printI’ve spent quite a bit of time in Ontario, Canada, and I’ve found about the same percentage of rugged individualists there in industry as we have here in the formerly industrial wasteland known as Michigan.
The difference is that the ‘culture’ there really is ‘cultured’ by the government, as when you grow pathogens in a petri dish. So those who have the constitution of individualists are merely incrementally more out of place and out of touch. Their Ministry of Culture sees to it that all (mostly government controlled) media outlets blanket the landscape with nanny state wonder stories, interspersed with nasty ‘artier than thou’ condescending sniffs at vulgar Americanism. The newspapers, especially in Toronto, have raised this to a fine art. The individualist in such an atmosphere must not only get all of his information from the internet, he must also swim in the sea of life completely at odds with the emotional and intellectual environment around him.
We really aren’t that different, though. The disparaging remarks towards Canadians should be tempered with the observation that at least we (mostly) share a language and a custom of politeness, both of which are fading faster in the U.S. than in Canada. But Canada seems to be in a race with the U.S.—trying to stay 10 years ahead in the slide towards welfare state bankruptcy. That race is the unifying glue to their fractious political system. They might squabble, even contemplate secession, but none of them wants to be seen by the others as ‘just another state.’
My years of dealing with customers across the border have yielded a few valuable friendships. When my friends would joke about us gun-totin’ cowboys (they loved to go the shooting range and waste handgun ammunition, a forbidden pleasure for them), I would ask them if they ever saw the Monty Python lumberjack song. Other than those few friends, though, I was left with the overall impression of wonderment—if I hadn’t seen it myself, I might not have believed that a people could love their servitude so.
—John Danforth
“A people who love their servitude” pretty well sums up my sister’s attitude. She once sent me a very condescending e-mail stating to the effect that most Canadians liked for their government to be involved in their lives.
Thats exactly how my aunt described her position! ‘We’re not communists; this is how it is over here, and this is how we like it.’ What a dumb, pea-brained attitude.
Of course, some people like it over there, but some do not. People with that mindset ignore the minority – unless it’s trying to teach sodomy to ten year olds, in which case they are very supportive of a minority – but these same people have no compassion over a simple matter of a man wanting to keep what he has rightfully earned in an honest manner.
It is sad to think Americans believe that American individualism is somehow better or different than Canadian collectivism. The idea that governments serve people is some kind of democratic utopian dream. If you don’t think that Americans love their servitude, stop singing “God Bless America” or reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance”. Acknowledging that Canadians “love their servitude” is the first step in admitting you also have a problem. Do not pretend to be blind to the control that governments have on society especially your own.
Agreed. I’m hard on Canada, and Canadians in general, but I’m probably more hard on American’s claiming to be better than Canadians.
A friend of mine was talking about how terrible Canadians were, while gushing over the only slightly better state of America. I responded that the main difference in Canada versus the States is that Canadians have more of what Americans want.
We’re inching towards a Canadian style health system, and like all government programs, it creates its own need as it continues to distort market systems, creating further incentive to try to fix the problem the Way of the State. This is why Canadians don’t feel any pressure to change; they feel, rightly so, that they are ‘ahead’ of the world in terms of politics. We’re heading to where they are, and any time we regulate an industry, we give a nod to our Northern friends.
MJ Markovic,
Of course Americans love their servitude. Observe next Tuesday as an overwhelming majority of the Americans who can be bothered to vote prove their complete ignorance of economics and limitations on government power as they vote for one of the two false alternatives presented to them.
I guess I’d need to know what you mean by your term “American individualism” before I can understand how you equate any kind of individualism with any kind of collectivism.
Seems to me, individualists aren’t often guilty of reciting state chants, believing the welfare state serves them, being democratic, or being blind to the extent of control a government has over society. Anyone, including myself, might have difficulty admitting we have a problem, though. Would you care to define what you think it is in clearer terms?
I know that the media machinery of state in Canada routinely conjures a caricature of the ‘American Individualist’ as a straw man to knock down in their propaganda. Has this apparition formed the basis of your judgement?
–John Danforth–
Are you aware that the elected leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. are involved in removing America’s borders and creating a North American Union with the Security and Prosperity and Partership agreement? Any differences that exist will be minimal when we all become subject to the WTO. Please visit http://www.JBS.org to learn more about the planned NAU, the NAFTA superhighway,the Free Trade Area of the America’s and more.
In comparing America to Canada, particularly in terms of the settlement of the western part of the country, my sister once bragged to me that, unlike the American “Wild West,” Canadians had an “orderly” settlement, led, of course, by their wonderful, ever-watchful, nanny government. She claimed that Canada’s western settlement was much more peaceful and less rowdy than our own here in the United States. She, of course, was quite smug in her statements.
I’ll state that I am not up on Canadian history, but am just reporting on her statements and attitudes.
Please also note that I’m not inferring in the least that the U.S. does not have problems; just that in some ways we are not as far along the path to socialism as Canada is… and that perhaps there are fewer people here in the U.S. who like the nanny state.
Quite simply, my point was that “American individualism” excludes nearly anything dealing with the individualist. Of course the ideas of individualism and collectivism cannot be equated but the United States and Canada cannot be wholly described in terms of either respectively.
The problem does not lie with individualists. However when things start to get labelled, America Joe will believe that America stands for individualism while Canada Joe will want to cast flames at the straw man’s feet.
MJ,
Re: “American Individualism”
Your last message clarifies your context for me. The bastardization of the concept in the U.S. is almost as complete as it is in Canada.
In the U.S. this process is more insidious. The American media attempts to equate individualism with false bravado, amoralism, stupidity, nihilism, and latent criminality in movies and on television. The American effort is less transparent and perhaps more sophisticated than what I observed in Canada. Or maybe it was, until Hollywood dropped all pretense with the release of a gay cowboy movie.
It’s the same kind of hatchet job they did on the concept, “capitalist” – a campaign which started earlier and which has successfully managed to redefine the meaning of the term in the minds of most of the population.
The vilification of the individualist dovetails nicely with the emasculation of the American male as outlined so brilliantly in Ilana’s latest essay.
The Marlboro Man and John Wayne are the antithesis of the ideal ‘modern man’. If the elites can make the caricature unpopular enough, for long enough, eventually they will be able to get our firearms, with barely a whimper of resistance. They have to change the meaning of the labels, before they can do that in the U.S. How much longer until they succeed?