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. [Return to index]

Letter No. 28

[To a Vancouver-based participant in a Canadian-affairs computer forum re his suggestion that because federalists won two referendums, no referendum for Quebec separation will ever succeed, December 5, 1997]

YOU try to make it sound as tho separation was defeated by 99.999% of the people of Quebec, rather than by 7/10 of 1%! Get real. Has outmigration from Quebec by Anglophones and Allophones stopped? I don't think so. How many of those who remain are elderly and thus likely to DIE soon? Put these two factors together, outmigration and attrition by natural death, and the NO side in the Quebec-separation controversy may be approaching the demographic point of defeat even if not one Francophone Quebecer changes his or her vote. So, the Federalist forces must either (a) persuade the YES voters to change their minds or (b) inspire federalist-inclined Anglophones and Allophones to migrate INTO Quebec instead of OUT of Quebec. What are the chances? [Return to index]

Letter No. 29

[To the same Vancouver-based participant in a Canadian-affairs computer forum re his suggestion that Canadians prefer Canada to be bilingual rather than unilingual, December 5, 1997]

YOU say "That French is an integral part of Canada is a defining fact of the country, and a good thing." There are millions of English Canadians who don't think that's a good thing at all. [Return to index]

Letter No. 30

[Two messages to a B.C.-based woman participant in a Canadian-affairs computer forum who asserted that Canada accepts perpetual difference of immigrant communities; the first, from November 17, 1997, now]

YOUR assertion that Canada's "multiculturalism is our culture. We are flexible, adaptive and tolerant in a way that no other nation on earth is", is drivel. Canada is in fact NOT multicultural. It's just a little slower to assimilate than is the United States, the country you compare to without speaking of.

All talk, alarmist or laudatory, about 'permanent communities' of people who do not assimilate to Canada is nonsense. Posts in other parts of this Forum have repeatedly talked about how this area or that was different decades ago, but no one seems to have appreciated the significance of observations about, for instance, how one area of Toronto was Jewish or Irish or whatever in the 40s, 50s or 60s but is Chinese or Jamaican or whatever today. What happened is the Jews and Irish and other concentrated communities of the 40s were ASSIMILATED, then moved out into the wider society. I imagine that observers of Toronto's 'balkanization' in those days also thought that the 'ghettos' of minorities were a permanent bar to the assimilation of the individuals who lived there. But here we are, several decades later, and the assimilation of those communities has been utter and absolute. There is no reason to think the same won't happen with Chinese, Sikhs, Pakistanis, or other communities now raising fears — and hackles — today.

Both English Canada and Quebec assimilate their new arrivals over time, tho in the case of Quebec, the assimilation in too many cases (for Quebec's tastes) is cultural rather than linguistic. That is, they take to the Quebec-Canadian way of life without becoming fluent in French and preferring it to English. In English Canada, assimilation is total. Ethnic origin is just a point of personal interest, like hair color or the school you attended. Participation in an occasional Ukrainian folk festival does NOT make Saskatchewan Canadians into unassimilable Ukrainians! Thus the "mosaic" is temporary, "multiculturalism" is the forced toleration of temporary diversity, and all communities will be assimilated over time. Don't worry about it — unless you're worried from the immigrant's side, that your ancestral culture will vanish, leaving scarcely a trace. Yes, it will. That's what happens to immigrants, and all immigrants expect it. If they wanted to live in their own culture, they wouldn't have moved outside it.

[And the followup, November 23, 1997]

NO, I set up no straw man. [An Ontarian in the forum], I believe it was, spoke of Chinese and other minorities in Toronto, for instance, achieving a "critical mass" great enough to ensure the perpetuation of a separate culture into the indefinite future. The premise of the doomsayers of cultural fragmentation is that the only reason earlier immigrant communities assimilated was that they were small; whereas now communities of size have arisen that don't need to assimilate, don't want to, and will successfully resist assimilation, instead to create their own little countries, or at least turfs, within a Canada (or U.S., or Britain, or you-name-it) forced to become multicultural by the new ethnic "realities". That is all nonsense. Assimilation of large minorities occurs everywhere. Sometimes it happens in one generation; sometimes in five. But it happens, everywhere.

The Germanic "Norsemen" who conquered a peninsula in northwest France, within 150 years became the completely Frenchified "Normans" who went on to invade Germanic Britain and impose FRENCH on it! In turn, these same Normans were assimilated to English — an English language much changed by the meld of French with Anglo-Saxon — within another 150 years! I imagine it seemed to the first couple of generations of Anglo-Saxons under the Normans that "Englisc" had no future. They had no faith in assimilation either. [Return to index]

Letter No. 31

[Two messages to a Canadian-affairs computer forum re the peculiar fact that historically more Quebecers have moved to the United States than to English Canada beyond Ontario. First, to a Franco-Ontarian, December 5, 1997]

YOU are quite right that most geographic expansion and mass migration is by increment rather than by huge jumps. If the North Atlantic were marked by a series of 700 large island steppingstones rather than one huge gap, North America might be only slightly populated by Europeans now, the islands closest to Europe being populated first and those farthest being populated only later. In the same way, the Atlantic seaboard was populated first, then the interior of present New York, Pennsylvania, etc., and only when the good farmland or timberland was already taken did significant numbers of people move farther west, with the constantly moving "Frontier".

Britain tried to confine its 13 seaboard colonies TO the seaboard, in order to prevent their becoming a huge continental force that the homeland would have to deal with, by extending the boundaries of Quebec after 1759, knowing that a French-speaking Quebec would not welcome English-speaking migrants from the coast. Rather than slowing westward migration, however, Britain bought itself a Revolution. The attempt to limit seaboard population and its concomitant, enlargement of Quebec, are two of the causes of the American Revolution named in the Declaration of Independence:

"He [King George III of England] has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands."

and

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: ... For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province [Quebec], establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies".

Ontario was indeed a huge bar to the migration westward of Quebecers.

But we fail to understand the whole dynamic if we refuse to consider Quebecers' attraction to the U.S., not just its aversion to Ontario. Many Quebecers went TO the U.S. to be IN and OF the U.S. They may not have told their parents that they wanted to be Americans, but they knew in their heart that they did. Rather than bring their province into the Union in order to become Americans, they just made their own emotional America out of emotional Quebec by moving themselves to the U.S., having children there, and raising them to be good Americans — albeit French-speaking Americans who value their ancestral culture and unique place in North America.

The movement of Quebecers into New England, and now into Florida and other places in the U.S., is not just a "push" phenomenon, whereby economic hardship or bad weather drives them out of Quebec, but a "push-pull" phenomenon, whereby the bad things about home combine with the good things for themselves that they expect to find in the U.S. Quebecers are not desperate refugees driven by famine into seeking sanctuary in the United States. They are prosperous, educated people who make a conscious choice to live in the United States — but NOT in Saskatchewan, Alberta, or (perhaps especially) "British" Columbia.

[Second message, December 7, 1997, to an American resident of British Columbia whose own Québecois ancestors moved to New England. He has since returned to Canada — but to English Canada, not French.]

PERHAPS you have not been reading this thread. [A Franco-Ontarian] is the one who asserted that Ontario was a physical and psychological barrier to migration westward from Quebec, and I was merely agreeing with him, not "making up" anything "out of the blue".

Franco-Ontarian flag

The point of my "lengthy introduction" to that agreement was to show the reverse situation — attempts by Britain to hem in English-speakers in the Thirteen Colonies by erecting a French-speaking barrier, comparable to the English- speaking barrier Ontario constitutes to French migration westward. Ontario is 1,000 miles wide! And unlike an ocean, which is as much a highway as a barrier, much of that width is harsh, Canadian-shield wilderness populated, if at all, by Anglophones. Any French Canadian from Quebec or New Brunswick would, in the days when trains were the fastest means of transportation, and not dirt-cheap for the era, be separating himself very starkly from family, friends, and the bulwark of his culture in moving so great a distance, over 'hostile territory'. Remember that people in those days didn't have weeks and weeks of vacation to give over to traveling back and forth by train. Many had almost no vacation at all. Making a visit back home was not a simple matter of hopping a plane for the weekend. Rather, travel in itself would take the better part of a week!

Franco-Albertan flag

Nor does this thread relate solely to the last century but to current distribution of French due to migration or the lack thereof, in the last century or more recently. The title of this thread is "French in the West", not "French migration in the 19th Century". I suspect there are about as many French Canadians in the U.S. West as in Western Canada, tho I don't have hard data on that, nor do I think anyone has, given that a lot of Canadian migration to the U.S. is illegal — tourists and students overstaying their legal time, then taking jobs they are not entitled to have, that kind of thing. And even if an illegal enters at Vermont or by plane at NYC, where he goes once he's in is anybody's guess.

Nor did I say that 19thC migration from Canada — any part of Canada — to the U.S. was of only the best-educated. I said that Quebec migrants to the U.S. are not driven by starvation ("famine") but are well educated (so could move elsewhere, as to Western Canada, and make a living there). Note the grammatical tense of the passage you object to: "Quebecers are not desperate refugees driven by famine into seeking sanctuary in the United States. They are prosperous, educated people who make a conscious choice to live in the United States — but NOT in Saskatchewan, Alberta, or (perhaps especially) 'British' Columbia." That is wholly in the present tense. But I would assert it for much of the 19thC as well. And the point is relevant in either century, since the issue is being surrounded by speakers of English in either location but more Quebecers choosing to move South than West.

"Educated" is a relative term, and must relate to the categories "refugees" — to which I applied it — and "immigrants", at the least, and more broadly to levels of education worldwide. Surely you don't suggest that Canada's educational system is among the worst on the planet, do you? Quite the contrary. Anyone who attended school in even rural Quebec in the 19thC was better educated than the bulk of their peers elsewhere outside the U.S., education almost everywhere being reserved, in those days especially, to the elites and citydwellers. The World Book 1997 Multimedia Encyclopedia observes that even in the United States, "Not until the 1900's did high schools become institutions designed to educate all young people." So how "uneducated" 19thC immigrants might have been is arguable. In those days, to have a sixth-grade education was pretty much to be "educated".

Immigrants are rarely the people at the top of the society they come from — those people don't leave! But nor are those that succeed in the United States generally inferior in any significant regard to the rest of their country's population. Quite the contrary, they tend to be among the most adventurous, open-minded, ambitious (and possibly most intelligent, whether they have formal education or not; and remember that there has always been such a thing as "self-education", whereby people whose formal education has consisted of almost nothing but learning to read, write, do simple arithmetic and learn the catechism, may read themselves wise; and life experience counts too) — or they wouldn't take the risks of many types involved in uprooting oneself to seek a better life abroad. [Return to index]

Letter No. 32

[To a Canadian who found attractive the idea of Canadians' being able to use traditional measures rather than metric after union; December 8, 1998.]

I WILL look at the sites you suggest. I don't recall having advocated "freezing" metrication, but I'll check what our "Private Action" page says on the subject. The U.S. is a "both-and" kind of place: both metric where metric is useful and traditional measures where they are useful. We have one-liter bottles of liquor, two-liter bottles of soda, 12- and 16-ounce cans of beer and soda; miles for distance (mph for speed), but with kph indicated as a second set of numbers on speedometers; and we use cc for medicine but Fahrenheit for thermometers, including medical thermometers, at least for home use. (Now that I think of it, I don't know what measure doctors' thermometers use!) In that conversions from one type of thing to another aren't commonplace, we don't find it difficult to deal with these things, and it seems appropriate, in its way, that different things use different measures. We have, however, cleared away some of the older, irregular measures that we didn't find particularly useful, e.g., rods and stones, tho we have kept acres and dozens. [Return to index]

Letter No. 33

[To a Canadian-affairs computer forum, re a reformed and strengthened Senate for Canada, November 17, 1997]

I FIND it amusing that anyone would assert that Canada's doing fine without a functioning Senate, when in truth the country is perpetually at the edge of breakup and constantly subjected to high-handed governments at both the federal and provincial levels.

Would Canada function differently if it had a triple-E Senate? I suspect so. Would it function differently if it had a bipartite Senate, in which French Canada had half the seats and English Canada the other half? Assuredly. And would Mike Harris be able to carry off a conservative revolution condemned by his critics as heartless, if Ontario had a working Senate? I suspect not, in that it is much harder to sweep two houses than one in any given election, as we see in the United States overall and in the various States in particular.

It is unthinkable in the United States that the national Senate be abolished, or rendered basically powerless, or that any state senate be similarly treated. (I think even Nebraska, which had a unicameral legislature for decades, the only one in the U.S., did eventually create a second chamber, tho I cannot find in my home library any reference to that. Maybe I can find out on the Internet.) [No, Nebraska does have a unicameral legislature, the only one in the Nation.]

Canadian coat of arms

Having a Senate with different terms of office than a House (e.g., six years as against two); staggered terms (only 1/3 of the U.S. Senate changes each two years, as against 100% of the House); different requirements for members (e.g., minimum age of 30 for Senators but 25 for Representatives); different constituencies — e.g., state- / province-wide rather than by district; different-size districts (e.g., 3X, 5X, 10X as many voters for the Senate as for the House, even where, as in a state senate, senators are chosen by district rather than at-large) accomplishes a number of useful things, even when there is no historical nor ethnic basis for its existence. The most important are (1) that more minds are brought to bear on a problem, and set to see it from different perspectives; and (2) that a senior chamber with longer, staggered terms of office and larger districts, gives continuity to politics, braking radical shifts and protecting people from sudden swings too far to one side or the other of the political spectrum. Change can happen, of course, but only if there is agreement across a larger segment of society, and change is likely to be made more gradual in time, as permits people to adjust to it more easily.

By contrast, unicameral legislatures are subject to sudden, extreme swings — witness Canada's own experience, in which a Conservative majority was reduced to a mere TWO MPs. In normal times, with moderate parties, no great harm may be done — tho there are a lot of people in Ontario who think enormous harm is being done by the Harris revolution. Not all times are normal, and not all parties are moderate. In Israel, for instance, a single election ousted a "peace party" and substituted hawks who have resisted living up to signed agreements with the Palestinians, with serious consequences for Israel's internal peace and security, loss of support in the outside world, and a fracturing of the international coalition against Israel's arch-enemy, Iraq. I suspect no such radical shift in short order would have occurred if Israel had a bicameral legislature — and an independent executive, something else Canada should have.

In Canada, Parliament may be called upon to deal with an unprecedented occurrence not long from now, approval by referendum of a move by its second-largest province to secede. What happens then? Would a Government that let that happen survive a motion of no-confidence? If, as seems more likely, the Government of the day would fall, would the replacement Government, six weeks later, INclude Quebec's representatives or EXclude them? Would the new Government be conciliatory, dedicated to keeping the country together by good-faith negotiation and compromise, or hardline hostile, inclined to preserve — or reassert — Canada's unity by military force if necessary? No one knows. But if Canada had an effective Senate, an extreme stance of either kind would seem less likely. [Return to index]

Letter No. 34

[To a Francophone Quebecer on a Canadian-affairs computer forum re Lucien Bouchard's ultimate ambitions; November 17, 1997]

I SUPPOSE [a different participant in that forum] meant that Bouchard is acting from American sympathies, not that he has actually, sub rosa, taken U.S. citizenship. His wife was born American, as I understand, but I don't know her present citizenship status. If she retained her U.S. citizenship, Mr. Bouchard would likely, were he to become tired of Canada and its endless quarrels and vicious attacks upon him, be eligible for immediate entry to the U.S. without bar, and perhaps an expedited grant of either a "green card" (which, last I knew, was actually not green in color) or U.S. citizenship, or both.

He would as well have an inside track on becoming the first Governor of the State of Quebec, should Quebec opt to join the Union, or one of its first two Senators, on the road to running for President of the United States (assuming the act of union would retroactively grant U.S. citizenship from birth to people who were Quebecers at birth). There is a precedent, in the case of Texas, for treating nationals of an area annexed to the U.S. as tho U.S. citizens for years before annexation. Texas was independent for almost ten years. During that time, its leaders were presumably citizens of the Republic of Texas, not of the United States. Yet Texas was represented in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives immediately upon the grant of statehood, even tho the Constitution says that no one is eligible for the House who has not been a U.S. citizen for seven years or eligible for the Senate who has not been a U.S. citizen for nine years.

However, Bouchard seems to be working for a Quebec independent of both Canada and the United States.

Whether a sovereign Quebec would decide after a few years of independence that what it really hated was not so much the idea of being part of a federal union much larger than itself but the Canadian federal union, and so apply for statehood in the U.S., remains to be seen. I for one regard that as distinctly possible. One can freely relinquish sovereignty once he has it; but Quebec has never had sovereignty to relinquish.

By the way, I think the Bouchard Government has made a terrible mistake in asking the Feds for an amendment to the 1982 constitution to permit it to change the nature of school boards. To accept that that constitution controls Quebec in the matter of schools is to forfeit the right to depart from it in any matter whatsoever, such that if the Supreme Court of Canada finds that secession is unconstitutional, a Bouchard government would be barred from seceding by its acceptance of the 1982 constitution's authority as to schools.

I don't know if the "notwithstanding" clause [of the Canadian constitution] is so broad as to permit a province to secede despite secession's being declared illegal. But it certainly seems most unwise for Bouchard to ask that the 1982 constitution be amended so Quebec can do ANYTHING. Much better would it be for Quebec just to do what it wants and tell anyone who tries to stop it by citing the Canadian constitution, "Quebec never signed that 'constitution', so is not bound by it in any regard whatsoever. Quebec will do whatever it wants, whether Canada likes it or not — from reorganizing its schools to separating from Confederation, and anything in between."

[And a followup about the danger to Quebec in asking Canada to amend the 1982 Canadian constitution so Quebec can reform its school system; November 23, 1997]

YOU (that is, the impersonal "you", not you in particular) can't write a logical absurdity into a contract or law. You cannot, as here, accept that you need to amend the 1982 constitution BUT declare that that constitution has no power over you. Some judge, somewhere, is going to rule that there is no reason to apply for a permit to do something you have the right to do without a permit, but that once you do apply for that permit, you bestow jurisdiction to grant OR DENY that or any other, similar permit upon the permit-granting authority.

You also cannot in law compel people to waive rights merely by stating that their acceptance of a given arrangement constitutes waiver of those rights. Because some rights are superior to others; because contracts between individual parties or corporations can be voided by government as contrary to public policy; because unequal power gives one party the power to compel accession by the other; or for various other reasons. Merely stating something does not make it so. The entirety of the law determines whether any given assertion supposedly made within it is valid.

Thus, if the Quebec Government accepts that Canada's 1982 constitution prevents it from reorganizing schools as ever it pleases, Quebec is acknowledging aloud that Canada's 1982 constitution does indeed cover Quebec, a mere paper-word assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. It's like somebody jumping off the top of the World Trade Center while saying, "In doing this, I do not for an instant admit that the law of gravity applies to this situation." [Return to index]

Letter No. 35

[Now, several messages to two Canadians who attacked Lucien Bouchard as unprincipled; Message A, November 17, 1997]

ALL politicians have personal reasons for going into politics, just as all dentists or engineers or lawyers or people of whatsoever other career have personal reasons for their choice. Many people who go into politics and spend huge amounts of time on it do so from anger at injustice, stupidity, unfairness, etc., as they see things. Whether you, from your different perspective, see the same things has nothing to do with whether a given politician is motivated by principle. Lucien Bouchard has bought himself a lot of personal trouble for his political stances but sticks to his guns. He obviously has principles, and it is absurdly unfair of people to pretend he does not.

If Bouchard were motivated only by ambition, he has made a lot of wrong choices, because even President of a Republic of Quebec is a small office because it is in a small country that would have scant influence on world affairs. If Bouchard had set his sights on PM of Canada, by contrast, he might come to be regarded (at least by Canadians) as a significant player on the world stage, and would in fact be a regular invitee of the Group of Seven (now Eight?), a very elite group indeed. That same office would empower him to make grandiose statements on various international questions and expect to be taken seriously. But Bouchard did NOT opt to pursue that office and its pretensions. He chose to work for something that a lot of people in his own province oppose. The man is highly principled, and suggestions that he is not are petty viciousness. Oppose his stance if you must, but don't belittle the man or his sincerity.

[Message B, November 22, 1997]

You have repeatedly disparaged Lucien Bouchard as unprincipled because YOU could not see a consistent pattern to his behavior. I have told you more than once that I see a PERFECTLY consistent pattern. You conclude from your observations and preconceptions that he is unprincipled. I conclude from my observations, as a politician (recognized as such in Who's Who in American Politics), that he is highly principled and thoroughly consistent: he wants the best for his people. If one thing you try doesn't work out, you try another, and another, and another, until you find something that does work.

Thomas Jefferson noted in the Declaration of Independence that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." In the Quebec context, one might revise the "design" part of that argument as to reflect the automatous nature of the forces that are grinding Quebec culture finely into dust. Perhaps English Canada's leaders do not intend to destroy French Canada as a "design", but the way of the modern world is working that harm nonetheless. Quebecers can either consign themselves philosophically and fatalistically to the disappearance of their culture, due to political arrangements that compel them to see English as dominant, or they can break from past and present political and economic arrangements in the hope that new arrangements will substitute French expectations for English expectations.

