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WHAT ON EARTH HAS HAPPENED TO CANADA?
Le Quebecois Libre ^ | October 25, 2003 | Chris Leithner

Posted on 11/01/2003 1:11:37 PM PST by sourcery

OPINION

 

WHAT ON EARTH

HAS HAPPENED TO CANADA?
 
by Chris Leithner
  
  
          Once called the "Switzerland of the North", as late as 1968 it was the world's second-richest country. Today, in terms of GDP per capita ($29,300), it ranks ahead of Australia ($27,500) and Britain ($26,400) but just below the G7 average ($30,100) and well behind the U.S. ($35,200). Accompanying ? one is tempted to say causing ? Canada's relative economic decline has been the rise of many and various interventionist schemes: high taxes, big deficits, growing debt, nationalisation of "key" industries, attempts to control consumer prices, regulation of investment, regional development and transfer payments from the wealthier provinces to the poorer ones (such as Manitoba). Alas, these policies have done nothing either to enrich the country as a whole or to narrow the gap between its wealthy and not-so-wealthy areas. (As in Australia, so too in Canada: no social program ever fails ? it is simply "underfunded.")

 

          For as long as Canada has existed, Canadians have compared themselves to Americans(1). But for the past 30-40 years they have done so in a curious and disturbing way: their point of reference is invariably the disastrous set of social policies enacted since the 1960s(2) and their conclusion is invariably that, whether it takes the form of the subsidisation of unemployment, medical expenses or university academics' standards of living, Canadian governments have always intervened in the market more extensively than their American counterparts. That was true for the quarter-century after 1970, but it is arguable today ? and was certainly not true in the more distant past. The Canadian and the American, in other words, are quite alike in one respect: each is appallingly ignorant of his own history. On both sides of the border, misconceptions and costly mistakes have sprung from that ignorance. 
  
          Many Canadians probably know (or could venture a reasonable guess) that in the mid-1990s Canadian governments were about seven percentage points of GDP larger than American governments. Few, however, know that Canadian and U.S. governments were of similar size in 1970 and that until the 1960s Canadian governments were smaller than their American counterparts. Despite their neighbours' incessant and boisterous rhetoric about "freedom," in order words, for most of the century after Confederation in 1867 Canadians enjoyed smaller governments and a greater degree of economic liberty.  


  
          To redress their ignorance and rediscover their classical liberal heritage, Canadians should read The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State, 1900-1945(3) by Doug Owram, Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life(4) by William Watson and "The Socialist Wind from the South" by Martin Masse. To do so is to recognise that in 1900 the typical Canadian was a staunch individualist in the classical liberal mould. Indeed, according to Masse "the real interventionists and socialists at heart are the Americans, and [...] the real Canadian tradition is one of rugged individualism being slowly frittered away under the overwhelming influence of American collectivism [...] The anti-Americans among us have a point: we should protect ourselves from the nasty winds coming from the south. But they are wrong about the rest. The Canadian identity that should be cherished and the Canadian tradition that should be upheld are based on individualism, small government and the free market." 
  
         

During the first decade of the 20th century, academics (particularly in the fledgling social science departments of the country's few universities) noted the old age pensions and workers' compensation schemes in Europe and other parts of the British Empire and wondered "why Canada was so far behind other jurisdictions." The main reason, says Owram, was that the Dominion Government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier interpreted the 19th century British constitutional tradition "in more anti-statist terms than [...] any other government in Canadian history." It is true, for example, that Laurier's Liberals introduced old age pensions; critically, however, their scheme was voluntary, the state subsidised only the plan's administrative costs (which Sir Wilfrid ensured would not be burdensome), the pension was paid only at age 70 ? and at that time the average life expectancy in Canada was less than 60 years. Accordingly, between 1908 and 1927 only 7,713 annuities were issued. 
  
          According to Sir Wilfrid, "the role of government [is] [...] not to force action in any one direction but to remove barriers to man's own efforts to undertake personal and social improvement [...] Man must be free to seek his own improvement and be responsible for his own destiny." Watson notes that tentative departures from the Laurier government's laissez-faire principles were attempted by its young minister of labour. But Mackenzie King's efforts to settle a strike by threatening legislation against the Grand Trunk Railway were quashed by the prime minister, who regarded them as "a very unfortunate and dangerous precedent." Further, King's 1910 reforms to the Combines Investigation Act were denounced by a caucus member in unequivocal terms: "as a Liberal of the old school [...] I regret very much [...] to hear a young Liberal approach the subject of state control in so light-hearted a manner because I recollect the fact that the progress of true Liberalism has been associated in the history of England with the diminution of state control." Importantly, however, King's disagreements with his prime minister and political hero were infrequent. According to Owram, King "retained his belief in the preferability of leaving the individual alone to work out his own destiny, wherever possible." 
 
