Capitulating On Canada (But Only a Bit)

Canada, Democracy, Drug War, Free Speech, Individual Rights

In response to readers’ responses to “Canada: Crap County“:

To be fair, in many aspects, Canada is less regulated than the US. Their SEC, for example, has nothing on our soviet-style apparatus. They do not conduct the kind of war on drugs we prosecute. Writers here are right: subjugation exists on a continuum and we are sliding toward enslavement. Still, as far as regular folks go—people like us who are not likely to come to the SEC’s attention, and care more about keeping our property and guns than toking it up—the US is far and away the better place.
When you go through customs, Canadians will want to tax you; Americans to ensure you aren’t a terrorist. In the US, although heavily circumscribed, the right to self-defense still exists. In Canada one can’t even purchase mace—it’s illegal, as is self defense—practically. As an outspoken writer, I’m safe in the US. So far, at least. In Canada, there’s a “human rights commission.” As in Europe, it prosecutes and can bankrupt those it deems guilty of “hate” speech. I’ll be staying in the US.

Updated: Revving Up for Ramadan

Iraq, Islam, Judaism & Jews

You’d think that violence—Muslim on Muslim and Muslim on non-Muslim—would abate somewhat during the holy month of Ramadan. You’d be wrong. The religion of peace marches to a different drum beat (or is it a machine gun).

“The U.S. military spokesman says there has been a 22 percent jump in attacks during Ramadan,” reported the AP. Imagine a scenario whereby murder rates in Israel skyrocket during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Doesn’t happen; will never happen.

CNN confirmed the trend:

“This week’s suicide attacks were at their highest level of any given week. About half of those attacks targeted security forces… around 50 percent of car bombings were suicide strikes… murders and executions were the largest cause of civilian deaths in Baghdad… attributed … to sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shiites.”

Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).

Andrew Salivates

Islam, Media, Middle East, Republicans, The Zeitgeist

On a meta-level—process, not content—Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Andrew Sullivan about his new confused book exposes Sullivan as arrogant and hysterical. His manners are abominable. How Hewitt put up with Sullivan’s strutting, I don’t know. Why would he tolerate such rudeness from a guest? Is Sullivan that important? (Not to me. I have no interest in someone so “discerning” as to claim, as Sullivan did during the interview, that Jesus, Mohamed, and Socrates are part of the same search for truth.)

I’m happy Sullivan has finally come out against Bush’s dastardly doctrines, although it seems to me that he considers the war more of a logistic than a moral nightmare—the war is bad because it’s going badly, not because it’s bad. The fact that he seconded the decision to invade Iraq may have something to do with this qualified condemnation.

Would it be unfair to put Sullivan’s temper tantrum at the Republicans down to their excessive religious meddling and lack of enthusiasm for gay marriage? (There’s nothing wrong with split infinitives, by the way.) You tell me. (Sullivan is a gay-marriage activist–I’m not, as you can glean from “Marriage and the Manufacturing of Rights“–and is himself “engaged to be married.”)

Overall, his views are hardly conservative–but then that applies to the views of very many contemporary conservatives.

Letter of the Week: John Danforth on Canadian Culture

Canada, Individual Rights

I’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