Le Journal, a news program in French (with, here in NYC, English subtitles) from the TV network France 2, this past weekend had a special focus on Canadian Francophones in its coverage of the recent summit of La Francophonie in Hanoi (of all places: only 1% or so of Vietnamese now speak French!). One part of the report dealt with the struggle of Francophones in Saint Boniface, Manitoba, to retain their ancestral culture. It stated plainly that despite an aggressive in-French educational program at the junior and senior high school levels, most Francophone teens think in English, speak to EACH OTHER in English, even feel in English — this with all the supports the Saint Boniface and Manitoba governments have brought to bear to reinforce French culture in a small cultural island in a vast assimilationist sea.

Lucien Bouchard understands the problem, very personally in all likelihood, because he is married to an American woman and, unless I am mistaken, has kids who are his personal map to the future of French in Canada. He has himself in recent years made major efforts to learn English really well. I don't know what he sees as the future of French in North America, but I suspect it's a lot less simplistic than his enemies suggest. I'm willing to wait and see. Of course, I don't have as much at stake as have Canadians, but that tends to make me more dispassionate in my observations. Those observations lead me to believe that Lucien Bouchard is a highly principled man of high intelligence who has the best interests of his people (including his children) at heart, whatever those interests might be.

[Message C, November 23, 1997, using the U.S. Civil War as an example of how principles limit behavior]

I DID NOT say try "everything" to succeed. I said that if one fails to achieve one's ends one way, a dedicated person tries another and another and another. But principle will guide the conscientious person as to what things he is willing to do to achieve his ends, and he will balance the end against the means.

For instance, the United States had a unity problem in the middle of the last century. People who wanted to save the Union tried appealing to the American identity and nationalism of their Southern fellow citizens; tried compromising over the extension of slavery; tried to persuade the South that slavery would eventually have to go for the sake of the South's own economic, cultural, and moral future; and on, and on. Once the South fired on Union forces, the Union then tried war, and succeeded in preserving the Union, albeit at very high cost. Advocates of preserving the Union didn't jump to war as their first option, nor did they, on defeating the South, exterminate the Rebels to the last man and replace them with immigrants to prevent a resurgence of secessionism (tho that would have prevented the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, etc.). No. There were moral limits to what they were willing to do, and they stayed within those limits.

[Message D, November 24, 1997]

SLAVERY was, in the mid-nineteenth century, a long-established and "honorable" tradition. You may not wish to put yourself into that era's mindset as to admit that, but it is true nonetheless.

People who wished to abolish slavery were REVOLUTIONARIES. They were greeted with the same kind of animus as I find in this forum, because they said that what had gone before — for centuries — was WRONG, and needed to be replaced by RIGHT.

[Message E, November 24, 1997]

YOU are trying to impose upon the past the obligation to operate by the rules and principles of the present. That is absurd. Slavery was pretty much universal in the 19th Century, and is indeed still found today in parts of Asia and Africa.

The principle I have addressed was not abolitionism to itself but the belief that the United States was, as Lincoln put it, "the last, best hope of earth" and that only the unity of the United States kept government "of the people, by the people, for the people" from "perish[ing] from the earth", and thus how abolitionism and democracy interacted.

Last nite, NYC's PBS station WNET-TV showed the last two episodes in the series on the American Revolution, Liberty, which put this in context. Tho democracy is very common now, it was essentially nonexistent outside the United States when the U.S. was established, and hadn't lasted long in prior incarnations. Temporarily set back, despotism had always made a comeback, as monarchy, absolutism — one type of dictatorship or another.

Even after the people of Latin America, following the U.S. example, rebelled and established their "freedom" in the sense of independence from colonial rule, they lost their freedom in the sense of personal rights vs. government dictation soon thereafter, pretty much globally thru that region. Shortly before the U.S. Civil War, there had been a series of rebellions for freedom across Europe, in the violent year 1848 — which were successfully put down by the combined forces of European despotism. If the United States broke up, many people feared that the separate much-diminished countries — which might not end up being two in number, but several — would be easy pickings for the British Empire, French Empire, Mexican dictatorship, or domestic dictatorships of various kinds, and popular democracy might suffer a shattering defeat from which it might not recover for centuries. After all, if a brave experiment in popular freedom results in civil war with accompanying loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, and fails anyway, that's pretty powerful justification for opposing any such experiment into the long-term future.

Britain's "democracy" was very feeble, and most rural voters (at the least) were pretty much under the thumb of local aristocrats. Canada's own democratic institutions might well not have succeeded if American unity and democracy had collapsed. The resulting chaos in North America could have brought all kinds of unpleasant things and have justified the British Empire, had it even been able to retain its North American dominions from regional wars, in ending 'dangerous' democratic experiments in Canada.

In any case, abolition of slavery had to take a back seat to preserving the unity of the United States. A unified Nation could abolish slavery in time; a failed Union could not.

All compromises with slavery in the course of trying to preserve the Union were mere temporizing, to give the South time to adjust to the inevitable. The South knew that, so understood full well that if the Union held, slavery would have to end sooner or later. Which is why they attempted to secede! Abolitionists wanted slavery to end sooner. Slaveowners wanted to pretend slavery could last forever, but they knew the forces of abolition were growing with every passing month, so at least wanted abolition to arrive later.

Principled people do what they can do, and accept that they canNOT always do what they want because they do not yet have the wherewithal, or forces of history are not yet on their side — whatever. They build to success, one step at a time. What choice do they have?

Abolitionists built their movement over time and succeeded. Bouchard is building his movement over time, and hopes eventually to succeed. Determined people do not let one setback destroy a movement. They accept failure as a learning experience and try a different tack. But the point about principles is that you don't abandon them just because you can't get your way today. Tomorrow's good enough. [Return to index]

Letter No. 36

[To the Toronto Star, June 9, 1998 re its article "Minorities Set to be Majority", June 7]

AH, Canadian racism rears its definitional head again! Elaine Carey, the Star's "Demographics Reporter", claims that a new report shows that, "In less than 18 months, the majority of people in the new city of Toronto will be non-white". She accepts that report's classification of South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans) as "nonwhite"! That will surprise many of them, who are lighter in color than some people from the Mediterranean whose whiteness is never doubted.

Such a classification of races may be acceptable in Canada, a country where French and English are regularly called "races", but it is not acceptable anywhere else. At least French and English are now both regarded as white. Thirty years ago one might hear Anglophones reproaching Francophones with the famous words "Speak white.")

The overwhelming preponderance of people from the Indian subcontinent are Caucasian, that is, of the "white" race, no matter how dark their skin tones. And in fact some fade noticeably once out of the sun for most of the year.

One wonders if the report Ms. Carey accepts also classes Caucasian Hispanics, Arabs, Israelis, Turks, Cypriots and other non-Europeans as "nonwhite".

Ms. Carey quotes the same report as claiming that "Toronto is the most ethnically diverse city in the world", more so even than New York. Oh? She says "only 28 per cent of [New York City's] population [is] foreign-born, compared to Toronto's 48 per cent". But New York is much larger, 7.5 million people within city limits as against Toronto's 2.3 million. 28% of 7.5 million is about 2.1 million people. 48% of 2.3 million is 1.1 million. So New York has twice as many foreign-born people as has Toronto. Further, New York metro is 18 million people, and older immigrants tend to spread out from the City proper across the tristate metropolitan area, and even farther afield. Inasmuch as New York is the headquarters of the UN, an organization of 185 members, it is obvious that every single member country has nationals residing in the New York area (as against 169 countries for Toronto). We also have nationals of nonmembers, like Switzerland. How can any city be more diverse than that?

Considering that the foreign-born in New York proper (within city limits) comprise a group almost equal in size to the entire City of Toronto, and we all, foreign- and native-born alike, get along, for the most part, splendidly, it is more than a little pretentious for Toronto's city government to claim that Toronto is doing a better job than we are.

By all means let Toronto take pride in how well things may be going, but let's have no silly self-vaunting that belittles the accomplishments of a city even more diverse, involving vastly larger numbers of individuals from substantially more countries. [Return to index]

Letter No. 37

[Re Canadian self-delusion]

YES, Canadians really do like to think they are friends to all peoples. Of course, every now and then they bomb some of them as part of NATO or the Gulf "War" — but, hey! what's a few bombs between friends? [Return to index]

Letter No. 38

Subj: European and Canadian Affairs??
Date: 1/27/99
To: mayesb@PANET.US-STATE.GOV [a State Department information officer]

A MEMBER of this organization . . . sent me copy of an e-mail from you that says you have forwarded his inquiry about whether the U.S. is doing anything to prepare for the eventuality that Quebec leaves Canada, to "the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Office of Canadian Affairs". I was under the impression that the State Department had reorganized as to move Canada from the category of a European country — which it plainly is not — to that of a country of the Americas (which it plainly is). Did I hear wrong? Or did the State Department decide that Canada really is part of Europe? And if State decided that Canada doesn't fit State's profile of a country of the Americas, on what basis was that done? racial? Please advise. [Return to index]

Letter No. 39

Subj: Booting Canadians from U.S. TV
Date: 1/19/99
To: voicers@edit.nydailynews.com [the Letters column of the New York Daily News, a major newspaper]

OUSTER of the Canadian host, Kevin Newman, from Good Morning America is a very good start, but there's much more to do. All U.S. networks should send Canadians back to their beloved Canada, starting with the most insistent anti-American, Peter Jennings, who, last I knew, had been employed by ABC for over 30 years but continued to refuse U.S. citizenship — even though he is happy to intrude his Canadian nose into U.S. politics. There are hundreds or even thousands of other Canadians parasitizing U.S. news, from John Roberts on-air at CBS and Keith Morrison at NBC to unknown writers and researchers twisting U.S. news to Canadian preconceptions and prejudices. Send them home.

Once we've purged news departments of these hidden foreigners, let's move on to deport Michael J. Fox, who has been here for over 19 years but refuses U.S. citizenship, and the hundreds of Canadians who take very good jobs away from Americans, from Caroline Rhea on Sabrina, Teenage Witch to Jason Priestley and other Canadians pretending to be Americans. [November 2000:  Michael J. Fox, after some 20 years of refusing U.S. citizenship, finally became a citizen — and was promptly voted one of George magazine's "Citizens of the Year" (for his work in combatting Parkinson's disease)!]

If Canadians here refuse U.S. citizenship because they are proud to be Canadian, they should be ecstatic to return to that wonderful country. But let them leave their dirty American money here. If they feel they have the right to be here while despising our citizenship, let them wear a large Canadian flag pin everywhere they go, including on-air. More, let every TV show and movie made in Canada bear large symbols side-by-side, a proud Canadian flag on the left and a U.S. flag with a superimposed bar-crossed circle on the right. Then let indignant Americans boycott every show they appear on. [Return to index]

Letter No. 40

[To a British Columbian woman on a Canadian-affairs forum who thinks it's fine for Canadians to omit to mention in a U.S. context that they are Canadian, November 17, 1997]

KINDLY stop being disingenuous: "Are you suggesting that Americans are too dumb to recognize a Canadian when they see one ? None of those people 'pose' as Americans" No one on Earth can "recognize a Canadian when they see one". Not even Canadians can recognize each other in the U.S., but all vanish into the American mass instantaneously upon arrival. When the news on Good Morning AMERICA is presented by a young man who looks American, most people will assume he is American, not Canadian, and that he is telling them the truth. In reality, Kevin Newman did a poisonously inaccurate report on Canada's elections for U.S. viewers, without making plain that he was speaking as a Canadian. In that report, he minimized the costs of Canadian contests and made Canada's election system out to be vastly superior to Americans'. Did Americans in general have information enough to know that he was LYING to them? No.

Does the origin of one's news matter? How many national newsmen in Canada's own networks are American? The Third World has been very indignant for a very long time that almost all news to them and about them is controlled by Western news agencies and networks. They know that the origin of the companies and personnel who cover the news controls what is looked at, what is reported, and how it is reported. They are right to worry, and I am right to be concerned that Americans [might] naively assume that since Canadians look like us and sound like us therefore they think about everything just the same as we do and have our own best interests at heart. But what about coverage of Canadian unity issues?

Do Americans really get the truth? or a pasted-over "optimistic" version, that Canada will stay together and we're all better off that way? Not once in all the coverage of Canada's unity problems by Canadians on U.S. networks have I ever heard anyone mention that if Canada breaks up, part of all of English Canada is expected to drift into the United States. Never have Americans been allowed to think that maybe the breakup of Canada would thus be in the interest of the United States, so Americans should root for the separatists and even help in their work.

How many Americans are being put out of work by Canadians in the Hollywood and New York entertainment industries who hire other Canadians preferentially over Americans? (E.g., Lorne Michaels and his stable of imported Canadian comics.) Is it really conceivable that Rachel Blanchard of Toronto, who plays "Cher" on Clueless, was the very best choice for the part of a California "Valley girl", and no one else could come close? We're not talking high art when we're talking of entertainment TV and film, but there are an awful lot of Canadians being hired to fill American jobs at very high pay. Who's doing the hiring? Canadians? Does it make a difference? You bet your bippy it does. If there's an underground "Canadian mafia" giving very good American jobs to Canadians, and placing Canadian nationalists in positions of power over media coverage of Canadian-unity issues, these are matters Americans have every right to know, and express concern and indignation about. [Return to index]

Letter No. 41

[Two messages to an American woman participating in a Canadian-affairs online forum, November 22 and 23, 1997]

WOLVES in sheep's clothing are a problem for sheep. Surely you know that there are a lot of bad people posing as good. We hear horror stories practically every day (at least during "sweeps months", among which is November), of pedophiles prowling the Internet, 45-year-old men posing as 12-year-old girls in order to get their jollies remotely or by inviting a child to a rendezvous the nature of which she/he does not remotely understand. The Internet is an ideal "blind" for 'duck-hunting', but it is not the only one. The Wall Street Journal, which should have known better, ALLOWED the son of a woman journalist who was very famous in Canada (Barbara Frum) to pose as an American in a column designed to dissuade Americans from thinking about annexing Canada if its unity problems got the better of it. That is SCANDALOUS. For you to suggest that it's just fine for people to misrepresent themselves to advance a cause subversively that they could not advance aboveboard is equally scandalous.

Most people want to believe the truthfulness of the things they read and the people they "talk" to in media and on the Internet. "Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper" is pointless advice to many people, because they DO believe everything they read in anything that remotely looks like a newspaper, including the National Enquirer and Midnight Globe. Savvy — and needfully cynical — readers will bring skepticism to what they read, but very few will apply common sense everywhere, and fewer still will wonder about ulterior motives but tend instead to accept at face value what someone says and what someone seems to be, whether he says so or not. Absent a reason to believe that a columnist in The Wall Street Journal is a foreigner, the typical intelligent reader will assume that he is American. That is a reasonable supposition, especially if the word "we" (or something like it), meaning, in context, "the United States", appears in that column.

You are an intelligent woman of unusual mental independence, so you would like to / you pretend to assign to everyone the same qualities of intelligence and independence of thought that characterize your mental life. But, coming from where you do (Arkansas, is it?), you surely know better than to pretend that everyone around you is as bright, educated, and logical as you are. It is dishonest for the intellectual to pretend that everyone is equally able to separate wheat from chaff.

"Full disclosure" is a term of recent coinage but ancient provenance. People should know lots of things about what it is they are told or would be sold. Americans mindful of our appalling balance-of-payments deficit, who are inclined to refuse imports on that account, need to know what is imported and what is not! You can't just lay everything out there with no country-of-origin label and expect people to know where what they are buying comes from. Nor can you actually expect people to understand, absent nationality-identification, that what they read in The Wall Street Journal that seems to be an opinion piece by an American who thinks annexing Canada would be a bad deal for "us" is actually a PROPAGANDA piece by a Canadian nationalist trying desperately to save Canada from absorption by the United States by persuading Americans that they shouldn't want it even if it is offered to "them".

BUT you are arguing for hiding information! You suggest that it's fine for people to hide nationality and misrepresent themselves. That brings a whole new dimension to "freedom of information" — the freedom to suppress adverse information — and effectively suggests that "full disclosure" is a bad thing. Novel.

The traditional defense of free speech is that when placed side by side, truth will be plain against falsity. But that works only, if at all, when all information necessary to a decision is set forth, not when part of the information or argumentation is in "fine print" or suppressed altogether.

I think people should be alerted to frauds. Let David Frum and all other Canadians in the U.S. spouting anti-annexationist sentiment make plain to their U.S. audiences "where they're coming from", and the audience might understand that they don't have our best interests at heart. [Return to index]

Letter No. 42

[To a B.C.-based woman on that Canadian-affairs forum, re the expected impact on English Canada of the actual secession of Quebec, November 23, 1997]

You know full well, tho of course you deny it, that many people, even on this Forum, concede aloud or to themselves that if Quebec leaves Confederation, Canada is FINISHED, for there would be no way on Earth to justify the continued separation of one English-speaking country from another English-speaking country with which it has multitudinous economic, political, and cultural ties, from NAFTA to a binational NHL, NBA, NL, AL, etc., etc., etc.

A few people pretend that Canadians could create some new justification for continued separation from the United States once the "great bilingual / bicultural experiment in intercommunal understanding" rationale explodes. Most Canadians are more honest than that. [Return to index]

Letter No. 43

[Two messages to the same woman in reply to her suggestion that Americans might reject English-Canadian states, November 26 and 29, 1997.]

IT IS certainly true that there is a strong isolationist-nativist mindset among too many Americans. Every expansion has been opposed by somebody. One Senator White of Delaware in 1803 said that the Louisiana Purchase was 'the worst disaster that could at present befall us'! But the Louisiana Purchase was, as I recall, approved.

YOU are completely wrong in asserting that "The notion that annexation of Canada would be good for the US is lunatic fringe stuff at best which has almost no support in the US". The one poll I know that has been taken of U.S. opinion on this matter addressed precisely that point in 1967 in the Toronto Daily Star. It asked Americans if they thought annexing Canada would be in the interest of the United States, to which 71% of those polled said YES. It then asked Americans if they thought annexing Canada would be in the interest of Canada, to which 75% said YES. To my knowledge, the Star never asked such questions in the U.S. again. I guess they found the answers too disturbing — or felt that they likely have not changed.

Cut the "lunatic fringe" and similarly slanderous crap. [Return to index]

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Letter No. 44

[To a B.C.-based, U.S.-born, Canadian-identified participant in a Canadian-affairs computer forum, in response to a poll he saw that found most British Columbians hostile to the idea of joining the U.S. even if Quebec secedes from Canada, December 7, 1997]

I'D HAVE to see (1) (a) the exact wording of the question and (b) all introductory materials, (2) whether people were allowed to rank several options, and (3) whether there was an enthusiasm index (a "strongly favor...favor...oppose...strongly oppose" kind of thing). Further (4) absent a real crisis or even a real suggestion from a powerful political leader (either Canadian/British Columbian or American), most people may not take such a question very seriously, so not think seriously before answering; and (5) a significant portion of people tend to tell poll interviewers what they think the interviewer wants to hear or at least not say what they think will cause the interviewer to despise them. (By the way, 3% of respondents are missing from the poll as you reported it. Why?)

(1) (a) As you know, the exact wording of a question can profoundly affect the result. You have yourself made this point regarding the questions Quebecers were asked in two actual elections, not just public-opinion polls.

(b) But even the same short question may produce different results if it is preceded by different explanatory materials or scenarios. Posit two different scenarios to the person questioned:

(I) "It's 1999, and Quebec has just voted itself out of Confederation. The 10 remaining First Ministers declare that Canada can go on without Quebec, state their intention to abolish French as co-official language within Canada, but agree to enter into an amicable economic union with Quebec, headquartered in Ottawa, all within the context of an enlarged NAFTA." Then the question is asked, "What do you think would be best for BC to do? Stay in Canada, join the United States, or declare independence on its own?" I suggest that very few BCers would feel comfortable saying anything but "stay in Canada, of course".

Posit an altogether different intro: (II) "It's 1999. Quebec has just voted itself out of Confederation and applied for associate membership in the European Union, turning its back on even economic union with Canada. Prime Minister Chretien has tearfully resigned, saying that he must be true to his culture, so will return to Quebec and do everything he can to secure the future of his people. The Premiers of Atlantic Canada have declared that they don't see how they can stay in what remains of Canada, an East Pakistan far from the center of the rest of Canada's concerns, but will have to petition Congress for statehood if they cannot get extraordinary reassurances and heavy subsidies from Ontario and western Canada. Alberta's leaders have declared that without Quebec, there is no Canada, so it will go its own way. The President of the United States and leaders of Congress announce jointly that they are very sorry to see Canada break up but would welcome any province that wanted to become a state, and especially British Columbia, in that its admission to the Union would make Alaska contiguous to the rest of the Nation. Now, what do you think would be best for BC to do...?" I suggest that such an introduction would lead to a very different result.

One way to know with certitude is to try a two-part poll, the first part of which poses a scenario of the first type, the second a scenario of the second type — to the SAME respondent. Try it with your friends! (Yes, kids, you can try this at home!) Heck, some of you in BC may be able to judge from your own reactions to the scenarios above whether the circumstances posited would make a difference in your own answer.

Absent any kind of introduction, that is, coming cold from out of the blue, "If Quebec were to separate from Canada, what do you think BC should do?" would strike many persons polled as an unrealistic, even silly question. Many would object mentally, if not even aloud, "Quebec is NOT going to separate, so it's a silly question", and thus not really cooperate with the poll but merely endorse the status quo — which is what they think (or want to think) is going to happen anyway.

