Why doesn’t the United States teach history in school? The US annexed Texas, California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and western Colorado from Mexico. They thought about annexing the rest of Mexico but then realized they would have more Mexicans than Americans in the US.
They also tried to annex Canada, but after British troops and Canadian militia captured Detroit, burned Buffalo, fired rockets at Eastern cities, and burned Washington, the White House, and the Capitol, they realized it wasn’t such a good idea and gave up on it. (Since then they have fixed up the White House and it looks very nice!)
The Star Spangled Banner: “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” Yes it was still there but it was all shot to shit.
Congreve Rocket. A Fourth of July kind of weapon used on America in 1814.
PLUS: Just imagine what could happen if Canadians put together a few suitcase nukes, walked them into the US, and left them in lockers in northern US cities.
(US Backpack nuke.)
Canada could do up a bunch of these within a few days.
Well, the leader of the federal New Democratic Party, the major party farthest to the left (pro benefits, pro union) is this fellow:
Jagmeet Singh. Sure, he’s a typical guy who was born in Scarborough (like me) and raised in Newfoundland, but he’s really never been the nationalistic type.
No, the nationalists in Canada are on the right.
That would be this guy, the leader of the People’s Party of Canada and former contender for the Conservative leadership.
Maxime Bernier. As you might imagine, Mr. Singh is somewhat more amenable to immigration than Mr. Bernier is.
As for Americans, there hasn’t been any real anti-American sentiment in Canadian politics since the early 20th century (Except for Trump) where Sir Wilfred Laurier was painted as a tool of the Americans for wanting to introduce free trade between the two countries.
In a rare and uniquely candid interview, former prime minister Stephen Harper warned of a “nihilist” modern left bent on “ripping everything down” and seeking to “end the democratic system.”
“If it plays out, our societies fail,” Harper said in a Tuesday edition of the podcast American Optimist. He added, “the adolescent egos of the woke university crowd is not an alternative governing philosophy for any society.”
The former Conservative leader rejected the claim — taken up in recent years by many senior Democratic politicians and organizations such as Black Lives Matter — that the United States is fundamentally racist.
“What I see is all these supposedly repressed races trying desperately to become Americans,” said Harper.
While the 62-year-old former leader said Western societies should strive to make “constant progress,” it should not be premised on the assumption that “everything is wrong and terrible and awful.”
“I can see lots of things wrong with my own country … and yet you travel around the world and there’s no other time in history and no other place you’d rather be,” he said.
The 40-minute interview also included a veiled criticism of the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. While Harper said he tries not to critique his “successor government,” he implied that a Conservative administration would not have suffered delays in securing adequate doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
While Canada is now the most-vaccinated country against COVID-19, the mass-vaccination campaign was delayed by several months because of federal procurement problems — most notably a deal with a Chinese vaccine manufacturer that was quashed due to the direct intervention of Beijing.
“When we were in government, we never had any problem making sure we had vaccines well in advance,” said Harper. “So it’s just a matter of competent execution.”
Harper, who was Canada’s prime minister for nearly 10 years, has largely shunned media interviews since his 2015 electoral defeat, aside from a 2018 interview he conducted with Global News to promote the release of his book, Right Here, Right Now.
The American Optimist interview focused primarily on two issues that Harper has brought up often in his post-political life: the unique geopolitical threat posed by China and the coming economic consequences of rising debt loads around the world.
After witnessing China assume direct control of Hong Kong in 2020, Harper said he now believes there is a risk that Beijing may eventually try to take Taiwan by force. “Ten years ago I would have said the chances of that happening are zero, I no longer think that’s the case,” he said.
Harper was head of a minority government when Canada faced the Great Recession of 2008. While his government counteracted the downturn with a round of aggressive deficit spending, Canada’s response would end up ranking as one of the cheapest and most temporary in the developed world.
