of which were 143 Conservatives, 76 Liberals, 37 New Democrats, 50 Bloc Quebecois, and 2 independents elected to a 308-seat House of Commons. The previous results in 2006 were 124 Conservatives, 103 Liberals, 29 NDP, 51 Bloc Quebecois, and 1 independent. Clearly the results showed an increase in support for the Conservatives, a decrease in support for the Liberals (who received the lowest percentage of the popular vote ever accorded the Liberal party since Confederation, at just over 26 percent), and unchanged numbers for the Bloc.

The Conservative government, under Stephen Harper, won by all accounts an increased mandate. The Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, announced his resignation within a week of the results, indicating that he would stay on until a leadership convention (previously scheduled as a leadership review, slated for May, 2009) were held. The new government was sworn in and had been back at work in Parliament only a week or so when an interim economic statement was tabled by the Finance Minister, which among other things proposed elimination of the subsidy (of $1.95 per vote received) to the political parties for funding. This was a measure introduced by former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien when he abolished corporate funding for political parties and limited individual contributions to $1,000. The results of Mr. Chretien's reform have been dramatic: the Conservative Party has done well, because it has a relatively large grass-roots network of supporters who give small donations. The Liberals and NDP have been heavily in debt because they lack the grassroots network to make up the formerly large corporate or union contributions. The Bloc Quebecois have been heavily dependent on the government's funding.

The backlash against this relatively minor (30 million dollars in total) cut to spending was immediate and galvanised the opposition parties to announce the formulation of a coalition (apparently previous conceived) aimed at defeating the government and forming a new coalition government with a signed "agreement" between the Liberals and the NDP to work as a coalition until June, 2011, terms to include installing none other than Stephane Dion as PM (until May 2, 2009 when he pledges to step down in favour of a yet-to-be-elected Liberal leader) with the NDP to have six of 24 cabinet seats, and a side-bar signed agreement with the Bloc Quebecois to support the coalition until June, 2010. Notice that the combined seats for the two parties in the coalition are 113 (76 Liberals and 37 NDP), some 30 fewer than the Conservatives. Further, note that it is only with the support of the Bloc Quebecois (a party whose raison d'etre is to work to enable Quebec to secede from Canada) that such coalition would be able to govern. All of this is under the guise of providing economic leadership for the country in troubled times (understood to mean opening the gates of government spending, deficit spending, to try to stave off or buy the way out of a recession). This is all in the face of an increased mandate given to the first economist to be elected as Prime Minister and whose approach has been to seek to maintain balanced budgets while reducing taxes to stimulate the economy, and with the result that of the major industrial nations Canada ranks first in fiscal health.

Now we are not without our problems, but it is telling that the latest poll says 60 percent of the population agrees with the planned elimination of the subsidy for political parties, even though the Prime Minister announced he would withdraw this proposal in the face of the opposition's opposition.

The non-confidence vote proposed was worded in such a way as to state categorically that the House lacks confidence in the government and that a new government-in-waiting would command the confidence of the House. The motion was due for debate and vote on December 8th. Yesterday, the Governor General acceded to the request of the Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament until late January, (thus avoiding the vote), and the Prime Minister has invited the opposition parties to submit suggestions for consideration by the government in the formulation of the 2009 fiscal budget, due to be tabled the day after Parliament resumes.

Demonstrations are planned on both sides for various cities across the land, several for tomorrow. What comes of this is known only to the Lord. The waste of time and energy which otherwise could and should have been devoted to careful governance and consideration of prudent measures in the face of worldwide economic challenges is colossal and inexcusable.

Where one is astonished and where the notion of a coup surfaces is in the grab for power by a coalition which is comprised of two parties who together saw their total number of seats drop from 132 (103 Liberals and 29 NDP) to 113 (76 Liberals and 37 NDP) and who have the audacity to propose a coalition headed by a leader who led his party through an election which resulted in the lowest-ever support for that party in the history of the country, who has promised to step down in less than six months, and yet who wants to commit the government of the country to a yet-to-be-elected leader, beholden to the support of the party devoted to the break-up of the country throughout the term of the proposed "government". The sane and sanctified mind has difficulty taking this all in and more difficulty in finding words to express what it thinks of such foolishness.

Post Election Liberal Refugees

Here are two funny political videos for your weekend enjoyment.