Further, was the question open-ended or closed-ended? That is, were there three and only three options offered: stay in Canada, join the U.S., or declare independence? Or were respondents asked for their own ideas? That too could make a difference, because lots of BCers can come up with hybrids of those alternatives, or new suggestions of their own. What if a person doesn't favor any of those alternatives as he understands them? For instance, if everything else stayed the same, Ontario would be absolutely dominant in rump-Canada, and many BCers would find that disturbing, even unacceptable, so favor either statehood or independence. But if they thought that remaining-Canada could be transformed into a looser confederation in which BC had greater powers, they might not go for so drastic a step but choose to stay in Canada. But what the first group of respondents think of when the word "Canada" is mentioned is very different from what the second group thinks. A third group would think, "I'd want BC, Yukon, and Alberta, and maybe Saskatchewan and Manitoba too, but certainly NOT Ontario, to form their own country." Etc. If Quebec separates from Canada, all kinds of possibilities open, and asking people about only three is not indicative of what BCers might actually think and work for if Quebec goes.

How much TIME did respondents have to THINK? Could they consult among themselves or was each asked in isolation? These things make a difference, snap judgments and considered judgments often being very different.

(2) Could respondents rank their preferences: "Well, I'd prefer that BC stay in Canada, but if the terms for staying were unacceptable — I sure don't want to be completely dominated by Ontario for the rest of my life — then I'd favor statehood, but if that were refused by Congress, then I'd prefer to stay in some kind of Canada over becoming independent — but not by much, I must say." A poll like that would give more insight into what people really feel. Rankings could be done in a strict 1/2/3 order or by assigning points: e.g., "There are 9 points total to assign to the three options. You can assign all 9 to one option and none to the others if you so favor that one option that you reject both others categorically. You can assign 3 points each to all three options if you favor them equally. Or you could assign 5 to one option, 3 to another, and only 1 to the last. Etc." That kind of polling would be interesting to see.

(3) Did the survey count people as "in favor" if they could just barely stomach the thought of being dominated by Ontario in a Canada unchanged except for the departure of Quebec, equally with those who were enthusiastic at the prospect of a chastened Canada learning its lesson and, so, giving other provinces the latitude they want lest they go their own way too? If 90% of the people who answered "stay in Canada" were very iffy and unenthusiastic, but 90% of those who chose either "join the United States" or "declare independence" were gungho, you are left with a survey that doesn't mean as much as it seems on the surface to mean. Because people whose approval of something is lukewarm and conditional can change their minds easily, whereas enthusiasts (not to say "zealots") rarely do.

(4) If this question were asked the week before the last Quebec referendum, it would mean a great deal more than it does now, in the middle of no political crisis whatsoever. If this survey were taken the week after President Clinton announced in a press conference that he has just conferred for two days with Lucien Bouchard and has come to the conclusion that the breakup of Canada and admission as states of its separate pieces is in the best interest of the United States, it would mean a lot more. But absent a statement from even BC's Premier or the leader of the opposition that if Canada breaks up BC must think of going its own way, a survey on this topic isn't very meaningful. It is interesting, of course. And

(5) Never forget that people lie to interviewers. Answers that would tend to bring down opprobrium upon them can be hard to elicit from public-opinion-poll respondents, because even if they are certain that their answer can't be traced to them individually — and many people are not at all sure of that — and thus their answer cannot be used to get them fired from their job or ostracized by neighbors and friends, many people are too timid to admit aloud that they have thoughts that might be seen as "bad" by society in general and thus, in all likelihood (or so goes the thinking) by the interviewer! In the U.S., we first noted that phenomenon with a poll in L.A. when Tom Bradley (a black man) first ran for mayor against Sam Yorty (a white man), which poll showed that Bradley should win handily — but in fact he lost badly. White people did not want to admit to interviewers that they would vote white! To put the simplest 'face' on this, how many white people will tell a black public-opinion pollster that they think blacks are intellectually inferior or that interracial sex is disgusting — even if they do? The most timid respondents may actually harbor the fear that they will be physically attacked by the pollster if they offend him. Tho most BCers would not expect to be attacked physically by a pollster who asks them whether BC should stay in Canada if Quebec leaves, all BCers know that they have been raised to be patriotic Canadians, and it's not "right" to do or say anything hostile to Canada. If separatism for Quebec is "bad", separatism for BC would be even "worse", because BC has no linguistic justification for leaving a country where its language dominates.

[A series of messages to a Franco-Ontarian member of a Canadian-affairs computer forum, re Quebec becoming champion of French in the Western Hemisphere, and especially Haiti and Louisiana. This began as a discussion of clannish behavior of Francophone Canadians in Florida resorts.] [Return to index]

Letter No. 45

[Message A, December 10, 1997]

HOW about all those "Snowbirds" who fly Canadian flags in their Florida compounds and get snotty if locals don't take kindly to their chattering away in French and suggest, by word, deed, or facial expression, that everyone around has the obligation to adjust to them? At least that's what I've read somewhere. All nationalities have their boobs — present company (on either side of this discussion) excepted, of course.

[Message B, December 13, 1997]

QUITE so: some Quebecers do need to speak among themselves in French while visiting Florida because they don't speak English. But (a) there are a lot of Quebecers among the "Snowbirds" who live in Florida for months at a time, during all of which they are surrounded by English TV, radio, movies, neighbors, and the like, so could easily learn the language in the privacy of their home if they were interested and (b) there's a big difference between not being able to speak English, and being apologetic about that in a U.S. context, on the one hand, and refusing to speak English and implying by word or deed that American merchants and others who deal with them have the obligation to speak French. Too few people appreciate what was stated about France-French people in some program I saw on TV, namely, that the main reason many French do not speak English is that they don't want to come across as idiots in another language, when they are really quite sophisticated, intelligent, even eloquent in their own language. They apparently don't realize that their self-consciousness comes across not as diffidence but as arrogance! The same may hold for Francophone Quebecers.

The U.S., and especially Florida!, a state of the Deep South, does not recognize French as special, and Quebecers who overwinter there know that full well. If they nonetheless choose to refuse to even try to accommodate their American neighbors, they are doing serious harm to U.S.-Quebec relations, and should reconsider. Quebecers must either (1) overwinter in Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Martin, French Guiana, or Haiti, or (2) try to speak English if they overwinter in Florida, or (3) at the very least, apologize for not being able to speak English and ask for the indulgence of merchants and others, not give the impression that they expect Americans to adjust around them!

I suspect that Haiti and the other Francophone areas I mention are substantially less expensive to overwinter in than is Florida. Unilingual Francophones from Quebec and New Brunswick should seriously consider spending their winter vacations in those areas, not Florida, if they do not care to exert themselves the little bit it takes to make plain to their American neighbors that they can't speak English — not that they are hostile to English; they just can't speak it and they're too old to learn. Haiti especially needs the tourist dollars — even Canadian dollars!

[Message C, December 14, 1997]

DO YOU really think that Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Martin, all of them dependencies / integral parts of France, are backward as regards lifestyle [and thus not attractive to Quebecers as alternative vacation spots to Florida]? I haven't been to any of them (the only part of France in the Western Hemisphere I have been to is St. Pierre, off Newfoundland), but they all have major tourist industries, so presumably can accommodate the most demanding Quebecois lifestyle. French Guiana, I grant, may be a more iffy proposition, and Haiti is certainly backward. But surely there are cultural tradeoffs that should make helping such areas relate to Quebec, and thus increasing Quebec's hemispheric influence, which should be an attractive proposition for Quebec enthusiasts of Francophonie.

Why shouldn't Quebec marry itself to Haiti — a Francophone area of comparable population, at least as far as creating a Quebec-oriented tropical paradise of modern resorts that employ thousands of presently unemployed Haitians in jobs where they can use French!? — and Quebec-oriented French at that — rather than have to learn English to service the international (but mainly American) tourist trade? In that there are as many Francophones in Haiti as in Quebec (or even a few hundred thousand more), Quebec could double its cultural area in even partially assimilating Haiti.

Quebec hoteliers could create Quebec-oriented resorts, with Quebec cable TV in rooms and same-day Quebec newspapers on the newsstand — even one's own city's newspaper delivered same-day to one's room, for no additional charge. If, then, a reasonably luxurious Haitian vacation would be 20% cheaper than a middling Florida vacation, why not choose Haiti? Day trips to the local open-air market, or major museum or historic site would take one to places where everyone speaks French!, so you could chat or bargain with the locals in your own language, even order, from a local artisan, a personalized variation on a local product in your own language, confident that the artisan will know exactly what you want and create it without misunderstanding.

Heck, Quebec would have such leverage with impoverished Haiti that it could surely arrange the creation of state-of-the-art Quebecois/Canadian hospitals (like the American hospitals in Europe and elsewhere) that would accept Canadian medical payments for at least emergency services — assuming Quebec could persuade Canada's national government that bilingualism/biculturalism argues for such payments; Quebec could even argue that Anglo-Canadians could equally benefit from such services if they should choose to learn French on vacation in Quebec-French-accénted resorts in heavenly-warm, tropical Haiti, some of which could even offer immersion classes in French! as part of their marketing program to English Canada, the United States, and elsewhere — for college credit! with participating universities).

Why not a Quebec University of Haiti, like the American University in Lebanon? Why not sister-city/town programs, Quebec-to-Haiti, whereby local Quebec businesses fund Internet connections between the schools of a town in Haiti and a town in Quebec, and Quebec families send their already-read French — and even English! — books and durable magazines to the school libraries and public library of that town (even creating such where none exist)? Etc., etc., etc.

My point is that Quebec feels isolated in an English-speaking sea, but there are lots of opportunities for Quebec to see itself as the Big Brother of French in the Western Hemisphere — an easy replacement for France itself! by virtue of nearness and dearness. Why shouldn't Quebec high schools, colleges, and universities be filled with kids from French-speaking areas of the Western Hemisphere, not just the Caribbean but also Louisiana, and the kids of Quebecers who have moved to New England and other parts of the U.S.? Maybe Quebec is thinking too small in turning inward. Maybe the best DE-fense of French culture in the Western Hemisphere is a good OF-fense, whereby Quebec volunteers itself as champion of French not as competitor with English — for that would be pretentious, and certain to fail — but as complement to English. After all, 65% of the vocabulary of English is shared with French (if pronounced differently). In other French-speaking areas of the Western Hemisphere, then, Quebec would promote not an insular and defensive French that hates English but French as the language that transformed primitive, truly-insular English (it was, after all, spoken mainly on an island) into a world-spanning tongue of brilliant evocativeness and endless flexibility — thanks to French!

Why isn't Quebec/Canada plumping with urgency for the admission of Haiti to NAFTA, at the least, or even for the admission of Haiti as "bilingual/bicultural" Canada's 11th province? as would partly even-up the French and English communities demographically and make Canada more genuinely a bilingual/bicultural experiment? Think of it: 14 million Francophones matched to 21 million Anglophones! Anglos would still predominate, but not by nearly so much. Francophones could stop seeing themselves as endangered and start rethinking what "partnership" can mean.

Even short of political merger of Haiti into Canada, I can visualize all kinds of opportunities, in business and media more than just tourism, for Quebec in Haiti. All Haitian modernization could bear a Quebec stamp! All the infrastructure of roads, subway systems, and computer systems, and a network of universities and technical schools could be built or steered by Quebec enterprises. Every French-language computer program in every Haitian school, library, university, or business could be designed in Quebec! A substantial portion of the programming on Haitian TV, especially in tourist areas, could come from Quebec, as could many of the films in theaters. Quebecois books could fill Haitian libraries and bookstores, especially but not only in tourist areas. And once there is a significant economic market for all things Quebecois in Haiti, it would be little problem to extend that marketing network to Cajuns and Creoles in Louisiana more than to just France's physical and/or cultural islands in the greater-Caribbean area. And Quebec tourist dollars would pay for the basis of all this, so the money spent in Haiti would go right back to Quebec!

Or is there a "darker" reason for Quebecers' preference for Florida over Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Martin, and French Guiana? If there is, shouldn't we bring that out into the open?

[Message D, December 15, 1997]

HAITI is only the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere. There are, alas, PLENTY of poorer countries in the Eastern Hemisphere. Haiti isn't even in the top 15 of the poorest countries in the world. My 1993 Software Toolworks Atlas CD-ROM shows 40 countries poorer than Haiti!

Flows of people to and from Puerto Rico have varied over time. Last I knew, there were slightly more people moving to PR from the mainland than the other way around, but that changes with fluctuations in the economy. There are about 3.6 million [in 2000: 3.8 million] Puerto Ricans on the island and 2.7 million on the mainland.

NAFTA is just a free-trade area. Unlike the European Union, there are no transfer payments from the richer members to poorer, nor freedom of movement for labor across boundaries. I don't see what the big deal would be in extending NAFTA to Haiti.

It seems to me that helping Haiti develop would be a perfect example of an opportunity to, as the popular phrase goes, "do well [financially] by doing good [works]". Perhaps the relatively recent ascent of Francophones in Quebec into positions of management hasn't been long enough to give rise to a super-ambitious entrepreneurial bent in which Quebec business seeks out new spheres of influence, new 'worlds to conquer' — in a business sense, of course. That should change.

[Message E, December 19, 1997]

PUERTO RICO is, as you know, a huge resort area because of its warm, sunny weather and many hundreds of mile of sandy beaches, so people would leave there mainly because of insufficient economic opportunity, altho some leave for other reasons, such as cultural opportunities (opera, for instance) that don't exist in a small entity or because of some local intolerance of religious or sexual nonconformity. Naturally, for people who were born there but migrated elsewhere, there is a tug on the heart to return someday, and if the economic or other reasons that drove them away to begin with cease to be valid, many people do return — unless of course they have by then formed a successful, happy life elsewhere and too little remains in PR to draw them back. This is the oldest story of emigration: "you can't go home again" — too much has changed, including you!

As for Haiti taking jobs away from mainland North America, there are at least three reasons that's not likely to be a significant problem for quite some time: (1) Lack of infrastructure makes creating jobs there quite difficult. Factories need electricity, for machines, computers, and, especially there, air-conditioning; a phone system with the latest switching, fiber-optic, and other capacities; and roads to get materials in and products out; ports with modern dockage and container facilities; etc. Haiti lacks almost all of that in all too large areas of the country. (2) Too much of the potential workforce does not have any education nor job experience. They cannot fill skilled jobs, have no work experience and the concomitant discipline to show up for work!, etc. Further, even language is a problem, because many Haitians don't even speak an easily understood version of international French, but only a dense patois opaque to outsiders. So communication between supervisors or managers on the one side and potential workers on the other can be a serious problem to overcome. And (3) Haiti is an island, so cannot just plug its commerce into the interstate highway system. Rather, everything must go by air or water, which makes it inappropriate for some types of time-sensitive industries.

Still, in time all these obstacles can be overcome, mainly thru outside help with education and infrastructure. But the earliest Haiti could be seriously competitive is on the order of a decade from whenever it is admitted to NAFTA, and it is so SMALL — under 7 million people — that it could not make a serious adverse impact upon North American jobs. The reverse, however, is that North America is so large, that even a modest expansion/transfer of jobs into Haiti would make a huge impact on that island, at least as regards keeping Haitians from emigrating, mainly illegally, to the U.S. and Canada, where they aren't much welcome. All in all, then, most mainland politicians should regard economic improvements adequate to keep Haitians in Haiti as well worth the tiny investment (considering the scale of the NAFTA market) such improvements would require.

[Message F, December 20, 1997]

HAITI is an appropriate — indeed, opportune — area for investment from Quebec mainly because, to use an American black expression, "what goes around, comes around". That is, what you do, good or bad, for others, tends to be done to you, sooner or later. Quebec is now dropping tons of money into Florida and other U.S. warm-weather sites without realizing much in the way of an immediate return. The U.S. is so vast economically, that Quebec's tourist dollars are a pittance as against tourist dollars generally. When the little drop of Quebec tourist expenditures falls into the lake of the U.S. economy, it vanishes without even making a splash. But in Haiti, the same tourist dollars would make a huge difference both in the quality of life of Haitians and in Quebec's international stature and influence. Further, if Quebecers approach Haiti as I outlined in my earlier message, a very large number of those dollars would almost instantly recycle right back to Quebec in the form of purchases of Quebec goods and services. By contrast, the bulk of Quebec dollars spent in the U.S. never return, at least not as far as anyone can see. Not everything that goes around, comes around in that sense.

In another sense, however, to the extent that Quebecers who vacation in Florida, Arizona, California, etc. segregate themselves in "colonies" that stick to themselves and use French in the presence of people who don't understand it (so are regarded as rude for so doing), they disserve the interests of Quebec by creating hostility in the United States. No one in Haiti is going to mind if Quebecers speak French in their presence. If they have a little difficulty with the accent, they'll enjoy the challenge of deciphering it. And Quebec expenditures would be so important, especially if matched by generous programs of aid and technology transfer, that locals would be glad to put up with any difficulty understanding Quebec French should cause.

"The Ugly Quebecer" — that is, clannish Quebec vacationers rude to their neighbors in Florida communities — can be a real problem for Quebec's future. In that sense, what goes around might indeed come around — to harm Quebec. And of course if Quebec does assume the role of patron and guide of Haiti into modernity, it will have to guard against taking on a colonialist mentality, looking down its nose at the people Quebecers are supposed to be helping, and assuming an air of superiority. Being perceived as a colonialist and snob, even when one is not, is always a danger to rich countries that try to help poor countries.

But the reason Haiti affords Quebec such opportunities is that it is an UNSATURATED MARKET — boy, is it! Whereas in North America, Europe, and Japan, many businesses are trying to sell to the same consumers, most of whom already have whatever anybody is selling, Haitians have almost nothing. Whoever first comes to them with jobs and goods wins everything.

How do you think the great fortunes of Britain were made? Britain took bits of useless, poverty-ridden territories all over the Earth and created them into a trading network that bought British goods! with the raw materials and exotic products Britain could not supply itself. Britain created markets that did not exist before its merchants arrived. In many places, the locals didn't even use currency! But thru barter and gradually building up a moneyed economy in trading posts and colonies around the world, Britain, a relatively small and resource-poor island a fraction the size of Quebec, became rich and powerful.

Quebec's merchants can do the same in Haiti and other Francophone areas. Why leave the entire field to France and the tigers of East Asia?

[Message G, December 22, 1997]

"IT TAKES money to make money." Those who will not invest will not reap the benefits of investment. And a business — or country-in-the-making — that does not plan for and take steps to secure the future doesn't have a future.

What I have pointed out is that Quebecers are already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on warm-weather vacations. That money vanishes if spent in the U.S., while doing very little good for Quebec. If Quebec enterprises establish Quebec-oriented resorts in Haiti, at first self-contained as to water purification and sanitation, electrification, phone service, Internet access, etc., for guests and employees — all or substantially all of it bought in and brought in from Quebec — all the profits and much of the cash flow would return to Quebec immediately, in the form of purchases of Quebec goods and services to supply what local Haitian business cannot yet supply. Those are sales that would not otherwise be made! because altho Haiti might like to buy such things, it can't afford to, so won't. Especially is it the case that Haiti won't buy Quebec goods and services if the money it gets to spend arrives in the form of U.S. foreign aid which pretty heavy-handedly urges recipients to "Buy American".

Meanwhile, the jobs those resorts provide would at once help individual families, provide the local and national governments with tax revenues, and generate other enterprises in the local economy, which will quite naturally turn first to Quebec for goods and services still not available locally. And on, and on, in an ever-widening circle. Alas, I suspect no bigshot Quebec business exec reads these messages, so this is just something I will have to put into my presentation about the Caribbean on my homepage — except that instead of Quebec being the one I advocate create these links, it will be the United States.

While it is true that some economic benefit can come from the migration to Quebec of some Haitians, the benefits are both limited and offset by losses. The people who have the gumption to leave and the education to make it in an advanced society like Quebec will likely be among the best people of the island, which robs the island of those individuals' talents and energies. To the extent emigrants send money home (even 69-cent Canadian dollars! - and Quebec wants to keep the Canadian dollar as the currency of an independent Quebec??), they provide some temporary benefit to Haiti. But when they either bring their family over or make a new family in Quebec, they STOP sending money to Haiti, and what little benefit Haiti once derived from their emigration vanishes.

Further, let's be honest: a lot of Quebecers don't WANT large numbers of Haitians to come to Quebec. They'd rather they stay in Haiti — prosperous or NOT, but ideally being able to succeed in their own country.

FAR better, then, would it be for the best and brightest of Haiti to find work in Haiti, and take the money they save and any business knowhow they gain from employment with a Quebec company and use it to establish their own small business that might employ others as well. Etc.

But the larger issue is not how long it would take for Haiti to develop - and I don't think 15 years for a substantial economic vitalization is too optimistic, given that a new crop of kids goes thru an entire education cycle in that time, adult-education courses take a fraction of that time, and the population at issue is small — but IN WHAT DIRECTION it develops, and who Haiti's long-term partners will be.

Quebec feels isolated. When one is alone, he should have the good sense to make friends and allies. Haiti is a friend and ally just waiting for the hand of partnership to be stretched out to it. Hey! Just think: Quebec on the north, Haiti on the south — you'd have the Anglos SURROUNDED!

