[Ruxpercnd]

Most of my experience in visiting Canada is in British Columbia; Victoria, Vancouver, Whistler Ski Resort. When I was a teenager, I took a boat trip up the Columbia River from the U.S. clear up to Revelstoke, B.C..
And... I have visited Edmonton, Alberta.

Live near Seattle, Washington and I am amazed how we Americans don't hear much about what is happening so close by. Every once in a while, I catch some Canadian TV, how come we don't get more? I guess because we don't demand it.

Canada is a beautiful country. I always look forward to a trip to Victoria. Took a boating trip a couple of years ago through the islands around south Vancouver, what a trip!

Wish for a better road from the U.S. to Whistler so we could get to skiing faster.

Reading some of the posts on this site - there seems to be a lot of strong political feelings. Frankly, even though we have lots of Canadians around here... Canada just isn't on our radar screen. I am delighted that folks can move to Canada when they want to quit our political system and Canadians can come here when they want to work and keep some of their money. It all seems to work out.

Politically, I think that if we Americans thought about it... we would dearly love to be isolationist and just snuggle up to Canada while telling the rest of the world to go fish.

Please believe that most Americans are in the political middle. The screaming extremist get all the press. And frankly, I think our southern right wing Christians have gotten a little too much sun. I would like to send them all to Canada for a nice long vacation.

Canada relations would be better if there was a train running directly between Seattle and Whistler, B.C. and we could fish in Canada without messing around with permits.

I think we split the continent the wrong way... instead of an East-West border, we should split the continent vertically. I would be happy to give Canada the entire Eastern U.S. and in return we would get all of Western Canada! Think about it... some real possibilities here. - Rux

[RUEZ]

Hey welcome to the site. I do take exception to this comment though.

Ruxpercnd Ruxpercnd:

... Canadians can come here when they want to work and keep some of their money. It all seems to work out.

The Canadian economy is doing quite nicely and the unemployment rate is at an all time low, so jobs aren't to hard to find. And I keep a lot of my money so I don't have a problem there either. I wouldn't believe everything you hear about Canada.

[Streaker]

Rux: I'm not sure I understood what you meant by that "snuggle up to Canada" bit. I'm just hoping you can elaborate on that.

Welcome to CKA!

[Johnnybgoodaaaaa]

RUEZ RUEZ:

Hey welcome to the site. I do take exception to this comment though.

Ruxpercnd Ruxpercnd:

... Canadians can come here when they want to work and keep some of their money. It all seems to work out.

The Canadian economy is doing quite nicely and the unemployment rate is at an all time low, so jobs aren't to hard to find. And I keep a lot of my money so I don't have a problem there either. I wouldn't believe everything you hear about Canada.

There's still Canadians who go to the US to seek higher pay. No offense meant towards you, I just remember that seemed to be what the few Canadians who lived around me did. Before I moved to Austin, a Canadian family lived accross the street from me(the guy had a son my age who played bass)and they stayed here for quite a while, made money, moved back to Canada, but kept their house here to rent it out. I think that it's not that jobs are hard to find in Canada, but often times people will come to the US seeking higher paying jobs. Please don't take this as me saying any shit about Canada, it's just something that has happened for years, and I'm sure there's great paying jobs in Canada, I think it could be something with the tax rates or something, although I don't really know, just remember reading about the "brain drain" on the CIA factbook.

[Ruxpercnd]

Hmmm.. about snuggling up to Canada....

first of all I don't like the idea that U.S. has to take on all the world's problems.... We were expected to take on the bulk of the tsunami aid. But that tsunami happened about as far away from us as one could get on this planet. And if something happened to us, those people could probably care less. We did a good moral thing by helping, but the attitude of non- U.S. - beating up on us while we were scrambling to help is startling. If I were President, I would start disconnecting the international phone lines. I think Canada deserves a lot more of our attention. We should:
- spend more money there
- visit more often
- carry all the Canadian television stations on our cable systems
- truly make the border open to absolutly free trade - no restrictions
- provide for fast border crossings for real Canadians (not foreigners who use Canada as a transit or bad guys from Algeria, I can't imagine why you take in those folks.)
- We should have non-restrictive work rights between us.
- One really wild idea I have is that I would like to have Canadian guest observers join in our legislative and congressional debates, so we could get a real direct dialog... and vice versa.
- Canada should open up completely to U.S. investment.
- We should never argue over fishing rights and have joint fisheries.
- Need to educate folks on how much U.S. and Canada work together everyday. There is a lot going on that we don't know about.