Canada's Glorious Years  
  
          Unlike the Progressive Era in the U.S., in Canada the decades before and after the First World War were marked by a revulsion against the state's power. The inter-war governments of Mackenzie King (1921-26, 1926-1930, 1935-1940) abandoned the Dominion's wartime economic powers and to the greatest extent possible returned the country's domestic affairs to provinces, municipalities and markets. It therefore cut taxes and expenditures and repaid debt aggressively. As a result the Liberal government's budget of 1929, $C385m, was less than that of the Conservatives in 1914. Even so, Stephen Leacock, a sometime economist and full-time humorist at McGill University in Montreal, stated in The Proper Limitations of State Interference (an address to the Empire Club of Canada delivered on 6 March 1924), "we are moving towards socialism. We are moving [...] nearer and nearer with every bit of government regulation, nearer and nearer through the mist to the edge of the abyss over which civilisation may be precipitated to its final catastrophe. [...] What I am saying, then, if I might put it in simple, almost prosy, business-like speech, is this ? that we need to get back to a sane capitalism." When he wrote those words, Canadian governments spent approximately 11% of the country's GDP (versus 17% in the U.S.). According to Watson, "with the important exceptions of mothers' pensions and old age pensions [...] minimum wage legislation was the sole evidence of a welfare state in Canada in the 1920s."  


  
          The Great War, then, did not give rise to leviathan government in Canada. Nor (thanks to the British North America Act, in this respect a sturdier document than the U.S. Constitution) did the Great Depression generate as much big government in Canada as it did in the U.S. King, in the words of his ablest biographer, Bruce Hutchison, regarded the Crash of 1929 and the slump of 1930 as "a passing adjustment, a stern but necessary purge of an inflated world economy." (He did not foresee the catastrophic errors of the Federal Reserve and Bank of England that turned the slump into the Great Depression.) As opposition leader in 1930, King denounced as unconstitutional the Conservatives' provision of funds to the provinces in order to finance unemployment relief ? and for good measure denied that there was an unemployment problem to finance. In 1931 and 1932, he ridiculed the proposition that the state could cure a depression by creating and spending money; condemned the Tories' "wild extravagance;" demanded lower taxes and a balanced budget; and lauded the gold standard. In 1933 and 1934 he denounced as "mad experiments" the New Deal measures being enacted across the border. He also offered a penetrating analysis of socialism as the doctrine on the left that begat the bureaucratic, centralised and unworkable state apparatus that Canada's Tories were trying to erect on the right. "Socialism and Toryism [were thus] sisters under the skin, both moving towards the same dead end." 
  
          During these decades, government in Canada was smaller than in the U.S. partly because King, prime minister continuously from 1935 until 1948, was in most matters very cautious. It was also partly because one of his political bases was in Quebec (whose voters at that time viewed government intervention in education, hospitals and welfare with admirable suspicion) and the other was on the Prairies (whose disproportionately agricultural voters stoutly opposed preferences and subsidies to Eastern industry). Finally, and as Owram and Watson show, King was cautious about the growth of government partly because his outlook and actions on most matters were, despite his occasionally and increasingly Fabian rhetoric, essentially classically liberal. When he returned to office in 1935, King retained a diluted but nonetheless marked bias towards orthodox economics, and was in no particular hurry to implement his "New Liberalism."  
  

     « The Great War did not give rise to leviathan government in Canada. Nor (thanks to the British North America Act, in this respect a sturdier document than the U.S. Constitution) did the Great Depression generate as much big government in Canada as it did in the U.S. »

 
          King regarded President Roosevelt "with public adulation and privately with a mixture of admiration, amazement, scepticism and some merriment. He thought many of Roosevelt's policies quite crazy [and] looked on much of the New Deal as mere political hokum." Hutchison recounts King's recollection of a wartime meeting with FDR. "'I said to Roosevelt last time we met, how do you expect to go on spending all these billions out of deficits? The President said, well, Mackenzie, my family has held French securities since before the Revolution and they're still paying interest; why can't we do the same?' At this revelation of Roosevelt's economic adolescence, King raised his hands in a gesture of friendly despair. It was hard, he confessed, to see what would come out of this dizzy sort of financing."  
 