[Message H, December 28, 1997]

YES, you're right. I should compile the messages I've written on this topic into a single, unified presentation and send it to the Quebec Government and other appropriate groups. Does Quebec have the equivalent of France's "patronat" (a 'union' of business executives that strives for a national economic policy from management's point of view)? Maybe the Caisse de Depots et Changements or some other entity would also be appropriate. Any suggestions?

My presentation should end with the note that if Quebec doesn't do it, perhaps the U.S. will, and there goes a unique, temporary opportunity right down the drain. [Return to index]

Flag of the Cajun community of Louisiana, USA

Letter No. 46

[Two messages to a Franco-Ontarian member of a Canadian-affairs forum discussing the origins of the Cajun community of the United States, with which Quebec sovereigntists can make useful alliances, December 29 and 30, 1997]

IN 1541, the Spanish explored the lower Mississippi and presumably claimed the whole region for Spain (that's the way all the European powers of the time did things: what they explored, they claimed). But they didn't actively colonize it. In 1682 LaSalle sailed down the Mississippi and claimed the entire river valley for France. In 1699 the French established a royal colony there, but headquartered east of the Mississippi. In 1762 France transferred the poorly performing colony to Spain. Spain did pretty well with it, and in 1800 France 'asked' for it back. Considering that Napoleon had invaded Spain in 1799, defeated it, and made it an 'ally', it's small wonder that Spain acceded to that 'request'. France sold it to the United States in 1803.

According to the World Book 1997 Multimedia Encyclopedia, "Between the 1760's and 1790, about 4,000 French settlers from Canada arrived in Louisiana." It seems hard to pin down an exact year for the first arrivals: "In 1755, during the French and Indian War, British officials tried to force the Acadians to take an oath of allegiance to the British king. But the Acadians refused to do so [— I can just hear them conferring among themselves: "What can they do if we don't take their oath, eh? What can they do?!], and between 1755 and 1763 about 10,000 men, women, and children were forced to move to colonies farther south. After suffering much hardship, most of these people in time returned to Acadia and settled in southeastern New Brunswick. ... About 4,000 Acadians went to Louisiana, a former French colony in what is now the United States." It is unclear whether "a former French colony" means that it was even then no longer under the control of France or is now "a former French colony". Since there are no French colonies in America today (unless, heaven forfend, one were to characterize France's New World possessions as colonies rather than as integral parts of France), it seems likely that "a former French colony" means that when the Acadians arrived, Louisiana was no longer a French colony. (??)

Spain controlled Louisiana openly and effectively (the initial transfer from France was made in secret in 1762; the local French colonists found out in 1764; they rebelled in 1768 and briefly forced the Spanish government out; but Spain reasserted control in 1769). So, depending on when the Acadians who ended up in Louisiana were deported (sometime between 1755 and 1763) and how long it took them to get to Louisiana, they would have arrived in the last years of French rule or during the brief (38-year) rule by Spain.

IF the bulk of the 4K Acadians arrived in Louisiana in 1760, they would have been there two years before France transferred the territory to Spain.

In those days, Spain might have been content not to trouble to try to teach the colonials Spanish but let them speak anything they liked as long as they behaved themselves and paid their taxes. The close alliance in modern people's minds between language and political affiliation is a fairly recent development. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor of Habsburg Austrian ancestry, lived mainly in Spain and presided over domains in which Spanish, German, Netherlandish, and other languages were spoken, and nobody tried to make anybody else speak a different language — at least on the European mainland. Colonials in the Americas didn't fare as well. [Return to index]

Letter No. 47

[To a B.C.-based female member of a Canadian-affairs forum who asserted that Quebec would never join the U.S. because it knows that the U.S. crushes non-English communities with relentless assimilationism, December 7, 1997]

ACTUALLY, a lot of Francophones in the U.S. may not be as assimilated as you think. Here is the discussion of Cajun culture from the World Book 1997 Multimedia Encyclopedia:

"Today, most Cajuns speak both English and a French dialect that includes many words no longer used by other French-speaking peoples. The majority of the people are Roman Catholics. Many Cajun families live by fishing and trapping. Others raise cattle or such crops as rice, sugar, and sweet potatoes. Cajun cooking is spicy and includes much seafood. Favorite foods include a thick soup called gumbo and a rice dish called jambalaya. Traditional Cajun music is played by a band consisting of a fiddle, accordion, and triangle.

"Since the mid-1900's, better communication and transportation have put the Cajuns into closer contact with other people. Many young Cajuns do not speak French or follow Cajun customs. Some Cajuns worry about losing their cultural heritage and have led a movement to preserve it. For example, Louisiana schools once discouraged Cajun children from speaking French. Today, most pupils study the language in elementary school."

The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia says,

"Although French is no longer widely spoken as a first language, the French Roman Catholic core of southern Louisiana may still be distinguished from the English-speaking Protestant majority of northern Louisiana and the east."

And Microsoft's Encarta 1994 concurs that there are a number of cultural differences that still mark Cajuns and Creoles (the latter being people descended from early Spanish and France-French colonists), among which is the use of a French patois by many. How many? Well, Grolier says:

"The French-speaking, Roman Catholic Cajuns, today estimated to number about 500,000, maintain many cultural and occupational traditions of their ancestors. Their speech is an archaic form of French into which are incorporated words taken from English, German, Spanish, and various Indian languages."

I heard, some years ago, that French can still be used in the state legislature and courts of Louisiana and that the state is officially bilingual, but none of the sources in my home library bears that out. Perhaps I'll seek out an e-mail address for some cultural official in state government there and ask for clarification on that issue. One of my CD-ROM encyclopedias does say that public notices in both English and French were commonplace well into the 1900s, a considerable achievement for a French community that has never been very large (perhaps 4K-5K Acadians reached Louisiana; and some went back) and was broken off from the mainstream of French language in 1755 (in the case of the Cajuns) and 1804 (in the case of the creoles).

I searched the Internet for more info and came up with a couple of interesting websites. MOST interesting to me is the fact that "Action Cadienne" (a Cajun group in Louisiana) is part of a website based in the province of New Brunswick!: http://www.rbmulti.nb.ca/cadienne/cajun.htm. That site has links to MANY others, one of which (marked "Excellent") I followed up: http://www.geocities.com/~timhebert/. I also sent an e-mail inquiry for more info on the official status of French in LA to a contact person noted at the end of the Action Cadienne homepage, so may know more within the next few days. [No response received.]  But right now it seems that French is alive and well and living in Louisiana. [Return to index]

HAITI
(and the United States)

Letter No. 48

[Two messages to a B.C.-based woman on a Canadian-affairs forum, November 28 and 29, 1997]

THE United States does not always act from narrow self-interest, you know. Sometimes we do things because they are the right thing to do, even if they should be costly and bring us nothing but the feeling that we are better off for having done them, and maybe a little more secure. The U.S. has exerted itself mightily for others and gotten precious little for it in two world wars, several minor wars, and assorted other skirmishes and peacekeeping operations.

Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but the U.S. has felt compelled to send the military into Haiti some three times in this century because it was such a mess. Haiti has cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and much concern. Each intervention has cost us money and brought us nothing. And after we're left, things have reverted to form. This last time, we left some people there to guide the course of Haitian democracy, and put heavy pressure on the President to let his term expire according to Haiti's constitution, as achieved a peaceful, democratic transfer of power for the first time in Haiti's history.

But Haiti is still a mess, and it is not good for the United States that a near neighbor be a mess. Illegal immigration is one reason; hospitality to drug trafficking another. (I will not debate drug legalization with you. If you don't know that the reason illegal drugs were made illegal is that they are DANGEROUS, even deadly, it is your duty to inform yourself before advocating so irresponsible a change in law.)

If we intervene without annexing, we do nothing but spend money; we get nothing back. If we annex, we get repaid in taxes and the taxes on profits of U.S. firms that invest (safely) there, as conditions improve. We face no periodic military crises, no pictures of dozens of people hacked to pieces in election-day violence. We get the satisfaction of seeing a job well done get even more done; kids getting an education and becoming productive members of our society; and we need never worry about Haiti deciding to emulate its neighbor to the West and impose an anti-U.S., Communist dictatorship between us and the Panama Canal.

The British Empire demonstrated that one can build a great, powerful, and prosperous realm by annexing little bits of poverty-ridden turf and knitting them together with commerce. Haiti does not exist in isolation, even now. Once it is brought into the Union, it will provide not just a comfortable and secure vacation destination for Americans inside our trade and taxation borders, but also serve as geographic and cultural bridge to Latin America and La Francophonie. Besides, the U.S. owes Haiti, bigtime, because if it hadn't been for the terrible toll Haiti's slave rebellion cost France, Napoleon might never have sold us Louisiana but tried to create a huge French-speaking empire midcontinent, with all the trouble that could have caused us, either to remove or to accommodate.

* * *Ordinary citizens on the streets of Haiti did in fact agitate for U.S. intervention to overthrow "Baby Doc" and save them from the Ton Ton Macoutes. Haitians might be eager to annex themselves to the U.S. but fear that racism, classism, and economic and linguistic segregationists would sink any such idea before it got up a head of steam, just as similar groups caused rejection of Santo Domingo's offer of itself for annexation during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. . . .

Your suggestion that "a majority of Americans would be quite happy if their government stopped spending their money" on intervening in Haiti to end murder by a right-wing dictatorship and to promote democracy and economic development, is almost certainly wrong, in that it is the Government of the United States that resisted calls from the people of the United States to intervene, for months before finally acting, from public pressure. [Return to index]

Main building, Ellis Island

IMMIGRATION(immig.html)

Letter No. 49

[To the television program Asian America (info@asianamerica.com) re open or restrictive immigration, January 20, 1998]

I WATCHED your discussion of immigration, on WNYE-TV (NYC) today. Did you ever think of striving for balance?

Your entire panel favored more-or-less open immigration. There was no advocate for reducing immigration, placing a moratorium on immigration, or changing the standards for immigration. There was no discussion of what immigration is FOR, in terms of U.S. national interests. There was no mention of the impact of immigration on the nature and, yes, complexion of the Nation, and precious little on the cultural and linguistic unity of the United States.

Yes, there are some simple-minded racists in the coalition of people opposed to large-scale immigration, but there are also thoughtful people concerned about (a) the quality of life in a country that is no longer empty, (b) full employment, as might finally provide jobs to the long-term unemployed, (c) cultural and linguistic strains that might emerge from incorporating too many people from very different, and arguably incompatible societies, too quickly, (d) religious strife, and even, yes, (e) racial balance / diversity / purity / character. Nor was there any mention of the chaos into which immigrants are dropped.

(a) One panelist mentioned that 20% of immigrants now go to one state, California. Altho geographically large, California is becoming overcrowded, and the things about California that once made it seem a subtropical paradise are vanishing. Intense but dispersed urbanization has created a nightmare of 3-hour (one-way) commutes in the L.A. area and housing costs so high in San Francisco that people who wish to live in the cosmopolitan center of things either cannot afford to do so at all or must turn over a crippling amount of their income to landlords, banks, and taxing authorities. There are large areas of this country that could profit from immigration, but they don't get any. How many immigrants go to rural Mississippi or Alabama, West Virginia or North Dakota? Any? A handful? Immigration to overcrowded areas strains public services and puts people into a pressure-cooker they may be unable to cope with. These are legitimate concerns, but viewers of your discussion heard no mention of them.

(b) Among the most outspoken opponents of large-scale immigration in recent years have been groups concerned with black economic empowerment. The perception, undeniably true, is that immigration of unskilled labor takes jobs away from unskilled blacks, and even where, say, Korean merchants may provide services to black communities, they don't provide jobs to them. A convenience store/greengrocer operation in a ghetto or marginal community may provide services to a predominantly black neighborhood, but all the employees, typically, are family members of the owners. How does that benefit, economically, the blacks who constitute the bulk of residents, and who were there long before these new arrivals? If unskilled immigrants compete in a market where unskilled jobs are scarce, that drives down the pay scale for low-level, and especially entry-level positions, for everyone.

The argument may be made that new arrivals earn their livelihood thru hard work, but if their hard work drives down pay rates even for themselves, and they must work insanely hard just to get by, their willingness to do so subverts the economic base for everyone else. If a Korean merchant has to work 16- or even 20-hour days to make a success of his business, and his kids have to work free, anyone who wants to compete with him will have to work in comparable slave conditions. Do we really want everyone reduced to economic slavery? No. I answered the question just in case anyone were tempted to fudge. Blacks, who have had centuries of hardship, don't want to see those years of harsh economic drudgery for scant economic gain continued by the willingness of people who come from poor countries to suffer worse than Americans have any reason to suffer.

(c) The Melting Pot is working very efficiently, but even a literal melting pot takes time to meld the various elements if cold, solid scrap iron, tin, brass, copper, lead, chromium, and a dozen other metals are added in huge quantities all at the same time. In a cauldron filled with metal, that doesn't mean much, but in a society in which groups touch and sometimes clash, it means a lot. What is the 'melting' capacity of the United States? and are we well below it, very near it, or temporarily over it? Will we be happy with the new alloy? Or would we prefer that the United States as we know it survive?

Not all immigrants want to be wholly assimilated. Some really do think they are better than others and want to change everybody around them. And some even dare to play dangerous numbers games: "Yes, English may be spoken by more people here, but Chinese is spoken by far more people in the world at large, so maybe Americans should learn Chinese. China is growing by leaps and bounds, the United States by hardly any, by comparison. And there are five times as many Chinese on this planet as Americans. "Overseas Chinese" have created a trading network over dozens of countries, and if you want to plug into that network, you will have to speak Chinese! The 20th Century may have been the American Century, but the 21st will be China's." Perhaps you have never heard such talk. I have.

(d) Many immigrants nowadays, except the bulk of those from Latin America and some from Korea, are non-Christian, from religious traditions most Americans know nothing about. What we do know is that Islam, for one, has a violent history and a violent present. We know about Moslem-Jewish, Moslem-Hindu, Sunni-Shia, Sunni-Druze, fundamentalist-sectarian, and other violent conflicts in the Arab world, and every week there is another report of the massacre of hundreds out of Algeria: men, women, children, and even infants cut from the womb, slaughtered, their throats slit so that kids drown in their own blood; bodies decapitated and dismembered; all in the name of Allah! Is it really 'silly' to worry that such things might happen here? Most Americans don't think so.

Even some Latins bring Santeria with them, a bloody mix of Christian and pagan beliefs that involves, among other objectionable practices, animal sacrifice. Most Americans do not accept that religious tolerance requires us to smile on animal sacrifice, female genital mutilation, and other practices that are regarded by many as quintessential to the religious traditions of large numbers of actual or potential immigrants. And

(e) "Birds of a feather flock together." "Racism" is natural. It can seem to the observer that objections by Asians, and especially Oriental Asians, to "racism" in American society are the height of hypocrisy, considering that their own ancestral countries are vastly more racially intolerant than we are. "Half-breeds" left behind by sexual affairs between U.S. servicemen and local women in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, even the Philippines, and elsewhere, often suffer a hellish life in their racially pure, racially intolerant societies. Most Americans, myself included, say "Bring them home!", meaning, take all such kids into the United States, quotas and immigration rules be damned. But is there really any moral issue involved in people's just preferring to see people like themselves when they look around their own country? I don't think so. Mirrors are not evil.

When Americans speak of maintaining their racial and cultural balance, they may indeed mean they want the United States to remain predominantly white. While nonwhites may think that's mean-spirited, it's not. As many white people see things, white men wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and all the basic laws and noble documents of this country's history. White Americans freed the slaves and created all the fundamental institutions of society, those very institutions that draw so many people from white and nonwhite countries all over the world. Many white people wonder, aloud or in silence, if a racially changed society will also be a culturally changed country, with different values and mores. Will the "work ethic" survive? Will Christian virtues survive? Will this country be recognizable as the United States in 50 or 100 years if current immigration laws remain in place? There is reason to wonder, and even immigrants from Asia have the obligation to inquire honestly into how many people, from which different cultures, the United States can absorb safely and still remain the United States.

Lots of people think there's a place in the world for white countries, black countries, Oriental countries, and mixed countries, and that the racial balance of any country is up to the people now there to decide for themselves. Nowhere does the Constitution say there cannot be a racial element to immigration law. The Constitution governs people NOW here. It does not say we cannot preserve the current racial balance or put absolute limits on how many people who don't fit our current racial makeup will be permitted entry past our borders. Current immigration law is thought by many people to threaten to change the Nation racially, in a direction that makes most Americans uneasy. If immigration law can make a change in one direction, surely it can be made to make a change in the opposite direction. If White America decides it wants the U.S. to remain predominantly white, or even become whiter, it can change the immigration laws to favor white immigrants and disfavor others, as to make the U.S. whiter 100 years from now rather than browner. That is our right.

I come from an ethnically and racially mixed family. I derive from at least 9 different countries of Europe. My two brothers both married Filipinas after failed marriages to Western women; one (Brian) is still married to a woman from Manila (Rosana / "Rosan"). Alas, they have no children, after perhaps 11 years of marriage. My niece Karen (Brian's older daughter from his first marriage, to a largely French woman from Connecticut) has three half-black children from two different men from two different areas of the Caribbean, Jamaica and the U.S. Virgin Islands. My mother was Catholic, my father Protestant. My elder brother is (undifferentiated) "Christian", but converted to Judaism to get the blessing of his future in-laws to marry a Jewish woman, and his children (from that doomed marriage) are now Orthodox Jews who migrated to Israel (tho one is back now, studying at Harvard, and Alan is trying to keep them from going back — to the Occupied West Bank!). Brian, the younger of my two (older) brothers, is nominally Catholic, but was married as tho non-Catholic when he married Rosan, an observant Catholic. Karen's three children were, for a while, raised as Rastafarians, tho no longer (last I knew). I am nominally Catholic, as is my older sister. My younger sister describes herself religiously as "nothing". I favor statehood for the Philippines (see discussion at homepage http://members.aol.com/XPUS), which would, after a stabilizing period, entail open migration between the present U.S. and the new states of the Philippines. But remember that the Philippines is predominantly Catholic, so even tho racial diversity is at issue, religious conflict is not as important, tho Mindanao is predominantly Moslem. Trust me when I say that even open-minded Americans from very mixed backgrounds can have honest, intellectually- and morally-defensible reservations about large-scale immigration from nontraditional sources.

What, indeed, IS immigration for? It's not to fill in the empty spaces in the middle of the Nation, because that's not where immigrants go. Is an ethnic ghetto in L.A. or some other crowded, noisy, and chaotic, crime-ridden city really the best place to drop someone from rural China, India, or the Philippines? And let's face the fact that we do just drop people into society, to sink or swim as ever happens, once they are admitted past the border. Most immigrants, except some refugees, get no help in learning the language and customs of the Nation, fitting in, finding work, and making a life as an American-in-the-making. Is that wise? Or should we have education and followup, at least as regards teaching about appropriate and inappropriate behavior so that immigrants don't raise hackles around them? In many Latin countries, for instance, it is perfectly acceptable to take a boombox onto the stoop or into a park and turn up the sound to "entertain" everyone around. In the United States, that is offensive intrusion on other people's space, and makes neighbors who can't have their windows open on a fresh spring day or sweltering summer nite, FURIOUS. Surely we can require immigrants to attend classes to sensitize them to their new culture.

Is the purpose of immigration to change the United States? to serve the United States without changing it in any fundamental way? To promote international exchange? development? How does it profit U.S. efforts to develop the Third World if the United States steals doctors and other highly trained professionals from Third World countries that spend hundreds of thousands of desperately short dollars training each one? If kids trained here so they will take skills back to their own backward countries choose instead to remain here because they can't face going back, shouldn't we force them to live up to their bargain rather than overstay their visa and remain illegally?

There are, in short, many subtopics within the broad topic of immigration that need to be considered, each to itself. And each discussion must be balanced by proponents of different points of view. [Return to index]

Letter No. 50

[To a Western Canadian participant in a Canadian-affairs forum re Canadian immigration authorities' properly refusing refugee status to people who stop in a third country before reaching Canada]

YOUR point about not taking in a "refugee" who passed thru a stable country on his way to Canada holds especially for that most attractive of potential refugee destinations, the United States. People come from El Salvador thru Guatemala (which has, admittedly, been a civil-war-ridden hellhole for much of the past 25 years) and then Mexico, a stable, moderately democratic society, but insist on going beyond that stable, democratic, Spanish-speaking country to seek asylum in the United States! I don't think so!

Similarly, Haitians pass by their near neighbor, the "worker's paradise" of Cuba, then wend their way past the myriad islands of another sovereign country, which is black like the would-be refugees, the Bahamas, the try to claim refugee status in Florida. I don't think so!

Refugees legitimately land in the nearest safe haven, not the ideal ultimate destination. Rich countries have no responsibility whatsoever to resettle refugees within their own territory unless they are in some way responsible for the circumstances that caused them to flee in the first place. Otherwise, the only responsibility of rich countries toward refugees from poor countries is to support them in humane circumstances and seek either their safe return to their country of origin, without retaliation, or to find a third country willing to take them in long-term. [Return to index]

HONDURAS — AND CENTRAL AMERICA MORE GENERALLY

[Here, now, some letters about Honduras and other parts of Central America.]

Letter No. 51

November 8, 1998

Letters
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Re: Time for Honduras and Nicaragua to Join the U.S.

To the Editor:

The hurricane-wrought catastrophe Honduras and Nicaragua find themselves in is a natural outgrowth of their basic condition as small, backward countries rife with corruption and dominated by uncaring governments that serve the interests only of the rich or well-connected, as is the case with much of Latin America. These things need to be said, and addressed.

