Canada and the USA: A Quick Comparison

 

An American friend sends a clip suggesting that Canadian government corruption is verging on Third World levels.

Sadly, this is not news. It occurs to me that this is a recurring theme in Canadian politics. Canadian governments almost always fall due to corruption. Whoever is the opposition vows to come in and clean things up. Ten years on or so, they too are thrown out for corruption. 

This goes back not just to our first government, under Sir John A. Macdonald, which fell over the Canadian Pacific scandal. It really goes back further, to the days of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique. These operated as a kind of oligarchy, monopolizing government positions and government largesse: cronyism. Despite “responsible government,” this seems cemented in by long tradition as the Canadian way. People speak these das of the “Laurentian elite.” You see the same attitude percolate through Canadian voluntary associations, which seem invariably cliquish. In government, it is seen in the many subsidies given out to industry under the guise of “regional economic expansion”; the bribes to First Nations, Quebec, feminists, multicultural groups. The untendered contracts. More recently the subsidization of preferred news media.

American politics does not seem to be like this. There have been scandals, certainly, but not such generalized corruption, and never taken for granted as standard operating procedure the way it seems to be in Canada.

This may be partly because in the US there is a better system of checks and balances. A rogue executive can be called out by the legislative, and either by the judiciary, and vice versa.

In Canada, the legislature is controlled by the executive; and the executive gets to nominate the judges. 

But American media also traditionally delight in muckraking; and individual Americans rarely have a good word to say about Washington.

 Under this, and causing this, is a different attitude to government. Canadians are spontaneously deferential to authority, and trust their leaders. Americans are spontaneously suspicious of leaders. And this traces back to our different histories: America formed by rebelling against established authority. Canade was formed by those who insisted on deference to it.

Both attitudes have their advantages. Canada is more orderly; there is more peace in the streets. The greasy wheels turn more smoothly. America is more prosperous and innovative; and there is more freedom. I have lived in both countries. In America, there is freedom in the very air. 

Canada is innately conservative. The US is innately liberal. In the proper meanings of those words.

Is Any Established Organization Corrupt?

Scoffing at the idea of a Chinese Community Party “anti-corruption campaign,” a Falun Gong commentator observes that all Chinese Communist Party leaders are corrupt. It’s like the Mafia, he explains. Anyone who is not corrupt is a threat to the others. He will not be allowed to take any position of power. He will always be an outsider. To rise in the party, you must have blood on your hands.

This is probably true of any well-established organization. Human nature demands it. What could prevent it?

It is apparently also true of the leadership of the USA. We see the curtain raised, at least partially, on “Hellfire Clubs” at Epstein Island and at P. Diddy’s “white parties.” Anybody who was anybody was there. To enter the elite, you had to do something compromising. This ensured you would never blow the whistle on others. You were then trusted by the others and given positions of prominence and leadership.

Only this explains the desperate opposition to Trump: he was not compromised, and so was a threat to the others. It seems also to explain the desperate opposition, within the Democratic Party, to RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, either of whom would have been ideal standard-bearers for the party in electoral terms. They were not trusted to do the wrong thing. Conversely, it explains how Bernie Sanders, or Pete Buttigieg, fell so meekly into line and folded what looked like winning hands in the primary process. They must have been compromised; the elite club had some hold on them.

Further, Trump’s record of accomplishment since being re-elected suggests how much corruption has held the nation captive. There were always special interests acting against the common good. 

It seems clear there is a similar dynamic in the Conservative Party of Canada; and in the Liberal Party of Canada.

And of course in the hierarchy of the Catholic church. This is necessary to explain the pontificate of Francis, which seemed to be fighting against the interests of the church. It is an open secret.

There is a similar dynamic in the universities and schools; one is not admitted to faculty, or to certification, unless one asserts certain approved and obviously false dogmas. If not necessarily oneself openly immoral, one must openly endorse immorality.

There seems to be a similar dynamic in the professions.

How can one break this sort of corruption?

Democracy is designed for this. There is nothing magical about the will of the people; the majority is not always right. But a periodic popular vote serves as a counterbalance against control by a corrupt clique. Without it, China is trapped. With it, albeit with great difficulty, the US seems to have begun a process of cleaning up the swamp.

The free market is designed for this. Given open competition, virtue will be rewarded with more customers. The problem with the professions and the academies is that they are cartels, where democracy and the free market cannot do their magic.

For the church, we have the Bible, and past ecumenical councils, as an objective check. And we have a free market: if any one denomination becomes too openly corrupt, any individual parishioner can walk out the door, and across the street to a different church.

For the academies, the internet may be bringing us a solution. YouTube allows for open public debate among prominent academics. There is coming to be an open market in virtual lectures. 

For the professions, AI and greater access to information with the internet may at least diminish their influence. Indeed, they may largely or entirely disappear.

Middle-Class Anarchy

Gonzalo Lira outlines neatly how one of the most fundamental principles of Confucianism works: if those at the top are upright, the entire system will be upright. If those at the top are dishonest, the entire system will be dishonest. And this is the single most important task in any form of government; to model uprightness.

What Lira calls "middle-class anarchy" is the situation in any country in the Third World. It is this situation that makes a country Third World -- which is to say, it is what makes a country poor. Very quickly, no systems work.

Sadly, this seems to be the direction in which the entire Western world is now heading. We have seen the elites openly reject all conventional morality, after all.