Posted on 08/20/2004 8:34:02 AM PDT by quidnunc
What did you make of that poll showing 40% of Canadian teens regard America as “evil”? A little statistical oversampling of various Khadr nephews and nieces in southern Ontario perhaps?
But no, these seem to be regular well-adjusted wholesome all-American-hating Canadian teens. And the only sub-group variation I saw in the Dominion Institute’s survey was that, when it comes to francophone teens, the number who regard America as an “evil global force” rises to 64%.
Given that, unlike other Yankophobic nations, the Canadian economy has only one customer, our anti-Americanism is, obviously, psychologically unhealthy: we decline to put our money where our mouth is, and, as a consequence, the gap between our money and our mouth widens every years. Even though Americans are “bastards” and “morons” and a “force for evil”, we expect to be able to cross their border without the passports, visas and other paperwork required of other foreigners.
But let’s look at it from their point of view: Is the continued existence of Canada in the interest of the United States?
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I'm more concerned about American Anti-Americanism.
Why would we expect Canada, France, Germany, or any other country to promote American ideals when US politcal, Hollywood, Environmental and other leaders constantly denounce the United States?
Warning--semi-fantasy post to follow:
Canuckistan will break up in 20 years. First, Quebec, and probably New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island along with it, will declare independence (its almost been done already).
Then, NWT, Alberta, Yukon, and British Columbia will break off and either join the US, or try and form their own country as this is the most conservative part of Canada.
Ontario and the rest will then be left.
---What did you make of that poll showing 40% of Canadian teens regard America as “evil”? ---
If they think America is evil, they should check out LA!
It's from Steyn Online and over two weeks old.... I think we can post the entire thing:
What did you make of that poll showing 40% of Canadian teens regard America as “evil”? A little statistical oversampling of various Khadr nephews and nieces in southern Ontario perhaps?
But no, these seem to be regular well-adjusted wholesome all-American-hating Canadian teens. And the only sub-group variation I saw in the Dominion Institute’s survey was that, when it comes to francophone teens, the number who regard America as an “evil global force” rises to 64%.
Given that, unlike other Yankophobic nations, the Canadian economy has only one customer, our anti-Americanism is, obviously, psychologically unhealthy: we decline to put our money where our mouth is, and, as a consequence, the gap between our money and our mouth widens every years. Even though Americans are “bastards” and “morons” and a “force for evil”, we expect to be able to cross their border without the passports, visas and other paperwork required of other foreigners.
But let’s look at it from their point of view: Is the continued existence of Canada in the interest of the United States?
Traditionally, it’s been understood that Washington is in favour of the Dominion’s unity – ie, she prefers a friendly neighbour to the north rather than neighbours. No surprise there. The foreign policy establishment’s line is that, when it comes to other countries, it likes fewer and bigger. In the first Bush Administration, Brent Scowcroft and Larry Eagleburger wanted to stick with the territorial integrity of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia even after the Soviets and Yugoslavs had thrown in the towel. In the Clinton era, Strobe Talbott talked up the European Union in much the same way: “A politically united Europe will be a stronger partner to advance our goals.” Only if your goals include losing Britain as your most reliable ally and military comrade.
Thirty years ago, Henry Kissinger used to say, “If I want to call Europe, whom do I call?” And that sums it up: better half-a-dozen big numbers in your Rolodex than getting the whole thing clogged up with Slovenias and Slovakias. The State Department’s natural tendency to inertia does the rest. A preference for the status quo in Canada relieves one of the need to think about Canada.
But suppose Canada’s becoming an unfriendly neighbour to the north in perpetuity. That would not be an unreasonable conclusion after an election in which the standard insult hurled by three of the political parties at the fourth was “American-style”. The Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren summed up the Conservative failure to make any headway in the decisive riding-rich Golden Horseshoe thus: “Low birthrates, outward migration, and high immigration from non-traditional sources have utterly transformed the political landscape.” None of these factors is going away. In fact, they’re going to spread. So, if David Warren is right, the arithmetic for the lone non-anti-American party is going to be worse in 2008, and worse still in 2012.
At a superficial level, America’s northern neighbour is taking on the characteristics of its southern one (pre-Vincente Fox): a ramshackle ersatz democracy where the ruling party never gets dislodged and the churlish resentment of the Yanqui is in direct proportion to the country’s economic dependency on him. This would be manageable were Canada’s anti-Americanism strictly of the traditional variety – the banal CanCon mood music playing in the Dominion’s elevator to nowhere. I’m thinking of things like: “As the United States descends into fascism, the importance of Canada, North America’s only civil society, is greater than ever.”