Honduras and Nicaragua cannot pull themselves out of their current crisis. They need vast inflows of aid from abroad. Already the source of most of the aid their people can realistically expect is plain: the United States. Others may arrive late and provide some assistance, but Hondurans and Nicaraguans have only one friend powerful enough and generous enough to provide assistance that matters: the United States. Because Honduras and Nicaragua are not now part of the United States, U.S. aid is charity. But if they become States of the United States — realize that at least some of the Founding Fathers intended the U.S. to be a Pan-American Union from Point Barrow, Alaska in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south — they will receive massive and ongoing aid as a matter of right.

It is not enough to rebuild the old Honduras and old Nicaragua. There must be a new Honduras and new Nicaragua, different in structure, different in purpose, different in outlook. These areas must become genuinely democratic parts of the modern world, fully integrated technologically and sociologically into the mainstream of world culture. Can anyone realistically expect that to happen if they remain independent?

Hurricane Mitch, today a nightmarish disaster, could end up being, sadly, the best thing that ever happened to Honduras and Nicaragua if it shakes their people out of their isolation and illusions that being dwarfs in a world of giants is a good thing. Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and other Central Americans, for that matter, should do everything in their power to secure a future in which no hurricane nor other natural disaster will leave them pitiable beggars for charity from foreigners. Since these countries do not now and will not ever have the internal resources to provide such security, their people can achieve real security only by joining the United States and thus becoming prosperous, socially and politically democratic Sunbelt States where ordinary citizens can enjoy a good life through honest work for a fair wage, without having to leave home.

The alternative for the United States is to shell out big bucks only to restore rotten little countries from which hundreds of thousands will continue to flee, in hopes of reaching the U.S. legally or illegally, with all the subversion of law and disruption to U.S. communities mass migrations can cause. We can have peaceful, prosperous Sunbelt States in Central America, or backward hellholes among our near neighbors, filled with people who want to violate our borders in hopes of making a living through honest labor in a country they have no right to be in, or who stay in their own country but make a dishonest living by becoming active agents in a drug war against the United States.

In the 1840's, some of the countries of Central America, alarmed by British colonial aggression, sounded out the United States on annexation. Had we annexed then, 150 years ago, they would be prosperous Sunbelt States today, and much of the infrastructure of bridges and buildings, built to modern standards by honest contractors, would have withstood hurricane Mitch. There would have been no Communist period in Nicaraguan history and we would have been spared all the anxiety that era caused.

To think today that we needn't secure that region against similar threats in the future would be as shortsighted as was our refusal to annex in the 1840s. No one can predict what mischief might issue from Central America if we do not annex. We can protect against unpleasant surprises only by gaining the legal right to control events, by extending the rights of citizenship to Central Americans and thereby creating a greater, economically and culturally richer, and more geopolitically and militarily secure United States. [Return to index]

Letter No. 52

Subj: Central America should join the Union
Date: 11/11/98
To: HeraldEd@herald.com [Miami HERALD]

AS the U.S. and other countries rush emergency aid to hurricane-ravaged Central America, we should all look ahead to the best long-term interests of the people of that region and of the United States. Hurricane Mitch has demonstrated that the nations of Central America are too small to protect the most basic interests of their people. It's time for Central America to join the Union.

Hurricanes are plainly not the only hazard to Central Americans. Even before Mitch hit, Honduras was the second-poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, after only Haiti, and Nicaragua suffered over a decade of Communism, which its vicious rulers of the day tried to inflict on their neighbors, as produced massive violence and suffering throughout the region. Guatemala too has suffered horrendous violence in a nearly endless civil war with racial and cultural elements. It's time to end that region's long nightmare by bringing the people of Central America into the Union, as to secure permanent and unassailable democracy to them, and provide them with the jobs, housing, electrification, education, and security of person, property, and human rights that their separate governments and separate societies have clearly been unable and/or unwilling to provide.

Central America's multitudinous, unending hardships have inevitably produced problems for the United States, in terms of mass migrations, with all the disruption to U.S. communities that they can produce, and in military and geopolitical anxieties. Central America has become a significant link in the drug-trafficking chain and thus a threat to the health and very lives of tens of thousands of Americans. And of course Central America provides the best routes for a future sea-level canal to improve shipping between the United States' East and West Coasts — and indeed, the east and west coasts of all the Americas.

It is in everyone's best interest that the conception of the United States be broadened to a Pan-American Union, as at least some of the Founding Fathers intended: a great arc of democracy from Point Barrow, Alaska in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south. Central America can be six prosperous Sunbelt States. Or it can return to the dreadful conditions of the past, which would seem acceptable only by contrast with the horrors of the present.

Merely to rebuild the old Honduras or old Nicaragua is not remotely good enough, because those countries were nightmares well before Mitch ever arrived. If Central America will not join the Union, then the United States should not spend one cent on rebuilding countries that will never be good for their peoples apart from the United States and each other. The very least we should demand as a precondition to any assistance in rebuilding infrastructure is a democratic economic and political Union of Central America. Perhaps all the countries of that region put together could give their people a chance at prosperity and security. Restoration of the old order, however, would be restoration of a nightmare, and we shouldn't contribute in any way to rebuilding nightmares. [Return to index]

Letter No. 53

[To a pro-Central American activist organization]
Subj: Best long-term interests of Central Americans
Date: 10/12/98

YOU may or may not know that in 1850 British aggression against Nicaragua made "several of the Central American republics, including Nicaragua, . . . so apprehensive of British designs that they were looking to the United States for protection. As [U.S. Secretary of State under President Taylor, John M.] Clayton bluntly informed [British Foreign Office secretary Henry Lytton] Bulwer:

"There is not one of these five Central American states that would not annex themselves to us tomorrow, if they could, and if it is any secret worth knowing you are welcome to it — Some of them have offered and asked to be annexed to the United States already." (Italics in original.) — A Diplomatic History of the American People by Thomas A. Bailey (Eighth Edition, 1969), p. 275.

Had the U.S. actually admitted Central American States to the Union in 1850, they would by now be prosperous Sunbelt States, with secure democracies and equitable distribution of wealth on the order of the other Sunbelt States. Alas, this was not to happen, in part because Secretary Clayton sold out Central America by negotiating the infamous Clayton-Bulwer Treaty by which the U.S. permanently forswore any territorial acquisition in Central America — even as it did not force Britain out of the region. Central America's sad, violent, dictatorial, and inequitable political and social history is a direct result of U.S. refusal to welcome these countries into the great American Union as new states on a basis of equality with older states. Instead, the U.S. Government had to stand by while these ministates ruined their people's lives, helpless to stop even U.S.-origin companies from exploitative behavior for being unable to impose extraterritoriality upon them. They were to be governed by local laws, laws promulgated by corrupt governments in the service of plutocracy.

We should learn from the past and move toward the long-term best solution for Central America: admission, almost 150 years late — but better late than never — , of the nations of Central America as States of the Union, and the extension of voting rights, land reform, equitable taxation, environmental and other measures to secure to Central Americans the rights of modern people in modern states. Charity, no matter how well intended, is not enough. These people need the power and wealth of the United States, directed to them as a matter of right, really to progress.

Nationalism has done them huge wrongs. The cure to the problems petty nationalisms have caused is to submerge small nationalisms in a great nationalism: that of full participation in a wider American Union. As Mexico had to recognize that 140 years of trying to stay outside the Union and compete with it was a loser's course, so entered NAFTA, so too must Central America throw in its lot with its northern neighbors. This is what organizations like yours, concerned with social justice for Latin America, must encourage. [Return to index]

Letter No. 54

[To a Honduran who sent a hostile reply to a letter to the editor to the same effect as above that was published by an online Honduran newspaper]
Subj: Honduras's mess
Date: 11/17/98

HONDURAS was a mess before Mitch arrived; it will be a mess if we just rebuild what was there in 1997. I won't contribute one cent to such rebuilding, and I oppose the U.S. Government doing anything at all to rebuild old Honduras.

Before Mitch, Honduras was the second-poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, after only Haiti, and if we only rebuild pre-Mitch Honduras, we will leave the people in misery. What exactly is the point of that?

If people want our help, they will have to accept our strings. That's the way the world works. It's OUR money, OUR food, OUR clothing. We made it, we produced it, we bought it. If you want it, you have to earn it, just as we did. We in all 50 present states of the United States gave up part of our sovereignty so we could be part of something strong, rich, and secure. When a hurricane strikes us, we get help as of right. If Honduras becomes part of the United States, it too can get help as of right. But if it refuses to become part of the United States, it has NO CLAIM upon our treasury, our helicopters, or anything else it may need. Look elsewhere. [Return to index]

Letter No. 55

[To a U.S.-based friend of Central America hostile to U.S. annexation, responsive to the same published online letter to the editor]
Subj: Democracy and reform for Honduras
Date: 11/17/98

PLAINLY you subscribe to the "not a sparrow falls to earth but was shot down by the United States" philosophy, so I doubt any reply I can make will make a bit of difference to your worldview. Nonetheless, let me point out that domestic U.S. environmental laws and regulations are far stricter than those in Honduras or elsewhere in Latin America, and we are certainly not deforesting our own country. Quite the contrary, our forests are in very good shape and tree farms are parts of major industries, from plywood and paper to citrus fruit and juice, to apples and peaches and other food crops.

Honduras is wholly responsible for its own laws, its own distribution of wealth and power, and its own land reform. If the United States were to attempt to make Honduras's laws in such matters fairer, we would be accused of "interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation", which is the long-form version of "imperialism".

The U.S. has the right to interfere in the affairs of its own states, to enforce Constitutional rights and safeguards, but not in the internal affairs of a sovereign Honduras. We cannot apply our laws to Honduras until and unless Honduras is part of the United States. Conversely, once Honduras IS part of the U.S., we can apply environmental laws, antitrust laws, progressive taxation, etc., and help Hondurans push thru and pay for land reform, rural electrification and other infrastructure development programs, etc.

As for "homogenization", perhaps you haven't traveled much in the United States, but it is very far indeed from homogeneous. Surely you don't think Hawaii and Mississippi are identical? or New York and Montana, California and Iowa, Alaska and Florida? That most of us speak the same language does not make us identical. Besides, individualism is the most important consideration, and in a country as large and diverse as the United States, individuals have many more choices than they would otherwise have. If a locality or local culture is uncongenial, we can move somewhere more to our liking. And tens of millions of us do.

As for drugs, it is not remotely true that drug use is uniform across the population of the United States. If you really believe that, you are profoundly ill-informed. More likely, you know that the reason AIDS confines itself almost wholly to minorities is that AIDS is intimately related to the use of very hard drugs, and hard drug use is confined almost wholly to blacks, Hispanics, and a portion of the homosexual population (the "fast-lane" guys). If you don't know that AIDS is a drug injury — that is, chemically induced devastation — check out http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/. No, drugs are not harmless. Very far from it.

And as for bilingualism and indigenous rights, (a) very few people want bilingualism in the United States; even most Hispanic parents want their children educated in English, and if you watch more than 25 minutes of TV on any metropolitan Spanish-language station, you will see ads and even infomercials for English-language courses; bilingualism outside present states would be an entirely different matter, but you must know that in many places not just two but several languages are on display in public hospitals and other facilities, and both English and Spanish appear on ballots in New York City and many other places; (b) I suspect that U.S. Indians (by any name, and most do call themselves "Indians", despite today's fad term "Native American") are overall the richest and most powerful "natives" on this planet, entitled, more than incidentally, to leave any impoverished reservation and work and vote in any part of the United States they might like, as a matter of right; this is not Guatemala, Mexico, or Brazil, where Indians have been the victims of governmental and nongovernmental violence aplenty. [Return to index]

Letter No. 56

[Now, reply to a followup by that same woman.]

SO of course you will not look at http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/, because you are a credulous person who, despite her proud cynicism about the U.S. Government, believes every single syllable uttered by that same Government about AIDS. Are you suggesting that HEROIN is distributed evenly across the general population? If so, you are deluded beyond the point of ration. Heroin junkies have always had the symptoms associated now with "AIDS". It's just that when a junkie showed up in an urban hospital with open sores all over his skin, thrush on his tongue, and critical pneumonia, then went on to die within three weeks, nobody thought to look for some mysterious virus. That's just what happens to junkies.

Heroin for sure, and other drugs possibly, damage the liver, which is the only organ that can detoxify the bloodstream of drug substances and the metabolic byproducts of those substances. If it is damaged so badly that it cannot eliminate all traces of hard drugs before the next "hit", those drugs build up incrementally, over months or years, to the point where they cause irreversible damage to all kinds of tissues and organs, including key elements of the immune system. That is what AIDS is. Except of course there is a second AIDS, produced by the prescription drugs prescribed to "treat" HIV-positive people, namely AZT, a deadly poison. When the "cocktail" of protease inhibitors and other drugs was put forward, the dosage of AZT in the mix was cut in half. Within one year, AIDS deaths plummeted by 48% — one half. Coincidence? No. AZT was killing people. Cutting AZT in half cut "AIDS" deaths in half.

As for Africa, the overwhelming preponderance of HIV-positive people in Africa are HEALTHY. HIV has frequency rates of 25% and more in the populations of parts of Africa where strong, healthy young people thrive despite it, because it is a defeated infection. In the case of any other infection, the commonness of antibodies among millions and millions of healthy people would be seen as proof of the infections feebleness or even total harmlessness. Only in AIDS is the existence of millions upon millions of healthy people seen as validation of a theory that the virus is lethal!

Liars about AIDS, who need desperately to try to continue to scare people here — even tho AIDS has VANISHED from the U.S. radar screen, lost into the ghetto of drug abuse (for obvious reasons) — point to Africa and see not the manifest proof that HIV is harmless — millions and millions of healthy HIV people — but a cataclysm in the making. Every single HIV person who dies of anything in Africa (other than old age, murder, or accident) is classed artificially as an "AIDS" death, even tho Africans die of diseases that are NOT indicator diseases for AIDS in the West. Believe what you want. As a militant homosexual man who does not and whose non-drug-using friends do NOT have AIDS and will never get it, I don't care what naive women want to believe.

Your insistence on mischaracterizing Expansionism as "colonizing" and "imperialism" show that there is no point in my trying to pry your closed mind open. Enjoy your fashionably cynical life — except, of course, on AIDS. [Return to index]

Letter No. 57

[To a Canadian-affairs forum on CompuServe, several messages re "global warming" and the "Gaia" theory; Message A, January 6-19, 1998]

THERE are three things to consider as regards warming of the planet Earth: (1) is it happening at all? (2) do human activities have anything to do with it? and (3) can a change in human activities undo it?

It turns out (1) that Earth is emerging from a "Little Ice Age" that reached its height some 200 years ago, so, given the very long time frame of these things, one could reasonably expect that yes, the Earth would be getting warmer — because we are coming out of a little ice age, when it was COLDER for hundreds of years than it had been before!

But (2) no, there is no reason to believe that human beings have anything to do with any climatic change that may — or may not — be happening.

People comprise an infinitesimal coating, on only a small PART of this huge planet (71% of which is covered by water, not people, and perhaps an additional 18% of which is uninhabitable: Antarctica, high mountains, remote deserts). Further, even on such tiny portions of this planet as people do in fact live in significant numbers, the sprinkling of human beings and all their works, even the tallest of skyscrapers, are proportionately finer by multiples of hundreds than the coat of dust that an ordinary globe accumulates in the typical home or classroom in six months. It is indeed arrogant to think that nearly nonexistently tiny human beings have anything whatsoever to do with so huge a phenomenon.

And (3) inasmuch as we aren't even certain if any human activity has any effect upon CLIMATE, a huge thing, and if so, which activity, doing which thing in particular, (a) it is very hard to say that anything we can do or undo will have the slightest effect on climate and (b) it would take so LONG a period of change of human activities to establish a connection that we could sacrifice the world's most vulnerable economies and cause the literal starvation of hundreds of millions of people before we could find out with reasonable scientific certitude whether human activities do or do NOT affect climate. And if not? We will have killed hundreds of millions of people for a pseudo-scientific theory.

Further, deserts are really NOT the issue in climatic change, because some of the world's hottest places are also among the wettest. Manaus, Brazil, for instance, near the equator and thus at the edge of the Amazon rain forest, has an average temperature of about 95 degrees Fahrenheit! When the world was (apparently) substantially warmer than it is now, during the age of dinosaurs, the world was apparently also substantially wetter. Today, in early winter, NYC is in the Fifties (Fahrenheit) — and we have fog and 90% humidity, and are expecting showers tonite and for the next two or three days.

The belts of deserts, rain forests, and temperate regions as regards both temperature and precipitation are functions of latitude, and are not likely to shift significantly with any trivial change in temperature. Most of planet Earth's land area and habitable land area are both in the Northern Hemisphere, well above the desert belt. A change in climate upwards of a few degrees (F or C) would merely increase the growing season of huge areas of the planet, without in any way drying out the areas that now receive adequate rainfall. Quite the contrary: in climatic terms, what goes up (water in the form of evaporate) must come down (in the form of precipitation). A higher global temperature, on a planet whose surface is 71% water, would of necessity mean higher evaporation from a much wider surface, and, thus, much greater precipitation worldwide! Huge quantities of water would be taken from places where it adds nothing, the oceans, to places where it can mean the difference between life and death. In this latest El Niño, for instance, the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, THE driest place on Earth, got copious rainfall!

Did the media or the world's governments rush to say "Bless you, El Niño, for making the sterile desert of Atacama bloom with a trillion flowering plants!"? Of course not. Media instead asserted that the blooming of the Atacama Desert led to a huge proliferation of rodent life, and with that, the spread of the deadly hanta virus! In short, for today's media there is NEVER a silver lining to any dark cloud. All news has to be bad — because only bad news sells!

Perhaps 11 years ago now, U.S. PBS stations broadcast a program on a British climatologist's concept of "Gaia", named for an ancient Greek goddess. His stance was that Earth is and remains habitable, for millions of years, not just because of where it is in terms of distance from the Sun, but because Earth is inhabited by plants and animals that in their own interactions MAKE Earth habitable despite varying levels of solar radiation over time.

His assertion is that the reason Earth doesn't have masses of carbon dioxide building up endlessly year after decade after century after millennium, is that we have green plants and animals that use up carbon dioxide and convert it to other things. The Sun, said that program, is becoming gradually warmer, but Earth doesn't, because plants and animals, by their activities, REGULATE the planet's temperature. If the planet gets warmer, plants grow for longer periods and remove more carbon dioxide, which lowers the planet's temperature! If too much carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere by plants, the planet gets colder, the growing season shortens, and plants can take less carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere!

Carbon dioxide is plant food. The more there is in the atmosphere, the faster plants grow, which means the more carbon dioxide they take out of the atmosphere. Further, the more carbon dioxide dissolves in the waters of the world, the more aquatic plants there are that provide oxygen to shell-bearing animals and the more biomass there is for them to eat, so snails, corals, bivalves, and other animals that create calcium-carbonate shells from carbon dioxide come to live, and the more carbon dioxide they too remove from the biosphere in the form of shells!

You get the picture: the more the world changes, the more living things make it the same.

[Message B]

THE "Little Ice Age" is called that, and I put it in quotes because that is its scientific designation, because it was a period, several hundred years long, in which temperatures were dramatically lower than the period before or after. The canals of Holland, for instance, which are shown frozen solid, with skaters aplenty, in 16th Century paintings, really did freeze over then, whereas they almost never do now.

And yes, plants do give off a little carbon dioxide when they "eat" at nite the food they have synthesized during the day, but vastly more carbon dioxide is locked away in plant tissues until those tissues are consumed by fire, the digestive processes of animals that eat plant tissues, or decay. Plants that are buried may not release their CO2 for millennia, and then only when peat, coal, or petroleum is burned.

[Message C]

THERE'S something even more insidious, if one may use that word in weather-report terms.

100 years ago, which is the base for many of the most alarming assertions now being bandied about concerning climate change, there were relatively few sites in much of the world from which reliable weather soundings were taken. Most weather statistics were collected from the advanced countries, and most of the surface of the Earth, from oceans (which comprise 71% of the Earth's surface and are still underrepresented in information reporting) to what we now call "Third World" countries, had essentially no collection sites whatsoever, or very few. "Global" temperature 100 years ago, then, would be an alphabetic average of temps reported by the places where temperature was then recorded reliably (as measured by the technology of the day; might modern devices be more accurate?). Those sites were located mainly in North America and Europe — which are now, and were then, especially over-winter, cold areas.

With the passing of time, "progress" in the Third World, and the development of ground-level, balloon-lifted, and satellite-'measured' weather data in much larger swaths of the world, more data became available from areas theretofore unmeasured, MOST of it in the Third World. Realize that most of the Third World is hot! Indeed, many sociological/anthropological observers have speculated that the reason the Third World is so backward is that it IS hot. In the absence of air-conditioning, sustained hard labor year-round to control one's environment is extremely difficult. People can literally die from heat exhaustion, especially in areas where either or both of (a) water and/or (b) salt is/are in short supply.

We are nonetheless now asked to accept surface temperature readings made from 23,000 miles out in space. I do not. We are also asked to ignore the HUGE increase in the number and distribution of weather-data collection centers all across the WARM and even very-HOT parts of this planet. Trusting souls will say, "Surely the people who do these averages have allowed for the different data bases from 100 years ago and now. They have surely ADJUSTED for the difference in location of the info available then (or 50 years ago - or 30 or 20 years ago) and now." You know what? I don't think so.