If John McCain somehow wins in November, American liberals really need to make good on their promises and move north to Canada which I understand will admit anyone. Such a migration would serve two enlightened purposes. In view of Stephen Harper's recent electoral victory up there, this "surge" could prevent Canada from becoming a haven for the Conservative Party on our northern frontier. In addition, correct thinking people could more easily prosecute Mark Steyn for his thoughtcrimes.



Here are the two candidates for president yucking it up at the 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith fundraising dinner for Catholic charities.



It is a testimony to all the nations of the earth that the two men who are vying for the American presidency, the most powerful office in the world, get together every four years in this spirit just a few weeks before the election. It's because of who we are. Citizens would do well to study what that is, how we came to be this way, and what is required for preserving that character.

Milk Bag Culture

Canada and the United States are English speaking neighboring countries in North America with British roots. The differences between the two countries can be comparable to differences within the United States, say between Wyoming and Oregon or even between Vermont and New Hampshire.

Nonetheless, there are huge differences, for example the significant differences in political culture (see, for example, "Steyn's ThoughtCrime in Canada"). But the minor differences are intriguing. Canadians use electric kettles. Americans prefer to put their kettles on the stove top. The closest you get to a plug-in kettle in America are little "hot pots" for the office where there is no stove.

Perhaps even more interesting is the Canadian use of bagged milk. I have found little reliable information on this practice (on the internet; it has not been worth my time to visit the library on this matter, but I welcome any informative comments). I have these questions: When were they introduced? Why were they introduced? Who introduced them? Why have they never caught on in the United States?

When I was a child in Georgetown, Ontario, and later in the eastern suburbs of Toronto, we would get our milk in heavy plastic, refillable one gallon jugs. We would pay a deposit on the jug and return it in exchange for the next gallon. The dairy would sterilize and re-use them. The advantage of the plastic was not that it was disposable, but that it unbreakable in normal use.

It was perhaps in the later 1970s that plastic milk bags were introduced. These are tall, lightweight, clear plastic bags that hold about 1 litre of milk. You slip it into a plastic jug and snip off the corner of the bag that is opposite the handle. The bags come in larger bags of three.

When I was in elementary school, we used to bring our books to school in the larger outer milk bags. We weren't poor. That's just what we did. Mothers would use the milk bags themselves (there is an awkward ambiguity in this phrase "milk bag") as storage bags for freezing. They would just cut off the tops, wash them out, and use a twist tie to seal them up.

It was not as if one company introduced this packaging, consumers latched on to it, and other companies followed suit with it. It all happened at once. Milk production in Canada is overseen by the Canadian Dairy Commission, established in 1966. "Canada adopted the system of supply management for industrial milk in the early 1970s.This system was established to address the unstable markets, uncertain supplies and highly variable producer and processor revenues that were common in the 1950s and 1960s." It's a little bit of Soviet efficiency in the midst of a capitalist economy.

It could not have been this government agency that co-ordinated the introduction of bagged milk however because the bags are not found in every part of Canada. Prior to the national agency, Ontario established a Milk Marketing Board which continues to regulate production, distribution and pricing. "In 1960, Ontario milk producer organizations were fragmented and lacked unity in purpose. Their bargaining position in the marketplace was very weak. Returns to the vast majority of milk producers for labour, management and investment were inadequate and there were numerous inequities and inefficiencies in the milk marketing system. Because of this chaos, the Ontario government commissioned a study in 1963 to determine how to solve what appeared to be an ever increasing problem." This "chaos" is otherwise known as the free market. Nonetheless, the OMMB was established in 1965. I don't know what the relationship is between the the CDC and the OMMB. But the Canadian approach is: "When in doubt, add another layer of government supervision." Otherwise, you might have "chaos" which leads to "inequity."

The introduction of bags could not have been for environmental reasons (or, as we would have said at the time, to reduce pollution). It was almost certainly to reduce packaging and distribution costs. The bags are lighter to ship and because they are disposable there are no retrieval and sterilization costs. From an environmental standpoint, Canadians toss less plastic than Americans do when they crush down and toss those light plastic jugs. The jugs can be recycled--though not always are, and the recycling itself burns fuel--but the bags can also be recycled as well as used for other purposes.

When I was living in Iowa for several years, a gas station food mart in Independence was promoting milk in bags and giving away the jugs, but it never caught on.