That was the opening sentence of an article by The Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume. Mr. Hume doesn’t write about politics or global affairs. He’s the architecture correspondent. Even more poignantly, he was writing about the new plaza on the Canadian side of the Peace Bridge between our two great nations.
But the US can afford to be relaxed about Mr Hume. He talks the talk but he has no inclination to walk the walk. He’s some arts-page pantywaist, so he’s not going to be strapping on the old suicide-bomber belt and waddling over to Buffalo pizza parlours any time soon. It’s on the long continuum between poseur Yank-haters like Christopher Hume and hard-core jihadi like the Khadrs that the judgments get more difficult to call.
Once you start thinking about it in American national-security terms, maintaining the territorial integrity of Canada seems easily the worst option, and all the permutations of coast-to-coast crack-up infinitely preferable.
1) AN INDEPENDENT QUEBEC
On September 11th, at Montreal’s now famous Conqaedia University, Muslim students bayed and whooped as the twin towers came down and spent the rest of the day celebrating or brawling with those boorish enough to be offended by their good cheer. Are those students as reliably passive in their anti-Americanism as Christopher Hume? Or would some of them be willing to serve as part of a support network for Islamists? Just small things, you know – providing references, loaning their addresses to applicants for driver’s licenses, etc. And, if you think some of them would, what percentage does it have to be before it becomes significant? Two per cent? Five? Ten?
Right now the Province of Quebec, for reasons best-known to jelly-spined federalists, controls its own immigration policy. That means new Quebecers come mostly from the francophone world – Haiti, Syria, Algeria, French West Africa. Furthermore, about a third of the “refugees” “processed” into Canada hail from terrorist-producing countries and they too tend to gravitate to Montreal, where they can blend into sympathetic local populations a mere half-hour from the US border. I was told by an RCMP guy recently that roughly three-quarters of Canada’s counter-terrorism effort is concentrated on the Montreal area.
Suppose you’re in Washington and you don’t like some of the things you’re hearing about terrorist cells in Quebec. Most jurisdictions that run their own immigration policy are independent countries, so you deal with them direct. But, under Quebec’s make-believe form of sovereignty, it gets to have a national immigration policy without being a nation. So you can’t get on the phone to the relevant guy in Quebec City. You have to go through Ottawa, and, given that the bedrock principle of modern Canada is Quebec-pandering, they’re the very last people who are going to crack down on la belle province.
In other words, if Montreal’s terrorist subculture expands and Washington wants any leverage on the scene, the best way to do that is through a small, weak Quebec it can apply the normal economic and diplomatic pressures to.
2) CANADA WITHOUT QUEBEC
If Canada were Iraq, Quebecers would be the Sunnis and the Anglos would be the Shia. And at least Iraq’s Shiites had the excuse that they were living in a ruthless dictatorship. As those statistics for francophone teens and American “evil” suggest, a Canada shorn of Quebec would be a lot less antipathetic to its southern neighbour. It wouldn’t be as reliable an ally as Australia and Britain, but it would be closer than it’s been for years.
3) AN INDEPENDENT ALBERTA
However the endgame plays out in Saudi Arabia, it’s going to be messy and disruptive. It’s in Washington’s interest to cultivate local sources of energy, and, once you start mulling over where most of that is, the reality is that bilateral US-Alberta relations would be more congenial for both parties than having to go through Ottawa. Freed from having to pick up the tab for Canada’s basket-case provinces, Alberta could be a textbook example of a modern medium-sized power. And Princess Patricia’s Alberta Light Infantry would be better funded and equipped.
4) CANADA WITHOUT QUEBEC AND ALBERTA
That doesn’t leave a lot for Canada. But the best way to rescue the Dominion from its death spiral is to remove the two biggest distorting factors in the national equation – Quebec’s pseudo-separatist shakedown and Alberta’s bankrolling of socialist torpor.
In Washington, the assumption has always been that Balkanisation is bad for North America. But not if the alternative is a sour monolith whose privileged access to your territory is unwarranted by its fast-shifting demographics and subversion of continental security. If national security is the priority for Washington, then the secession of both Quebec and Alberta is in the American interest.