I think that meteorological associations have created thousands of new weather-reporting stations in the Third World — that is, the HOT world — and either attempted some kind of crude worldwide averaging of all reporting stations or "INTERPOLATED" crudely to 'try' to 'correct' for the wider 'universe' (globe) of info we now have. To find out, tho, we would have to DEMAND that the planet's climatologists use ONLY those stations that existed 100 years ago in comparing climate changes from then to now. Do they actually do that? I don't believe it!

[Message D]

"GARBAGE IN, garbage out" neatly disposes of all "computer simulations". Start with false assumptions and you'll produce false simulations. Plug in dubious data, not comparable from one era to another, and you get equally unreliable simulations. [Return to index]

INDIA

Letter No. 58

[To various gay and pro-gay U.S. politicians, organizations, and publications]
Subj: Violent, 'religious' castration in India
Date: 10/22/98

I TRUST you will be as horrified and indignant as I am at the report I present below from the October 21, 1998 edition of Rediff on The NeT, a daily online newsletter from India, about religious (or pseudo-religious) cults that have castrated over 500,000 boys in India and may castrate an additional 100,000 every year into the indefinite future. I attach the original HTML-format story, but if for some reason your office does not accept attachments to e-mail, I present below, within this e-mail message, a text-only version for your review and action. The HTML version (the attachment) contains hyperlinks that you or someone in your office can follow to get such further information as you may feel you need to verify the assertions in the article.

The United States has been too little engaged with India, and India has been too arrogant and insular to heed the voices of civilized societies about the terrible, inhuman backwardness of so much of its "culture". Congress has recently backed away from punitive sanctions that tend to further isolate a country like India that is too isolated already. But somehow the United States — indeed, all civilized people everywhere — must help end these terrible crimes against humanity. Please read the story below (or as attached) and DO SOMETHING. Here, now, the appalling text:

Eunuchs cry for justice

Vinod Behl in Delhi

They have had enough of life in the twilight zone, and are now ready to make a bid for a visible image of their own.

Thus, a petition has been filed in a Chandigarh court, demanding that the People's Representation Act be amended to provide them representation in both Parliament and the state assemblies.

The petition goes further, to claim employment reservation in government and semi-government categories, under the sexually handicapped category; and, further, that suo motu criminal cases be registered against those who forcibly convert people into eunuchs. * * *

As per a survey done by the Sabha, there are only a few hundred genuine eunuchs countrywide [sense?]-— the rest, numbering around 500,000, are the victims of forcible castration.

The petition thus charges that young children are brought to the cities by agents, from villages and towns all over the country, castrated, and then put in charge of a guru at one of the dhams, or hijra centres.

Startlingly, the petition estimates that 100,000 new eunuchs are created by forcible castration.

The petition is pitilessly detailed while describing the ritual of castration. [Squeamish readers may wish to skip the remainder of this article and resume reading where the text goes back to the regular margin.]

The victim is taken to a deserted spot and sequestered in a hut. For two whole days, he is fed on a diet of opium and milk, maintaining him in a permanent state of intoxication.

In the pre-dawn hours of the third day, the boy is held down by five or six eunuchs, while a cord is tied tightly around his testicles to stop the blood flow to the genitals.

Thereafter, his penis and testicles are severed with one slash of a sharp knife, and they are then buried. The wound is allowed to bleed, 'signifying' the draining of manhood and the onset of womanhood.

Some survive. An unestimated number of young boys, however, die during the process, and are consigned to unmarked graves.

The survivor's plight, however, continues. A rounded branch of the pipal tree is inserted into the wound to ensure that the hole is not filled. Heated oil is poured on it, and a lump of kathha is used as antiseptic to hasten the healing process.

For 48 hours, the new-created eunuch is kept awake to the deafening sounds of drums and music, and maintained on a liquid diet. At the end of this period, the festivities begin — the 'gurus' serving sheera made in pure ghee to all and sundry.

Before a eunuch is fully accepted into the clan, however, he is made to sit, with his rectum spread wide, on top of the rounded handle of a grinding stone. Two eunuchs then push the youngster further down onto the handle, till the first drops of anal blood appear. This is taken to signify the first menstruation, and the eunuch is now a 'made' member of the clan.

At last count, there are an estimated 450 big, 1600 medium and 35,000 smaller dhams, where the young, castrated children are trained to dance and sing — and clap in that peculiarly recognizable way — and then put out on the streets to earn money begging at street corners and in marketplaces.

Alleging that this empire is under the control of a few hijra gurus, the petition says that eunuchs who grow old and whose earning ability is thereby lessened are then dumped, left to die on the streets. * * *

And, finally, [the eunuchs' petition] asks that the hijra gurus be booked, and brought to justice, for their heinous crimes.

It's a comprehensive charter of demands — the question it will remain yet another of the unheard voices of society's underprivileged..."" [End of article] [For the complete article, go to http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/oct/20hijra.htm — if it is still on that server.. It was as of March 14, 1999.]

I wanted to send copy of this article as well to my [then-] Senators, D'Amato [defeated in the November 1998 election] and Moynihan, but the Senate's webpage is misdirecting everything to a "Not Found" message! Unbelievable. If you (or your staff) know e-mail addresses for either of those gentlemen, please advise. Or you could forward a copy of this message for their immediate consideration, with a cc to me so I know it has reached them. Urgently, [LCS] [Return to index]

Letter No. 59

[The following e-mail letter was apparently published, and produced a few responses direct;y to the Chairman, whose replies follow this first letter.]
Subj: Anti-Christian ranting
Date: 1/13/99
To: news@rediff.co.in [Rediff On The NeT, a daily webzine from India]

ARVIND Lavakare [a Rediff columnist] must be either terribly naive or terribly dishonest to assert that Christianity is in danger of collapse in its traditional homelands, so must reach out to India to survive. What is he smoking?

Quite the contrary of Christianity's collapsing in Europe, there has been a rebirth of Christianity in the former Soviet bloc, including Russia, where an explosion of Orthodox piety has occurred. The churches of East Germany were leaders in the successful drive to de-Communize, as was the Roman Catholic Church, with the inspiration of a Polish Pope, in Poland's anti-Communist revolution. They couldn't have had such major impacts if they were on the verge of collapse.

Tho it is perfectly true that some Christians adhere to a Christianity that is more an ethical system and cultural traditions than a fervent religious faith, it is equally true that evangelicals by the millions have experienced what they feel is a "rebirth in Christ". Christian missionaries spring from hordes of devout people in Europe and other parts of the West, and places as far from the geographic center of the West as Korea and the Philippines. They are bringing what they feel is "God's love" to India not because they fear for the future of the Church in the West but because they believe in their heart (with obvious justification) that India's oppressed and devastated masses would be far better off as part of the Christian culture of equality in the Church than as "backward castes" in Hinduism.

Hinduism is a major factor keeping India backward, oppressive, and perpetually at the edge of starvation, in part because Hinduism is an insular religion in a world of universal religions. Advocates of Hindutva admit as much in suggesting that Hinduism is essential to Indianness, for it teaches people to be Indian — not simply human. And that's the problem.

Christianity has much to offer all Indians, of whatever caste, in terms of involvement with a world or huge diversity and intergroup, interclass tolerance and generosity. All the most advanced countries on Earth save Japan are Christian. No country on Earth save India is Hindu — and not even all of India is Hindu.

Hinduism must reform or pass from the Earth. It's influence is malignant, cancerous. Its culture of inequality and inhumanity does huge injustice to almost everyone under its thumb, and ALL Indians would be better off by far if it would in fact vanish from the face of the Earth. It is this realization that is behind the insecurities of the agitators for a "saffron revolution": they fear that Hinduism will disappear because they know in their guilty heart that it SHOULD disappear. [Return to index]

Letter No. 60

[To a Christian respondent to my letter who thanked me for rising to the defense of India's Christians and asked me to do more to raise awareness in the West of the need for continued Christian efforts in the subcontinent]
Date: 1/23/99

I AM NOT a religious person, but I do believe that Christian missionaries can do much to alleviate the misery of the "backward castes" of India — and Indians generally — so I encourage them to defy attempts to stop Christians from promoting conversion from evil, wretchedly backward Hinduism — and Islam, for that matter. I would prefer that people not need any religion, but if there is to be any religion governing people's choices, I'd prefer it to be a religion like Christianity that AFFORDS people choices, not one like Hinduism where all is "predestined" and the poor and miserable are supposed to tolerate their intolerable condition because "in the next life" they will be better off if they meekly accept being WRONGED in this life! [Return to index]

Letter No. 61

[To a different respondent to my letter to Rediff who, as a Christian who has criticized Hinduism's built-in discrimination against the poor, has had difficulty answering charges that severe poverty exists in some Christian societies too]
Date: 1/23/99

THERE are many evil people on Earth who do not heed the moral teachings of any religion. Christianity tries to persuade people to be good and fair and charitable to those less fortunate, but those teachings often fall on deaf ears. People who have privileges don't want to hear that they are just lucky. They prefer to think their good fortune is due to their own virtue, and other people's bad fortune is due to their defects or vices. Sometimes self-made millionaires are right, and they really did earn their good fortune; sometimes they just lucked out in finding something that made them lots of money with no more work nor ingenuity than other people applied to failed ventures. But people who inherit wealth? No, being born into the rich and privileged classes does not show virtue. Sharing wealth and helping others achieve prosperity are Christian callings, but not everyone will heed that call. [Return to index]

Letter No. 62

[To a defender of Hinduism]
Date: 1/21/99

IT must be lovely to have a "golden" past — 3,000 years ago. Most ordinary people have the right to ask of Hinduism, "But what have you done for me lately?" Besides, I seriously doubt that India was anything like paradise ever. In an illiterate society, only the literate write history, so of course it will be the history of the rich and privileged, and the rich and privileged have always lived well, in every society, at every time in history.

Adam and Eve is a Jewish fable, not Christian. That it is nonsense is plain, in that within two pages the Jewish Testament says that Adam was the only man AND that the children of Adam and Eve married OTHER PEOPLE than each other, when of course there couldn't BE other people than the family of Adam and Eve if the original fable were true.

Christianity is POST-Jewish and ANTI-Jewish. Christianity's "God of Love" is NOT Judaism's "God of Wrath". [Return to index]

Letter No. 63

[To an Indian defender of Hinduism who asserted that Western religions have given rise to terrible violence but Eastern religions have not]
Date: 1/21/99

TRY reading Rediff and other Indian publications, online and on paper. See the death and destruction every day in your "peaceful" country — riots and sectarian attacks and bombings. You've had TWO prime ministers KILLED in the past what? 20 years?! [I forgot to mention, as well, that the greatest of all modern Indians, Mohandas K. ("Mahatma") Gandhi, was assassinated by a Hindu extremist!] You had a hideous civil war following partition during which literally untold numbers of people died, an absolute, bedrock minimum of 300,000 and perhaps 10 times that many. If you are going to lie about how "peaceful" India is, do it to someone who doesn't know anything about daily life in India. Lie to yourself if it makes you happy. But do not lie to me. [Return to index]

Letter No. 64

[To an Indian Christian concerned that Western countries, including the U.S., have serious problems too and who is concerned that my harsh language may encourage Hindu militants to be even more intolerant. This letter also makes the transition in this page to a discussion of:]

BLACKS / "AFRICAN AMERICANS"

RACISM in the United States is not nearly so bad as outsiders want to believe it is. Certainly American blacks are far better off than "backward castes" in India. Blacks in the United States are, in fact, the richest and most powerful black community on Earth, vastly exceeding the wealth and influence of any African country, Brazil, or any other country where significant numbers of blacks live. U.S. blacks have electricity, sturdy housing, running hot and cold water, telephones, television in their own home. They have free public education thru grade 12 (that is, including kindergarten, 13 years of education at public expense, no matter how much they make; and their books are in-school supplies are free). The average black person in the United States makes some 10 times the average Indian, all castes figured in.

When the truth about black millionaires — not all of them in sports or entertainment — is factored in, and the host of elected black officials is considered, blacks in the United States are doing very well indeed. That they may not yet have reached parity with whites does not mean they are being grossly unfairly treated, in that much of black failure is self-subversion — people dropping out of high school when everyone tells them to stay in high school; kids and young people getting themselves hooked on drugs when everyone tells them to stay away from drugs, etc. Nonetheless, blacks in the U.S. are VASTLY richer, freer, and more influential with their government than "backward castes" in India. And the black church is a large part of the reason for their success.

We mustn't coddle anti-Christian fanatics in India or anywhere else. Hinduism is BANKRUPT. It makes hundreds of millions of people miserable and keeps India profoundly backward and violent. It would be a blessing if ALL Indians would abandon Hinduism TONITE, so that tomorrow India could wake to a bright future. [Return to index]

Letter No. 65

[To a member of the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe in response to his assertion that U.S. blacks are badly off, April 21, 1998]

AMERICAN blacks are in general richer than Britons. They are as well, the richest and most influential black community on Earth, as acknowledged aloud by the Paris-based African expat publication Jeune Afrique. And it seems to me that there are bad black neighborhoods in Britain too, some of which erupt into riots at periods at least as frequent as American ghettoes. We are making solid progress on reducing poverty in the U.S., but thanks to Britain's having dragged large numbers of unwilling Africans to our shores during its period of misrule, we have the largest black population in the industrialized world, a serious handicap most countries with large black populations have been unable to rise above. Would that it were not so, but all black countries are backward, without exception.

The U.S. has, however, by far the largest number of black millionaires and celebrities on Earth, and black Americans live far better than do black people in any other country on Earth where they constitute any significant portion of the population, including countries where they constitute the bulk of the population.

Kindly note that there is no massive outflow of blacks from the United States to any other country — and certainly not to Britain. Quite the contrary, there is a constant flow of blacks INTO the United States, from the Caribbean, from Africa, and indeed from Britain. [Return to index]

Letter No. 66

[To an e-mail correspondence group June 9, 1998 re American rejection of accusations of "racism" in wanting crime suppressed.]

THE election and re-election of hard law-and-order white mayors in cities like L.A. and New York after easygoing black mayors who were perceived as not doing enough about crime demonstrates the new attitude toward reclaiming our cities and thus our civilization. Whites are rarely bullied anymore by careless, shotgun accusations of "racism" and charges that "crime" is a code word for "blacks". No, we do NOT mean "crime" as a code word for anything. We mean it to mean "crime", and we are sick of it and will have an end to lawlessness. [Return to index]

Letter No. 67

[To a Canadian correspondent concerning the supposed lasting effects on blacks of slavery last century.]

ACTUALLY, Thomas Jefferson did attempt to get an anti-slavery commitment into the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of 1789, written a scant 6 years after the redcoats actually left (well, left most of the country; some remained in the Indian regions of the West, where they stirred up trouble until the War of 1812) did insert a proviso that the importation of slaves could be banned in 1808. On January 1, 1808, the first day the slave trade could legally be banned, it was banned. Before that, a number of northern states had abolished slavery, starting with Vermont in 1776, long before that area actually achieved independence and, thus, the legal right to abolish anything.

No, the lasting impact of slavery, begun by the British, is the vast numbers of black Africans present in American society. Tho the black community of the United States is the richest and most influential on Earth, it is also far and away the most violent and crime-prone segment of society. That has nothing to do with the way blacks are treated legally or socially; Indians, Pakistanis, and Koreans who arrive to set up convenience stores in mixed-race and even black neighborhoods, who had no preconceptions about blacks before they arrived from thousands of miles away where there AREN'T any blacks, within six months come to regard all blacks with suspicion and watch out for them as thieves and potential murderers. Sad but true. The fault is not in others that blacks have failed and are violent and criminal in all countries where they constitute a major segment of society. One way you find the truth is by cross-cultural comparisons, and everywhere you look around the Earth, wherever black numbers increase to the point where their communities imbue young members with a different value system and the community achieves a certain opaqueness to outsiders so it is hard to know what is going on and difficult to control it, criminality and violence flourish. France is now going thru serious political difficulties as one party, the Front National, dares to say aloud what increasing numbers of French citizens are realizing: that there are getting to be too many blacks in France and the result is a serious undermining of law and order.

Even in sports, where blacks have been so successful, we see that sports have become vastly more violent the blacker they get.

Wishing it were not so is no substitute for accepting the unhappy truth and finding ways to deal with it. One such way, plainly, is to break up the ghetto and disperse blacks widely and thinly across society so that they come to absorb and embrace the values of the larger community. Scatter-site housing instead of huge public-housing projects that concentrate blacks with other blacks is an obvious approach. While it would be nice if we could have hundreds of thousands of blacks concentrated in large urban areas without their making each other's lives, and police and firefighters' lives, hell, we have the largest part of a century's experience that says that is not possible — not now, at least. Perhaps once the culture of poverty, victimization, and violence is destroyed, decent blacks can recongregate in largely black communities without reconstituting the culture of poverty and violence, but that is pure speculation. The reality is that the United States has a crime problem because the United States has a black problem. That is why our crime rates, illiteracy rates, etc., are higher than other industrialized nations, because no other industrialized nation has so much as a fifth as many blacks, per capita or in toto, as we have. And I suggest, candidly, that we all know that, even if ideological inclinations would make us want to deny it.

Policy must be based on what is, not what we wish were. The United States is dealing more successfully with huge numbers of blacks than any other mixed-race society, and the present booming economy helps a lot. But when you see pictures on television of crowds of blacks literally jumping to their feet and cheering when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of a crime no sane person can believe he was genuinely innocent of, that is a disturbing indication of how lawless and how dangerous so much of the black population of the United States — and every country — is.

I have black relatives and don't want any artificial barriers set in their way. But nor do I want them to think they have a free ride and a license to steal and to kill just because they are half-black. The United States has bent over backward to avoid the necessary conclusions that race in itself is a problem, not because blacks are close to whites, orientals, mestizos and Indians with whom they may conflict, but because blacks are trouble to blacks in all-black countries. Black Africa is the world's basket case, perpetually at the edge of famine and mass starvation even without headline-grabbing 'famine'; civil wars, coups, and local wars; intertribal conflicts; interreligious conflicts; massive crime; endemic corruption. All this some forty years after the last European colonial power withdrew, and in much of the region Europeans controlled for only sixty or so years. The tendency of black Africa to blame whitey is dishonest, if convenient. Right now, Ethiopia, which was occupied by whites only during the brief Mussolini years, is at war, again, with neighboring Eritrea!

Outsiders, from countries where blacks are few in number — but even in such small numbers causing problems, like race riots in Halifax, Nova Scotia and knife-wielding violent attacks in Toronto schools; and race riots in Brixton and other parts of Britain — should be very wary of speaking harshly of U.S. racial matters they really do not understand. Tho we would all like to believe that "all men are created equal"ly civilized, there is massive evidence that they are not, but that blacks may well be evolutionarily many thousand years behind people from colder climates. Politically active people must work to solve problems, not deny them. [Return to index]

Letter No. 68

[Two messages to a British public-affairs computer forum re a finding that there are in Britain, as in the United States, six times as many blacks in prison, per capita, as whites. First message, October 14, 1998]

THERE is nothing racist about the Expansionist Party's website, nor about admitting aloud what everyone knows: that blacks are more involved in crimes of both property and passion than are white people in mixed societies. Sociologists will have to provide answers to how to deal with this, but honest people have to face reality before they can change it. Perhaps racially blind laws cannot work, just as laws that are blind to mental derangement cannot protect society. Psychopaths have to be treated differently, because ordinary admonitions and restraints don't work with them. Rail about racism all you wish, but kindly explain why there are, per capita, six times as many blacks in prison in both Britain and the United States if race does NOT make a difference. [Return to index]

Letter No. 69

[Second message, October 14, 1998, responding to the suggestion that crime in central cities may be preponderantly black but in prosperous suburbs and small towns is predominantly white.]

THERE is practically no crime in affluent suburbs, but much of what there is is committed by outsiders, not residents themselves.

Tho it is perfectly true that slums make slumdwellers, it is also true that slumdwellers make slums. There has developed a "culture of poverty" that justifies crime as 'getting back at The Man' for asserted wrongs done decades, even centuries ago by people long dead. In recent years, general handwringing over past injustices has been replaced by an expectation that people must deal with what is, and obey the laws, get an education, work hard, make intelligent sacrifices, and maintain a positive attitude toward others to get ahead. The culture of poverty is gradually being broken up thru the destruction of massive, high-density concentrations of the poor in public housing projects and the replacement of such complexes with scatter-site housing. We shall see how effective such measures prove. [Return to index]

IRAQ

(Iraq.html)

Letter No. 70

[To The Washington Times daily newspaper]
Subj: End sanctions against Iraq
Date: 11/12/98

SADDAM Hussein is wholly right, the United States Government wholly wrong in the Mideast.

What conceivable justification exists for victimizing Iraq uniquely in all the world with "sanctions" that never end? Iraq left Kuwait 7 1/2 years ago! Israel hasn't left the West Bank after 31 years! Yet the United States insists on the right to strip Iraq of even the chance to create nonnuclear weapons of mass destruction, while turning a blind eye to Israel's 200 existing NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The U.S. has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi children through heartless sanctions, yet gives Israel over $3 billion of Christian taxpayer money every year, year after year without end, even though U.S. law forbids foreign aid to proliferational nuclear powers. Why?

