LETTERS FROM THE CHAIRMAN

On this page appear 181, mostly emailed, letters (with updating notations) sent by the Chairman of the Expansionist Party of the United States, L. Craig Schoonmaker, on dozens of topics that haven't (yet) been given their own page and which do not seem manifestly to belong on any pre-existing site. For instance, we present here the only discussions of size we have yet posted to the Internet concerning Haiti, and those items together comprise several thousand words.

We address a very wide range of issues in messages that speak to specific Expansionist principles, as clarification to people who were uncertain as to our stand on particular matters and as answers to critics. There are, for example, dozens of letters on various aspects of Canadian-U.S., Canadian-Quebec, and Quebec-U.S. relationships that respond to criticisms and requests for clarification from many Canadians.

We also intend this page to be a means by which we can make an "end-run" around editors of major publications we write to who may hope that by refusing to print something we send them, they can keep our point of view from entering the mainstream of political discourse.

Clearly the low levels of inquiry at XP's site thus far do not endanger The New York Times's editorial clout, but there are plenty of sites on the Internet that do achieve a level of currency that gives their publishers their own clout. (XP has had four letters in The New York Times, mind you, tho none recently. XP was also mentioned in passing in The New York Times Magazine, in an article on Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations.) Still, there are things we'd like a wider audience to hear that don't necessarily warrant their own homepage. This is the place where older such messages appear. This first group is "Volume I". Newer messages may in time appear in a different new department, "cc: the Internet public".

[Readers: "Letters from the Chairman" may suggest a newsletter to members, so perhaps a different department name would be better. Suggestions?]

Some of these messages have been published in whole or part by the online or hardcopy publications they were sent to. We don't always know for sure, except when we get feedback. Those we know have been published at least in part bear the notation "[Published]". Those that are noted as having been contributions to online forums were of course "published" online, and most were written in reply to comments — often hostile — made by others.

Links at section headings refer readers to the subpage of our Internet site most relevant to that topic. Occasional cross-references outside of headings also occur.

Visitors may wish to read this section in its own order, start to finish, or check for particular topics that interest them. We give a PARTIAL subject index below, but many letters address more than one issue, including some that are not listed in the index, and it is certainly the case that not all messages that relate to a given topic are indexed here. If your browser permits, you can of course search this page for keywords that address your specific concerns.

Many of these letters were posted to online forums where italicization and bolding are not available, so alternative means of showing stress were employed, as by putting some words in BLOCK CAPS. Converting all such conventions to italics and/or bolding does not seem a productive use of our time, so we leave much of such text as it originally appeared. In like fashion, many of these letters employ familiar abbreviations, many of which we have left unchanged. Only very minor editing, as for punctuation or emphasis, has been done to any of these letters.

Index

REGION / TOPIC		LETTER NO. (please alert us to any nonworking link)
I. Geographic Region
Alaska and Alaskan separatism		9, 44, 55, 83-84 (main mentions), 88, 94, 109
Brazil		55, 57, 64, 101 (main mention), 128, 130 (twice), 140
Britain / United Kingdom		3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 31A, 35, 45F, 53, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 98, 108, 109, 110C, 112 (main), 114-123, 128, 133, 135, 141, 148, 153, 158, 172
British Columbia and the U.S.		44
Cajuns (Louisiana) and Quebec		46-47
Canada (and Quebec)	&	1-44 (main discussion), 50, 82, 83, 89, 93, 96, 108, 109, 115, 117 (twice), 119, 121, 128, 131, 141, 149, 152, 153, 167, 172, 179
Cuba		50, 99 (main mention), 129
East Timor (1998)		76, 110 (main discussion)
Haiti (and Quebec)	&	45A-H
Haiti (and the United States)	&	3, 48, 50, 122, 172
Hawaii / Hawaiian separatism		2, 3, 9, 11, 88, 91, 92 & 109 (separatism), 157
Honduras — and Central America more generally (a discussion in part spurred by the devastation caused by hurricane Mitch)		51-54, 100
India		11, 36, 49, 58-64 (main mention), 74, 76, 83, 110A&B, 121, 140, 149, 155
Iraq		70-80, 103, 121, 152
Ireland / Northern Ireland		11, 13, 102, 109, 117, 119, 121, 140, 148
Kosovo		72, 102-109, 153
Kurdistan / Kurds		72-74, 76B, 77, 78, 103, 104
Philippines (The) / Filipinos		9, 49, 59, 88, 11 (main), 149, 155B, 172
Puerto Rico		2, 5, 9, 11, 45D&E, 84-91 (main discussion), 109, 119, 172
Quebec		2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 13-19, 21-31, 33-35, 38, 42, 44-47
Russia		59, 72, 78, 79, 83, 110, 121, 128, 138, 152B&C, 153-155 (main)
Rwanda		6, 7, 78, 135, 152A&E
United Kingdom / Britain		(See entries under "Britain", above.)
II. (Nongeographic) Topic
Abortion		88, 162-171 (main discussion)
AIDS		55-56, 142-144 (main discussion), 146
American Indians / Amerinds / "Native Americans"		9-12, 20, 46, 47, 55, 79, 93-98 (main discussion), 119, 120, 128, 130, 149, 152D (illus.)
"Anti-Americanism"		39, 98 (at the end), 128-130, 153
Blacks / "African-Americans"		7, 9, 10, 20, 44, 49, 50, 55, 64-69 (main discussion), 107, 119, 142, 149A, 179, 181
Capital punishment / Death penalty		115B (main discussion), 146, 162, 163
Chinese vs. English		124
Drugs		9, 48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 64, 142-144, 146, 163
Fighting the good fight		137
"Global warming" and the "Gaia" theory		57
Gun control		7, 10, 147
"Hate speech" and free speech	/	141, 152A-F
Immigration and immigrants		7, 9, 15, 19-20, 30-31, 35C, 36, 48, 49 (main discussion), 50, 71, 79, 88, 94, 115, 149
Impeachment wrangling		127
Imperialism vs. Expansionism		55-56, 74-75, 79, 90, 108, 119, 131-135 (main discussion)
Islamism		70, 71, 79, 81 (main discussion)
Moral confusion		145
National Credo		181
New media, new voices		149
Political correctness		15, 141 (main discussion), 152,
Third World		40, 49, 57C, 76, 79, 80, 98, 111, 115, 128, 130, 136, 149B, 155
Zionism		70, 74, 76, 79, 81, 82 (main discussion), 103

CANADA

(Canada.html and other items cross-referenced there)

Letter No. 1

Subj: [Canadian] Senate reform
Date: 10/19/98
To: letters@herald.ns.ca [Halifax, Nova Scotia HERALD]

YOU observe editorially Oct. 19 that "Whether or not an elected upper house is desirable for Canada remains an issue which [Alberta Senator Douglas] Roche's little attempt to stir up a tempest in no way addresses." I suspect most Canadians welcome an appointed Senator's suggestion that members of a legislature ought to be elected.

Alberta has long been in the lead in efforts to give Canada a "triple-E" Senate: equal, elected, and effective. As one of the smaller provinces, Nova Scotia should see its interests as being very much at issue in Canadian Senate reform.

Letter No. 2

[To a Canadian correspondent who is uneasy about permanent unions, such as the United States, and thinks any federal union should be escapable; July 24, 1998.]

THE first constitution of the United States was the "Articles of Confederation and PERPETUAL UNION ..." (a fact that should be widely known but isn't). The second tried to improve upon that constitution and create "a more perfect union". Plainly a dissoluble union is not a more perfect union than an indissoluble union. What the Constitution says expressly doesn't matter. The Civil War settled that no State may leave; the Union is indissoluble, until the Nation itself falls. That may or may not happen sometime before the sun explodes. All would-be States have to understand that the Union is indissoluble; once in, ever in. Don't join if you might want out, because you ain'ta GETTIN' out.

Canada's constitution was written at a time [1982] when Quebec separation was very much on everyone's mind, yet the issue of whether a province may or may not leave was not addressed in the text of that constitution, presumably because if it HAD been addressed it would have had to be settled one way or the other. If yes, provinces could leave, Canada would be issuing an invitation to all disgruntled provinces or regions to leave. If no, Quebec might have declared independence unilaterally rather than participate in the organs of Confederation without formally ratifying a dangerously unacceptable Constitution.

Quebec was never sovereign; none of Canada's provinces was ever sovereign. They went from colonies of London to colonies of Ottawa with scarcely a break. By contrast, 16 of the United States were once sovereign: the original Thirteen States, Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii. All of those once-sovereign states could have remained independent (see the Federalist Paper No. 5 at my spelling reform site: http://members.aol.com/Fanetiks, wherein the possibility of several different countries emerging from the Thirteen States after the Revolution is discussed). The "United States" was a wartime alliance, like the "United Nations" in World War II, not a working federal nation. Each member of that alliance, once its separate independence had been won, could have pursued its own national destiny, but they all chose not to, understanding that to do so would have been terribly risky, for reasons only some of which are discussed in FP#5. BECAUSE they chose, after healthy debate, to end their separate independences and create an overarching federal union, all those original States knowingly gave up their sovereignty, in perpetuity, first in the Articles of Confederation (and Perpetual Union), then in the "new, improved" Constitution of 1787. Each new State thereafter joined knowing full well — and especially after the Civil War, which revolved around whether there was any right of any State to leave the Union — that the Union is indissoluble. Nobody's TRICKING any would-be new State into a permanent commitment its people do not understand to be permanent. Statehood requires a ratifying popular referendum. The electorate votes no, statehood is defeated. Voters know that statehood offers permanent advantages, but simultaneously imposes permanent responsibilities, not least of which is to remain within the Union and make it work — or suffer with the rest of us if it stops working, until we FIX it.