With COVID having ushered in another round of near-universal deficit budgets around the world, Canada is now at the other end of the ledger, with per-capita pandemic deficits that are the highest in the G20.
Harper said that he has sympathy that governments would make mistakes in tackling the novel crisis of COVID-19, noting that the pandemic is far more complicated than the Great Recession. “This is a combination pandemic and economic crisis, the solutions for one often being contrary to the solutions for the other,” he said.
Nevertheless, he pointed to continued high spending in both Canada and the United States as “bad macroeconomic policy on an enormous scale.” At a time when the adult populations of both countries are mostly vaccinated, Harper said that governments should be switching gears towards policies that prioritize economic recovery. “I think it’s actually pretty straightforward, but it’s the opposite of what governments are doing,” he said.
Instead, Harper said, governments have emerged from a period of unprecedented economic intervention with a sense of “why can’t we just do this forever?”
The consequences, he said, will inevitably come in the form of inflation, rising interest rates and the end of “affordable debt.”
“People believe the United States can continue to borrow countless trillions of dollars at zero per cent interest,” said Harper. “Not only do I believe that’s not true, I believe that’s actually coming to an end much quicker than people think.”
American Optimist host Joe Lonsdale is a colleague of the ex-prime minister. Lonsdale is a tech investor best known for early investments in the online retailer Wish, and in 2017 Harper became an adviser to Lonsdale’s Silicon Valley venture capital firm 8VC. The ex-prime minister is also an adviser to The Cicero Institute, Lonsdale’s Texas-based think-tank.
Last year, Lonsdale was among a wave of entrepreneurs — among them Tesla CEO Elon Musk — who left California for Texas, citing the Lone Star State’s lower taxes and more business-friendly regulatory regime.
Harper seemed to be referencing Lonsdale’s recent move to Austin, Texas, when at the top of the interview he expressed his pleasure at being in the “land of the free.”
While Harper praised the dynamism of the United States and called it the “flagship” country for democratic liberalism, he said Canada has benefited economically from an immigration policy that is much less restrictive as compared to the United States, calling it a “special advantage” that Canadian businesses have an easier time bringing in skilled labour.
Harper also said that Canada is not burdened by the same levels of political polarization as the U.S., which he called a “serious problem” to the U.S.’ political future.
Harper credited a Canadian parliamentary system where — particularly under minority governments — opposition parties must either vote with the government or remove their confidence and trigger an election. “Your opponents cannot adopt the strategy of defeating you regardless of the consequences,” Harper said.
Speaking to a mainly American audience, Harper also cast the prime minister’s office as a uniquely powerful political position.
In 2009, when then U.S. President Barack Obama could boast majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Harper said he told the president that he had “less ability to get things done under those circumstances than I did with a minority.” Still, Harper acknowledged the limited global power of a Canadian leader. When Lonsdale asked Harper how he would have responded to Beijing’s 2020 crackdown on the autonomy of Hong Kong, the ex-leader replied “as prime minister of Canada I couldn’t have led repercussions.”
Despite an election now looming in Canada, the topic did not come up once in the American Optimist interview. Harper said while he now keeps a close eye on U.S. politics, he has largely checked out of following Canadian politics “because I’m too emotional about it.”
Because Canadian do not live in terror of every stranger they encounter. If they do see someone who looks different, instead of wanting to kill them, they say, “That’s different. I’ll have to find out about it.”
Nadia Lorenz
***
Not only that..., but here we don't have everyone carrying a gun, no crazy militia's, no weird politics and no not many religious nuts!
Why did the United States want to send troops to the
Canadian border?
