[Brent Swain]

The election of Obama has raised respect for USanians around the world . Maybe if this continues, USanians, when asked where they are from, will no longer be so ashamed of their country, so that they will be able to admit the name of the country, instead of only giving the name of the continent, and leaving you to guess which one of the 22 American countries they mean.
Brent

[Individualist]

Brent Swain Brent Swain:

The election of Obama has raised respect for USanians around the world . Maybe if this continues, USanians, when asked where they are from, will no longer be so ashamed of their country, so that they will be able to admit the name of the country, instead of only giving the name of the continent, and leaving you to guess which one of the 22 American countries they mean.
Brent

Ah, the smug condescension of the Canadian left. Accept no substitute!

Further to your point though, I guess this is yet another reason why the NDP and its fellow travellers should stop referring to every shift of some service from the public sector to the private sector as "Americanization".

[Brent Swain]

I don't use that term , prefering "Yankification." You say right wingers dont have trouble understanding the difference between the name of a country and that of a continent? Bullshit.
I think the foreign investment review agency should have been the foreign investment diversification agency. Nothing wrong with having a large amount of your businesses foreign owned, as long as it is not all owned by one country, the one which has always been the greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty in history.
Brent

[Individualist]

Brent Swain Brent Swain:

I think the foreign envestment review agency should have been the foreign investment diversification agency. Nothing wrong with having a large amount of your businesses foreign owned, as long as it is not all owned by one country, the one which has always been the greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty in history.
Brent

It's pretty clear from your posting history you dislike Americans (uh...sorry, citizens of the US). You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but our trade relationship with the US is a product of geography and cultural similarity (yes, you read correctly). However much the Canadian left feels greater kinship with Scandinavian social democrats and Europe in general, Canadians are far more like our neighbours to the south than we are like the staid, ethnically homogenous welfare staters across the Atlantic. Our Yankee-bashing is simply a case of the narcissism of small differences mixed with a lingering colonial insecurity we have as a country.

I on the other hand like Americans (and I *do* call citizens of the US by that name). I've always enjoyed their television shows and movies and video games and music. I've admired their entrepreneurial spirit and love of individual liberty. I love how they beat back academic political correctness with parody and common sense, while the left-liberal elites in Canada embraced the ugly and often ridiculous excesses of identity politics and shoved them down the throats of Canadians, starting with the school system.

Americans have the right to own property. Canadians don't. An Amercian can defend himself from a home invader without worrying about his becoming the "criminal", instead of the intruder. Canadians can't. After all, that poor home invader was probably a victim of something.

I have no love for the American religious right, but I find Canadian PC thuggery just the other side of the same coin.

I can like and admire Americans and buy things from them without wanting to be American, or without diluting my Canadian identity. And I don't believe that ideas carry flags. So there's really no such thing as a "Canadian" idea or an "American" one. Let's argue ideas on their merits, not on assumptions about their nationality.

[Brent Swain]

I suggest you go find an atlas and educate yourself in grade three geography.
If you think that Canada is the same as a country where the coastguard has the right to board your boat in the middle of the night and march you and your family to the foredeck at gunpoint , with impunity, then you are incredibly naive.
That is what the advocates of North American Union are trying to arrange for us.
Saying that Yanks are not the only ones in two continents, and 22 countries who count, is not anti USanian. That is like saying that crticising what the Germans did in WW2 is being anti European.
Saying that only USanians are American is like saying only Germans are Europeans and you can't call the French or Spanniards European becasuse they are not German, or saying only Chinese are Asian, and when you refer to Asians you are refering only to Chinese and not Thais, Cambodians , etc..
In Canada public health care is a sacred trust. When Obama tries to give USanians the same safety net, he is compared to Hitler, and his popularity drops like a stone. Doesn't sound the same to me. When politicoes attack public health care in Canada, Canadians boot them out. Advocate public health care in the US and USanians boot the advocate out.
Had Canadians had a vote in US elections the republicans would have zero chance of ever winning an election, and even in redneck Alberta they would have finished ten points behind the democrats. Doesn't sound the same to me. In fact it sounds like exact opposites.We are far closer in our political thinking to Europeans , light years closer than we are to the yanks, harper being the one brief aberation.
Many Europeans, when they get to Canada, after visiting the US, tell me that Canada feels a lot more like Europe.
In Canada, our first reaction to a situation is "Whats best for the populace". In the US, it's "Whats best for me ? Screw the populace", or "Should I sue him or shoot him?" Hurricane Katrina was an example of that.I doubt if any Canadian government , even Harper would react by sending in mercenaries to a natural disaster to shoot people as a first priority. What did the miltary do in the Winnipeg floods? Shoot people? No, they sandbagged , in keeping with government tradition.
Some of my cousins used their aboriginal status to get access to the US, and moved to California. They thought it would be similar to living in Canada. They got a hell of a shock when they tried living there, and moved right back within a few weeks, wanting to kiss the ground when they crossed the border and got back into the free world.Sure sounds different to me!
Harper is the last vestige of the Bush regime .
He, being the one reform MP who voted for the gun registry, and still supports it , has no intention of scrapping it. He is just using it as an issue to sucker rural voters into supporting him. Some are begining to realise that. Some are still too gullible. In opposition they complained that the gun law could be changed by government unilaterally, without going thru parliament. Now, in power, he says he needs a majority to change it. Was he lying then, or is he lying now?
Gun siezures from honest Canadians have increased exponentially since the Tories came to power
Brent

