Zeitgeist

That’s about where I’m at. If Canadians have become so soft and dependent on big government that they aren’t willing to assert Canadian culture and make the sacrifices to defend it, let the Yanks run it. It might be better than the current arrangement. We can’t even win at men’s hockey anymore. WTF?!

Basically if Canada refuses to step it up by making the sacrifices necessary for independence, including having a formidable military, it’s better off folding itself into the U.S. The nanny state has been expanded to breaking point, such that there’s no room left to provide the essential conditions of sovereignty, including a strong defence, a resource and industry-friendly regulatory climate, and a tax system that encourages entrepreneurial spirit and rewards innovation and productivity, and that makes business activity the heart of the economy rather than government employment and spending.

Well let’s see if we can get an upgrade on the subs. Poilievre was in top form actually.

I’m all for ensuring that every Canadian has as much opportunity as possible. I just don’t support divisive identity politics that assumes that some groups are inherently better or more deserving than others, nor do I support a political ideology that takes power and opportunity away from individuals while expanding government power and bureaucracy. I also don’t support any rhetoric that depicts Canada as genocidal or oppressive. Well, we got a glimpse of government oppression in Canada during Covid, and it was the leftist dingbats who made it happen, the same ones who brought you the Residential Schools you condemn.

You’re regurgitating radical left nonsense that exemplifies why we’re in this mess with the U.S. Canada is in no position to pay off the possible descendants of people who were possibly wronged by the excesses of colonial settlement 400 years ago when the government can’t pay its bills or defend the country. Moreover, we’ve seen more “settler colonial” immigration under the current government than at any time in our history, but somehow that’s good for Indigenous? French Canada and Chinese Canadians have moved on from their grievances. The Loyalists gave up on retrieving stranded possessions in the U.S. The Irish aren’t demanding reparations for not having voting or property ownership rights hundreds of years ago or for suffering bias up until about 40 years ago from Orange Protestant Canada. The grievance industry has clearly worked on people like you and our federal government, which has essentially enshrined a hemorrhaging of tax dollars to designated groups. Again though, this is all rearranging deck chairs on the federal government Titanic. Worry about microaggressions and your revisionist histories and see how far it gets you and your family. See how much good it does to support Canadian independence. Far as I’m concerned, if you ninnies are running the show in Canada, I’d far rather see the country become 51st state to put an end to your Marxist dreams for good.

Be careful what you support, because that future might remove property from future generations of your family. You don’t seem to understand what’s at stake. It really is all about that. Money and land. There’s an illusion that there was an original tribe with the deed of deeds, though historical records indicate that Indigenous were invading each other’s territories with regularity, the ones that stayed in one area for more than several years after the soil was degraded, which was mostly the coastal settlements. They were also the wealthiest and most brutal, enslaving tribes from the south. Anyway, treaties were signed and people are free to bring their land claims to court. If you want more claims and reparations for the deeds of people living centuries ago, that’s your choice. I would estimate that if too much of that happens, the younger generation paying the price for your foolishness will happily turn the country over to America to release Canadians from these millstones.

Oh yeah, so you would choose to live like the 17th century natives right? None of that colonial European bourgeoisie lifestyle for you. So why don’t you do it? It’s never too late. Who needs literacy either, right? You’ve clearly attended your equity training and swallowed the radical nonsense. It’s attitudes like yours that put Canada in its current position of weakness. Seriously, why would you want to be part of this “settler-colonial genocidal” state? Indigenous are also part of Canada’s story, good and bad. They were no better than the settlers and had fought and enslaved each other. People are people. Indigenous ideas contributed to the culture along with many other groups.

You can’t like Canada no matter how hard you pretend to be patriotic, unless it involves getting free stuff through redistribution of wealth. Can you explain what you like about Canada? Genuinely curious.

It was founded over millennia, because the founders imported personal family histories and institutions based on a thousand year old parliament in Britain, which was itself based on Roman administration, the German assembly, and other distant precursors. It’s exactly this misunderstanding that makes revolutionaries think they can and should erase history and impose their flavour of the month.

You come across as uninformed. Your position would truly cause suffering, because you don’t seem to understand the millennia old origins of our social order. You mention the devil but don’t seem to understand the basic lessons of history explained in the testaments.