Democracy has limits, and often we have to abide by decisions made generations ago that bind us to this day. Canada's constitution is not the United States' constitution — yet. Canada's history is not that of separate, sovereign countries deciding that separate nationhood is too risky, and knowingly throwing sovereignty away. You have to BE sovereign to give up sovereignty, and Quebec never was. It's not that Quebec was offered its own independence but chose Canada instead! By contrast, each of the original states did have the option of remaining independent in perpetuity but chose to become part of the Union in perpetuity instead. And Puerto Rico [for instance] would have the choice to assume full independence or full participation in an indissoluble Union. A democracy can offer that choice of two enviable alternatives. What a democracy cannot do is compartmentalize citizenship and give second-class citizenship to some while retaining first-class citizenship for others. [Return to index]

Letter No. 3

[Further message, July 25, 1998, to the same Canadian correspondent's further concerns re (1) the legality of Quebec separation from Canada and (2) holding "open enrollment" for new states of the U.S. (excerpts)]

English Canadians don't seem terribly unhappy at the prospect that Canada might last forever and perhaps no English-speaking province would be permitted independence if the Supreme Court of Canada rules that the constitution does not permit secession(s).

Calling Newfoundland once independent is nonsense. Britain had various legal covers for imperialism which it used here and there, but at end Britain always controlled Newfoundland's foreign affairs, external trade, etc., and could interfere in any area of governance it wanted, any time it wanted, simply by revoking any legalistic sham it chose. In the same way, Canada had no real sovereignty until c. 1932; the "Dominion of Canada" was very much a colony the day after Confederation became effective, as it had been the day before Confederation (sham independence). If it had refused, for instance, to come to Britain's aid in World War I, Britain might have been able simply to recruit on Canada's territory over the head of its government; or London might have compelled obedience, on pain of Canada's being thrown out of the British trading system, having the Privy Council (which then served as Canada's supreme court) rule against Canada in any challenge to British authority, or even having Britain threaten Canada with military punishment after a British victory in WWI — or even something further afield, such as turning over all British legal rights over Canada to the United States, which would have been in a better position to enforce them. Never put anything beyond the realm of believability when it comes to British spite. If Canada had spit in Britain's face, Britain could have had the last laugh in any number of ways. We'll never know what Britain would have done if Canada had asserted real independence before 1932 because Canada was a compliant colony and did its master's bidding, even tho Quebec was VERY unhappy about it.

Britain's power was fading fast after 1900, and it faced the total loss of its settlement colonies if it didn't do something drastic. It ran a series of rearguard defenses of Empire, loosening this bond while retaining that, adjusting the relationship to keep the Empire/Commonwealth together. But it lost the whole thing anyway, because it refused to admit "colonials" to the Parliament at Westminster that was the only body authorized to write laws for the entire participating Empire, including the home islands. The U.S., by contrast (a) is growing in power daily, not declining precipitously, so doesn't have to pander to colonials and (b) does permit all states' representatives to write the basic laws of the entire Union.

A Montanan who moves to New York can vote for President, Senators, and Representatives soon thereafter, as you well know. A person moving out of the States, to territories, colonies, or foreign countries, can retain a domicile in a State if he wants to vote for President, etc., but if he shifts his domicile elsewhere, of course he loses the right to vote for representatives from an area that doesn't HAVE representatives.

Some countries have become quite lax about nonresident, absentee balloting, mainly because they have many people forced by economic hardship at home to work abroad. That does not apply to Americans. Some of those countries are also appalled at the thought of losing many hundreds of thousands of citizens — and the money they send 'home' — if they don't permit even dual citizenship, so their nationals can take the citizenship of their new home AND retain their native citizenship. That does not apply to the U.S. either. If anybody wants to leave the U.S. for good and revoke his citizenship, that's fine with us. We'll just seal the border against his/her return. (Actually, Elizabeth Taylor was allowed to renounce her citizenship and reclaim it. I don't know how that worked, what technicality she used, but it may have had to do with her retaking British citizenship, to which she was born.)

When you say that Quebec could have remained outside Canada, you may be right. But it would not thereupon have become independent. It would have remained a direct British colony, and apparently les Quebecois felt a few hundred thousand English Canadians were easier to deal with than many million Englishmen.

Quebecers know that if they should opt to abandon provincehood in Canada for statehood in the United States they will have internal cultural controls only up to a point; they would not be allowed aggressively to discriminate against speakers of English, and of course Federal services would be available in English. As my presentation on Canada makes plain (Canada.html), there is no way in the world the U.S. would become officially bilingual in English and French, in part because the U.S. has NO official language, and if it were going to go for any, that would be English; if it were to go for two co-official languages, they would be English and SPANISH. So Quebecers would have no unrealistic expectations that a 2.2% minority would be granted special linguistic rights coast to coast to coast, into the Pacific, and beyond, anywhere the U.S. might ultimately expand. Quebecers aren't stupid, you know. (Well, I suppose some are. The federalists come to mind.)

As for a place that wanted statehood without a majority U.S.-citizen population, try Hawaii in 1854. The first treaty of annexation with the Kingdom of Hawaii provided for immediate statehood. Americans didn't go for that. The U.S. was, you may recall, a very different place in 1854 than it is in 1998.

I suspect that if the U.S. held a yearly 'open enrollment' for new 'members' for our 'club' we'd get new states every year. First year, maybe Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Bangladesh and various other dreadfully poor and overwhelmed societies. The next year, more of the same, plus some middling-prosperous countries. And on, and on. Each year's results would show such stark improvement in the lives of the new annexees — mass electrification, school-building programs, etc. — that onlookers would want to get in on the action. And doing all that work would spark economic activity and employment not only in the areas newly annexed but also bring in all kinds of MONEY to contractors, makers of electrical equipment (transformers, transmission systems, generators, etc.), and all kinds of other industries in the old U.S. that such outward growth would prove to be self-sustaining. Present Americans would see such huge improvement in their own economic security and reduction of their external worries that they would be converted from skeptics to enthusiasts in short order. Perhaps we'll get to see. [Return to index]

Letter No. 4

[Further to the "open house" proposal above, the same Canadian correspondent replied that any rich country that threw open its doors might get applicants for membership, be it Canada new provinces, Britain, France or Germany new regions. I responded thus, July 28, 1998.]

Well, why NOT? Why not have all countries, one week a year, hold a sort of college-fraternity 'pledge week' in which any country could apply to ONE other country for admission on terms of equality with the other parts of that country, and see what happens? Arnold Toynbee, the prominent British historian of earlier this century, predicted a reduction in the number of countries worldwide by the gradual amalgamation of all into seven (I think it was) regional superstates, but there has been precious little movement in that direction. Why NOT ask basic questions about what countries, and how many, there ought to be, one week each year — and have people all around the world think about next year's drive in the months between?

The map of Africa, for instance, was drawn by European colonial ambitions, without regard to local ethnic / tribal / linguistic / religious distinctions and affinities. Foolishly, the nations of Africa after independence have pretty much clung to those irrational boundaries. Likewise, the boundary between Canada and the United States was drawn by the now-defunct British Empire for the express purpose of keeping part of North America British! That plan failed, but the border that dead Empire drew still exists. Why?

We should be redrawing the map of the entire world on the basis of the real interests of the people of today, as guardians of their own and their descendants' best interests. The fewer countries, the better. There are now 193 countries on Earth. Surely we don't need that many, especially not multiple countries that speak the same language, have the same religious and ethnic nature, etc. The more rational the basis for national boundaries, the better. Yes, let's have all the countries of the world start thinking about merging compatible peoples and reshaping boundaries to make some SENSE. [Return to index]

Letter No. 5

[To a Canadian correspondent, October 5, 1998, to rebut his contention that the United States is a "nation-state"]

HERE'S Merriam-Webster's definition, the one I mean (from their online dictionary on AOL):

"na*tion-state (noun)

"First appeared 1918

" : a form of political organization under which a relatively homogeneous people inhabits a sovereign state; especially : a state containing one as opposed to several nationalities".

The United States contains millions of individuals of myriad nationalities, and some communities of size of a great many nationalities. We have found it unnecessary in recent decades to compel these people to give up their cultures to join ours; they have been able to function within our society while retaining key elements of their original culture, including language, until such time as they or their children or grandchildren do convert to our culture. And even then, an Italian household may retain key features of Italian culture for generations: Catholicism, patterns of churchgoing, Italian-language expressions, clannishness, silent acceptance of (or even grudging admiration for) the Mafia, etc.

There are now [eight] English-language (in channel order, CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, UPN, the WB, [PBS] and Paxson) and two Spanish-language television networks (Univisión and Telemundo) represented in NYC. The Univisión 6 o'clock evening news actually beat CBS's local news program in the ratings during the same half hour one day last week. There are also large blocks of time on NYC television devoted to Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Polish, and Italian programming, and smaller amounts given over to programs in Hindi, Urdu, French, Farsi, Bulgarian, Romanian, etc.

People of many communities, in several different parts of the country, can be very well informed about the things citizens must know, including candidates' stands on matters that concern them, without having to know English. If Puerto Rico becomes a state, most PRans will get most of their news and political information in Spanish. That is NOT a problem. Nor, then, would it be a problem if a State of Quebec got most of its news and information in French, etc., etc., across the planet. The Federal Union could function just fine.

The U.S. remains a melting pot, but there are hot spots and cold spots, and communities of size can erect heat shields. [Return to index]

Letter No. 6

[To an e-mail group, one of whose participants, from Canada, said XP denigrates Canadians (August 14, 1998)]

I have never denigrated Canadians. My presentation makes plain that the problem of Canadian unity, for instance, is not that Canada is bad, which it plainly is not, but that the United States is better; and that Canadians shouldn't get upset about that, because the U.S. is the premier civilization on this planet at this time, and so is more powerful and influential than EVERY other country, not just Canada. This doesn't mean that we have to detach the Canadarm from our space shuttles and forswear "CorelDRAW!" and other Canadian inventions and products. It just means that Canadians know that compared to the U.S., Canada doesn't amount to diddly. Two examples?: landmines and Rwandan refugees.