The other night, I saw some sort of twenty-fourth anniversary of the McKenzie Brothers'--billed as a Doug and Bob 2-4. They were touted as the internationally recognized emblem of Canadian culture. Even former Prime Minister Paul Martin was involved as host of the production. It was entertaining, but embarrassing and pitiful. After 140 years of confederation, that is the best we can do? I think that bagged milk tells us more about Canadians.

Armed, Polite, and Free

"An armed society is a polite society," as the saying goes. Of course, it's an American saying. Rasmussen tells us that after the Supreme Court upheld citizens' second amendment right to bear arms--hand guns in particular--that branch of government rose eight percentage points in popularity with the American people.

We continue to befuddle foreigners, even Canadians, our neighbors to the north who are becoming more foreign in their political culture all the time. Read Colby Cosh's description of Justice Scalia's defense of the right to own handguns--not just a reluctantly legal defense, but vigorously moral one--and how perplexing it is to Canadians ("In America, a Man's Home is Still His Castle").

While we're on the subject, it seems that love for individual liberty is doing very poorly in Great Britain, the land of its birth, so the Economist reports. Of course there are all those closed circuit cameras not only all over London but in many town centers.

Vast computerised collections of information have become popular too. Britain possesses one of the largest police DNA databases in the world, containing the records of over 4m of 60m citizens (including a third of the black men in the country). Records are kept for everyone who is arrested, meaning that many on the system have never actually been charged with any crime. The government's identity-card scheme, the first phase of which is due to start later this year, aims to record the fingerprints and biographical details of everyone in the land.

And of course parents cannot be trusted to govern and nurture their children.

Other big databases are justified on grounds of administrative convenience rather than crime-fighting and security. One such is a plan to centralise the records of all patients of the National Health Service. Another would allow social services to monitor every child in the country, including how parents spend their money and how many portions of fruit and vegetables they feed their offspring each day.

But if it saves even one child from escaping salad, isn't it worth it?

We can also learn from Canadian mistakes. My associate at Principalities and Powers, Harold Kildow, alerts us to Mark Steyn's recent difficulties with Canadian Star Chambers creeping into this country: "Beware my friends--there are many Democrats in Congress and abroad in the land who would like a way to threaten their opponents like the Canadians do--via kangaroo courts of various devisings. The imminent return, for example, of the "Fairness Doctrine", driven by Komissar Pelosi, is a step in that direction. But note well, it is only a first step. David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen ("The Resistance Must Continue") surveys the swamp Canadians have been force marched into--the one we will be looking at if we don't watch out."

Oh, by the way, happy Dominion Day up there!

The Shadow Descending Across Canada

In case any Canadian readers missed the little note of invitation that I added to the previous post as an afterthought, I reproduce it here. (You can follow up on the petition pictured above at steynian.wordpress.com.)

I said: Canadian readers, I want to hear from you. Let me know what you are reading on this, what you are hearing from the people around you (especially from the right thinking ones), and what you make of it yourself. Pass this along to a friend.

By the way, how much reflection is there upon the words of the national anthem in this context? What does "free" mean? Does it just mean "not American" and "no longer British?" What does it mean to "stand on guard?" Is it anything more than being ready to render service in the military if called upon to do so? Is vigilance over this violation of free speech recognized by anything more than a fringe minority as "true patriot love?"

If Steyn loses, then Canada is as "free" as East Germany was "democratic" and a "republic." The noble and free spirits north of the border will need to start advocating regional separation. Start in the west. If you remain stuck to Ontario, you'll be dragged into the darkness which Canadians seem philosophically and religiously helpless to oppose.

In 1965, George Grant published his Lament for a Nation. He didn't know the half of it.

Follow the "Mark Steyn" label beneath this post for other Steyn related posts.

Steyn's Thoughtcrime in Canada

For many years now, I have been telling Americans why I prefer to remain in the United States and breathe the atmosphere of freedom. In America, there is a battle raging between, on one side, the defenders of the Founders' understanding of liberty that is bequeathed to us in our Constitution and, on the other side, advocates of post-modern, progressive statism. But in Canada, there is only the political correctness of the left, and everything else is thoughtcrime.

We are seeing the truth of this claim played out in the Star Chambers of the British Columbia and Canadian Human Rights Commissions where columnist Mark Steyn is on trial for "hate crimes." Read Rich Lowry's "Mark Steyn: Enemy of the State?"