I don’t disagree. But where is our King? Where are the Loyalists? Are there enough of them to make the case for Canada? As Chrétien said in the last referendum on Quebec separation, “Who will speak for Canada?”

Should anybody be able to enter your home, take your things, rape your wife/children simply because they want to or perceive themselves as needing to? Protection of property is a condition of respect for the individual and sanctity of the person. Without it you have no real rights, because your stuff can be taken, including your dignity, in the service of anyone else’s interests. You don’t make distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants, nor do you understand that a country’s citizens decide who can enter the country for the sake of the safety of the citizens. Self-determination, a condition of any democracy, requires this.

Good thinking. Make an immediate assertion of hard power to protect our sovereignty. That solves multiple problems at once, including meeting NATO commitments. Without thinking on the level of the power over life and death, as well as our economic strength, tough words are meaningless.

Incorrect. The highest form of democracy is the most local and based on the idea of subsidiarity. It starts with respect for the family unit and the local community. The members of that community must have as much political control over their community as possible to ensure that the people have the greatest level of self-determination. What do you think the Indigenous beef with Canada is all about? Self-determination. A local community is a jurisdiction with its own voters. Jurisdictional self-determination is the origin of the border, because polities must protect their interests. It goes back tens of thousands of years, before the Mesopotamian cities that protected their interests no differently from today. Communities come together to form regional higher levels of government such as states or provinces, and on it goes to the level of the nation states. Self-determination is at the heart of social organization, and a healthy liberal democracy respects that, which is why healthy democracies don’t subjugate citizens of any countries.

I know you always give preference to the British Protestant foundation of Confederation over the Vatican-influenced side of the Canadian equation, though Britain enshrined Catholic rights in the British North America Act of 1867. Sadly those foundational forces have been weakened and essentially walked away, relinquishing authority to something outside both of those cultural forces. I’d call it Cultural Marxism, the idea that the state is the ultimate authority and has the right to tell you what to think and how to live. It’s what has filled the cultural vacuum created by Post-National State, China’s heavy influence, and a capitulation to radical left woke ideology. Constitutionality protected Catholic education in Canada is one of the last vestiges of protecting Canadian values and culture, and it too is being attacked at the highest levels of the Vatican. Where are the royalists? Where are the Churchillians? Where are the Catholics? Where are the Protestants? Where are the Canadians? The leftist posters on here don’t understand where the strength of Canada dwells.

It doesn’t matter what radical views you have, the population decides. Your views are essentially Marxist. No working person who has saved to buy a home and a small piece of the American Dream (or Canadian for that matter) will accept having to give that up in the name of property redistribution or high taxation to pay for the upkeep of new arrivals. The new arrivals have to bring something to the table unless there’s some extreme instance of injustice they are fleeing, in which case they can claim refugee status. Most people are willing to give up some of their earnings and property to help people who are desperate and fleeing a situation thrust upon them, against which they have no recourse. That’s not what is being questioned here. It’s the rapid and illegal immigration or the government supported mass immigration without clear purpose that people are justified in questioning. Otherwise the purpose of the nation state as a polity operated by the citizens for the citizens falls apart. No rational person would take the risk of supporting your free for all, which essentially amounts to anarchy and redistribution of property at gunpoint based on whoever wields the most power, because public safety requires social organization, collection of taxes, electoral jurisdictions, and borders.

Yeah and democracy ends so that oligarchs with big egos can play a giant game of Risk against the will of entire populations. Sounds like a recipe for progress and success. Sarcasm. Trump isn’t coming across as wise or strategic in this trade war that he started, because he can quickly lose the middle swing voters for the sake of fairly meaningless concessions from countries with but-hurt populations looking to take their business elsewhere. Strong relations are built on trust and goodwill. Bad relations are built on coercion. Basic human nature.

Yeah Trudeau is your saviour. Set up an alter with his photo entitled dictator for life. The Trudeau Liberals have achieved the seemingly impossible by being both soft and naive AND oppressive. They overspend and tell weak-minded people how they should think, which is basically to embrace false anti-Canadian equity rhetoric. It’s gross and irresponsible and you love it.