Allan
I am pretty sure the US did not want to send troops to the Canadian border. Rather some people in the Trump White House decided that making such an announcement might help the current office holder in some way. Perhaps someone from CBP (border patrol)proposed it. The idea presumably was to make the White House look equally tough on the Canadian border as Trump had threatened on the southern border with Mexico. Apparently many rational voices spoke up opposing this plan including those from Homeland Security and National Intelligence. Trump decided to make the announcement anyway.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Government, our Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland forcefully pushed back against this positioning of troops on our border and stated that Canada regarded it as a hostile and unfriendly act that was harmful to long term Canada-US relations. Trump at first did not respond but later and much more quietly killed this idea allegedly to “ satisfy” Canada. You can just imagine how joyously satisfying this was for Canadians.
So why did this happen at all?
As others have more eloquently answered, when Trump is under pressure he loves to do a “Don’t point at me, look at what is going on over there” style of diversion. If he can’t find a diversion he will create one no matter how ridiculous.
Of course there is a chance that the irregular immigrants coming from the US into Canada could be coming here to pick up Chinese steel and deliver it on their backs into the US in contravention of Trumps steel Tariffs.
Gregg Goodfellow
This cartoon was lifted from another great post but I loved it so had to share.
The dark green countries are the most democratic ones. So that’s Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand…..
…and Canada.
Democracy Index
Measure of the state of democracy in 167 countries The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index map for 2019 [1] Full democracies 9.01–10 8.01–9 Flawed democracies 7.01–8 6.01–7 Hybrid regimes 5.01–6 4.01–5 Authoritarian regimes 3.01–4 2.01–3 0–2 No data ? The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a UK -based company. It intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states . The index was first published in 2006, with updates for 2008, 2010 and later years. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories, measuring pluralism , civil liberties and political culture . In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorises each country in one of four regime types: full democracies , flawed democracies , hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes . Method As described in the report, [2] the democracy index is a weighted average based on the answers of 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted alternative answers. Most answers are experts' assessments. Some answers are provided by public-opinion surveys from the respective countries. In the case of countries for which survey results are missing, survey results for similar countries, and expert assessments are used in order to fill in gaps. The questions are grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Each answer is converted to a score, either 0 or 1, or for the three-answer questions, 0, 0.5 or 1. With the exceptions mentioned below, within each category, the scores are added, multiplied by ten, and divided by the total number of questions within the category. There are a few modifying dependencies, which are explained much more precisely than the main rule procedures. In a few cases, an answer yielding zero for one question voids another question; e.g. if the elections for the national legislature and head of government are not considered free (question 1), then the next question, " Are elections... fair? ", is not considered, but automatically scored zero. Likewise, there are a few questions considered so important that a low score on them yields a penalty on the total score sum for their respective categories, namely: "Whether national elections are free and fair"; "The security of voters "; "The influence of foreign powers on government"; "The capability of the civil servants to implement policies". The five category indices, which are listed in the report, are then averaged to find the Democracy Index for a given country. Finally, the Democracy Index, rounded to two decimals , decides the regime type classification of the country. The report discusses other indices of democracy, as defined, e.g. by Freedom House , and argues for some of the choices made by the team from the Economist Intelligence Unit . In this comparis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Last year, Canada ranked 5th ,one one-hundredth of a point behind New Zealand and 0.6 points behind #1 Norway
And all the countries ahead of it have much smaller populations. And much smaller areas.
And its rating is getting better year by year.
Now, does that mean it’s perfect? Of course not.
Buy that does mean that we had better be damn careful before we start fiddling with things .
One of the things Canada doesn’t do well with is a string of minority governments. Few countries do (see Italy). In effect, one of the biggest vulnerabilities of Canadian democracy is that if a party really wanted to force election after election in a minority situation, there’s pretty much nothing that could be done. Germany does have a mechanism for dealing with it - the President, and only the president, can call a new general election.
But with majorities always looming, minority governments generally have an incentive to keep everyone happy to avoid another election that could either wipe them out or return them to power.
One of the issues with a proportional representation system or a ranked voting system is that you will just get constant minority governments. That incentivizes small parties to either ask for extreme terms to provide support (like the Greens did in British Columbia) or to crash the government to make a point (like the Social Credit did to Joe Clark) as it turned out, at the next election, those parties maintained some of their support, but were crushed at the polls anyway.
