MANIFEST DESTINY:

Cultural gulf may divide the country (TED BYFIELD, 12/14/03, Edmonton Sun)

Why are Americans and Canadians becoming so different?

I think both have changed. Americans, after all, have taken the leadership of the free world. Countries that assume the role of leadership must face realities other countries need not face. They must be more disciplined, less given to frivolity and whim, more ready to face financial facts, and always prepared to back up what they say with physical force. People who live in such countries develop a certain pragmatic realism, and that realism makes them far more ready to serve and to pray.

Europeans no longer carry this burden. They easily forget that without the Americans they would certainly be part of the Soviet slave state today. The U.S. rescued them from this, and their lofty "independence of mind" dates from the fall of the Soviet system. Canada has changed too. Where we once at least modestly shared this role with the Americans, we have now exempted ourselves from it. We can take a far more leisurely view, airily looking down upon them, offering advice and criticism on how they might better do the job. We don't pray much anymore because, unlike them, we are not dependent on God. We're dependent on the United States.

Canadian resistance to this new ultra-liberal Canada is not confined to the "old" and the "rural." Far more, it is a geographic gulf. Its political manifestation was the Reform and Alliance parties which fairly well swept the prairies and British Columbia outside the Vancouver area. This means the cultural gulf is also a geographic gulf. Therefore, if it became serious - and this kind of thing can become very serious indeed - it could break the country in two. The people who matter in Canada - meaning those who live and rule in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal - do not consider such an eventuality remotely possible. Very soon the West will fall into line, they say.
That's one possibility. Another is that as the West discovers it has more in common with the Americans than it has with Ontario and Quebec, its true allegiance will lean far more southward than eastward. To me, this seems altogether probable, particularly as we find out that our true economic interest lies much more southward as well.

We're always willing to welcome new Red States.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2003 01:20 PM