You live in an imaginary world. You clearly have no idea where our monarchy and country came from. Both originated in battle. Kings raised armies and offered protection to feudal vassals. It was because they won battles and were able to hold lands that they were recognized as kings. In a Parliamentary Democracy the monarch’s role is much more symbolic. However the symbol is powerful because it represents the culture and the country over thousands of years. Where do you think Canada’s institutions came from? Do you know about the Plains of Abraham defeat of the French or the Battle of Queenston Heights resistance against the Americans or Vimy Ridge where Canada assembled 4 divisions in WW1? Paintings of the battlefields line the walls of our Senate Chamber. I hate to have to say this, but I actually don’t think you know much or care much about any of that, which is why you can’t fathom why Canadian sovereignty and identity mean anything. I don’t know your background but I can see that much. Also you don’t seem to understand that money has allowed for the highest forms of exchange and trade of goods and services. Without it you cannot build an advanced society with the lifestyles we enjoy today. Without having a currency that represents the value of things, there’s no way to value labour or effort in a diverse large economy. I will grant you one concession here, which is that as we automate our society and human resources become less necessary for the basic production of our goods, we will need to find ways to make jobs that traditionally paid less pay more. We will need to find ways for people to feel valued and connected to a system of production that in fact won’t require much from them. We need to remove the machines from our restaurants and grocery stores and replace them with people. We may need to de-automate portions of our economy so that we maintain a sense of community and make people feel valued. That’s a separate issue from protecting Canada as a culture and country. Well, not entirely, because Canada has embraced modernity, but some innovations have eroded our sense of community and wellbeing.

I’m well aware of those. Vietnam had an arguable purpose, as did the first Gulf War, though the first became an entanglement. The second turned into an unnecessary entanglement after the 2nd invasion of Iraq. Also, Canada is in America, well North America. Culturally and economically it’s so similar to the U.S. that in many respects it acts like the U.S. Canada is in some ways a better version of the U.S. in terms of safety and social cohesion. It simply needs major restoration. It needs to straighten out priorities and act more carefully and tactically. If it does, Canada can be very strong again. Isn’t it funny though that it’s in many ways a Canadian version of MAGA that’s going to rescue Canada. We need to return our institutions to their original purpose and make government leaner. It’s the Conservative message. America First is reminding us to put Canada first, which means scrapping a lot of foolish Liberal anti-Canadian rhetoric and overbearing, bloated, irresponsible government. Trump may be good overall for Canada by reminding us to get our act together. Any imperial adventure to try to make Canada the 51st state against the will of Canadians isn’t worth the cost to Americans. We need mutually beneficial partnerships or both partners suffer.

The day the U.S. invaded a country simply to take its stuff under false pretences of national security or open theft is the day that the U.S. loses any moral authority that it has left. Not only would it be internationally condemned but it would be domestically condemned by millions of Americans as an unamerican act, in violation of its own constitution and supposed values. The rules based order of the West and the pacts that support it, from NATO to the WTO to other economic treaties, would be abrogated and dissolved in one fell swoop, returning the world to medieval power grabs and atrocities, without regard to the Geneva Convention, international law, or any moral codes. Could the U.S. do it? Sure, but Russia could also nuke the world. Just because one can do something doesn’t mean one should do it. Occupying a country is a much bigger challenge than invading it, which is why we all had to leave Afghanistan eventually. It’s why Napoleon and Hitler retreated from Russia. Conventional warfare is neither advisable nor necessary for the U.S. to have control of Canada. Trump was stating a fact when he pointed out that without access to the U.S. market Canada struggles to an extent that Canadians would not want to endure. Nevertheless, the U.S. would struggle too without our purchasing of their exports and without affordable access to our goods, especially energy and minerals. That doesn’t change if the U.S. invaded Canada, because those mines require minors and companies and local businesses. Local people do the extraction. If they tried to bring in Americans to do it, they would become locals and have to occupy the lands against hostile Canadians who are indistinguishable in appearance from Americans. It would weaken export markets for America and turn the world against America. It’s really that simple. The US already has access to our resources through USMCA, so what’s the upside of subjugating a population? The only way Canada could become part of the U.S. in a way that benefits the U.S. is if the Canadian citizens choose it because they perceive it as beneficial to Canadians, so if Trump is serious about Canada joining America, make the case to Canadians and Americans. As of right now Canadians are not feeling the love. They perceive Trump as coercive and threatening, so the reaction is Canadian nationalism, unity, and greater independence from the U.S., despite the costs of pursuing it. I still don’t think it’s too late to make the case for concrete guarantees against future tariffs in exchange for assurances that are reasonable, and this could include the free movement of goods, services, and people, like in the European Union, but America is more protectionist now, not less, and it is talking about expansion through economic pressure, causing Canada and other governments to take protective measures against American belligerence and unpredictability. There’s simply no choice for Canada if we wish to protect our interests and bargain from a position of strength.