Canada played a major role in getting an international landmine treaty (tho the effort was largely led by an American woman). However, the U.S. refused to sign on and refuses to remove its landmines from Korea, the major sticking point. Canada can't compel the U.S. to do ANYTHING about that; nor can all the signatories to that treaty put together.

[Aside: in a message in a Canadian-affairs online forum December 5, 1997, I observed that the U.S. could indeed have derailed that treaty altogether, if it had so chosen:

The U.S., for instance, could have vetoed Canada's cherished landmines treaty by simply defying Canada, denouncing the treaty that provided for an undefended border, and starting to mine the U.S.-Canadian border! — something I would very much approve — and then telling the rest of the world that the United States will not EVER do anything remotely helpful to any country that signs Canada's landmines treaty without an exemption for the Korean peninsula, but indeed that the United States would cut off all diplomatic relations and trade with any country that signed Canada's ill-conceived treaty. Exactly how many countries do you think would sign your blessed landmines treaty if the U.S. had taken such a stance? 7? 0?]

Several months ago, Canadian PM Chretien wanted to lead an international humanitarian effort to find, feed, and resettle what were believed to be a minimum of 70,000 and maybe 200,000 Rwandan refugees wandering and suffering in the forests of Zaire (soon-to-be Congo). The U.S. did not sign on, would not use its transports nor send its military logisticians to assist. ALL THE REST OF THE WORLD PUT TOGETHER could not find the will nor means to do the job, and in fact it just wasn't done. We haven't heard anything further about those supposed tens of thousands of Rwandans lost and starving in the forest, have we?

Rwandan Hutu flag

If the U.S. had decided to act and asked for assistance from Canada, France, Belgium, etc., that international expedition would in fact have been mounted. Without the U.S., however, Canada, France, Belgium and the entire remainder of the world community could not get their act together to do anything of consequence. The U.S. didn't make the rest of the world powerless and weak-willed. There was nothing to stop Canada from leading such a rescue effort, but in fact once the U.S. refused to participate, Canada just rolled over and played dead.

Canadians should be indignant not about U.S. refusal to enlist in its crusades but at the refusal of their own government to follow thru. But as against the huge power of the United States, Canadians have no more reason to resent the powerlessness of Canada any more than Spaniards should be upset that Spain does not today amount to diddly, and a major international initiative sponsored by Spain but opposed by the U.S. would as likely fail as any from Canada. Or Britain. Or France. At least those other countries all have brilliant pasts. Canadians' problem is they don't have a brilliant past, so it's very difficult to approach the U.S. as anything like an equal. Britain or any of those other former great powers could bring its rich history, literature, art, etc., to the table and merge into the U.S. in the clear confidence that it brings something of enormous value to the table. Britain still, for instance, has enormous influence in the Commonwealth, and many contacts of value to an enlarged-U.S.'s foreign policy. Canada is the nice kid down the block. He's a good guy to have in a committee, and you'd want him on your team. But he's not going to be the captain.

It is not denigrating anyone to say that when the world looks for a team captain, they want the U.S., not Canada. Canada is a rich, progressive, decent country that would bring much to the U.S., not least in terms of votes for progressive policies and humane attitudes on the part of government, as would knock the Republican Revolution on its ear. Canada would also more than double the area of the U.S., and, just as the Louisiana Purchase set the stage for the United States' greatness in the 19th and 20th centuries, Canadian accession to the Union would ensure the United States' continued greatness into the 21st and 22nd centuries. That's an awful lot of good to proceed from the trivial consequences of ending Canadian sovereignty and yielding Canadians' fuzzy "identity" to a firm identification as "Americans". [Return to index]

Letter No. 7

[Now, a followup (August 17, 1998) to a further challenge from the same Canadian who said the U.S. should be ashamed, not proud, of having thwarted Canada's plan to 'rescue' Rwandan refugees. This letter then moves on to other assertions by that writer, about Vietnam, crime, U.S. "decline", guns, and Canada's long-term historical insignificance if it continues to refuse to join the United States.]

You overlook my mention that no one has heard anything about the so-called tens of thousands of lost and starving Rwandans after the U.S. refused to participate in Canada's crusade. I suggest that they did NOT starve; they were NOT lost; they did, for the most part, find "safe harbor", in Rwanda or elsewhere. The U.S. Government did NOT believe a huge international rescue effort was either necessary or desirable. The U.S. Government was apparently under the impression that the people at risk were, in any event, MASS MURDERERS guilty of genocide against their Tutsi neighbors and thus undeserving of any sympathy or rescue whatsoever. Should we have mounted a comparable effort to rescue SS (Gestapo) forces in danger of dying from starvation in flight from Nuremberg? I don't think so.

If you and PM Chretien do, then YOU should have mounted that 'valiant' 'humanitarian' effort yourselves, and seen it thru to successful conclusion. But you DIDN'T, did you? And there have been NO reports in Canada's own media of mass death of Rwandan refugees as a consequence. I know, because I listen to Radio Canada International regularly.

You overlook all that to attack the United States — typical Canadian pettiness, jealousy, and slander of Canada's superior neighbor. Yet you accuse me of denigrating Canada! How about the ENDLESS Canadian denigration of the United States? You mention (if misspell) My Lai, a TRIVIAL incident in a terrible "police action" filled with horror, the overwhelming preponderance of it committed by COMMUNISTS against non-Communist and anti-Communist South Vietnamese and Americans. The misdeeds in My Lai were not the act of the United States: they were PUNISHED by the United States! That doesn't stop fuzzy-headed, Communist-influenced Canadians (and others) from raising My Lai as some kind of "proof" of innate U.S. evil. All that is propaganda — Communist-origin propaganda that no sensible person heeds, especially in this post-Soviet age when even the Kremlin admits that it was all lies and nonsense.

You then go on to posit a U.S. "decline" hastened by a dog-in-the-manger / I'll-take-my-ball-and-go-home attitude. Crap. Talk of U.S. "decline" has been circulating among enemies of the United States — and worriers about the U.S. within the U.S. itself — for AT LEAST 35 years, yet the U.S. is stronger and more unchallengeably supreme on this planet now than ever before. Remember Khrushchev's vow that "We will bury you?" Remember Kremlin claims that Communism was "the wave of the future", which would wash over and drown the decadent and retrograde U.S.? Didn't happen, did it? And it never will. The U.S. is constantly in decline and constantly in rebirth. The U.S. is endlessly stirred by deep currents of good and bad bubbling constantly in the cauldron of the Melting Pot, and each bubble belching gas merely purifies the mix of unwanted and unneeded waste. What remains is new and rich and vital. As things stand now, and have for two centuries and more, the United States is a society of endless vitality that astounds the world. Except, of course, Canadians, who refuse to be astounded by anything the United States achieves, lest they have to admit that Canada is drab, faded, and inconsequential by contrast. But only by contrast! Were Canada located where Zaire is, it would be the envy of its continent! and an example to the world — except, of course, for being essentially all-white, thanks to a century-long discriminatory immigration policy.

Canada is empty and will remain rather empty even once it DOES become part of the United States, for the good and sufficient reason that it's COLD! and most people can't stand the cold. Once the border is removed, Canada will be significantly depopulated by flight to the Sunbelt. It may take twice as long to replace even those who left, much less build on that base.

Coat of arms of the Yukon Territory; note the sled dog.

Canada's low crime rate has two origins: (1) racially discriminatory immigration policies thru most of Canada's history and (2) gun control. A different 'Canadian mentality' is in large part a consequence of Canada's different racial history. Violent crime in the U.S. is primarily of two types: (a) black (against blacks, first, and whites and others only second) and (b) crimes of passion among whites and others. Canada is only beginning to see a problem with crime originating from blacks. Despite its historic exclusion of blacks until the 1960s, Canada's crime rate among blacks is substantially higher than among whites, and Canada has seen race riots / incidents in Halifax and Toronto. Fear of black in-migration is in fact THE No. 1 reason Canada refuses to join the Union. Canadians WANT that border between Detroit and Windsor; they WANT to be able to keep poor blacks OUT of Canada. Americans can sympathize. But what we cannot do is let you criticize us for problems you spared yourself by discrimination at the border. We weren't so lucky. Britain saddled us with a population 23% black in 1790, and even with massive white, Hispanic, and Oriental immigration in the many years since, the U.S. remains 13% black. Canada? perhaps 1% black AT MOST. That makes a huge difference, and all the world knows it.

I have elsewhere suggested that the Second Amendment, in its massive but commonplace misinterpretation, has given rise to serious problems of violent crime in the U.S., but that those problems can be solved by accession of countries such as Canada and Britain to the Union, as would allow the majority of us who want stringent gun control to get that thru Congress! Already, we've managed to get the Brady Bill passed into the Brady Law, and more restrictive measures are at the ready whenever would-be sponsors feel they have a chance of success.