Saddam Hussein performed an extraordinary service to the world in hemming in the lunatic Islamic revolution of the late, unlamented Ayatollah Khomeini, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. For this extraordinary service, the West and the leaders of Iraq's near neighbors, whom he saved from overthrow, have rewarded him and his people with genocidal encirclement and starvation.

Never mind that Iraq was wholly right in attempting to undo the dismemberment of Iraq at the hands of the British Empire in 1897. (See Iraq.html.) The U.S. Government today, which apparently sees itself as the latter-day British Empire, is working hand-in-glove with the rump-British Empire to continue to victimize Iraqis. (Apparently the present American ruling class never heard of the American Revolution against the self-same arrogant British Empire that dismembered Iraq. Or perhaps they revile Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and all the other Founding Fathers.)

How is any vital interest of the United States advanced by murdering Iraqi children? There's no vital U.S. interest in ravaging Iraq in endless, genocidal war. So it must be that the endless war against Iraqi Arabs is being waged for someone other than the people of the United States, for something other than U.S. national interests or principles. What might that be?

We all know the answer: the U.S. Government is slave to radical Zionism, and Christians are being used by tribal Hebrews to slaughter the enemies of tribal Zionism not for any conceivable national interest of Americans, but only for the interests of a foreign power, Israel. I accuse the United States Government of active treason, in selling out the interests of the American people, which reside firmly in nontribal, secular government all across the world, but especially in the Mideast, in favor of a radical Zionism that can only keep the Middle East in turmoil — to no one's advantage.

The creation of Israel was a monstrous mistake of British Empire arrogance. It is only an accident of a business association between Harry Truman and a Jewish former partner in a haberdashery that made the United States into a co-conspirator in the British Empire's crimes against Arabs. President Wilson knew in 1918 that the creation of a Jewish state in an Arab land would produce endless war, and his key advisor Colonel House urgently appealed to the British Empire not to unleash such pointless warfare upon that region, by renouncing the Balfour Declaration. But Britain wouldn't listen then, Britain won't listen now, and the imitation-British-Empire of the present U.S. ruling class won't listen either.

Israel must be disestablished, and all Palestine united in a secular state with rigid separation of religion and government. That is the only road to peace in Palestine. Once that is done, it will be manifestly unnecessary to murder Arabs in secular Iraq or elsewhere to defend the indefensible: a tribal, theocratic Israel that should never have been created and should now be uncreated. Let all people of good will walk peaceably, in brotherhood, through unbloodied streets in a shared Holy Land governed in secular matters by a secular state. [Return to index]

Letter No. 71

Subj: [PBS nightly newscast] NewsHour appearance 11/16/98: Madness on Iraq
Date: 11/16/98
To: senator@biden.senate.gov
To: senator_specter@specter.senate.gov
To: senator@hutchison.senate.gov
CC: newshour@pbs.org

WHERE in the Constitution is the U.S. Government authorized to overthrow the government of another sovereign nation? Please quote the exact wording of that provision and tell me where exactly it appears in the text of the Constitution. I suggest there IS NO such provision, for the good and sufficient reason that the Framers never intended the United States to get into the business of overthrowing other governments — in part because that would legitimize other countries' trying to overthrow our government.

Likewise, the U.S. traditionally does not intrude into civil wars or other internal affairs of foreign countries because that would legitimize other countries' intruding into our internal affairs militarily. Iraq didn't intervene in our Civil War. We have no right to intervene in its — much less foment civil wars that might kill hundreds of thousands of innocents and end up dismembering Iraq and creating a number of nonviable, mutually warring ministates that could destabilize the entire Gulf region.

Further, where does the Constitution authorize the United States to make war without a declaration of war? If Congress wants to make war upon Iraq, DECLARE WAR. Don't ravage the Constitution to do what you could perfectly well do after a declaration of war. If you couldn't get a declaration of war, it is because such a war would be unjust and unwise — in which case it shouldn't be pursued by illegal means any more than by legal means!

If the United States asserts the right to destroy the Iraqi Government, the Iraqi Government can with absolutely equal legitimacy assert the right to overthrow the U.S. Government. What's sauce for the goose is indeed sauce for the gander. Would you really like Iraq sending assistance to the likes of Timothy McVeigh and the host of "militias" all over this country? to radical leftists? to Islamists among Moslem immigrants? to any and every group of disaffected citizens? Think about that.

And finally, think about this: TALIBAN. There are worse things than Saddam, and you might very well produce something far worse if you screw around with a country you don't understand. [Return to index]

Letter No. 72

[To a world-affairs forum on CompuServe, October 14, 1998]

AS for the poor, downtrodden Kurds and their monstrous mistreatment by Saddam Hussein of Iraq, consider this news story TODAY from the Associated Press:

[Kurdish "national" flag]

"52 Reportedly Die in Turkey Clashes

"VAN, Turkey (AP) — Turkish troops have killed 36 Kurdish rebels near this southeastern city in clashes over the past two days, the Anatolia news agency reported today. Two soldiers and 14 village guards helping troops fight the Kurdish insurgents were also killed in the clashes, it said. The area lies 780 miles southeast of Ankara, the capital. Military officials were not available to comment. The Kurdish guerrillas, who have been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast since 1984, have been a source of tension between Syria and Turkey, which accuses Damascus of sheltering and supporting them."

Imagine that! TURKS fighting Kurds. Turks being KILLED by Kurds. Kurds fighting a guerrilla war against TURKEY since 1984! (Notice that the Kurds claim to be fighting for "autonomy", just like Kosovo's KLA. They're not. They're fighting for the creation of "Kurdistan", a new country to be carved out of not just Turkey but also Iraq and Iran.) Could it possibly be that you are WRONG about the Kurds being specially victimized by mean old Saddam?

[Further, there appeared on the newswires February 16, 1999 this little item:

COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — Fugitive Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan is under arrest in Kenya, the Kurdistan Information Center confirmed today. The center confirmed that Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, was arrested in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi yesterday, and brought to an unidentified location. No one accompanying him was allowed to join him. Ocalan's lawyer in Germany, Eberhard Schultz, told German television ZDF that Kenya was not a final destination for Ocalan, but that he'd hoped that a European country, most likely Italy or Greece, would grant him asylum.

Now, why would Kenya arrest a poor little Kurdish rebel if Kurds are innocent victims of bad old Saddam who deserve our protection?

This arrest gave rise to violent protests by Kurds in many European countries, involving the invasion of embassies and consulates, clashes with police, attempted self-immolations in at least three countries, and the taking by Kurds of HOSTAGES in Switzerland and several other countries! The man arrested was head of what the evening news program Le Journal of the French television network France 2 described as a "Marxist" organization.  Old video footage showed him in front of PKK flags that bear that out:  a red flag with a white circle inside which appears a red star. The old flag of the PKK (above, right) is even more forthright, for having a hammer and sickle! Their new flag (below, left) has a red star in a yellow disk inside a green circle (thus using three of the four colors of the Kurdish "national" flag shown at the start of this discussion). Given the PKK's political allegiance, it is by no means clear whether their war "for Kurdistan" is genuinely nationalist or just one of those multitudinous "wars of national liberation" that Communists have waged for decades in the guise of nationalism but actually for Communism.

AP reported that the PKK was active in a war by the Kurds that had killed 37,000 people on both sides! and that "White House spokesman Joe Lockhart denied hints by Greece's foreign minister that the United States could have been involved in Ocalan's capture but hailed his arrest as a blow against terrorism."  Ocalan (pronounced, bizarrely, OEjalon) had been forced out of Syria, Russia, and Italy in earlier months, and a plane suspected of having him aboard was denied entry into Belgium's airspace. All these countries wrong about the Kurds! — and effectively on the same side as the monster Saddam (even tho the reports I heard carefully avoided any mention of the U.S. providing a "safe haven" to Kurdish terrorists against retaliation by Saddam in a "no-fly zone"). Who'da thunk it? And if the U.S. Government thinks it's "a blow against terrorism" to arrest the leader of a Kurdish nationalist party, why does the same government smile on the same violent, insurrectionary nationalism in northern Iraq?] [Return to index]

Letter No. 73

[To a world-affairs forum on CompuServe, January 21, 1999]

YOU pretend that Iraq attacked people for no reason, when the reality is that Iraq has, over and over, been hit by violent insurrection by Shiites and Kurds who have KILLED thousands of Sunni Iraqis out of nationalist separatism and religious fanaticism. Killing the members of a more powerful group intent on self-defense is very foolish behavior. [Return to index]

Letter No. 74

[To a global-issues computer forum, January 19, 1999]

WHY does Iraq have less right to weapons of mass destruction than Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, the United States, etc.? Certain imperialist tendencies of the bad old days have resurged, whereby arrogant, narrow-minded elitists in the West assert the right to dictate to the entire world, with no more moral authority than the British Empire's imposition by superior arms of OPIUM upon China. Might does not make right, and feebleness does not make wrong.

Saddam Hussein is a hero to a billion people worldwide. They are right. He is a secularist in a region whose main problem is religious fanaticism. He is a unifier in a region riven by separatists. He promotes a larger and longer-term vision of The Arab Nation in a region where different sects (Sunni, Shia, Druze, etc.) contend violently and non-Arab minorities (e.g., Kurds) resort to violence to break themselves out of The Arab Nation, and petty despots protect their own turf and preside over retrogressive regimes. Saddam is a modernizer in a region increasingly dominated by people who look backward. In short, Saddam Hussein should be not our enemy but our ally — as he was when he stopped the fanatics of Iran from spreading their madness over the entire Middle East. For this huge service to humanity, the West made war upon him! Insane.

The West should be engaging and helping to modernize the Islamic world, making alliances with modernizers and secularists like Saddam and trying to wean them from repression. But we should understand that the Mideast is not the Midwest, and what is savage and inappropriate in the Middle West may be the only way to hold societies together in the Middle East.

Saddam is trying to heal divisions inflicted upon The Arab Nation by the British Empire in 1918. He is absolutely right to do so. He is right about Kuwait which for over 4,000 years was part of Iraq and its predecessor states. (See Iraq.html) He is right about Zionism, which should never have been instituted and should now be undone. Let pious Jews live in Palestine only as Jewish Palestinians, on a par with, not superior to, their Moslem and Christian Arab neighbors. Saddam is right to promote modernity, unity, and religious tolerance across the Arab world. The West is wrong to see Arab unity as being of necessity a threat and an evil. It makes no more sense to oppose union of The Arab Nation than to blindly oppose the enlargement of and intensification of unity of the European Union. There are dangers in every larger union, but there are also opportunities. The West must stop seeing its best interest as in promoting the perpetual division and backwardness of the Arab world. And it must stop taking orders from Israel and using Western force in the service of radical Zionism. [Return to index]

Letter No. 75

[To a global-issues computer forum, January 24, 1999]

IMPERIALISM is a valid term in political science and the behavior of Britain and the present British-identified U.S. ruling class can indeed be called imperialist. Until such time as other countries become part of one's own legal realm, one country has no right to dictate to another. Only when the people of different countries agree to write, together, the laws that will govern them all can one area demand that another area abide by common standards. Until borders vanish, sovereign states have the right to assert full sovereignty. [Return to index]

Letter No. 76

[Three messages to a B.C. woman on a Canadian-affairs forum, November 29-30, 1997.]

Saddam Hussein did not annex "his neighbo[]rs" but only one neighbor, a province of historic Iraq that had been stolen by the British Empire. (Any lurker interested in the legitimacy of Iraq's claim to Kuwait can check out Iraq.html.) India did much the same thing with Goa, Diu, Pondicherry, Sikkim, etc. - but the world did not go to war against India, did it. West Germany reannexed its lost region of East Germany. I don't recall a popular referendum on that, do you? Indonesia annexed East Timor, committing horrible, multitudinous murders and other crimes against humanity, and the world sat idly by. China marched into Tibet and killed many, many thousands, and the UN did not endeavor to surround, starve, and make war upon China, did it? Nor did the world community mount a campaign of starvation and aerial destruction upon the Soviet Union, which annexed THREE countries whole: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. And on, and on. Only Iraq's recapture of its stolen province provoked an absurdly excessive reaction — because Iraq is the sole credible danger to Israel, and the United States, which led the "coalition" to destroy Iraq, is wholly under the thumb of Israel as regards Middle East policy. Speaking of Israel, I don't remember a worldwide embargo and aerial assault upon Israel after it seized EITHER the West Bank and Gaza OR southern Lebanon. Do you?

THE IDEA that oil is the motive behind ongoing U.S. mass murder of Iraqis is widely believed but obviously, appallingly ridiculous. The U.S. and UN actually FORBID Iraq to export oil as a regular commercial practice. Before the Kuwait reoccupation, Iraq was one of the largest exporters of oil on the planet. What happens to world oil prices when you STOP a major exporter from exporting? Prices rise. Did the United States rain death upon Iraq to RAISE oil prices worldwide, including for itself? Did the UN impose a worldwide embargo of Iraq to raise oil prices for starving Third World countries? Surely not.

That simple and obvious reality shows that oil had NOTHING to do with U.S. action against Iraq. If you are concerned about keeping the price of oil low, you don't SHUT DOWN a major supplier!

No, Iraq's ONLY international or military significance is that Israel and its puppets in the U.S. Government believe that Saddam Hussein sees himself as a new Abbásid or Saladin. The Abbásids were the dynasty of Arab caliphs that ruled over a religiously and politically united realm that, at its greatest, extended from the Atlantic Ocean (Morocco) to Pakistan! and was headquartered in Baghdad.

Saladin was the only Kurd that practically any non-Kurd has ever heard of, a great "Saracen" (Arab) defender against Crusaders' attempts to retake the "Holy Land". Saladin was from Iraq. The entire Abbásid Caliphate was from Iraq.

The highest point that Arab civilization ever achieved was under the Caliphate based on Baghdad — and all the Arab world knows that. The trouble is that Western civilization, which owes a HUGE debt to the Caliphate ("Arabic" numerals and the concept of zero (transmitted from India); algebra, an authentic Arab innovation (sorry, kids); paper, the technical know-how for which was taken from the Chinese after a key battle; and thousands of ancient Greco-Roman texts and their ideas that had been preserved in Arabia long after they had been lost by the West), doesn't KNOW Arab history, so assumes it is unimportant to the West. WRONG.

When Brits and Franks were scarcely literate but living in feudalism, in which the largest political unit of importance to most people was at most 20 miles square, the Abbasid caliphate ruled a united, tolerant, and brilliant civilization perhaps 20% larger than modern Canada. (For more on the astonishing brilliance of Iraq's history, and its importance to us, see Iraq and its links.)

NO, "oil politics" are not more complicated than the laws of supply and demand. If you mean that oil suppliers other than Iraq would be glad to have Iraq out of the picture so they could raise oil prices, that would be credible as far as it goes, but it does not explain why the United States, whose ties to the major oil suppliers are tenuous at best and nearly hostile at worst, would consent to have oil prices artificially higher for its European allies, Japan, and the Third World, in the last of which oil costs constitute a major burden and hamper development efforts — efforts the United States has poured tens of billions of dollars into over the course of decades.

Artificially high oil prices affect the U.S. economy and Americans in general very adversely, not just directly, in making oil expensive, but also indirectly, in allowing producers of competing fuels/energy sources to raise their prices too. U.S. interests, not only in regard to its own energy costs but also in regard to the economies of Europe and East Asia on which some of our own prosperity depends, plainly plump for restoring Iraq to full production and competition as soon as humanly possible. In that actual U.S. policy is utterly at variance with U.S. interests, some other consideration must be seen in Washington as more important than the American people's prosperity, Europe's emergence from recession, East Asia's perilous prosperity, and the development of the Third World. There's only one thing that mounts higher in the minds of U.S. policymakers than all those interests put together: Zionism.

Nor has Iraq "long been hostile to the US". Quite the contrary, prior to the unfortunate developments of 1990-91, Iraq and the U.S. were effective allies in containing Iran, and many people believe Iraq had good reason, after its meeting with the U.S. ambassador prior to August 1990, to expect the U.S. to smile upon its recapture of its lost province of Kuwait, a pimple of a country that was, as my Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (once the U.S. Ambassador to the UN), characterized as "a poisonous enemy of the United States". Saddam and his people were shocked that the U.S. used the pretext of an invasion Saddam believed the U.S. had indicated it would not oppose, to ravage Iraq and kill a quarter of a million defenseless Third World people. Perhaps you are confusing Iran and Iraq. Iran has indeed been hostile to the U.S. for a couple of decades (tho even it was very friendly before the fall of the Shah, and the new President of Iran has indicated, just this week again, a willingness to reconcile with the U.S. and the West more generally).

Nor would a pan-Arab empire include Iran, which is Persian in language and culture, not Arab at all. The last pan-Arab union was indeed achieved by conquest, not peaceful merger by legislative action or inter-presidential treaty ratified by senates. That's pretty much the way everything was done in those days. And the world hasn't changed as much as you might think. There are at any given moment dozens of wars, insurrections, and/or contending coups and countercoups all over planet Earth.

As for your characterization of the areas of the world that fell to Arab conquests in the 700s as "peasants in mud huts", I suggest that, aside from that being an offensive characterization of, among other political entities conquered by the Arabs, much of the Byzantine Empire, all of the Persian Empire, plus Transoxiana and the Punjab, what matters in conquest is not absolute state of civilization nor technological advance but relative strengths between would-be conqueror and defenders against conquest. The Arabs of the 600s and 700s were in no significant way technologically more advanced than their neighbors, and they comprised small numbers at first. But what they lacked in technology and logistical resources they made up for with zeal and the ability to improvise.

There is a will to pan-Arab union in many Arab countries. These people know something of their glorious history and would be ecstatic to recapture such glory for themselves. At least three moves toward reintegration of the Arab world have failed; one has succeeded, albeit with a civil war intervening; and others are sure to follow.

The failed attempts I know about offhand were (1) the United Arab Republic of Gamal Abdel Nasser, in which Egypt and Syria tried to unite but were unsuccessful, in part because of a geographic gap; (2) the attempt by Baathist governments in Iraq and Syria to unite; and (3) an announced union of Egypt and Libya, which got nowhere. The success was the union of (North) Yemen and South Yemen/Aden.) Please note that the United States, which has promoted regional groupings and unions all around the globe, from the European Union to ASEAN, has at best done nothing to promote Arab unification, and may well have acted covertly to subvert it. Is it really in U.S. interest to see the Arab world fractured and in a state of perpetual unease and incipient internecine warfare? The U.S. spends billions of dollars a year, year after year without end on Egypt, a basketcase of a country incapable of achieving self-sufficiency. Plainly union of Egypt with the oil-rich countries of its region is the best long-term solution to the problems of that populous country. Why not let Arabs take care of Arabs? Because, you see, that's not all they would take care of. [Return to index]

Letter No. 77

[To a global-issues computer forum, January 26, 1999]

I AM tired of foolish people throwing around the slander "Nazi" and won't tolerate it. I have said that Iraq has had to go to war to assert its rights and defend its territorial integrity against violence from within and without. That is beyond question true. You pretend that there is some magical right of Kurds and Shiites to make war against the central government of Iraq and when that government retaliates with all the force of state, that government is somehow guilty of crimes! In your view, then, self-defense, if it comes from Baghdad, is a crime. I reject that suggestion as preposterous.

The human being is a killer ape, which science has made plain. Violence, brutality, and murder in the name of this cause, that group, or the other faith is an integral part of the history of that killer ape. People who wish to hold civil societies together against lawlessness have created states, promoted laws, and enforced those laws with countervailing violence against offenders. Thus shall it ever be, and rightly.

Anarchists assert that no state is legitimate, so any effort to destroy that state apparatus is legitimate. Anarchists have murdered presidents, kings, mayors, and other authority figures in their mad quest for total personal autonomy, without regard to the rights of others. States have always retaliated.

Separatists have always sprung up, in all eras, and states have always held together by force, which is the only thing that can control a killer ape.

I am no Pollyanna. I do not pretend that each of us is capable of infinite personal or group autonomy and, so, a world of millions of separate little countries and billions of individuals asserting freedom from imposition by the group would be a happy place filled with love and respect for other people. A substantial proportion of human beings are selfish, violent scum who must be controlled. States must hold together because the alternative is anarchy, and anarchy is chaos, chaos is destructive, and people get destroyed wholesale when chaos ensues. So societies hold together for good reason, and at end by force, no matter how that may "oppress" radicals.

When do the rights of the state take precedence over those of the individual? When do the rights of individuals take precedence over those of the state? These are issues that are constantly addressed in the day-to-day existence of all societies. But most of the time, most people use the institutions of their society to assert their rights; they don't make war on their government and assert that they have the right not to be counterattacked by the government they act to destroy. Court challenges, elections, educational movements, and political parties are legitimate means by which people pursue social change and assert their rights. Taking up arms to overthrow their government is not generally recognized as a civil right. [Return to index]

Letter No. 78

[To a global-issues computer forum, January 27, 1999]

I HAVE no more time to waste on negative people who deny the truth about the need of governments to restrain the monstrousness of human nature. Tribal wars are the rule in human warfare, rather than the exception, from the Hebrew-Arab conflict in Palestine to the Albanian-Serbian conflict in rump-Yugoslavia to the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda to the Kurd-Arab conflict in Iraq to the Chechen-Russian conflict in the Russian Federation — need I go on? In all such wars "innocents" are killed in substantial numbers because neither side regards any member of the other tribe as "innocent" in perpetuity, only a temporary noncombatant. And with good reason. Tribes at war rarely have a genuine change of heart, so today's noncombatant is almost always tomorrow's soldier.