          Equally importantly, during the 1920s and 1930s Canada's external relations were commendably limited and non-interventionist. The Dominion, according to King, was "not inclined to organise or join in crusades on other continents [...] We are not asking and will not receive any help from outside in meeting [our] difficulties and we are unlikely to have any surplus of statesmanship or good fortune to bestow elsewhere." On the eve of war in 1939 he affirmed that "the idea that every twenty years this country should automatically and as a matter of course take part in a war overseas [...] to save, periodically, a continent that cannot run itself, and to these ends risk the lives of its people, bankruptcy and disunion, seems to many a nightmare and sheer madness." In that year Dominion, provincial and municipal governments consumed 19.5% of Canada's GNP; in the U.S., the corresponding levels of government consumed 22.5%. 
  
          Jack Pickersgill, a Winnipeg-born historian who worked in the Prime Minister's Office from 1938 to 1952, recalled in My Years with Louis St Laurent: A Political Memoir(5)

that in 1943 King was extremely reluctant to introduce family allowances. The Prime Minister "said no Canadian government would dare to start providing family allowances [...] He felt family allowances would be a greater threat to national unity than any other measure he could think of except [military] conscription." Watson chronicles the long debate about family allowances during the late 1920s and early 1930s, with much opposition expressed and nothing enacted, and staunch opposition continued into the 1940s. Similarly, after the end of fighting in Europe in May, 1945 and a comprehensive Liberal victory at the polls in June, King's Liberals trod the path of intervention very cautiously and half-heartedly. In April 1946, for instance, after making a formal pre-budget presentation, the forerunner of the Canadian Labour Congress "was sharply rebuked by Finance Minister [James] Ilsley for its costly demands. [...] Ilsley [stated] that the government's priorities were for reducing taxes, balancing the budget, and retrenchment." In 1948, when King left office, Canadian governments consumed 24.6% of the country's GNP. In the U.S. the equivalent figure was 35.2%. 
 
          King's successor, Louis St Laurent, was also no enthusiast of the leviathan state. Donald Creighton wrote in The Forked Road: Canada 1939-1957(6) that "St Laurent was not an advocate of the welfare state in any serious sense." In his memoirs, Pickersgill tells how it took a three-year campaign to persuade the prime minister that self-employed fishermen should be eligible for unemployment insurance. St Laurent objected that the measure "would not be actuarially sound" (which was true) and that "it might prompt costly demands from other groups" (which of course it did). In his memoirs(7), Lester Pearson (Liberal prime minister 1963-1968) criticised St Laurent's refusal to build the South Saskatchewan dam. St Laurent declined because the dam had not passed a cost-benefit test. St Laurent also won the hostility of many artists (and applause from classical liberals) because he took six years to act upon the recommendation of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (commonly called the Massey Commission) to establish the Canada Council. According to Watson, St Laurent opposed "subsidising ballet dancing." When "Uncle Louis" lost office in 1957, Canadian governments consumed 24.5% of the country's GNP ? very slightly less than when he took office. In the U.S. the equivalent figure had grown to 37.3%. 
 
Affection and Strong Misgivings 
  
         

What, then, has happened to Canada? What was once a Duke of Edinburgh country has since the late 1950s degenerated into a Prince of Wales country (see in particular Oh Canada! by Adam Young). When Canadian élites argue that big government is the Canadian tradition (as they have done virtually without exception since the 1960s) they betray their bias that that tradition is synonymous with the erection of an intrusive welfare state.  
  