Canada’s government, like its universities, is ideologically captured. Rather than hearing Trump’s vision for Gaza and Gazans, the knee-jerk reaction is to make claims of genocide against the U.S. It’s so predictable now. “Canada and the U.S. are settler-colonial genocidal.” The radicals influencing our institutions take no notice of the fact that in Canada the group that kept more slaves than anyone was Northwest Coast Indigenous or that many Muslim countries continue to oppress their own citizens. It took Trump waving a stick to remind everyone that there are consequences for irresponsible ideologies and misrepresentations. I still don’t think Trudeau gets it.

I would probably prefer US-CAN, simply called America, to Canada alone depending on what we can retain. For example, I don’t mind having US citizenship and a U.S. dollar and all the rights of statehood, but I can see the value in retaining much of our healthcare and low-cost pharmaceuticals, with the option to pay for private services. If it’s US citizenship then we need to be able to vote in federal elections, which I’m sure the Yanks don’t want. I’m also certain that Canadians won’t support the 2nd Amendment. I’m not sure I want the guns coming up either, though I see both sides of the argument. That makes the most viable options to either carry on independently, but we’re going to have to rely a lot more on our domestic market and do more domestic manufacturing, refining, etc, as well as diversity trade away from the U.S. (difficult), or we retain our sovereignty and border, but integrate fully on the free movement of goods, services and people, without federal voting rights for residents from the other country. The latter option seems the most realistic and promising, especially if we still try to expand markets and domestic manufacturing. However, we would need strong guarantees that such an agreement can’t simply be violated without good reasons. Bogus claims of national security by a president cannot ever again be grounds to impose tariffs on Canada. This is really the question going forward: More independence or more integration? The status quo is untenable. I’d love to roll the clock back to 2014 Canada, but much has changed and much change is required just to restore what we lost.

Totally agree. Post-National State is the erasure of Canada. It goes hand in hand with the false narrative of Canada as genocidal when it was and remains perhaps the least violent, least oppressive, most harmonious society on Earth, probably also the wealthiest in terms of natural resources, education, and social safety net overall. Chretien and Harper understand this, but of course we lapsed into weakness by relying too much on government to take care of us, too much on America to defend us, too much on international organizations to tell us how to think and live. We also bought into dubious ideas about identity and radical activism. Canada has lapsed into socialist complacency. The courts and media have bought into the phoney overdone anti-Canadian woke-green rhetoric. We overspent on unaffordable programs, some of which just aren’t effective. We stopped asserting our rights, which our Constitution probably doesn’t enshrine properly. We don’t even have protection of property. Too much state intervention. Not enough energy and entrepreneurial spirit. Lagging productivity. Compromised healthcare. Screwed up priorities on defence and resource development. All of this can be turned around. Now it must be turned around or we stand no chance defending our interests against the interests of the behemoth to the south, unless we join the behemoth.

I like it. This approach brings hard power and focus on unlocking the economic potential of Canada, which when divided among 41 million people should make us the wealthiest country in the world, especially once confidence returns and our dollar strengthens. That was our trajectory under Harper. That’s the trajectory of a well-managed independent Canada. Any kind of economic union with the U.S. would have to be something better that doesn’t include giving up what Canadians value. US-CAN citizenship in a much larger land mass would also have tremendous value, perhaps more value, but we haven’t heard the case for it or seen evidence yet of a consensus around what that would look like for the citizens of both countries.