Your suggestion that all history is brilliant is pitifully fatuous. In historical terms, Canada is a footnote. A thousand years from now, when Canada has been part of the United States (and any future superstate that might emerge out of the United States) for 990 years or so, no one will see anything worth studying in Canadian history. If "Canada" does not survive as a regional designation, the very word may have been forgotten. There is no chance in hell that the United States will be forgotten a thousand years hence. Quite the contrary: there is every reason to believe that in 2998 the entire planet Earth will have been under a single federal (or imperial) government for hundreds of years, and that that federation (or empire) will have been based on the United States. [Return to index]

Letter No. 8

[To The New York Times, July 8, 1998, re métis martyr Riel]

Anthony DePalma, in his article on Louis Riel ("Journal: Canada Reassesses Hanged Rebel", July 7) fails to state the most obvious reason Riel could not properly be convicted of treason: he wasn't Canadian. DePalma states that Louis Riel, hero of the Metis, spent some 15 years in the United States. What DePalma omits, however, is that Riel took U.S. citizenship, so could not possibly commit "high treason" against Canada, because one can commit "treason" only against one's own country, and Riel's country was the United States.

Louis Riel saw no conflict between being a faithful Metis and a citizen of the United States, because there was none. Today's Metis leaders refuse to land on the obvious legal error of charging an American with treason to Canada, even though acceptance of that error would swiftly exonerate Louis Riel of his wrongful conviction. Apparently they are unwilling to accept that Riel took U.S. citizenship because it would be awkward for modern Canadians to accept an American as a Canadian hero. But Canada was scarcely in existence when Riel led his rebellions in defense of Metis rights, and then only as a legalistic cover for ongoing British occupation of northern North America. (Canada had no real independence until the 1930s.)

Manitoba French community flag

Despite his Catholic faith and French language, both minority conditions in Montana [tho there is a magnificent Catholic cathedral in Helena], the United States gave Louis Riel, the greatest of the Metis, sanctuary when Canadians were trying to kill him. The role of the United States in the life of the Metis Messiah should be openly and gratefully acknowledged. And Canadians of all communities, but especially minorities, should recognize that the United States, with its long and deeply ingrained tradition of respect for individual difference, is a staunch friend should they ever need a friend. As Canada faces an uncertain future, individual Canadians should bear ever in mind that they do have a backup alternative: statehood for their own province if Canada doesn't work out. [Return to index]

Letter No. 9

[To a Canadian correspondent, September 22, 1998, under the heading "PR and Canada"]

THERE is a big difference between having de facto cultural colonies and deriving any benefit from them. The U.S. gets nothing more from Canada than it does any other trading partner, plus some hockey players and additional sports mentions in wrap-ups of MLBaseball and the NBA. This planet is a mess, and we need good people to be united in efforts to change that. We need to think beyond current borders and bring progressive voices and votes into Congress to thwart louts like Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich and their ilk.

The U.S. drove for the Pacific in the 1840's, and when it got there, most of the steam went out of expansionism. Alaska was the last major territorial acquisition, and Hawaii the only one of the small, insular acquisitions of 1898 that has been brought into the Union. The others became independent (the Philippines) or colonies, at once an embarrassment to us and an injury to their own self-reliance. Now's the time for second-round expansion to transform de jure and de facto colonies into integral parts of the Union, then move on to the really difficult areas, places where starvation and genocide still happen. Your rush to see this as some kind of militaristic posturing is absurd. Yes, the U.S. has the wherewithal to take over the world if it so chooses. It would be very easy for an ambitious U.S. to find allies and underlings enough to unify the world by force. But the U.S. has no interest in doing that, as you well know. We are far too peaceful and far too rich and comfortable to take on the host of sacrifices and unpleasantnesses involved in such a course. So kindly stop misrepresenting what I am talking about.

PRans do NOT agree that "commonwealth" works for them. In the last referendum [this does not refer to the December 1998 referendum, tho the figures then were much the same], statehood came within a couple of percentage points of winning, and because of a 6% (?) [2% in December 1998] vote for independence, "commonwealth" did not receive a majority vote. [In the December 1998 referendum, "Commonwealth" received almost no votes, the bulk of pro-"Commonwealth" votes being cast instead for "None of the Above".]

I don't have at hand the measures of poverty in MS [Mississippi: the U.S. Postal Service abbreviation] that you speak of, but no one in Puerto Rico in this year's congressional hearings on status asserted that by realistic measures of wealth, PR is doing just fine, or at least as well as MS. All sides agree that something needs to be done. The "Commonwealth" people want to "perfect" "Commonwealth" so it approximates independence within the U.S. dollar area, PRans are eligible for welfare and federal transfer payments for roads, etc., etc. — all the benefits of statehood without the responsibilities. Statehooders want to step up to full equality with other states. Independentistas want full equality with other nations. NOBODY wants the status quo. [Thus did "None of the Above" win the December 1998 status referendum.]

The U.S. is structured as it is structured to bring all territories to equality as STATES, not as territories. To become a UNION, not a confederation of convenience or trade bloc. We don't give Canada the vote either, until and unless it joins the Union and ratifies that Constitution. That's the way it works in the real world, and it makes no more sense to give PR votes in Congress if they don't subscribe to the Constitution of that Union than it would to give it to any foreign country or group of foreign countries. Everyone in the real world understands that.

As regards dual citizenship and split loyalty, prohibitions on dual citizenship have either vanished or been seriously weakened in recent years. Meir Kahane, the revolting Jewish thug, took Israeli citizenship but retained U.S. citizenship so he could come here and cause trouble. (As it happens, he made one trip too many back home, and a resident of foreign origin who hadn't absorbed our values blew him away. Pity.)

The U.S. effectively invented mass naturalization, and is among the most generous nations in the world when it comes to accepting foreigners into the substance of the Nation. People who leave one country for another understand full well that they are LEAVING their first country to go to another. It is not the slightest unusual for countries to require a transfer of loyalty in people who take citizenship; nor is it at all unreasonable. We can't have enemy aliens in the guise of citizens. Canada may or may not have a different legal stance, but (a) Canada is a country in deep trouble as regards divided loyalties and (b) most ordinary Canadians DO in fact expect "New Canadians" to forswear allegiance to any other country when they become Canadian. [More than incidentally, the U.S. does not call naturalized citizens "New Americans" but accepts them as, simply, "Americans".] In fact most naturalized citizens of Canada do cut themselves off from their old country. You are trying to make a universal practice into something uniquely American and xenophobic.

To call a status that has resulted in almost universal poverty in Puerto Rico "commonwealth" is a grotesque misnomer; to restyle it "commonpoverty" is not juvenile at all, just "telling it like it is". PR has some rich people and some middle-class people, of course, but the bulk of its population, by U.S. standards, is poor. The bulk of the U.S. population is, by its own standards — the highest in the world — doing fine, and by PRan standards, rich. The U.S. is even richer than Canada, per capita, as recourse to any good almanac will show. There has never been a time nor a system in any country in human history in which no one was poor, and the U.S. has its share of economic failures, many of them self-subverters on drugs and/or booze who hate themselves and do everything in their considerable power to make their lives miserable. There is very little a society can do about self-haters, but we have done and continue to do a lot to help people who truly want to succeed. And by far most do. As you well know.

I call propaganda "propaganda" no matter who it's from, and regularly tell people who ask if I do something else when I'm not freelancing in word processing that I am a propagandist. Value neutral. "Propaganda" propagates, and as with plants, propagation is not a bad thing.

As for other causes than geographic enlargement, the XP netsite says plainly that XP is a general-purpose political organization, not a single-issue group. There are lots of things that need fixing in the U.S. and abroad, and merely expanding the area within which defects can operate is not necessarily a good thing.

But effective and principled organizations do NOT find it necessary to host OPPOSING views. How many pieces hostile to the Republican Party, and how many links to the Democrats, appear on the RNC [Republican National Committee]'s homepage? [This is a reference to one supposed pro-Puerto Rico-statehood website  (http://www.puertorico51.org) that actually places anti-statehood arguments on its own site, without response!]

You are a creature of your environment; I of mine. Just as the Roman Catholic Church took the structure of the Roman Empire's state and is hierarchical because it derived from a hierarchical society, I am a federalist because I'm American and you are a confederalist because you are Canadian. I don't believe in loose unions; you don't believe in tight ones. I believe that permanency and predictability of elections, foundations of U.S. polity, are good and necessary things in a country as large and diverse as the United States, and that the world overall needs those things. And you will notice that the very region that tried to leave the Union 135 years ago is the most gungho nationalistic today. The Union survived, and the rebels were converted.

Nowhere do I say that all influences start in the U.S. and go to Canada and elsewhere later. Quite the contrary, I have again and again said that the U.S. quickly adopts devices, forms of music, foods, etc., from all over the planet, then mixes them together into a powerful new culture, and the resulting culture then influences others widely because it is so widely derived.

The telephone, however, was invented in the United States by a man who was born in Britain (Scotland), but whose parents moved him to Canada when he was a child (and thus not able to veto such a move); he left Canada as soon as he became a man, invented the telephone in Boston with the help of an American assistant, took U.S. citizenship, and maintained a fond relationship with Canada but owed it no loyalty. A better case can be made for hockey, an indisputably Canadian game played widely in the colder parts of the United States.

As for Canada ever having lots more people than the U.S., this is a common Canadian delusion. "Canada is bigger, so maybe one day we'll have just as many people as, or even more than, the U.S." NO! Never. Canada is too cold, and always for the foreseeable future — centuries and centuries — will be. Heck, a million Canadians flee winter in Florida each year. Canada will NEVER have even remotely as many people as the U.S., even if it becomes part of the U.S. Contrast Alaska, with 607,000 people in an area slightly smaller than Quebec, with Canada's northern territories' 95,000 people in an area three times that of Alaska.

Yes, as the bulk of Quebecers see things, only French-speaking Quebecers or those who share Francophones' devotion to Quebec's French-speaking culture are real Quebecers. You obviously don't like that. That's tough. Real Americans are people who are devoted to the interests of the United States over all other areas' interest, just as real Quebecers care more about Quebec than about any other entity, including Canada. Real Americans speak English, as at least one of their languages, and owe no loyalty to any other place. The overwhelming preponderance of black Americans are PATRIOTS, with very good reason.