          A member of British Columbia's Legislative Assembly, in the midst of a constitutional debate, put this point nakedly on 21 October 1992: "across Canada, Canadians [are saying] 'This is what we're about. This is why we're different. This is what we want to say as a statement of our values in our constitution.' I think it's really important for me to be specific about the social union, for people who have not read the agreement. The social union talks about comprehensive, universal medicare. Surely that's a Canadian value. Surely that's something that every Canadian is proud of and is prepared to say 'yes, that's our value.' Adequate social programs, high-quality education, protecting the rights of workers to organise and bargain collectively and protecting, preserving and sustaining the integrity of the environment for present and future generations ? surely those are values of a modern society. As Canadians we would be proud anywhere in the world to say: 'this is what we stand for.' At a time when we are pressured by international economic pressures, when we need to preserve our sovereignty as a country and very clearly say that these are our values and this is what we stand for, it's worthwhile having that in the constitution." The British North America Act of 1867 facilitated the economic development of the northern half of the continent and enabled Canada's two founding peoples and migrants from many lands to live together in peace, liberty, steadily increasing prosperity and (for the most part) harmony. These salutary things occurred precisely because during Canada's first ninety years the Dominion and provinces remained small enough to fit inside the Constitution. Alas, since the late 1950s Canada's élites have utterly bastardised governments into instruments of economic warfare; and in the 1980s and 1990s they enshrined plunder into the Constitution.  
  
          One of the purposes of history is to distinguish what does from what does not promote human liberty, harmony and prosperity. Today's Canadians would therefore do well to recognise that for ninety years after Confederation their forebears affirmed and successfully practised the idea that a free people must be self-reliant and cannot depend upon the state. If Canadians can re-establish this essential link with their ancestors, then perhaps they can reclaim that fundamental part of their history that the Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Mulroney and Chrétien governments have so comprehensively erased. "Until recently," as William Watson summarises, "individualism ? not socialism ? defined Canadians." They may or may not decide that their classical liberal heritage merits resuscitation: but it is unquestionably a fundamental part of their history. 
  
         

From the 1940s to the 1980s, Bruce Hutchison was one of Canada's most perceptive and eloquent journalists. In 1952, members of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly were so outraged by one of his editorials that they came within a few votes of summoning his publisher before the bar to apologise. Hutchison responded by reprinting the editorial on the front page ? just in case anyone missed it the first time ? and for good measure wrote a follow-up that congratulated the parliamentarians for averting their "ridiculous" censure(8). The offending editorial was one of a series that won the National Newspaper Award for 1952. In 1943, his book The Unknown Country: Canada and Her People(9) won the Governor General's award for non-fiction. With a world war raging in distant lands, Hutchison wrote from the relative solitude of Vancouver Island that "we Canadians can probably claim the distinction of being the most rugged surviving individualists [...] The best Liberals, in their hearts, still believe in free trade, the play of natural economic forces, the sanctity of enterprise and the evil of monopoly. They behold on all sides precisely the opposite [...] but they hope that a better day will dawn, that the world will come to its senses, trade again, reduce government interference, abolish monopoly." Canada's calamity is that this hope presently beats in so few Canadian hearts. Its greatness is that it once did in so many. 
  
  

1. See, for example, S.F. Wise and R.C. Brown, Canada Views the United States: 19th Century Political Attitudes, University of Washington Press, 1980.  >>

2. See in particular Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, Basic Books, 2nd ed. 1995, ISBN: 0465042333 and Eric Schansberg, Poor Policy: How Government Harms the Poor, Westview Press, 1996, ASIN: 0813328241.  >>
3. University of Toronto Press, 1986, ASIN: 0802066046.  >>
4. University of Toronto Press, 1998, ISBN: 0802042201.  >>
5. University of Toronto Press, 1975, ISBN: 0802022154.  >>
6. McClelland & Stewart, 1976, ASIN: 077102360X.  >>

7. Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, Quadrangle Books, 1972, ASIN: 0812902998.  >>
8. Bruce Hutchison, The Unfinished Country: To Canada with Love and Some Misgivings, HarperCollins, 1986, ASIN: 0888945124.  >>
9. Greenwood, 1942, 1977, ISBN: 0837194512. 


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Canada
KEYWORDS: socialism; socialismatwork
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To: hotpotato
In a word - Socialism.

And if they have their way, they'll do the same to California. Hopefully, it will be stopped in its tracks.

Just when I thought we in CA were collectively insane, we drew ourselves up and had ourselves a revolution. And we're not done yet -- the Car tax and Driver's licenses for Illegals are next. Piece by piece right-thinking Californians (more than anyone thought) will dismantle this Socialist Paradise that the Dims tried to build in the last few years.

Illegal Immigration is no longer the 3rd rail in politics. Those politicians (outside of the Bay area) who ignore it - INCLUDING BUSH - do so at their peril.