The Canadian Islamic Congress took offense at an excerpt in Maclean's magazine, the premiere Canadian news magazine, from Steyn's book America Alone. ("The Future Belongs to Islam.")

"Canada's Human Rights Act defines hate speech as speech 'likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.' The language is so capacious and vague that to be accused is tantamount to being found guilty." Truth is no defense.

"The national commission has never found anyone innocent in 31 years."

One of the principal investigators of the Canadian Human Rights Commission said, "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

Tony Blankley mentions the Steyn case in the course of discussing the Muslim assault on liberty in "Rising Euro-Muslim Tensions."

But radicalized Islam places little value on the individual, while holding up for supreme value the interests of the group, particularly their view of the group called Islam. And it is this aggressive, assertive insistence by radicalized Muslims in the West to subordinate our inherent rights to their collective demands that slowly and more or less quietly is forcing Westerners to take sides in the radicals' demands.

Americans are fighting and dying to establish liberty in the Middle East, and yet this sort of thing is going on in the country immediately to our north.

And on this side of the border, not all is well. In his column, "Political Viagra," Steyn reflects on what Barack Obama recently said are his hopes for America after he is elected. "My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it." Of course, if America is the greatest nation in the world, why would you change it? Never mind. Steyn's concern is this: "Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the western world remade itself along the lines Senator Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go...."

As a fellow Canadian immigrant to this land of liberty, I share that position, and I lament for my nation.

P.S. - Canadian readers, I want to hear from you. Let me know what you are reading on this, what you are hearing from the people around you (especially from the right thinking ones), and what you make of it yourself. Pass this along to a friend.

Appendix:

"Hearings An Embarrassment for Democracy" by Paul Schneidereit (The Chronicle Herald, Nova Scotia): "...nearly six months after Steyn’s article appeared and after they had published 27 letters to the editor in response, many opposed to Steyn’s point of view, they still agreed to meet Awan (law school student Khurrum Awan) and his group to see if they could accommodate their demand for space for another rebuttal. That went nowhere, the magazine said, when the group demanded total control over the editorial content, cover art and a donation to an Islamic charity. (Awan told the hearing last week he had $10,000 in mind)."

"Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech," New York Times, June 12, 2008 - Of course, this article just takes the Steyn case as a jumping off point for Americans talking about themselves. Americans are NEVER interested in what's happening in Canada.

Canada Strong and Free only in Song

Americans generally have no clue what is happening north of the Canada-US border, and have only the vaguest sense of who is up there. For their own part, Canadians are always in existential angst over their identity (unless they are in French Canada or the Maritimes). Thus for both Canadians and Americans, Mark Steyn's Free Market Forum lecture on September 29, 2007 at Hillsdale College is helpful. The title, "Is Canada's Economy a Model for America?," sounds dull but the lecture insightfully identifies who these adjacent yet very different peoples are, their relationship to one another and the separate directions they are headed.

Rhetorically, the lecture is a gem. Consider his inviting introduction:

I was a bit stunned to be asked to speak on the Canadian economy. “What happened?” I wondered. “Did the guy who was going to talk about the Belgian economy cancel?” It is a Saturday night, and the Oak Ridge Boys are playing the Hillsdale County Fair. Being from Canada myself, I am, as the President likes to say, one of those immigrants doing the jobs Americans won’t do. And if giving a talk on the Canadian economy on a Saturday night when the Oak Ridge Boys are in town isn’t one of the jobs Americans won’t do, I don’t know what is.

Through the Canadian example, Steyn reflects on the relationship between liberty, big government, and government control of the economy and of the health care system in particular. He tells stories of a government funded anti-government riot, unionized panhandlers, a special immigration category for "exotic dancers" (strippers), and a ten month waiting list for the government run maternity ward.

What I found most alarming, not only from an ex-pat perspective, but also from the perspective of American national security, is the Canadian demographics that Steyn reports. Like Europe but unlike the United States, Canadians are not replacing themselves.

Between 2001 and 2006, Canada’s population increased by 1.6 million. 400,000 came from natural population growth kids, while 1.2 million came from immigration. Thus native Canadians—already only amounting to 25 percent of the country’s population growth—will become an ever smaller minority in the Canada of the future. It’s like a company in which you hold an ever diminishing percentage of the stock. It might still be a great, successful company in the years ahead, but if it is, it won’t have much—if anything—to do with you.