I am utterly consistent in everything I say, and you play silly games with what I say to deny the reality that real Quebecers do NOT see anglos and immigrants who are devoted to Canada over Quebec as real Quebecers. It is not for you to tell Quebecers how they should feel. I recognize how Quebecers DO feel. You try to take comfort that a victory by 7/10 of 1% represents the plain will of the people, when no one else on Earth believes any such thing. As for PR, yup, on the island only people who speak Spanish are real PRans, and I have never heard anyone challenge that notion. There are some ethnically PRan mainlanders who are not real Puerto Ricans because they don't live in PR. PRans live in PR, speak Spanish, and are confused as hell about what they want.

As [Jonathan] Freedland points out in his book [Bring Home the Revolution: How Britain Can Live the American Dream, Fourth Estate, London, 1998], the United States is a place united by principles. Anyone can subscribe to those principles and become thereby American. It's a totally different conception of society from those of Quebec and PR. If PR votes for statehood, it will do so on the understanding that PRans have finally decided that the United States, not PR, is their "country", and they will become wholeheartedly American, without reservation, since it will no longer be necessary to see PR as something apart from the U.S. Just as New Yorkers or Texans are fiercely proud of their own state but even prouder of the Nation, so too will PRans be fiercely PRan but even more fiercely American.

Yes, the fault is always in others that thus-and-such group of nonconformists is troubled. Never mind that the human being is not a computer that accepts anything fed into it, true or false, correct or incorrect. Never mind that all cultures in all places and all times have standards by which they include or exclude individuals. Never mind that "birds of a feather flock together" and in fact almost nobody DOES want to see interracial mating. Blacks don't want it; whites don't want it. The people who do it do so not because they just happen to fall in love with someone outside their group; they do it deliberately to [FLOUT] the standards of the group. It is not positive but negative acting up. I know many people with such racial maladjustments, including my (ostensible-lesbian) niece, who has three half-black children (no, not from artificial insemination) I am very fond of. These kids were raised for over a decade in Santa Fe, NM an area with almost no blacks; this month they moved to a black area of Oakland, CA, and nobody yet knows how they, and their mother, will be accepted.

No, the problem is not in everybody else. The human race does not conform to largely universal behaviors out of chance. Some things are built into us, like recognizing ourselves in a mirror and in others like ourselves.

The United States is not devoted to miscegenation but to equality of opportunity and treatment under law. Blacks and whites exist, socially and sexually, largely apart, and that's the way everybody wants it. At work, in baseball and pool leagues, and in other circumstances, social interaction aplenty occurs. But at the end of the day, most people of most races are most comfortable returning to a place where the people around them look like them. That's nature, not contrivance. And human institutions must conform to human nature, because in a clash, human nature wins over any human contrivance.

I was overly optimistic in my youth about a lot of things. Some things have gone much farther and faster than I imagined — such as acceptance of homosexuality. Others, like the annexation of Canada, haven't yet caught on. But I keep plugging away regardless of what happens. People like me do eventually change things, if only incrementally.

Quebec does not forswear unilateral separation. The Bouchard government did not participate in the court case because it held, quite realistically, that this is a political question (not to say military), and if Quebec chooses to leave Canada there is nothing Canada can do to stop it — no court ruling, no rhetoric about not negotiating, no nothin' can stop it. When the SCt of Canada says Quebec can't vote on unilateral secession, the SCt is blowing smoke. Of course it can. Andrew Jackson was told by the Supreme Court of the United States that he couldn't move the Cherokees to Oklahoma. Guess what? He did it anyway. There's a moral in that history for any Indian bands that attempt to leave Quebec. Legal rights aren't rights if they can't be enforced. And when you are outnumbered 70 to 1 (or more), it's not a very good idea to declare war.

But it is precisely BECAUSE nothing has changed that a new referendum may go differently. Chretien and this person and that movement all swore up and down on a stack of Bibles that they'd do anything it took to make Quebec happy. Tens of thousands of Canadians bussed in at special low rates waved the Canadian flag in downtown Montreal proclaiming their love for Quebec and devotion to making Quebec happy; BCTel gave special low rates just before the referendum on calls to Quebec so BCers could pledge their love of Quebec and heartfelt determination to do whatever it takes to make Quebec happy. Now, three years later, what have all these wonderful lovers of Quebec actually DONE to make Quebec happy? NOTHING.

The U.S. was less than 30 years old when the War of 1812 happened, and still shaky. In point of fact New England did NOT attempt secession. By 1861, those who held that the Union was indissoluble were strong enough to establish that in fact. Law is what can be enforced.

Yes, Bouchard has changed parties several times, but has always been consistent in his devotion to Quebec. And that's the difference that may MAKE the difference among Quebec voters: Bouchard is devoted to Quebec; Charest is devoted to Canada. We'll see in a few months. [January 1999: Bouchard's separatist PQ defeated Charest's federalist Liberals in the Quebec provincial election and now holds a strong majority of seats in the National Assembly.]

You say that provinces cannot be partitioned without their consent, yet (a) foresee that some provinces may be partitioned into Indian and non-Indian provinces; and (b) Canada threatens to partition Quebec if it attempts to secede. I don't know how many white people in the English-speaking provinces would be willing to partition their provinces to give Indians a greater role in Canada. And if Quebec does not accede to partition, then Canada would be violating its own constitution to do so, if it asserted that Quebec was legally still part of Canada. Or Canada would be attempting to dismember a foreign country! which is the behavior of an empire. Tricky, isn't it? [Return to index]

Letter No. 10

[To a Canadian correspondent, August 17, 1998]

YOU have long said that the British Empire did not try to intervene in the internal affairs of its American colonies, yet now you are expostulating on what might have happened if the Empire had told the American South that it had to give up slavery in the 1820s. Well, (a) Thomas Jefferson was persuaded not to put an abolition plank in the Declaration of Independence because it would have cost the support of the South for separation [from the British Empire]; and (b) when the U.S. central government did seem about to abolish slavery everywhere across the Union, the South attempted to secede. It took all the force the U.S., a substantially more powerful entity, close at hand, to subdue the South and end slavery in the 1860s. The British Empire could NEVER have done it.

NAFTA area

I agree that the EU has gone a long way toward the kinds of things North America hasn't even talked about seriously. "Europe" has not only free trade but also free movement of labor and capital, which does not exist in NAFTA. Moreover, the EU is moving toward a common currency — altho why it doesn't just let all member states in puzzles me; the U.S. let all 13 original States in on the dollar, without serious problem — and has "ambassadors" here and there and is even issuing EU passports! In the real world, the EU really isn't nearly so much as it seems on paper. Still, the ability of these people who WERE slaughtering each other this century (until THE UNITED STATES STOPPED THEM) to go as far as they have should EMBARRASS us in 'Anglo'-America (with due apologies to my beloved Quebec: see Quebec.html for over 20 photos that show how "belle" "La Belle Province" is), who haven't warred against each other, as sovereign nations, EVER.

There is a serious possibility that on Thursday the Supreme Court of Canada will rule that there is absolutely no right in Canada's constitution (which, for the information of non-Canadians, is a very lengthy complex of documents, not a single short doc) of any province to secede unilaterally, and there may not even be a right of any province or region to secede even WITH the permission of other provinces. How will [Canadians hostile to annexation to the U.S. on the basis that the U.S. does not permit secession] then feel about Canada's setting ITSELF up as an 'indissoluble union'? [January 1999: The Canadian Supreme Court did rule that way, save that it said that if a referendum for separation won a convincing majority, the Canadian federal government and the other provinces would have to negotiate in good faith the terms of separation!] But ALL countries proceed from the assumption of permanence. No one forms a nation with a set term (say, 99 years, then renegotiate or separate).

As for the sovereignty of the "United Kingdom", [anti-monarchists are] saying that the sovereignty of that particular state is the majesty of the MONARCH, not the majesty of the people. Big difference, even if largely only in form. Forms matter.

If Britain joins the Union, of course its people WILL get the kinds of freedoms and guarantees of personal rights that [a British member] speaks of. [You are] betting that Britain will never want to heal the breach of two centuries ago. I think a lot of Britons really would like to see the whole of the old Empire reconstituted in some way. The "Commonwealth" doesn't do it for them, nor for that host of others who ENJOYED being part of a huge, powerful, and proud Empire. Now the huge, powerful, and proud entity they might aspire to if they admitted their feelings aloud is the United States. People need MUCH more than good government. They need PRIDE, majesty, greatness. They LOVE to have something to LOVE, not just admire as competent or fair.

I reject categorically the suggestion that the United States Government incited Indians to scalp Canadians during peacetime after Canada's independence from Britain — EVER. By contrast, Britain did incite Indians to such vile conduct against Americans during the Revolution and well after, until, indeed, the War of 1812's indecisive conclusion, whereupon Britain gave up any hope it might have had of driving the U.S. out of 'Indian territory' mid-continent and retaking it for the Empire — which is probably what lay behind its incitement of the Indians after 1783.

As for the Second Amendment, [you] make[ ] a great to-do of it, as tho somehow it could not be ABOLISHED by the enlarged U.S. anytime the requisite supermajority of all States, including new states, decided to do so. I would remind [you] that "Prohibition" (of alcohol) was put into the Constitution by amendment — and taken out of the Constitution by amendment.