41 posted on 11/01/2003 5:35:53 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Peace through Strength)
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To: TrappedInLiberalHell
How did you manage to squeeze in between my double post when I know doggone well I only hit the post button once???
42 posted on 11/01/2003 5:40:17 PM PST by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!)
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To: sourcery
Considering that both the MoD and Chretien were asked NOT to attend the ceremonies for the two soldiers from 3RCR that were recently killed in Afghanistan speaks volumes. I can't think of one country where that ever happened before?

It's taken me a long time to accept the fact that the MAJORITY of Canadians have spoken and openely embrace socialism and everything that goes along with it. Leeches that have sucked the military dry to pay for foolish government programs. What a shame.

43 posted on 11/01/2003 5:49:15 PM PST by Aura Of The Blade
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To: billorites
In all seriousness, the future of Canada lies in a politcal union with the United States.

Alberta: the 51st state!!!!!!

Many Albertans would leap at the opportunity to leave their exploitation by Ottawa.

44 posted on 11/01/2003 9:49:15 PM PST by friendly (Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.)
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To: Age of Reason
jamaican immigration equals jamaican gangs!!

Todays Toronto Sun:

Get tough with gangs of thugs

Vote for anti-crime campaign

Vicious gangs of home invaders who beat, rob and even rape victims are becoming all too common in the Toronto area. And with a Nov. 10 city election coming, it's more than high time that candidates paid more than lip service to the need to launch an all-out campaign against such crime.

For instance, at 12:50 a.m. Friday, three residents at an Etobicoke house shared by Humber College students were assaulted in a home invasion by four men armed with a handgun, a machete and a knife.

Police reported that one of the victims, a 20-year-old woman, was "taken into the bathroom and sexually assaulted."

She and a 22-year-old man were also duct taped while the invaders ransacked the house,

Later, a 19-year-old woman returned to the house from a Humber College party. The report stated she was "sexually assaulted, robbed of her bank card and a ring and forced to give her PIN numbers."

"She was grabbed, tied up, stripped and sexually assaulted by these pigs as well," was the way Toronto Police Det.-Sgt. Wilf Townley described the attack on the second woman.

TERSE REPORT

The terse police report added:

"Police are requesting the assistance of the public in identifying the following described persons in connection with this offense. Description of Suspect #1: Male, black, early 20s. 5-foot-10 to 5-foot-11, thin build. Suspect #2: Male, black with a light complexion, early 20s, 5-foot-7, 160 pounds. Suspect #3: Male, black, early 20s, 5-foot-10, medium build. Suspect #4: Male, black , 6-foot-2, slim build."

The gang, who wore masks and bandannas, fled with jewelry and the second woman's bank card.

"Even seasoned officers in this particular case are outraged and disgusted," commented Supt. Ron Taverner, unit commander of 23 Division.

Within the next 24 hours, three more home invasions took place in Toronto, along with a shooting at the CNE grounds.

One home invasion occurred Friday evening when four men armed with a handgun and a shotgun forced their way into a home at Scarlettwood Court and Eglinton Ave. W.

The victims were a man, woman and a 13-year-old boy. The man was pistol-whipped while the house was ransacked, with cash and a "CD blaster" stolen, stated the police report.

The report added: "Description of Suspect #1-#4: Male, black, 22 years."

In all cases, the perpetrators were still on the loose during the weekend.

But where and when does this kind of violence stop?

There was a time when a person's home in the Toronto area was his or her castle -- a safe refuge from the trials and tribulations of the outside world.

But today, with so little respect for law and order by these vicious gangs of thugs, this kind of thing -- muggings, rapes, robberies, break-ins and now home invasions -- are becoming all too common.

GROWTH INDUSTRY

The only people who are cheering -- besides the thugs -- are the mushrooming security firms busily installing burglar alarms and heavy-duty locks. It's a real growth industry.

Unfortunately, this increasingly threatening society we see unfolding before us just didn't happen by spontaneous combustion.

It has been encouraged during recent decades by such things as the actions of mostly federal Liberal governments and other vote-seeking politicians.

They've done it by such things as eliminating capital punishment for first-degree murder; making our country a haven for criminals due to a soft, wide-open immigration system; establishing weak, ineffectual laws for young offenders; and creating a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that's often used by criminals to beat the rap. The Charter also forced the scrapping of longstanding vagrancy laws -- allowing panhandlers and prostitutes to freely roam our streets.