Let’s face it. The main criticism of democracy in Canada right now is that people don’t like Justin Trudeau for undefined reasons. Okay, the defined reason is that Pierre Trudeau is his dad, but whatever. Democracy is working here so let’s not try to “optimize” it without thinking of the long term effects.
This re-writing of history to acquiesce to all the "woke" assholes has got to stop folks!
Why are we applying todays morality and conventions to yesterday's events?
Guest Post by Tyler Dawson:
Canada’s national library, which bills itself as “custodian of our distant past and recent history” has deleted a history of the prime ministers from its website, with archivists having labelled it “outdated and redundant.”
A search on the Library and Archives Canada website now yields an error page, and a news release entitled “spring cleaning” explains that the feature, called First Among Equals, has now been removed, along with a handful of other historical records.
Blacklock’s Reporter, an Ottawa online news outlet, which, along with the Toronto Star, first reported on the deletion, said there was “much fanfare” in 1994 when the web page was launched.
The removal comes as the country grapples with Canada’s history with Indian Residential Schools, a heated debate that has even led to the burning of churches and destruction of statues.
This latest reckoning, which has again tackled the history of figures such as Egerton Ryerson, Hector-Louis Langevin and Sir John A. Macdonald, came in the wake of reports that hundreds of unmarked graves had been discovered at former residential schools.
The Library and Archives Canada page regarding Macdonald made no mention of his role in the creation of the residential school system, the Toronto Star reported last month.
The library also deleted a website dedicated to the War of 1812 and a poetry archive, a news release explained.
The federal institution did not respond to the National Post’s request for comment by press time.
John English, a former Liberal member of Parliament and author of biographies of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Lester B. Pearson, called it “evasive.”
“I understand you have to revise these things but would think it would be a more deliberative process with proper discussion,” English said.
In another section of the website, which explains the process for “renewal,” staff say that some of the content on the website, written years ago “does not always reflect our diverse and multicultural country, often presenting only one side of Canada’s history.
“This is why content that is redundant or outdated will be removed or rewritten,” it says.
The changes came under fire from some Canadian historians, Blacklock’s reported.
“I honestly cannot understand why the biographies of prime ministers would be ‘redundant’ or ‘outdated’ in a country that has a poor historical memory,” said Barry Wilson, who’s published a biography of Mackenzie Bowell, the fifth prime minister of Canada.
“It would be educational to update the site to say in the 21st century there have been doubts or criticisms raised about past leaders, but surely the answer is not to destroy online access to historical records.”
History is normally written by the victors..., but now it seems to be written by the snowflakes
No, the US is turning into the next Mexico. It has far too many people to be the next Canada, not to mention far too many murders and too many gun fatalities.
It also doesn’t have universal health care insurance, which is pretty much the minimum criteria for a first world country these days, and its educational system isn’t really up to Canadian standards, so it is back to the third world for the USA.
Very pretty, but it doesn’t grow potatoes. Most of the Canadian land mass in eastern and central Canada is dominated by the Canadian Shield. If you are lucky, you get a centimetre or two of thin, highly acidic soil. Historically, populations only grow along routes of easy transport with arable land. You only live where you can either grow your food or get it transported easily to you.
How do I avoid toilet freezing in the winter of Canada?
Mike Webster.
Mike:
I’ve lived in Canada for my most of my life. (Since I was 4)
I can say without a doubt that I have never, not even once, had to do anything to prevent a toilet from freezing nor have I ever had a toilet freeze nor have I ever heard of anyone having a toilet freeze.
It isn’t “a thing” here in Canada for the simple reason that we have building codes and houses are not designed and built by morons who don’t understand the concepts of insulation and heating.
Yes, our igloos are made of snow and ice, but I can assure you that our plumbing and electricity are right up-to-date!