That is not a racist concern. I am not concerned with the color or cuisine of 21st century Canadians. It is their view of liberty and of liberty's enemies abroad that concerns me and should concern my family, friends and countrymen north of the border.

Harvard Prof: Multiculturalism Kills Community

Daniel Henninger reported yesterday in The Wall Street Journal (“The Death of Diversity”) that the cultivation of diversity in the form of perpetually distinct ethnic communities “has a downside.” That is, “People in ethnically diverse settings don’t care about each other.”

That seems counter-intuitive.

He draws this conclusion from reading a study by Robert Putnam, public policy professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000). He has just completed a study of the impact of diverse communities on social cohesion and civic engagement entitled E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century.

Henninger quotes Putnam’s scandalous conclusion:

Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.

Growing up in Canada, I was taught that while America follows the “melting pot” approach to integrating immigrants into the nation (understood to be clearly bad), enlightened Canada welcomes her new arrivals into something we called a “salad bowl” (understood to be clearly good). The Trudeau government of the 1970s made this a matter of policy, calling it “multiculturalism,” their way of trying to diffuse the bi-cultural, bi-national Quebec problem.

I came to see the inherent contradiction in this. The goal was to form a tolerant society of diverse communities, each appreciating and respecting all the others. The celebration of this social model was the annual “Caravan” festival in Toronto, a delightful arrangement in which the various ethnic groups would put on shows, serve food and sell crafts at their respective restaurants and community centers. People would buy “passports” and circulate from one venue to another all week.

The problem is that the people hosting and the people circulating represent two very different views of the world and of neighboring worlds. The more appreciation for diversity one has, the less attached one becomes to one’s own culture. Perhaps it is a weak sense of having a culture at all that inclines a person to circulate rather than host at an event like Caravan. Of course this is a generalization, but English Canadians are notorious for their paralyzing confusion over who they are.

So diversity, in the sense of a confederation of distinct yet peacefully coexisting communities, a "community of communities" as I think Canadian Tory leader Joe Clark once put it, is something that can be cultivated only by people who care nothing for it, but instead care only for their own respective insular ways of life. They care nothing for other communities and nothing for the nation as a whole, except perhaps insofar as it pertains to protecting what is particular to them, if they think about it at all. There is no citizenship within this view, except in the merely legal sense, for that requires a sacrificial concern for the common good. There is only the opposite. This social model encourages retreat into concern for what is narrowly one’s own, though not as far as what de Tocqueville calls individualism. Love for everyone else’s cultures is held up as a virtue, but those cultures can perpetuate themselves only to the extent that there are people paying no attention to other people’s cultures and perhaps even rejecting them. This is what Putnam has documented. (It is interesting that we need expensive studies to prove what otherwise is quite obvious.)

The American model, the so-called “melting pot,” is not the oppressive enemy of human flourishing that some claim it to be. Indeed, it is the opposite. The “melting” indicates the virtue and necessity of conforming to what is “American.” The United States is the only country in the world that is founded on certain principles of right, truths held to be self-evident, namely “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Thus, a newly naturalized citizen, whether from Canada or Tonga, is as much an American as a descendant of Washington himself, provided that he supports the Constitution and the principles on which it is based. This model is most conducive of citizenship, or what Putnam calls “social cohesion and civic engagement.” It directs people to think more about “us” than about “me,” with what is good for “us” being informed by what is objectively known to be good through reflection on nature and nature's God.

Putnam goes even further than I would expect, however, in his characterizations of these insular communities. Notice, they "withdraw even from close friends, [and] expect the worst from their community and its leaders." The final picture is one of total alienation: they "huddle unhappily in front of the television." It sounds like a stultifying and miserable existence. This goes beyond even the individualism against which de Tocqueville cautions us, and descends into egoism. I don't recognize this, but his argument merits reading.

Especially interesting is the hope Putnam sees in "large evangelical congregations" which provide people of diverse ethnic backgrounds with lots of little groups (perhaps local Bible studies and fellowship evenings) in the context of a common identity and community experience. I would say that the church of Christ offers people the social body and personal identity for which they long, but which can be found only partially in gangs, families, neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves. See my earlier post on community and the longing soul.

For a good study of the present fixation on diversity by our cultural elites, Peter Wood's Diversity, the Invention of a Concept (2004) is the definitive word of the subject.