Hopefully, in the upcoming city election voters will pay attention to those like mayoral candidate John Tory who promises to go all-out to fight crime. He has noted:

"Over the last 10 years in Toronto there were 209,688 homes broken into, 30,141 sexual assaults and 12,469 armed robberies. You can vote for more of the same or you can vote for a comprehensive plan to crack down on crime that includes hiring 400 more police officers for our streets to combat gangs, guns and drugs."
45 posted on 11/02/2003 5:23:44 AM PST by wiseone
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To: sausageseller
"Anytime I see the word "hate" I first think lefty."

Then we need a little self-examination cause this thread is nothing more than a hate Canada rant. Given how much we rely on them for the success of our economy, we shouldn't keep spitting in their soup...

46 posted on 11/02/2003 7:27:24 AM PST by Dr. Luv
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To: Dr. Luv
"Hate Canada rant" is jsut garbage. When one points out something fallacies that doesn't equate to HATE!

Your use of the word hate is a hallmark of the left.

47 posted on 11/02/2003 8:48:06 AM PST by sausageseller
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To: Dr. Luv
" Given how much we rely on them for the success of our economy, we shouldn't keep spitting in their soup...

SS. They rely on us for their success! And if you would read the article : The truth is they are spitting in their own soup!

48 posted on 11/02/2003 8:55:53 AM PST by sausageseller
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To: sausageseller; Dr. Luv
I think you are right about Dr. Luv. It seems that he always shows up to defend Canadian anti-Americanism and socialism. That's a pretty strange philosophy for a conservative, imo.

Canada is a real mess and their anti-Americanism and creeping socialism pose a danger to us. I find Dr. Luv's opposition to our speaking the truth to be suspect!!!

49 posted on 11/02/2003 10:16:42 AM PST by Sunsong
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To: sourcery
Excellent article!

IIRC, and I do, there was no finer place on the planet around 1960 than British Columbia.

No finer place on the planet. Then that b*stard Pearson and his cronies took power. After saddling us with Medicare and a beer-label flag, he handed the leadership to that b*stard Trudeau, an extreme leftie who, empowered by the fabulous corruption of the Liberal Party and the bizarre desire of Canadians to be 'hip', destroyed what was left of our legal heritage by imposing a new Constitution on the country.

Then there were some other b*stards. ;^)

Now, we're hooped. I advise my children to emigrate - Canada could well become a sort of East Germany of the 21st Century.

Posted with great sadness.

50 posted on 11/02/2003 12:41:30 PM PST by headsonpikes (Spirit of '76 bttt!)
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To: Dr. Luv
Then we need a little self-examination cause this thread is nothing more than a hate Canada rant.

I posted the article because I love Canada, but hate socialism. I'd apply many analogous criticisms to many of the social and governing policies in the United States. I loathe and despise the New Deal, the Great Society, the income tax, the Federal Reserve and the idea that one person's needs form a valid call on the life, liberty or property of anyone else.

What about you?

51 posted on 11/02/2003 12:49:22 PM PST by sourcery (Moderator bites can be very nasty!)
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To: headsonpikes
Vancouver is one of my favorite cities.

-- California/Bay Area resident/native (for 4 generations on my father's side.)
52 posted on 11/02/2003 12:55:38 PM PST by sourcery (Moderator bites can be very nasty!)
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To: Sunsong
" I find Dr. Luv's opposition to our speaking the truth to be suspect!"

What nonsense. This thread is all about belittling another country - what precisely is conservative about that? Canada has much to recommend it and there is a great deal that we can learn from them. Despite our constant prattle about their socialistic tendencies, many people here with opinions about Canada actually know nothing about them and have never been there.

For example, did you know they have run a surplus budget every year for the last seven or eight years? That they have decided they need to pay down their debt and not load it onto the backs of their children (like we have done). That they, by far, buy and sell more to us than any other country? That doesn’t sound very Marxist to me…

Finally, does the constant avalanche of disparaging comments about our northern neighbor make us feel better about ourselves? I can think of no other reason for it to be done…

53 posted on 11/02/2003 2:15:17 PM PST by Dr. Luv
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To: Dr. Luv
Perhaps you could benefit from re-reading this thread and especially your own comments.

You seem either to be unwilling or unable to understand what the difference between "conservative" and "socialist" is. You also seem to have no comprehension about the difference between speaking the truth and "belittling" a country. It is my view that Canada is in decline and people like you who blindly defend Her deterioration are indeed suspect.