I had Canadian kids in school with me, have lots of Canadian coins in my coin jar, and we have lots of Canadian flags flying around here, in shopping centers, on boats. I see lots of B.C. license plates on the Highway.

How is that for snuggling up?

[Ruxpercnd]

...On working in the U.S. and keeping more money:

While visiting Canada to buy a timeshare at Whistler, I was startled to listen to a discussion on Canadian TV about Canadians adoptiing the U.S. dollar.

The salesman who sold us the timeshare, told me that his ambition was to work in the U.S.. He said that he could make and keep more money in U.S. Hey! I was told that by a Canadian. I asked him what the biggest problem was with the Canadian economy and he said that there were too many Canadian goverment workers, and therefore too many voters protecting their government jobs.

Twenty percent of Americans live off our government. What is the Canadian percent?

By the way... I don't want Canada to become the U.S. I've always kept Canada in mind as a place to escape to. Victoria is as charming as you can get and the Canadian wilderness is priceless. - Rux

[Telkwa]

Ruxpercnd Ruxpercnd:

.... first of all I don't like the idea that U.S. has to take on all the world's problems.... We were expected to take on the bulk of the tsunami aid. But that tsunami happened about as far away from us as one could get on this planet.

Well, not exactly true. The US naval/air base on Diego Garcia was right in the middle of the tsunami. In fact, some of the aid came from there. But I get your point.

You are right, we shouldn't have the frictions between our peoples that we do. One has to remember that the American Revolution created two countries. Some of my ancestors came to Canada circa 1776 precisely because they rejected the American way. However, there have always been some Americans, such as Ethan Allen (hero to you / terrorist to us), who resented that; who believe in Manifest Destiny. Every time we hear some jackass like Paul Cellucci spouting crap at us, relations between our peoples get slammed backwards. And every time we have a Canadian go cap in hand sucking up to New York or Washington, again the resentment builds. One would think that we could get over it after a couple of hundred years, but at the present it doesn't look like it.

[dgthe3]

Umm, although some of your ideas such as increasing Can-con (Canadian content) on TV and Americans spending more of their money up here, we don't really want to give Americans our resources, we like our fish, trees, and clean water, if we could, we would like to keep them too! You may not know this but NAFTA helped the US and Mexico, mostly at Canada's expense. But we did benifit somehow (we must have...), does anybody know how we did benifit?

[Ruxpercnd]

dgthe3... Just wanted to express my fondness and respect for Canada and all the Canadians I have known in my life.

Yea, we want Canadian resources, but its not like Canada is a third world country where the citizens don't benefit from the sale of resources. I believe that NAFTA and Globalized trade have some problems that need to be worked on. Actually, U.S. lumber has protested the import of Canadian lumber. I disagree with U.S. lumber companies and want unrestricted trade. Give us that lumber!

We all have troubles with environmental issues. I wouldn't like to eat any fish caught in Puget Sound where I live, too polluted... and I am very unhappy about that. But even Victoria, B.C. has problems..

It's been estimated Greater Victoria dumps 45 billion litres of raw sewage containing PBCs into the ocean each year. (just Google 'Victoria Sewage' for the full story on that.

Bottom line is that there is no way on God's Green Earth that we can separate our interests. We have to learn to live with the paradox that for as much as we have in common, we are different in delightful ways. And I like it that way.

Canadians have total control over their destiny. This is a wonderful thing and a challenge. We need to think about what we want the future to look like.

- I want the future to give us a Canada that is highly educated, strong and thoughtful.
- I want Canada to be our wilderness backyard.
- Canada should play a greater roll in world diplomacy, as a moderating voice and convince America to lighten up a little. I would like to see a Canadian as United Nations Secretary General.
- There is no reason that Canada could not be a leader in any endeavor of it's choosing.

If you want to really create mental distance from America, just ditch the English language and go with French. I guarantee that would make you really different. - Rux

[Telkwa]

BTW, Ruxpercnd, conservatism is a legitimate political stance. What has been scaring so many people, on both sides of the border, is the rise of the radical right. These people aren't conservative; they're fascist. Barry Goldwater must be rolling over in his grave.

[Mustang1]

The Conservatism of Bush and Harper is better labelled, neo-conservatism. Neo-cons espouse, strong free-market enterprise, regressive social change, and massive Christian morality. Moreover, they possess a myopic view of foreign policy – they label nations/individuals/groups as “bad” while they retain the mantle of “good”. This not, ideologically speaking, the same as classic Burkian conservatism or Red Toryism, it is a relatively new phenomena and one that can be politically and culturally divisive.

Some example of neo-cons: George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, Ralph Klein and Mike Harris.

