As reported by Blaze News today, Donald Trump feels Canada is seriously considering seceding to the U.S. in order to save the 61 billion dollars it would presently cost it to be shielded by his proposed Golden Dome System. The system, which integrates ground, sea and space based technology in defending America from foreign missile attacks, will apparently cost more than 500 billion dollars over the next 20 years according to the Congressional Budget Office. But in response to Trump’s Tuesday statement, I would offer the following facts.
First of all, there is a good deal of skepticism regarding the effectiveness of such a system. Former MIT professor Ted Postol, a leading expert in the field of missile defence, has declared Trump’s dome to be mere science fiction. He cites, for example, the mediocre success rate of the so-called Iron Dome which the U.S. helped finance in its attempt to help Israel ward off foreign missile attacks. That Canada would secede to the U.S. to gain access to a system of such questionable value, is extremely unlikely.
But even more significant, Mr. Trump, is that the vast majority of Canadians see their country’s cultural identity to be significantly different from that of the U.S. and would be horrified to become just another state. As a young man whose primary interests were literature and philosophy as opposed to politics, I was nevertheless aware that many Canadians were bemused by American Chauvinism, by the relentless promulgation of the notion that the U.S. was the sole promoter of Freedom and truly Liberal Values on the planet. I certainly do not mean to dismiss America’s significance as a bastion of those values, nor am I implying most Americans to share in the Chauvinism of which I speak. But ironically, while I agree with many of his initiatives, the bullying manner in which Trump pursues them has done nothing but re-awaken in Canadians their awareness of the differences between themselves and their neighbours to the south.
Whereas Americans celebrate their revolutionary dismissal of their British overlords, Canada continues to cherish its relationship with Great Britain. King Charles was in this country just a few days ago and one of my earliest memories is of Queen Elizabeth in a green Ford convertible cruising down the Main Street of my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario, in 1951! But facts other than our continuing sense of affiliation with the British feed Canadians’ conviction that they are basically different, basically less aggressive, basically more conciliatory than their neighbours to the south. Yes, the Americans launched a devastating Civil War in 1861 to eradicate the cancer of Slavery. But, as most Canadians know, approximately 30,000 Blacks fled to Canada throughout the 19th C. in the knowledge that slavery was simply not tolerated north of the border. That this is true is clearly related to the fact the P.M. William Wilberforce banished slavery from the British Empire in 1833. Do facts such as this justify the disdain shared by many Canadians for America’s apparently overweening sense of self-importance? Of course not! But at the same time Trump’s conviction that the U. S. has the right to bully the rest of the world via his tariff threats do nothing but exacerbate that disdain.
Hitherto unmentioned in this discussion is the fact that Leftist values percolate throughout the Canadian Culture far more prominently than in the U.S.. Yet while I find many of the initiatives fostered by those values utterly absurd [i.e., open borders, D.E.I. fanaticism, anti-Capitalism, etc., etc.], I do think our two countries are significantly different in various other ways. What I can say with absolute certainty is that any Canadian Prime Minister who agrees to secede to the U.S. for monetary reasons would be reviled from coast to coast for betraying the distinctive sense of Identity shared by the vast majority of Canadians.
Trump’s repeated references to Canada as the 51st State are ignorant. At the same time many of his political initiatives make sense. We live in complicated times wherein simple Black and White valuations are utterly inadequate. Hopefully Rational Conservatism will lead us to a more enlightened future!