[Your] reference to blacks being counted as 3/5 of their actual number in the original Constitution (a) is irrelevant to today — and 130 years of todays — and (b) misses the point of that enumeration. The historical gap between the 3/5 and 1:1 enumeration of blacks was on the order of 75 years, over 130 years AGO. Further, the REASON blacks were not counted 1:1 is that to do so would have given slave-owning states FAR MORE REPRESENTATION in the House of Representatives than they would be entitled to if only FREE persons had been counted: that is, blacks were enumerated at less than 1:1 to REDUCE the influence of slave states! as would make future abolition of slavery easier. The consensus of historians is that had slaves been excluded entirely from the population count used to determine representation in the House of Representatives, the South, whose population was perhaps 33% slave (the Union overall in 1790 was 23% black, and there were relatively few blacks in the North), would have REFUSED to ratify the Constitution, and the Union would not have come into existence. The Framers of the Constitution understood that Southern participation from the outset was crucial to the success of the United States. Union first. Abolition later. I cannot quarrel with their logic. And I cannot judge from this distance whether they were needlessly timid as to what they could demand of the South and still get Southern accession to the Constitution.

Tho I have stated that annexations of areas with significant populations should be accomplished by treaty that survives annexation and thus protects certain key elements of the U.S. form of government — separation of powers, differential apportionment of Senate and House of Representatives, etc. — for some reasonable period, perhaps 50 years from accession to the Union, nowhere do I suggest that the Second Amendment cannot be amended or even abolished by act of existing and future states working together. I agree that guns are dangerous, and would like to see all that are not absolutely necessary for self-preservation or self-defense (e.g., in very rural areas subject to raids by polar bears and such) rounded up and destroyed, then recycled into plowshares or other useful objects. Canada, Britain, and other areas that know how dangerous guns are and have done nicely without many themselves can help us rid the United States of this wretched menace. [Return to index]

Letter No. 11

[To a Canadian correspondent]

As to the War of 1812, it is Canadian national myth that "Canadians" trounced Americans in their determined effort to take over Canada. The reality is, of course, that the nation of Canada wasn't even a twinkle in somebody's eye in 1812, and the combatants were the United States, independent a scant 30 years, and the British Empire, the greatest overseas empire on Earth at that time. Invading Canada was indeed something some Americans wanted to do for conquest but others saw necessary as self-defense, in that within living memory Canada had been the host of British forces and the base for invasions of the United States! Moreover, that war was enormously unpopular, and was a massive threat to the cohesion of the Union. The invasion of "Canada" was a subsidiary theater of a war fought mainly at sea, over maritime issues arising from the British Empire's refusing to recognize the independence of the United States, in seizing U.S. nationals and pressing them into slavery in the British Navy. Moreover, the British Empire was still stirring up trouble with American Indians in the West, and the War of 1812 put an end to that. The outcome of the war reaffirmed the independence of the United States, drove Britain from the West, and ended with a military triumph in New Orleans. That a poorly mounted and backed invasion of "Canada" had a less auspicious outcome is due to the might of the British Empire, not to any resistance by nonexistent "Canadians". Canada has its own valid reasons for pride, but inventing Canada 55 years too soon to create a brilliant military triumph is not one of them.

To credit the United States as a creation of Britain is outrageous revisionism. The United States did not grow out of British constitutional developments — as is plainly shown by the present state of the British and U.S. constitutional systems — but was a literal revolution against it! Puh-leez!

I am very concerned that there are some terrible tendencies in the British ruling class toward using people, manipulating intercommunal hatreds, and the like, that must not be permitted to contaminate the policies and purposes of our joint country after merger. We must have no Northern Irelands here, no partitions (a la India, Palestine, Cyprus, etc., as ensued as a result of hatreds stirred up by the British ruling class — "divide and rule" you know). And the government of the United States is high-handed enough without uniting legislature and executive in one all-powerful branch.

Interesting you should mention Puerto Rico, because earlier today I renewed acquaintance with the head of an organization devoted to Puerto Rico statehood whom I had not spoken with in years. We will probably be working together closely in coming months. The problem with Puerto Rico is the problem with U.S. generosity overall: if you give people almost everything they need without requiring statehood, of course they won't join the Union and assume the responsibilities of statehood. If Canada is given free access to our market, why would it want to yield its sovereignty to gain access to a market it already HAS access to? Canadians seem to just march across the border to take jobs, very good jobs, away from Americans. Kevin Newman, a Canadian, was recently made host of the national TV morning program Good Morning, America! Astounding. [He was subsequently sacked and replaced by American Charles Gibson.] Peter Jennings is anchor on the American Broadcasting Company's evening newscast, World News Tonight. John Roberts is weekend anchor on CBS Evening News. Canadians all. How did that happen? Why is U.S. news dominated by and filtered thru the foreign values of Canadians?

The U.S. actively or passively allows dual nationality to compromise people's loyalty to the United States. Foreigners can be lawyers — officers of our courts! In New York City, foreigners can even VOTE in local school board elections! There is an expression used for generations to warn teen girls away from promiscuity as a hazard to their ever getting married: "Why should a boy buy the cow if he gets the milk for free?" The same thing holds for the benefits of citizenship. If foreigners get the benefits of U.S. citizenship without any of its costs, why would they want to join the Union? The U.S. must make U.S. citizenship and participation in our Union valuable again. We must close off our market, close off our job market, close off our professions, close off the vote, close off dual citizenship to make participation in our Union attractive.

Mindless conformity is not, however, one of the costs of adherence to the Union. No sensible person would suggest that Hawaii and Mississippi are identical, and forced so to be by national policy. There is huge variation from state to state now, and would continue to be as new states are admitted. Tho the United States must never give any language co-official status at the national level, locally Spanish is practically co-official in New York City, much of New York State, and large parts of the Southwest. French is either legally or effectively co-official in Louisiana. That kind of variation is not a problem. Anything cultural that people feel genuine devotion to will survive. It's only the silly things that people pretend matter but don't that will vanish, because people abandon them. No one is going to force Canadians to say "about" if they prefer to say "aboat". And XP's plan even permits Ontario to retain at the provincial level "responsible government" and a parliamentary form of government in which executive and legislative branches are merged. It just does not permit monarchy — either real or make-believe.

It is for individuals to support a culture. Societies evolve over time, abandoning this, taking on that. Trying to mold a national character by government subsidy and fiat is very hard to do. [Return to index]

Letter No. 12

[To an e-mail correspondence group re what to call our enlarged nationality, June 6, 1998]

"CANADA" comes from an Algonkian word for "village", so fits the conception of a global village (a term coined by the Canadian, Marshall McLuhan. So it's not exactly a geographical term. Then again, there were millions of 'Englishmen' and 'Britons' abroad during the days of the Empire who didn't see either term as geographically limiting, so "American" might not be so seen either as the U.S. enlarges. [Return to index]

Letter No. 13

[To a Canadian-affairs forum on CompuServe, re English-French wrangling, January 25, 1998]

I AM struck by two things in this long thread — 57 messages when I downloaded it:

(1) Some English Canadians seem far more interested in debating than discussing, and winning debating points rather than keeping their country together. So, by all means win the debate — and lose your country.

(2) [A Franco-Ontarian] is ALONE among Canadians in championing the separatist cause in this Forum. Why is that? Are there no other Canadians who share his views? Hardly. The Two Solitudes phenomenon is plainly at work. Francophones generally, and separatists more specifically, just do not have anything to do with Anglophones or predominantly English-language discussion groups or media. They have heard all the arguments, and don't care to rehash them. They have made up their minds and will not be swayed. And they are certainly tired of anti-Quebec rhetoric, tired of being jumped on as "racists", tired of unsympathetic boors who will not put themselves in Quebec's shoes so will never understand Quebec's concerns.

If French were the dominant language of Canada, the English would be desperately trying to save their language and culture by any means necessary, including separation from the dominant linguistic community. We know this is true, because in the case of the one area of Canada where French IS the dominant language, Anglophones are talking about secession from Quebec if Quebec achieves independence as a unilingual French nation! If partitionists feel free to say they have no obligation to abide by the democratic decision of the people of Quebec voting in direct referendum, but will themselves separate out of Quebec rather than accept domination by Francophones — whereas Francophones peacefully accepted the narrowest of defeats without revolt — it is plain to all disinterested outsiders that linguistic insecurity is fully as well developed among Anglophones in Quebec as among Francophones in Canada. That neither group can or will identify with the other bodes ill for Canada's future — I'm glad to say.

So keep it up. Keep fighting among yourselves. Just remember what happened to Ireland when the Irish fought among themselves 800 years ago.[Return to index]

Letter No. 14

[To a B.C.-based member of a Canadian-Affairs forum on CompuServe, re the role of France in Quebec's future; January 25, 1998]

PERHAPS you have not been following events in France of late. I have. I watch Le Journal, an English-subtitled TV news program from France 2 out of Paris, at least 4 times a week, and get the distinct impression that France contains a lot of people who would be glad to migrate elsewhere if things don't get starkly better in France sometime real soon. France has a very high unemployment rate at present that is causing major dislocations, thanks to the inclusion of Communists in the present Leftist government. The Communist part of that coalition is stirring up as much trouble about "chomage" (unemployment) as it can, and French long-term unemployment is at least on the same order as Quebec's, and possibly worse, longer. There may be as many as a million French citizens who would be willing to consider moving to Quebec, were that a realistic option legally, and were Quebec unilingual in French. French people are not keen on being surrounded and outnumbered by English-speakers.

Culturally, France is fighting for its life against English, and its temporary advantage in certain organs of the European Union may soon be challenged by the new countries soon to be admitted and the others banging at the door, who see English as useful but French as nearly useless to their economic and cultural future. France is most unlikely to 'cut Quebec loose' to fend for itself in that "English-speaking sea" we speak about so often. To have Quebec falter, then fall to English would be an unimaginable and unacceptable disaster for French pride.