And, if those sinister neocons are half as “evil” as Canadians think they are, they’ll be giving some thought on how best to advance that.
I went for a grad interview at McMaster in 1975 and the minute the campus population got a look at my New York license plate, all I heard was "Yankee Go Home!".
I took a lesson from it.
Glad to see nothing's changed much.
Canada's still around?
What did you make of that poll showing 40% of Canadian teens regard America as “evil”?
Here's what I make of it: I couldn't care less what Canadian teens think of America.
"I couldn't care less what Canadian teens think of America."
Bingo! This has gotten far too much press ... on both sides of the border.
"First, Quebec, and probably New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island along with it, will declare independence (its almost been done already)."
It is? I'm from NB and no one told me. Separation of the Maritimes with Quebec has never been discussed.
Antipathy to self-determination on the part of disaffected groups is a longstanding U.S. policy...remember how Nixon "tilted" towards the Pakistani government when East Pakistan decided to secede from Pakistan. And Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederate States of America.
In reality, Liberal Canada is big only in one thing. In the month of May, this country created 56,100 new jobs. Sounds great, eh? The old economy’s positively roaring along.
Well, hold on a minute. Of those 56,100 new jobs, 4,200 are self-employed, 8,900 are in private businesses, and the remaining 43,000 are on the public payroll. You see now why they call it “creating jobs”: 77% of new jobs are government jobs, paid for by the poor schlubs working away in the remaining 23%. That’s the only thing that’s “big” in Paul Martin’s Canada: the government, and the massive transfer of resources from the vital dynamic sector to the least vital, least dynamic sector.
Follow quid's link for the rest of that piece.
This won't happen until Quebec is relegated to a minority position in government as far are political power is concerned. At this time, they'll take their marbles, go home, and pout...then secede causing the chain reaction of other parts seceding. At least, that's *my* theory. :)
In that case -- chaos. The Maritimes, which are dependent on Ottawa (actually, Alberta) could not afford to join Quebec or survive on their own. Having a country the size of Canada be non-contiguous would be untenible. If Quebec and what remains of Canada cannot have a ton of treaties which makes Quebec sovereign in name only, the Maritimes might look for another option. I think, in the immediate aftermath, what remains of Canada would remain intact (sentimentality if nothing else) and be more conservative.
I'm disinclined to give a rat's kiester what Canadian teens think of the U.S. With Canada's unbridled immigration policies, most of those kids are third world America-haters anyway.
I wouldn't like to have an openly hostile country on our northern border but with Canada depending on us for their defense how belligerent can they get before we bitch-slap them? Their one ship navy and worn out 60's helicopter air force can't do much and that's assuming they could find any volunteers to operate them.
The best thing for the U.S. would be an establishment of a new nation made up of the western provinces and territories, one that we could trade with, and leave the froggie side of the country to Europe.
I'm basically talking out my Kerry, er, a$$...
Not saying that's the way it will work, just observing the separationist attitude of Quebec and perhaps wrongly assuming the other Eastern provinces may also choose to go, esp. the primarily French-speaking ones.
This was the basis of my argument as well.
I went through Canadian Customs on a flight to the US and the guy behind the counter asked "Why do you fly to Canada, the customs check through here is a night mare." I said the flight was cheap. He then said "It's all about money with you Yanks isn't it."
He was right, the customs was stupid, and I never took that route again.
I agree. Washington should adopt a "divide and conquer" approach to each region of Canada. Just as what most Australians say they would do to NZ when our country joins the Australian Federation in 10 years - playing the new state of North Island off against the state of South Island so that the new states won't drag Australia into the south Pacific Canada, Yanks should seriously consider playing the Western provinces off against the Central and Eastern parts. Breaking Canada up is a good idea preventing another Trudeau or Chretien coming on the scene.
Of course this makes Mark Steyn an open enemy to many patriotic Canadians who would otherwise support (or not support) his other stands. I wonder how our resident Canuck FRers think of this article? Hey, Mark is much more Canadian than most of you - but his Canada is more the pre-1965 one.
Both Canada and New Zealand have significant anti-Americanism - and I don't think it is just the Francophones in Quebec which caused this. In contrast, this anti-Americanism is much more diminished in Australia. Well they have Tasmania, sure, and Melbourne is a carbon copy of Toronto, but Sydney is quite centrist/conservative by big city standards, and Queensland, Western Australia, rural NSW and South Australia are all very American-friendly by Canadian standards.
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