[Individualist]

Brent Swain Brent Swain:

I suggest you go find an atlas and educate yourself in grade three geography.

Hmmm, grade three geography would reveal Canada as a large land mass populated by a thin strip of people hugging our long border with the US. Many of us are a shorter drive to a neighbouring US state than to the next province.

We watch American TV, read American books and magazines, and buy American products (or their American-branded but Canadian made equivalents). We speak English with a similar enough accent that Canadians have had great success as newscasters in the US.

We are both New World societies with a frontier past. We are both ethnically diverse societies built primarily on British legal and political traditions. Canada has a single-payer health insurance system, but it wasn't that easy a sell here the first time around. People here called it "socialized medicine" when it was first proposed as well.

Just because Canadians would vote in greater numbers for the Democrats than Americans do does not make us political opposites. Canada has never elected and will never elect social democrats to power at the federal level. Harper is a right-of-centre politician, and Ignatieff is a Turner-Martin Liberal. If the Liberals had gone with Bob Rae, Harper might have gotten a majority this time around.

$1:

In Canada, our first reaction to a situation is 'Whats best for the populace'. In the US, it's 'Whats best for me ? Screw the populace', or 'Should I sue him or shoot him?'

In Canada, an all too common reaction is simply to blame Americans, or corporations, or in Toronto, Mike Harris. The other typical response is to hire more bureaucrats.

"Harper is the last vestige of the Bush regime."

A popular slur, with some superficial justification. But Harper's government is actually to the left of Barack Obama's. Harper's main issue with Obama is his protectionism, and justifiably so.

[Brent Swain]

Of course we buy American goods we are in the Americas , we also buy an increasing number of American goods fron South America, which are also American goods .
You make my point well about the political difference when you point out that Harper, considered right wing by Canadian standards is to the left of Obama, considered left wing in the US. Thank you for conceding to my arguement.
When it comes to surrendering Canadian sovereignty , Harper takes the all time record.
He has just signed an agreement which would allow Europeans to police Canadians inside Canadian waters. He said it won't be done however . The maritimers are furious , saying "If it won't be done , then why would Harper ever put it on the books?"
So much for his promise of defending Canadian sovereignty.

[Individualist]

Brent Swain Brent Swain:

You make my point well about the political difference when you point out that Harper, considered right wing by Canadian standards is to the left of Obama, considered left wing in the US. Thank you for conceding to my arguement.

Not sure how you would have drawn such a conclusion. I wasn't arguing that Canada and the US were identical. The mean position on the left-right political spectrum is different between the two countries, but there's a huge area of overlap. If New York City accounted for as much of the US population as Toronto does Canada's, then you'd have the means a lot closer to one another. And if you removed Quebec from the equation, they'd become closer yet.

Canadians would bristle as much under Scandinavian cradle-to-grave paternalism as they would under American laissez-faire individualism. And Europe is not some left-wing monolith in any case.

Are you from Winnipeg? If so, please pass on my thanks to the good people of Charleswood for keeping Glen Murray out of federal politics.

[Brent Swain]

There are huge overlaps between most countries . We chose what we want , and don't allow neighbours and their treasonous quislings to impose it on us, or allow them to promote apathy in their attempts to impose it on us.
I'm from the wet coast. My ancestors are from Winnipeg ( Red River Settlement NWT)
Brent