Whereas France cannot openly interfere with the internal affairs of Canada, as long as Canada remains (politically) united, it certainly can act aggressively to bolster an independent Quebec. It would be most unwise to exclude France from any equation having to do with the future of the French language and culture in Quebec. [Return to index]

Letter No. 15

[To a Francophone Quebecer, member of a Canadian-affairs forum on CompuServe, concerned about the impact of immigration on Quebec, January 6, 1998]

AS USUAL, you are right and your adversaries wrong. Don't pay any attention to their attempts to paint you as a xenophobe. Every country despises immigrants who refuse to fit in but create themselves into, as well as they can manage, an unassimilable mass insistent on maintaining a separate identity and even nationality, while demanding equal treatment under law. When Americans form "Little Americas" in the various countries they move to, they are called "Ugly Americans" (even tho in the book from which that term is taken the (physically) ugly American is the good guy). For some reason, no one has a problem with using such a negative term for Americans who refuse to fit into a country they may migrate to. But dare to suggest that there are "Ugly Chinese", "Ugly Mexicans", "Ugly Pakistanis", etc., and all hell breaks loose in the Politically Correct camp.

Pay no heed. What's sauce for the goose really is sauce for the gander, and when people segregate themselves and hold themselves aloof from — and, in the view of their neighbors, presumably better than — their neighbors, it is entirely appropriate for the neighbors so offended to BE offended, and to let it be known that they are offended. [Return to index]

Letter No. 16

[To a Canadian-affairs computer forum re Quebec's tough cultural situation, November 17, 1997]

Why can't English Canadians be honest: "You know, Quebec, you've got a very tough row to hoe. Whether you stay in Canada or depart won't make a damned bit of difference as to whether hundreds of millions of your neighbors will speak English, the world trading and diplomatic communities will speak English, the academic world and its opposite, popular entertainment, will speak English, and on, and on. Canada really CAN'T protect you from that, and no one should pretend it can. To the extent that your young people want to participate in world trade, they will have to learn English. If they wish to exert significant cultural sway outside the fading realm of La Francophonie, they will have to learn English. If Quebec wants to influence world political behavior, it will have to assert itself in English. But to the extent Quebecers wish to converse with their family and their own soul, French will do fine — and it doesn't matter whether that private conversation is carried on within the political context of Canada or an enlarged U.S. or a UN turned federal union. No one can make you forswear your linguistic patrimony, but equally no artificial force can maintain a language that is vanishing because it is no longer useful nor powerfully evocative, against a world in which utility is the prime directive and evocativeness is easily learned by students of the new lingua franca. [Return to index]

Letter No. 17

[To a B.C. member of a Canadian-affairs forum re pressures upon Quebecers to learn English even within their homes, November 23, 1997]

THO it is certainly true that some parts of Quebec are thriving both culturally and economically, it is equally true that parts of Quebec are doing very badly and pernicious economic and cultural forces are undermining the primacy of French in Quebec. For example, many young bilinguals from the Anglophone and Allophone communities have left Quebec and will continue to leave rather than assimilate fully to French and contribute their energies and ideas to the future of Quebec. That's called a brain drain, and it's not good for the long-term future of a culture. [In Canadianese, "Anglophones" are speakers of English, "Francophones" are speakers of French, and "Allophones" are  native speakers of languages other than English and French. Note that in Canada the preferred term for "speaker of English" is French!]

Economic problems in Montreal and limited opportunities in many fields impel even tens of thousands of personally ambitious Francophone Quebecers to think about moving elsewhere to pursue their career. Some will find employment enough and opportunity for advancement enough to stay. Others will decide that living in a French ambience is worth some sacrifice, and stay. Others will, with sadness in their heart, pack their bags and move to English Canada or the United States. Once there, they are more likely to meet and marry a non-Francophone than a Francophone, and have children who will abandon French.

Further, the Internet is slowly permeating urban communities in Quebec, and even gradually extending into rural areas. Tho there certainly is French-language content on the Net, there is probably, today, far more German than French, and of course vastly more English than German or any other language. Will Quebecers drawn to the wide world of the Internet be content to read only materials in French? I don't think so. A Francophone Quebecer, and especially a teenager, who spends hours a day, even only 3 days a week, is going, over time, to become fluent in English and see its utility. He may by contrast to the wide world of ideas and opportunities that English opens to him begin to think of Quebec's French culture as closed, small-minded, and claustrophobic. That is a cause for concern to defenders of Quebec's distinctive culture long-term.

If the Internet were overwhelmingly French, I think English Canadians might worry about its pernicious influence on their own children. [Return to index]

Letter No. 18

[To a B.C. woman who suggested on a Canadian-affairs forum that separatism is hurting Quebec's economy, November 26, 1997]

MONTREAL is suffering from vengefulness by Anglophone Canada, which has moved major corporations out of that city to culturally and politically "secure" parts of English Canada, starting with Sun Life. France is in no position at present to bail out Montreal, because France is now, and has been for some years, in a very deep economic malaise, along with much of the rest of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Prosperous countries are few in number, and most of those are watching their back. [November 2000: France is in much better economic shape for the moment, thanks in large part to the improved economy of its European Union major partner Germany, which had a very difficult decade in assimilating East Germany after reunification, and to the very long period of prosperity in the United States.]

In pointing out the difficulties speakers of French face in North America, I am merely trying to open Anglophone minds to the problems Francophones face. In no way do I apologize for the success of English, which is indeed a phenomenon directly related to the cultural, economic, and military power of the United States. I think it would be fine if everyone on Earth spoke English, at least as a supplemental international language, while retaining any other language they might choose for use in the home. But the more useful a second language is, the more dangerous it is to learn.

In Belgium, for instance, there is no danger to a Walloon's cultural identity in learning Flemish for work, because French is a major language but Netherlandish a minor language, and the reinforcements for a French identity are ubiquitous and powerful. Learning English in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, or France poses no danger to the cultural identity of such Europeans because their national cultures are well established, none of them adjoins an English-speaking country on land, and there are other languages of size around to balance English. Germans, for instance, have a nation of 81 million people. Tho they are outnumbered by speakers of other languages all around them, no one of those languages is spoken by even nearly as many people, in that vicinity, as is German. So Germans can easily afford to learn English for its utility in international commerce and politics without fundamentally subverting their culture.

In no way is that situation comparable to the peril Quebec faces if the bulk of its people learn English. [Return to index]

Letter No. 19

[To a Toronto-based Canadian-affairs forum sysop who said that some Torontonians are feeling overwhelmed by immigrants, November 11, 1997]

IF there is free movement of immigrants within Canada, and Toronto feels itself swamped by a "tidal wave" of immigrants, all of whom want to fit into its English-speaking culture, (a) how is Quebec to control immigration as long as Quebec remains within Canada? and (b) can't English-speaking Canadians appreciate what Quebec is going thru in seeing hordes of immigrants who arrive in Quebec refuse to learn French but take to English on arriving in "Canada", i.e., that part of Canada demarcated by the boundaries of the Province of Quebec? How would Torontonians, Ontarians, or English Canadians more generally like it if immigrants to Toronto decided to learn French ONLY and REFUSE English because Toronto is part of Canada, and Canada is officially bilingual, so they have the right to speak only French in Toronto?

I suggest that immigration would be hugely unpopular in English Canada if most new arrivals wanted to speak French only. [Return to index]

Letter No. 20

[To an American expatriate in Vancouver re Canadians' (guiltily) exaggerating the role of nonwhites in their history, November 11, 1997]

THE suggestion that the railroads of Western Canada simply would not have been built had it not been for the availability of immigrant-Chinese labor is too silly to withstand inquiry. Can anyone seriously believe that Canada would have consented to fail to build railroads that would hold the country together against an attraction for BC to annexation to the U.S., just because a particularly cheap source of labor was not available? Puh-leez.

Sikhs, native Hawaiians, and American blacks comprised an infinitesimal percentage of the population of BC — both at the time and thereafter. They comprise an essentially uncountably small proportion today, and it is ridiculous to talk about those groups as tho they were ever significant in the history of 'British' Columbia.

As for any European's being able to survive in what became Canada only thanks to aboriginals' not killing them, that touchy-feely suggestion should embarrass you in its stupidity. The various nations of Europe conquered nearly the entire planet Earth, including far more hostile shores than Canada ever presented. Europe's colonies were supplied, to the extent necessary, directly from the metropolitan country, and the relatively-huge populations of the European metropolitan powers were capable of sending not just hordes of settlers but also vast quantities of stores of many kinds to sustain colonies of size wheresoever situate.

Newfoundland provincial coat of arms.

It was assuredly convenient that some of the native peoples of the Americas helped their eventual conquerors — Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, and French, more than just British — but hardly necessary. And in case anyone forgets, the natives were not always friendly in North America, even on the east coast. Ten years after he arrived from Europe, my own first forebear on this continent was wounded — twice — in an Indian attack that came to be known as the "Massacre of Wiltwyck" in what is now New York State on June 7, 1663, even tho the Dutch settlers (my people; the British didn't take over until the following year) tried their best to get along with their darker-pigmented neighbors. [Return to index]

Letter No. 21

[Two messages to an Alberta-based member of a Canadian-affairs computer forum re his claim that English Canada is not a unitary culture.  First Message, November 24, 1997]

I followed you in agreement until you suggested that English Canada is not a unified cultural entity. Yes it is. And you know it is, at least as regards the threat to French Canada's continued existence as a French-speaking area. French Canada and Quebec are not exactly conterminous, there being some French-speaking communities outside Quebec's borders. But the growth of English, largely OUTSIDE the Canadian context (on the Internet, etc.), does threaten the survival of all French-speaking Canadian communities. They know it. You know it. We all know it. Let's be honest about it. French in North America has a very tough row to hoe, and is, demographically speaking, extremely disadavantaged.

