March 10, 2003
TRANSNATIONALS ARISE, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE
Is that really what Canadian citizenship is? (Mark Steyn, National Post).One of the dark and bloody oaths OJ made me swear when he offered to loose me upon you was that I would not do the blogdance: hey, look at Instapundit's riff on Vodkapundit's fisking of Calpundit's post about Andrew Sullivan. Nevertheless, I am linking to a Mark Steyn column about a Mark Kingwell column, rather than directly to Kingwell, because, first, I'd much rather read Steyn and, second, he highlights exactly what I want to talk about. Steyn quotes Kingwell as follows:
"For generations, we [Canada] have been busy creating, in your shadow, a model of citizenship that is inclusive, diverse, open-ended and transnational. It is dedicated to far-reaching social justice and the rule of international law. And we're successfully exporting it around the world not by bucking the UN, but by seeing it for the flawed but necessary agency it is."Now, Steyn does a splendid job making fun of this, but I did want to focus on the idea of "a model of citizenship that is . . . transnational." I'd like to top it off with a model of ice cream that is hot and a model of black that is pink. How, exactly, do you run a country if your citizens think of themselves as transnational? What is transnational citizenship? I've never been much of a Marxist, but I wouldn't be that surprised if Canada's state was the first to actually wither away or, at least, convert itself into an HMO. Posted by David Cohen at March 10, 2003 1:42 PM
Fortunately Canada is far too cold for people to seriously engage in open ethnic warfare a la Rwanda.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at March 10, 2003 2:33 PMIt wasn't too long ago the Quebecois were blowing people up and now the West wants to secede.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2003 3:34 PMThis has little to do with what you posted, but: Thank you, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Judd! The reason I no longer read Instapundit is because of the "blogdance." Especially when the links where to people who I had no idea who they were or why I should care about what they have to say. And I mean it that in the kindest possible way.
Posted by: Buttercup at March 10, 2003 3:59 PMReynolds linked to my blog a few days ago, so let the copious linking continue.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at March 10, 2003 4:11 PMThose of us who have jobs cannot scan the Net as extensively as some others do. I take the links as they come and am grateful for the interesting ones.
Maybe being a transnational Canadian means the young woman I met some years ago. She had a N.Z. boyfriend or husband and neither had the slightest intention of ever spending any time in Canada again, except that every time she got pregnant, she went "home" to get government-paid maternity care.
I am not sure whether she paid taxes in Canada or not. Probably not, whatever the legal requirement, since she and her boyfriend worked in the black economy and didn't pay taxes here either.
The Wife had a Canadian patient hooked up to a breathing apparatus, but when the Canadian government realized what it was costing, they wanted him back--breathing be damned.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2003 5:27 PMWell, not trying to offend any Canadians, but I live in Florida and we get a lot of them down here on vacation. They are okay as far as tourists go, and I'd rather they help our economy than Castro's, but, why are they so darned smug about their health care system?
Posted by: Buttercup at March 10, 2003 7:45 PMMr. Cohen;
OJ made me stop doing that on my own
weblog so don't feel too bad.