Clinton paid off the deficit on the backs of tax payers as Canada is doing. There is nothing "conservative" about that. Conservatism is about respecting individuality, personal liberty and personal responsibility within a Constitutional Republic and the rule of law. Canada is about collectivism, anti-Americansim, smug complaceny and socialism.

If that appeals to you and conservatism does not, perahps you would be happier up North???

54 posted on 11/02/2003 8:12:12 PM PST by Sunsong
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To: Sunsong
Translation:

"If you don't see things my way, then you are not a conservative."

Predictable claptrap from someone who seems to know nothing about our northern neighbor. Have you ever actually been to canada? This concept that we have nothing to learn from anyone else is a disturbing trend on this forum and a real weakness amongst conservatives.

55 posted on 11/03/2003 4:57:12 AM PST by Dr. Luv
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To: Dr. Luv
Dr.Luv, as a Canucklehead posting here for a couple of years, I can assure you that I, at least, am not offended by American hostility to Northern Sopcialism. Your countrymen may be somewhat provincial in their perspectives, but they are a breath of fresh air compared to the fatuous smarminess of Canada's established opinion-makers.

Mind you, I'm not surprised that you chaps cheer on your own Southern Socialists in their familiar guise as 'good citizens', protecting the population from self-reliance.

Anyways, conservatives are no more ignorant than liberals. ;^)
56 posted on 11/03/2003 5:35:41 AM PST by headsonpikes (Spirit of '76 bttt!)
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To: sourcery
Could this be remenants of the Vietnam war. The draft dodgers going up north also?
57 posted on 11/03/2003 5:51:58 AM PST by TomHarkinIsNotFromIowa (Foe Hammer!)
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To: Dr. Luv
I probably know more about Canada than you do, but you appear to be so close-minded that facts are not going impact you. And yes, I have been to Canada, and I have been to Europe, and I know the difference between conservatism and socialism. You apparently are here promulgating socialism -- as something we can "learn". I guess it has never occurred to you that maybe we are informed and know what Canada is about and just don't like it.

Maybe you also think that we should explore the "root causes" of terrorism and "learn" from the militant Islamics so that they won't hate us so much...

Have you ever really studied the founding of this country? Have you ever really studied that Founding Documents, the Federalist Papers, the biographies of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin etc??

Maybe, instead of trying to "teach" others, Dr. Luv, you would do well to take your own advice and "learn" from conservatives...

58 posted on 11/03/2003 11:50:05 AM PST by Sunsong
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To: Sunsong
"I probably know more about Canada than you do"

Given the vicious and stupid things you've said about Canada on this and other threads, that seems unlikely.

Here's something you said a while ago on another thread that lends credence to you not having adequate access to the facts: "I hope this leads to much stricker and slower border crossing between America and Canada. I hope this leads to tedious and thorough checks of everything and everybody coming into this country from Cannuckistan."

Anyone with an IQ over a hundred would know that your above suggestion would cripple their economy - at the same time that it crippled ours. We receive car parts from plants in Ontario in JIT delivery for the automotive engine of Michigan. This is just one of the many industries that would be destroyed by “tedious and thorough checks of everything and everybody coming into this country”. The economy of our country is directly linked to the economy of theirs – stupid border wars would be tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot. Or perhaps you would like a wrecked economy in order to make your point? Fortunately for us, the leadership of our country are not as witless or as small-minded as to take your advice.

59 posted on 11/03/2003 1:51:37 PM PST by Dr. Luv
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To: Dr. Luv
Translation:

"I refuse to discuss anything. I am only going to attack those who don't agree with me"

You have not responded to anything that I have said. It seems to me that you are just here to promulgate socialism and defend it in Canada. Do you prefer that we NOT have tedious checks on our borders??? Do you prefer that we are just "trust" Canada to radically change and start caring about terrorists??? The same Canada that would not even lift a finger to help us in Iraq? The same Canada that calls our President a moron and us Americans "bastards"? The same Canada that tells us they are "morally superior" to us because they are more socialist???

It seems to me that the one who is being vicious here is you. For whatever reason you think you are "entitled" to come onto a conservative American site and tell people that they should "learn" from you and socialist countries like Canada. For whatever reason you seem to think you are "entitled" to come onto a conservative American site and tell people that you don't like their opinions and that they shouldn't hold the opinions they do, because, I guess, *you* disagree with them.

As I said, maybe it is you who needs to "learn" something from us...

60 posted on 11/03/2003 5:48:21 PM PST by Sunsong
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