Britain has a special relationship across the North Atlantic. It is with Canada.
The descendants of the United Empire Loyalists are to the Commonwealth as the Palestinians are to the Arabs. Like the Palestinians, they even keep the keys and the title deeds to their ancestors’ confiscated properties.
Huge numbers of Canadians are of Scottish descent. So are huge numbers of Americans, but all the fuss there is made of a ridiculous pseudo-Irishness.
Although Canada was undoubtedly an independent country, she fought in both World Wars from the start. She did not wait for Germany to encourage a third country to attack her several years into the First. Nor did she wait for Germany to declare war on her, and to attack her shipping, several years into the Second.
As one of the 16 Commonwealth Realms, including Britain, independent Canada retains the monarchy. Any of them can abolish it (as many others have done), or change her own Law of Succession. Canada freely chooses not to, just as Britain does. She cherishes her ties to us and to our other 14 sisters. Likewise, we cherish our ties to her and to our other 14 sisters. Or, at least, we should.
Canada’s was a social democracy constructed in order to defend the best conservative values against capitalism, just like ours. Most of her people still want this, just like ours. Yet she currently has a neoconservative government, just like ours. And it engages in scaremongering in order to curtail liberty, just like ours.
Finally, Canada’s vast resources of fuel, fresh water and other key commodities make her a coming superpower of the twenty-first century. By contrast, her southern neighbour is already in decline.
Which transatlantic special relationship matters more? Indeed, when the chips are down, which one really exists at all?
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Canada's current government, clinging on by the narrowest of margins, is greatly to be preferred to the totalitarian-PC regime which controlled Canada previously. Indeed it is quite a remarkable achievement for it to get itself elected at all, when the Canadian media is all in the pocket of the Liberals.
ReplyDeleteIf there is any difference at all, then it is the Bush-Kerry difference: Harper, like Bush, does and will do absolutely nothing about pro-life, family values, and so on, although he might talk a good fight (but so what?); whereas the Liberals, like Kerry, will do exactly the same while not waging pointless, immoral wars or trying to dismantle communitarian institutions.
ReplyDeleteCanada needs, and will have, the same realignment that I outline for Britain in another post, because it is now in the same Phase Three of the lunatic takeover that I also describe: Phase One was the imposition of lunatic social policies in the 1960s, Phase Two was the logically inescapable extension of those same principles in and as the imposition of lunatic economic policies of the 1980s, and Phase Three (again, logically inescapable) is the imposition of lunatic foreign and "security" policies today.
There is also a constitutional dimension: those of the 1960s-1980s persuasion - the neoconservatives - are the real threat to the monarchy on both sides of the Atlanatic, and indeed in the Antipodes and elsewhere. Yet they are in government in Britain, Canada and Australia, and also control the "Opposition" in at least the first of those realms.
"Although Canada was undoubtedly an independent country, she fought in both World Wars from the start. She did not wait for Germany to encourage a third country to attack her several years into the First. Nor did she wait for Germany to declare war on her, and to attack her shipping, several years into the Second."
ReplyDeleteWell, of course, Canada, as a dominion or realm of the British Empire and then (after the enactment of the Statute of Westminster in 1931) a dominion/realm of the then-styled British Commonwealth, was in a committed and formal military alliance with the UK, which entailed that if Britain declared war on an enemy, Canada was obliged as a British ally to declare war on the same enemy: this is what happened in 1914 & 1939. However, the United States was of course not in a military alliance with Britain and so was not obliged to declare war on Britain's enemies in the event of Britain declaring war. Why Britons persist in thinking that the US should have come into the world wars against Germany in 1914 & 1939 simply because the UK had declared war on Germany at these times, and had then mobilized the British armed forces against those of Germany, mystifies many Americans.