Tho it is (presently) true that no Language Police of either the French-perpetuating or English-perpetuating variety are going to push their way into any given household by battering ram, Francophone Canadians may well regard the overwhelming cultural force of English in the larger culture, including the Internet, as the equivalent of a battering ram smashing all the defenses a culturally-concerned French family can erect against English. I repeat my challenge to English Canadians to think what their life might be like if Canada lay alongside France and 3/4 of everything on TV and the Internet were in French. Thinking in such terms might be very salutary to the Canadian dialog.

[Second message, November 26, 1997]

CANADIANS have an amazing ability to exaggerate tiny differences into huge stumbling blocks. It's as tho they develop microscopic vision in school. But when you take your eyes away from a microscope, telescope, or even binoculars or telescopic camera lens, those 'huge' differences disappear. [Return to index]

Letter No. 22

[To a B.C.-based member of a Canadian-affairs computer forum re Quebecers in national service having to speak English if they wish to rise to the top in their own country, November 26, 1997]

YOU'RE talking politics; I'm talking culture. Tho politicians may pretend that politics is the be-all and end-all of society, there are other, and arguably larger forces to contend with in regard to a culture. Language is one; religion another; mores another; etc.

Yes, English Canadians have bent over backward to accommodate Quebec — and I don't think unilingual English Canadians should have to consign themselves to second-class status in their own country's federal service. But [a Franco-Ontarian member of that forum] has pointed out that the price of rising to federal prominence for Quebecers has been to give up unilingualism in French! He rightly asks how warmly English Canadians would embrace a unilingual-French PM. So it's not as tho Francophones get a free ride, linguistically speaking, in the federal civil and political service. Indeed, they often have to learn English better than English Canadians in the civil service outside areas of Francophone concentration have to learn French, because they actually have to use it.

Even Lucien Bouchard uses English daily — and he would pretty much have to continue to do so even if Quebec were to separate from Canada. What he and other leaders of French Canada are saying, however, is that there must be protections for Francophones who do not WANT to learn English. They should have a place where they can speak French-ONLY if they so desire. And a lot of Quebecers wonder if that will describe a province of Quebec 50 years from now. [Return to index]

Letter No. 23

[To the same B.C.-based member of a Canadian-affairs computer forum re other languages than English being valuable to Quebec and Canada, November 28, 1997]

THE world is not English-speaking. Tho English is very useful in international trade, science, and diplomacy, there are still some 6,000 languages spoken on planet Earth, and there are large parts of the world where scarcely 1 in 100 persons can so much as read a paragraph of English. It would be easier for a unilingual Francophone to learn Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, and make him-/herself useful in international trade between Francophone countries and the many countries that speak those other romance languages, than to learn English, a Germanic language with somewhat different structure and grammar than the romance languages share. Canada and Quebec both trade with Latin America and Italy. They may, consequently, both soon need people bilingual French-Spanish (especially in NAFTA), French-Portuguese (especially if a hemisphere-wide FTA emerges), and French-Italian. [Return to index]

Letter No. 24

[To a Canadian-affairs computer forum re whether Canada is two "founding peoples" or ten provinces, November 23, 1997]

WHAT we have is a partnership-vs.-corporation conceptual problem. In a partnership, the initial partners set the rules, no matter how many junior partners may eventually be admitted or associates and employees hired. In a corporation, all shares of common stock have equal vote. In a public corporation, millions of shares are voted for different candidates and programs. In a partnership of two, two individuals sit down and work out everything. If they canNOT work things out, they dissolve the partnership and divide the assets equitably.

Quebec sees Canada as a partnership of two: English Canada and French Canada. English Canadians see Canada as a public corporation with ten equal blocs of shareholders. The two conceptions are irreconcilable in old thinking. New thinking creates new forms, such as the limited liability partnership (LLP), limited liability company (LLC), or whatever else may be necessary to make an old company in danger of dissolution into a going concern.

If only English Canadians could conceive of themselves as a one-fourth minority (the other 3/4 of Canada's population being French-speaking) in a country that borders France rather than the United States, such that Quebecers had the upper hand in all things cultural and political by virtue of their ties to the dominant power of the region, even to the point of implying that if English Canada didn't give them everything they want, they might simply annex all of Canada to France, they might understand why some Quebecers in the present world feel desperate to defend their culture from all threats from the majority. Could that happen? Could English Canadians really envision a world unlike what exists, and learn from that what it's like to be Quebec? Naa. [Return to index]

Letter No. 25

[Two messages to a woman in B.C. who suggested in a Canadian forum that it is absurd for Quebecers to think they could retain Canadian passports, the Canadian dollar, free trade with Canada, etc., if Quebec leaves Confederation, December 7 and 10, 1997]

MANY Quebec sovereigntists envision for post-separation Canada a European Union-style association in which Ottawa equates with Brussels (sorry: Bruxelles). Believe it or not, there really are European Union passports; a European Parliament to which all member states do elect representatives; and transfer payments of various kinds from the rich countries of the EU to the poor. Perhaps English Canadians wouldn't go for any such reconstituted Canada; perhaps they would. But sovereigntists may not be as confused as you suggest in wanting sovereignty with association within a larger conception of Canada, as an interdependent region of sovereign states. Whether there would be two sovereign states in a "Canadian Union" (à la "European Union"), maybe 10 (to replace the present 10 provinces), maybe 11 (plus Nunavut), maybe 12 or 13 (depending on what would be done with the balance of the Northwest Territories and Yukon)!

QUEBEC objects to being one province of 10 provinces, not to being one sovereign country of 10 in an economic union, nor one sovereign country of 186 members of the United Nations. [Return to index]

Letter No. 26

[Three messages to a Vancouver-based participant in a Canadian-affairs forum, December 12, 14 and 15, 1997]

YOU seem stuck in old thinking, which insists on seeing new relationships in old molds.

I suggest that Quebec is concerned about how English Canada constitutes itself only in a Them-vs.-Us political context. It is important, if Quebec is trapped in perpetual, political union with English Canada, that it be on equal legal footing with English Canada, 1:1. But if Quebec is sovereign and English Canada's various regions/provinces are equally sovereign, with each making no legally-enforceable demands upon the other, it makes not one whit of difference to Quebec whether English Canada forms itself into one unit or hundreds. What matters to Quebec is the ability to decide its own future. If it is sovereign, it can do that, without interference from English Canada. If it is not sovereign, however, it has to worry about being reduced to having only 1/10th of the power that controls the lives of Quebecers (1:9).

To draw a comparison, Quebec would not expect a permanent seat on the United Nations' Security Council. Being 1 member of a General Assembly of 186 members, and serving an occasional term on the Security Council in rotation with other non-permanent members, would be good enough, because other member states would not have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Quebec the way the Government of Canada does every day. Quebec wants no more vis-a-vis Canada than, say, the Netherlands has vis-a-vis the European Union. But it wants no less.

IT SEEMS to me (and my guesses about Quebecers' attitudes have essentially always been right on the money, as verified by reactions from Francophone Quebecers here and in other places) that Quebec would be perfectly happy to focus on its own political and cultural concerns internally and leave trade issues to an enlarged NAFTA. Why else would Quebec ask for a guarantee of instant admission to NAFTA? I am the one who, in this little Forum that apparently does not include decisionmakers at either the Quebec Government or Canadian Federal level, has suggested that a revamped Canada à la "European Union", with 9 English-speaking and 1 French-speaking member, could be a happy replacement for current Confederation — perhaps for all parties, not just Quebec. Quebec's own government has talked only about entry to NAFTA, which pretty much says that Quebec would be happy to be part of a four-party NAFTA (now) and expanded NAFTA (PAFTA? — Pan-American Free Trade Area) later.

THE colonial mentality does tend to make people want to be taken care of, avoid risks, and all that. The European Union does have various kinds of transfer payments and subsidies to farmers and businesses, so an arrangement of that sort with Canada, with the U.S., with a transformed NAFTA would all do the trick. [Return to index]

Letter No. 27

[To a Canadian-affairs computer forum re a French-literacy test for voters in Quebec, November 22, 1997]

DOES anyone suggest that if voting in the last Quebec referendum had been restricted to only people who are fluent in both spoken and written French, the result would have been anything but a TRIUMPH for separation?

Please remember that in political terms "Quebec" has not always meant "speakers of French". The ruling class of Quebec's business, at the least, was British, then English Canadian, for generations. How closely that control was reflected in the legislature I do not know. Do you? We know from modern politics that economic control of a society often, if not always, equates with political control. So how meaningful is a narrow approval of Confederation by nineteenth-century Quebec MPs? Conversely, if large numbers of members of Quebec's National Assembly voted against Confederation, isn't that striking, given how hard it must have been to buck the commercial establishment?

As for how much freer a vote might have been, I have answered that, implicitly, in my opening question to this post. All literate societies pose literacy tests to would-be voters. In the United States, a major controversy surrounds the question of whether literacy in Spanish, Chinese, or dozens of other languages is good enough to bestow the right to vote. Advocates of the 'yes' side of that debate assert that there are well-developed informational media (print, radio, TV) in the major language communities (Spanish, Chinese, etc.), so people literate in any such language or even illiterate people who pay regular attention to spoken media should be able to inform themselves about issues enough to justify their being given the right to vote. Opponents of giving the vote to people who do not speak or read English fluently respond that an informed electorate is one that can hear two (or more) sides to an issue, but that people who get all their information from a potentially-biased ethnic media establishment are pushed in a direction they might not take if they knew English; and further, that truly to understand what the Nation is, one must speak the language of the Nation and see things from its point of view.

Put that in Quebec's terms and you will see that a case can plainly be made that NO ONE who is not fluent in French should have been permitted to vote in Quebec's various status referendums. Recast the outcome in those terms, and you will see that REAL Quebecers, those who either grew up in French or took the time and trouble, out of love for their province and its people, to learn French really well, would have APPROVED independence.