Elbows Down, Idiots!

Those aren't Mounties in the red coats.

Canadians, like most countries, live with various shared delusions. Perhaps it is their shared delusions that hold most countries together. But a particularly troublesome and dangerous one in the case of Canada is its anti-Americanism. 

This has my attention just now because I recently sat through a rant from a fellow Canadian irate at New York State for “stealing” the beaver as their official state mammal. “Those Americans want to take everything.”

Canada does not, of course, own the world’s beavers. New York State has as much right to the beaver as its mascot as does Canada.

Canada also did not, contrary to what every Canadian believes, defeat the USA in the War of 1812. Canada did not burn down the White House. 

The War of 1812 was a fight between the United States, on the one side, and Great Britain and Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy on the other. Canadian militia units, “fencibles,” did participate, as British subjects, in a relatively minor role. But it is safe to say that no Canadians were involved in the burning of the White House by the British Navy.

Britain ended the war in possession of everything they had at the start. As did the US. Tecumseh’s Confederacy collapsed. On balance, then, I’d say the US came out ahead. They did not conquer Canada; but that was not a war aim.

The kneejerk anti-Americanism among Canadians is a prejudice. Like all prejudices, it is immoral. Substitute “Jews” for “Americans” in all the standard complaints, and perhaps you can see where this is tending. “Those Jews want to take everything.”

Like antisemitism, it is based on envy of American relative success. This is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the worst next to pride. It is unworthy of a grown-up country.

It is doubly absurd since English Canadians and Americans are ethnically identical: the same language, the same accent, the same shared history, the same waves of immigration from the same countries, the same religion, the same geography, the same governmental and legal traditions. How can there be a sane basis for prejudice, even if prejudice were ever legitimate?

It is probably true that Canada owes its existence as a nation, and its relative freedom, to the United States. The American Revolution, the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, and the US Bill of Rights, were the model and test case on which modern liberal democracy in general has been built, here as everywhere else. While Britain had its own liberal traditions, the American experiment pushed them further faster than would likely otherwise have been the case. The American example certainly led directly to the French Revolution, and then its many echoes throughout Europe. It forced Britain, over the next decades, to extend responsible government to their remaining North American colonies. The US Constitution also became the model for the federal system that defines Canada—for confederation.

The US further serves as the model for Canada as a non-ethnic state, America being the first nation based purely on human equality and human rights. As Laurier put it, “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.” If and as Canada is based on freedom, it is based on the example of the United States. The United States is the mother country.

Canada moreover could not ask for a better neighbour. The United States is ten times our size. They could easily conquer Canada in a week or two. Yet since 1815, they have made no attempt. Where else has peace between neighbours lasted so long? It has not even lasted that long internally in the United States. They have offered us free access to their markets—because the US market is so much larger, any free trade deal benefits Canada more than the US. Through NATO and NORAD, they have taken upon themselves responsibility for our defense—we could never secure our vast northlands by ourselves. We boast of our rich resources, as if we had somehow earned them. In a sense, we owe these too to the USA.

It is time we acknowledged this.