The question is why (or rather how) America has somehow stayed (mostly) immune from the rest of the world as it succumed to the disease of socialism, as it would seem to be the irresitable normative desire of humanity?

Frenchie fifth column in the middle of the damn country?

Your propensity to condemn Canada irretrievably to the ninth circle of Euro-Hell while according unlimited patience and hope to much more anti-American New Zealand and proclaiming unlikely India an honoured member of the Anglospehere is noted, Ethan Allen. You should pay more attention to actions and less to words. There are statists and there are statists. Warren's equating of the corrupt, poll-driven Liberals with serious socialists is a hyperbolic mistake, understandable as it may be given events of the last few years. Canadians are neither that ideologically committed nor all that anti-American, as such things go. Just isolated, self-revering and self-absorbed. I'm betting it can be reversed, but I'm not giving odds.

Agree with Jim (if I understand). Quebec and the seperatist movement and the reaction to it made Canada what it is now

Let's trade Canada for Australia.

Gideon:

Religion. We're the most anti-intellectual/anti-rational society in the West.

Gideon:

Orrin is right. Canadians actually ressemble Americans much more than Europeans in culture, lifestyle and values, but they are far more neurotically confused as to why.

erp:

Be careful what you wish for.

Peter: The difference is that, in Austrialia, it's the anti-American who has to lie.

David:

Ouch.

Canada was always part of continental Europe.

Frog/Limey above US

Spanish/Frog below US

failures both.

Then there's 'Nawlins........w/all those cajuns......

Alberta should move on up. Nova Scotia would join, then we could really have some fun stomping the Euros overfishing the waters up there.

It's simple: Tories. Tories, Indian-lovers, and bad gun laws.

The United States is the settler nation. We are what the former RSA should have been, but for the error of racism.

Religion has a lot to do with it, of course, with our religious traditions having favored both independence and exceptionalism. What it all comes down to are confidence and assertiveness, the spirit of the frontier, the Indian-fighter, the Texan.

We have discussed on these pages the history of the cold war. Ponder, if you will, the spirit that enabled up to face the FORMER SOVIET UNION over the nuclear gunsight for all those years. Who else could have sustained the threat of total destruction with the threat clock set at a few minutes before midnight for all those years?

I saw a Bush speech clip this evening. Strong words. 9-11 was the price we paid for all the bug-outs over the last few decades, he said. Being attacked is the price of nuance, he said. Those who took us down that path were weaklings and cowards, he could have said. No Canadian could have conceived such a speech.

The Aussies were smart enough to elect Howard though.

We could solve this problem with a couple of troops of Boy Scouts, and we should.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 22, 2005 11:45 PM

Lou:

Don't be so sure. And watch what you say about Tories, young man.

Robert:

That's what you said in 1812 and all you got for it was New Orleans.

All:

I'm big on the Aussies too and they don't pay me enough to defend Canada around here, but can anyone tell me why you all speak of the Aussies as if they were born without original sin but are quite quick to trash the Brits, who are fighting and dying with you in far more significant numbers.

Peter:

Every boy hates his father, not his brother.

The Brits are great but they're also having a flirtation with our mortal enemy, the European continent. Why should we swoon over someone who doesn't like us better than France?

Who's bashing the Brits?

I'm afraid that we are quickly catching up to the Euros in the statist realm. Bush's Compassionate Conservatism has been a shrewd ruse to build a broader based client network among American voters. OJ's "third way" rhetoric is merely a fantasy, you don't promote independence through dependence. The Katrina/Rita aftermath will only wire the states and communitites closer to the federal bureaacratic colossus.

Transferring money the state was going to spend on families and communities to families and communities is progress. The alternative you seek is a pipe dream.

Medicaid prescription drug payments don't go to communities, they go to individuals.

Even if money is filtered through community groups, the dependency is still there. The money flow will only corrupt the integrity of the community groups. Voluntary organizations will become permanent bureacracies, beholden to the wedge issue du'jour in Washington.

Just admit you are a statist, OJ. You're a theo-statist.

"The Brits are great but they're also having a flirtation with our mortal enemy, the European continent. Why should we swoon over someone who doesn't like us better than France?"

?

One would hope the British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan would be proof of affections. Besides hasn't the US been backing the concept of the EU for decades now?

Robert:

HSAs are individual.

"That's what you said in 1812 and all you got for it was New Orleans."

So? First we were facing the British Army back then.
If at first you do not succeed, try, try again.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 23, 2005 4:14 PM

Really when you guys talk about Canada as Europe Jr. You should realize that it is basically eastern Ontario, Quebec, and parts of Vancover you are talking about. Alberta and most of B.C. and Saskatchewan are redder than Texas.