[Mustang1]

The Conservatism of Bush and Harper is better labelled, neo-conservatism. Neo-cons espouse, strong free-market enterprise, regressive social change, and massive Christian morality. Moreover, they possess a myopic view of foreign policy – they label nations/individuals/groups as “bad” while they retain the mantle of “good”. This not, ideologically speaking, the same as classic Burkian conservatism or Red Toryism, it is a relatively new phenomena and one that can be politically and culturally divisive.

Some example of neo-cons: George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, Ralph Klein and Mike Harris.

[Ruxpercnd]

Telkwa & Mustang1 - Fascism can be found anywhere and deserves to be feared. I am not academically sophistcated enough define fascism. However, off the top of my head I would look for these attributes:

- Folks give up their control and freedom to a strong leader.
- The strong leader plays on emotions and invokes a psuedo spirituality and perhaps religion.
- The shining leader plays on fear and declares a enemy to which all attention must be directed and for such cause the citizen must be totally dedicated.
- The individual is nothing in relation to the leader and the cause.
- The enemy is sub-human and an abominatination before God and we as God's servants are obligated to correct the abomination.
- Folks who eat this crap have nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain, including 77 virgins waiting in heaven...

All smart politicians know this crap and unleash some of it occasionally. American presidential politics an simply jingoism and crass media manipulation. No one man can represent the desires of 190 million Americans much less 100. How would you climb to the top of this dog pile?

I am a conservative-middle American and the religious right makes me want to throw up. Hey, I like bible stories and Jesus and the Golden Rule. But, especially here in the Pacific Northwest, polls show that most of us are spiritual rather than religious. We are not fascist any more than Canadians are.

Here is what is happening... U.S. presidential politics requires consolidation of power before the election. To paraphrase Mayor Daly Sr. of Chicago, "Don't hold an election until you count the votes". In parlimentary systems consolidation takes place after the election. The parlimentary systems permits multiple parties and therefore the wheeling and dealing must take place after elections in order to form a government.

Our peculiar American system dearly wants only two parties. For many years we were content to leave out the fringes and just let middle Americans do their thing. What spoiled the game was third party candidates; Ross Perot killed the Republicans, Ralph Nader scares the Democrats. These third party movements are taken very seriously by hard core power mongers. Bush Sr. lost a second term because of Perot.

The parties have decided to make deals to pull in the fringes. Bush makes love to the fascist, rewards them with Ashcroft. It's just deal making. Kind of like CEO ethics in politics. We voters have to vote for the least worse instead of voting for what we believe.

In America, look for this soul selling to become open, understandable negotiation. Look for Americans to get smart and begin forming super interest groups that can bargain with their votes. Organizing over the internet has barely begun. The Democrats under party chairman Dean will lead off. Other groups will take lessons.

Please forgive President Bush. He's just a man, caught up in the game. For most of us he is the least worse, everything taken into consideration, even if we do throw up when he acknowledges the nut cases.

What we can all do is to remain loving to each other, never entertain hatred, never give up our freedom - vote, find and actively support your cause. The worst is for good people to do nothing. - Rux

[Mustang1]

Ruxpercnd,

Hey, I didn’t suggest that mainstream Canadian or American political parties or individuals were practising ideological fascism. I merely outlined a case that postulated there are many examples of Neo-Conservatism currently at play in Canada and the United States. While ideological fascism and neo-cons do share some similar philosophical tenets (socially regressive, myopic worldview), they are not ideologically identical.

Basic Elements of Fascist Outlook

1. A rejection of rationality and a reliance on emotion to govern
2. A belief (especially National Socialism) in the superiority of specific groups and the inherent inferiority of other groups
3. Advocacy of the legitimacy of subjugating countries of “inferior” people
4. A rejection of the rights of individuals in favour of “corporatist” view that people are “workers” for the state
5. Gearing all economic activity to the support of the corporatist state
6. Anthropomorphic view of the state as a living thing (organic state theory)
7. Belief that the individual’s highest expression is in the people (volk in German)
8. Belief that the highest expression of the people (and, by extension, the individual citizen) is in the leader (German fuhrer and Italian duce) who rules as a totalitarian leader.

(see Ebenstein, Ebenstein and Fogelman)

And I don't forgive Bush.

[america]

YA I LOVE AMERICA AS MUCH AS I LOVE CANADA, I JUST DONT LIKE THE PRIME MINISTER, I THINK ALBERTA AND BC SHOULD BECOME THE 51ST, AND 52ND STATES, BECAUSE THERE THE 2 PROVENCES THAT ARE CLOSEST RELATED TO AMERICA!!!!!