On isolated occasions, the leaders of the tribe weary of mutual slaughter and make peace that lasts. In the case of Europe, they went so far as to create a series of cooperative pacts, first in steel and coal, then in nuclear energy, then in this, then in that, culminating in today's European Union, which is intended to be a safeguard against the return of tribal warfare to the members of that Union. It has succeeded for some decades at an intergovernmental level (tho local tribal wars continue, called "terrorist movements": IRA, ETA, A Cuncolta, etc.), but that is too short a time to determine if it will really work in the long term. It is also far too short a time for Europeans within the EU to be turning up their nose in feigned disgust at the continuance of tribal warfare in their own little neck of the woods and threatening to cart off to "war crimes tribunals" people committing today the very acts EU member states were committing against each other not long ago — and may yet commit again.

Participation in CompuServe forums turns out not to be the friendly give-and-take on ideas I had hoped for but rather a small-minded series of baseless and mindless ad-hominem attacks, so I now depart this and other CompuServe forums forever. I am a positive person with positive programs. I will find a more congenial way to promote them and to learn more about areas and peoples I need to research. [Return to index]

Letter No. 79

[To Latino members of Congress re preventing an unjustified attack upon Iraq, February 16, 1998.]

CO-CONSPIRING IN "YANQUI IMPERIALISM" in Iraq: Why are Hispanic members of Congress so quiet about impending U.S. violence against defenseless Third World people in Iraq? Iraq has never attacked the United States. Congress has never declared war. Where in the Constitution is it written that the Anglo power elite of the United States has the right to overthrow governments abroad? — and kill anyone who gets in the way — without even a declaration of war?

And where in the Constitution does it say that the United States may have weapons of mass destruction and use them thousands of miles from our shores in causes not our own, but Iraq may neither create nor possess the same kinds of weapons and use them in its own region as ever IT sees fit? To reserve to oneself rights that one does not grant to others is called "hypocrisy" — the major export of Washington, DC.

The British and Israeli governments have apparently seized control of the minds of the WASP ruling class of this country and turned us into the latter-day British Empire, dictating to the world's "lesser breeds without the law" and killing those who refuse to take imperial orders.

Latins in Congress should denounce the perversion of the U.S. from leading anti-imperialist (we threw the British out of this country and thus started the entire modern drive against imperialism) to prime imperialist under the thumb of the British and Israeli elites. The ruling class of the United States — a group to which you are supposed to belong — has taken on the most odious characteristics of that hated Empire, and you say nothing. Shame!

The Framers of the Constitution intended that the United States never go to war save upon a formal DECLARATION OF WAR, and they gave the right to declare war to CONGRESS, and Congress alone. Has Congress declared war on Iraq? If so, when did Congress debate whether the United States has any right to intervene in the internal affairs of another sovereign country? Did Congress consider that if the U.S. embarks upon assassinations abroad — and make no mistake: the death of Saddam Hussein is definitely an object of any military attack — then it legitimizes reciprocal assassination to achieve changes in our own Government . What's sauce for Saddam really is sauce for Clinton.

When did you debate whether it is in U.S. national interests — not those of Israel, our lord and master — to go to war against a country that has never attacked the United States? I heard of no such debate. Are the debates of Congress now held in secret? Or has the President replaced open debate on matters of war and peace by the full Congress with secret consultations with the Congressional leadership alone? If the latter, where is the constitutional warrant for doing that?

You set a very dangerous precedent that can come back to haunt you as much as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution came back to haunt the Congresses of the late 1960s and early 70s, when you allow the President and Congressional leadership to go to war against countries that have never attacked the United States, for reasons having nothing to do with our national interests. Today Iraq, tomorrow ... where?? Congress is handing the President a blank check to use U.S. power anywhere and everywhere in the world it may suit the WASP power structure (and suchever foreign influences as have the ear of the President: today Britain and Israel; tomorrow, who knows?): against Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru (to cut off illegal immigration and drug trafficking, and crush Maoism, and which countries are, militarily, easy pickings), China (which could cost us dearly), even Russia (which could bring on full-scale nuclear devastation of the United States itself, without Congress ever having had a chance to prevent it). Are we to see a revival of the rampant interventionism throughout this Hemisphere that Latinos have so long decried? If the U.S. Government can overthrow a government 6,000 miles from us, why not one only 110 miles from us, or 450 miles, or 1500 miles? If Clinton can bomb Baghdad, why can't his successor bomb Havana , Mexico City or Cali? — all without a declaration of war.

Iraq is not our enemy, and has never been our enemy in its entire 4,300-year history. Moreover, Iraq is right in its attitude toward both Kuwait and Israel. Far from being "a danger to the world", Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people did the entire world a great service in stopping Iran's extreme Islamist revolution from sweeping the Middle East. As repayment for that huge favor, we made war on Saddam and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, even shooting in the back an entire convoy of Iraqi soldiers who were obeying our order to leave Kuwait, in the most sinful U.S. behavior since the Army distributed smallpox-infected blankets to Indians in the 19th Century.

Saddam is a modernizer and secularist in a region where the really dangerous people are backward-looking, religious fundamentalists. We should be on Saddam's side, not the regressive Saudi or Kuwaiti monarchy's, and especially not Israel's. (See the Expansionist Party's homepage at Gorby.html and especially its last two annexes for more on why the United States and Iraq should be both friends and allies.)

Iraq is not OUR enemy. It is ISRAEL's enemy. And the "State" of Israel is not one of the 50 States of the United States, but a foreign power — a stridently anti-Christian, anti-Moslem tribalist monster that has attacked all its neighbors and even countries with which it does not share a border, always in the name of "self-defense". How many Latino soldiers should die for Israel? How many Latino soldiers should murder for Israel?

You should urge Hispanic soldiers, sailors, and pilots to REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS to attack a country we are not at war with — because no declaration of war has been voted, debated, or even requested. Iraq cannot defend itself from U.S. weapons, so using such weapons against them is not war but murder. Latinos must not bloody their hands doing the work of imperious WASPs on behalf of foreign, tribalist Jews at the urging of a haughty British ruling class that seems to think WASPs have a divine right to order the whole world around.

The most fundamental U.S. interest in the world is justice, and attacking Iraq for Israel is scandalously UNJUST. If the U.S. is to go to war, it should ONLY be for U.S. interests, not Israeli nor British interests. And we should get some permanent, tangible benefit out of it — like an oil-rich 51st State of Iraq, whose people would be given all the rights of citizens and PROTECTED by our arms, not murdered by them. Speak out, now!, before the United States disgraces us all, of all racial and ethnic communities, by committing imperialist mass murder for Zionism. [Return to index]

Letter No. 80

[To a Canadian-affairs forum, November 22, 1997]

It's not at all difficult to train soldiers to kill. In wartime emergency mobilizations, nations can turn fuzz-cheeked farmboys into killers practically overnite. More distant nations have the luxury of eight weeks of basic training before their lads are ready to slaughter. This has always been true, even when war comprised up-close-and-personal hacking, stabbing, and disemboweling of men you could look in the eye. Nope. You just put a cross on the front of his tunic and a sword in his hand; or a uniform on his body and a rifle with bayonet in his hand, and send him off to kill. No problem.

Nowadays, war isn't even hand-to-hand. The killer doesn't even see the killed die. It's all just a video-arcade game. A missile streaks across a field and blows up a tank. "Smart bombs" drop down a chimney on a remote video screen. The audience CHEERS! Do they for an instant think that that missile, that bomb is KILLING SOMEBODY — maybe dozens or hundreds of people — right before their eyes? Of course not.

Do you think the pilots of the B52s that dropped bombs on Iraq from so great an altitude that no Iraqi defense force could shoot them down, thought for so much as an INSTANT, "War is two-sided conflict, where I kill because the alternative is to be killed. But here, there's no chance in hell of my being killed by the people I'm killing. This isn't war, it's murder!"? I certainly have never seen any evidence that U.S. or other "allies" in the Gulf "War" (amBush) felt that dropping bombs from a very great height upon defenseless Third World people was terribly wrong. I didn't hear of anyone at all mutinying at the idea of dropping bombs on or shooting missiles at people who couldn't possibly defend themselves. Did you? [Return to index]

ISLAMISM

Letter No. 81

[To a friend, concerning an Associated Press article about Islamic terrorism, August 21, 1998]

THE Moslem world is a mess and getting worse. In Algeria, supposedly religious people have attacked undefended villages, where they literally shoot, bayonet, and slit the throats of hundreds of people in a single attack. Where do they get the idea that Islam smiles on murder, much less mass murder?

Plainly, the intrusion of Jews into the center of Islam by the West, and especially, unfortunately, by the U.S. because Harry Truman had a Jewish friend who called Truman and persuaded him to back Zionism! — yes, history sometimes is that ridiculous — has stirred up terrible hatreds. It was all a terrible mistake. The U.S. was initially OPPOSED to the creation of a Jewish state in Arabia.

What must now be done is a world conference must be convened, of the highest religious authorities of all the world — the Pope, the Patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the most esteemed teachers and preachers of Islam, Hinduism, and all the other major religions, to discuss publicly the morality of murdering people to promote religion and put all the world's condemnation upon religious violence. That may not stop the most insane of the fanatics, but it may prevent a new generation from thinking that religion is about murder. [Return to index]

ZIONISM

Letter No. 82

[To a British-based Jew who found our Netsite interesting but had serious reservations about our stance on Iraq (pro) and Zionism (anti)]

THANKS for your feedback. Tho it is true that after some 25 years creating a Zionist community in Palestine, Britain backed down during the Second World War (it needed Arab allies, or at least neutral Arabs), the damage had already been done. What was in 1891 a mere pie-in-the-sky nutso idea, recreating ancient Israel/Judea, became in 1917, with the Balfour Declaration, a realistic project, approved as such and given express backing by a great power. When Britain followed that up in the 1920s by actually creating such a state-in-the-making and bringing Jews in from other areas, the die was cast, and the terrible costs President Wilson and Colonel House foresaw started to pile up. Britain itself was to pay some of those costs, as Jewish terrorists blew up the King David Hotel and killed their erstwhile champions. Such is Zionist gratitude. Make no mistake about it: if the U.S. should turn against Zionism, Zionists will commit violence against Americans too. Where, then, will American Jews turn? Will they side with their country or their (ostensible) co-religionists? It's a serious question with dangerous potentialities.

There are various solutions to the mess in the Middle East. One is a tripartite United States of Palestine (by any name), with Israel as a Jewish cultural state, Palestine as a Moslem cultural state (incorporating predominantly Moslem areas of Lebanon), Lebanon as a Christian cultural state, and Greater Jerusalem as a neutral federal district, a la the District of Columbia, but with freedom of movement, freedom of religion, and antidiscrimination laws in force in all areas. Another is simply to merge Israel, Palestine, and maybe even Jordan into a single country, with everyone having a single citizenship and a religiously neutral government. Another is to create the "State" of Israel and the incipient Palestinian State into a single state of the United States and apply U.S. constitutional standards of separation of religion from government, plus antidiscrimination legislation. The U.S. could sanely and decently support any of those solutions.

What we CANNOT morally do is support religious bigotry and theocracy. Not only is that contrary to our principles — which would mean that the least we would have to do is discontinue all U.S. aid to Israel, of every kind and amount — but it also endangers us in stirring up fanatical madmen in the Moslem world to murderous furies. * * *

It pains me and other progressives to see American Jews who have been allies and leaders in all the major fights for human rights everywhere around the world suddenly develop profound moral blindness when it comes to the crimes of some Jews against Moslems in Palestine. If the United States were doing to El Salvador or Canada what Israel does routinely to Lebanon and Palestinians, progressive Jews here would be trying literally to lead riots in the streets. But the very same people won't say Word One against Zionist outrages. That is sad, and infuriating.

Jews must decide which of the three versions of Judaism/Jewishness they wish to uphold: (1) Judaism as a world religion and ethical teaching, of universal application, which preaches charity and justice, and fair dealing with all; (2) Jewishness as tribalism, based on race and place, and determined to take all of ancient Hebrew holdings no matter the violence they must do to the Ten Commandments; or (3) Jewishness as a cultural identification, focussing on Jewish tradition, music, storytelling, humor and the like, which can be shared with everyone regardless of religion or ethnicity. I for one hope most will prefer the first and third, and renounce the second. [Return to index]

ALASKA

Letter No. 83

[To a writer for the Anchorage Press about an article he wrote about special "security" measures Bill Gates demanded in Juneau for a cruise ship he had chartered; this is a followup to a phone call from him for permission to print my letter.]
Subj: Bill Gates joke; Alaska
Date: 10/14/98

HERE'S the joke about Bill Gates, as promised.

The End...

Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates were invited to have dinner with God. During dinner He told them:

"I invited you here because I need three important people to send my message out to all people — Tomorrow I will destroy the earth"

After dinner, Yeltsin immediately called together his cabinet and told them:

"I have two very bad news items for you:

1. God really exists, and
2. Tomorrow He will destroy the earth."

Clinton called an Emergency meeting of the Senate and Congress and told them:

"I have Good news and Bad News:

1. The good news is: God really does exist.
2. The bad news is: tomorrow He's destroying the earth."

Bill Gates went back to Microsoft and happily announced:

"I have two fantastic announcements:

1. I am one of three most important people on earth.
2. The Year 2000 problem is solved." [Sent to an online joke service by Sue "Z" S.]

I'm one of those people who appreciates what Microsoft has done but also understands that now, as ever, "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely", so Gates has to be restrained. Perhaps Microsoft should be broken up: operating system in one company; applications in another; joint ventures with publishers and broadcasters in another; etc.

I'm interested in Alaska because it is one of the few states I have not yet been to AND because its geographical isolation is an accident of history. If President Polk, who fought the Mexican War and brought the Southwest into the Union, had stuck by his campaign slogan "54-40 or fight", Britain would likely have backed down (for fear of losing all of Canada to a victorious United States, which had considerable advantages on the ground), the U.S. would have annexed the whole of the Oregon Territory, and Alaska would today be contiguous with the other states! If Britain had fought, the U.S. might have been seriously injured in coastal cities, briefly, until it had time to produce and man a navy, but the War of 1812 showed Brits how dangerous the U.S. Navy could be, and the ruling class of England could not be sure (a) that the U.S. would not simply march into (empty) Canada and annex it whole, then use those additional resources, possibly including captured British merchant or even military vessels in Canadian ports, against the Royal Navy or (b) that the U.S. would content itself with taking Oregon and Canada but might go on the offensive after it recovered from the initial shock of British attack and wreaked vengeance not just on Britain's other American colonies, but also on the home islands, British shipping worldwide, even Britain's other far-flung colonies. Tho it is hard to appreciate today, much of the U.S. was violently anti-British in 1850 and would gladly have destroyed the British Empire by, for instance, fomenting native revolts in India, aiding Irish independence movements, etc.

Alas, it was not to be, and Alaska is separated from the bulk of the Nation by 'British' Columbia. The result has been greater isolation than necessary, and needlessly poor roads to Alaska from the Lower 48. At least we had the good sense to buy Russian America. Can you imagine what the world would have been like if the Red Army had been glaring down at us from Ketchikan for 70 years?

It is because history shows us that decisions to expand or not expand can have unexpected and potentially devastating consequences for centuries that I am an Expansionist. The longest-term security of the United States would be best served by bringing Canada into the Union as several States, which would integrate Alaska fully into an expanded and improved Interstate Highway System, among other effects. It would also win greater attention to northern concerns. [Return to index]

PUERTO RICO

(http://members.aol.com/XPUS2/PR.html)

Letter No. 84

[To a British member and a Canadian associate, September 21, 1998 re Alaska and Puerto Rico]

ALASKA was purchased outright by the taxpayers of the United States, and like most of the still-empty West, much of its land is still owned by the Federal Government as trustee for the people of the Nation and indeed the planet, present and future. Past disregard for posterity did terrible damage to the land and many species, and we have finally, as a society, learned not to keep doing such things. Some people want to drill for oil or create this mess or that on public lands, but state and federal governments now resist most such calls to irresponsibility. Naturally, that makes some would-be rampant exploiters unhappy. Tough.

Actually, many Americans want to put even more land away into permanent wilderness areas, national forests, national parks, historical monuments, etc., not take any of it out of the system. Alaska is immense (not quite as immense as Quebec, but immense nonetheless). Unlike Quebec, there aren't 7 million people there clamoring for development of resources. There are only perhaps 607,000 people in an area of over half a million square miles, or almost 1 square mile per person. True Alaskans like that space and emptiness, and don't want the land ravished.

I don't think Alaskans really need to answer the inane criticisms of such nuts as Vogler and his Alaska-independence fellow loons. The Vogler propaganda should simply be removed from the PR51 site, where it only wastes people's time and confuses the statehood message.

As for PR not asking for its current status, that is just plain wrong. "Commonwealth" was a contrivance of Puerto Ricans to which the U.S. grudgingly agreed in 1952. Luis Muñoz Marín, the most famous of all Puerto Ricans, is famous because he took a benighted, desperately poor colony and by means of negotiations with a great power, converted it to self-governing status within economic union and under the military protection of the United States, then launched Operation Bootstrap to develop the island economically by making good use of its special arrangement with the U.S. So "Commonwealth" is a Puerto Rican invention which others have sought to emulate.

There are four Puerto Ricans in Congress, three mainland-elected Representatives born in PR, all of whom have full rights to vote, plus the nonvoting Commissioner who was, last I knew, ex-Governor Carlos Romero Barceló, with whom I have had a cordial exchange of letters in the past and who appreciates XP's efforts, minuscule tho they have been to date. The Commissioner can speak on the House floor, and both speak and vote in committee. The Democrats in the last Congress before they lost to the Republicans, had allowed previously nonvoting reps to vote in main votes too, as long as their vote wouldn't make a difference! That is, if there were more than a five-vote margin in any measure's passage, reps from PR, VI, GU, AS, and DC could all vote. But if their vote would mean passage of a bill that otherwise would not pass, their votes would not count! Bizarre, huh? Well, the Republicans put an end to that, and I'm with them on that 100%. The Constitutional plan, which followed up the good work of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (passed right here in New York under the Articles of Confederation) was to convert territories to full states as soon as possible, not to give the U.S. a permanent Empire.

As for President, there is no constitutional bar whatsoever to a Puerto Rican born after 1917 becoming President of the United States. A President must be a citizen by birth (as is everyone born in PR since 1917), at least thirty-five years of age, and "fourteen years a resident within the United States". Constitutional scholars would have to decide whether for this purpose PR is "within the United States". I think a case could be made that PR plainly IS "within the United States" in that it has permanent organs of the U.S. Government (a District Court, Bankruptcy Court, local offices of federal agencies, etc., more than just military bases; and U.S. federal laws apply to PR unless either PR is specifically excluded or the other way around, if the act specifically names PR — but I think it is unless PR is specifically excluded. In any case, any PR-born politician who has resided on the mainland for 14 years would assuredly be entitled to run for President. As to whether he could win, that's another story, but the Presidency is pretty hard for anybody to win.

What is at issue as to the status of PR or any other colony, from the U.S. side, is equality in a democracy or the creation of Empire. The mere fact that some colonials may be content to be colonials does not make colonialism any the less disgraceful to the United States, which denounced colonialism at its origin. Colonialism is destructive to colonials' initiative, self-esteem, self-reliance, etc. PR's neither-nor status is DESTRUCTIVE. It keeps PR from prospering the way it surely would as a state, and keeps it in a politically immature mindset and a tumultuous domestic political scene punctuated from time to time by bombs and bullets. It is NOT a good thing, and there are VERY good reasons for ending it.

The argument that PR risks its culture more as a state than as a "Commonwealth" is hard to support. States have substantial autonomy. Legally, there is no reason PR would have to give up its culture to participate fully in the Union. As a practical matter, yes, it is likely that more PRans would feel they "should" know English better and yes, more would start to migrate emotionally if not physically to the mainland. But there is nothing about statehood, legally, that would require it. As I have said, however, the whole world is changing toward a global culture, the outlines of which can be espied even now: diverse but able to share thru English. Dutch and Swedish nationals who learn English beautifully do not cease to be Dutch or Swedish.

Todd is quite right that the U.S. could easily afford to continue to send welfare to PR, but welfare isn't good for people, even if the 'burden of Empire' should be trivial. (Even so, there are penny-pinchers in Congress who resent that tiny burden.) Self-reliance is good for people, but PR's status is that of a "dependency", so "dependence" is a natural mental pair to a dependent political status. The one reinforces the other in a vicious circle.

The U.S. doesn't need to worry about bilingualism. There is no real threat to the internal cohesion of the U.S., and the only political leaders who pretend there is a threat do so out of racial (most Latins are nonwhite) and largely religious (anti-Catholic) bigotry. It's a "hot button" to push if you want a better chance of winning office from a socially retrograde district. If one watches any Spanish-language TV station in the U.S. for more than 20 minutes (and we have two, count 'em, TWO Spanish-language networks), he is likely to see a commercial — or even infomercial (program-length commercial) — for one or more English-language courses. Spanish, not English, is endangered within the U.S. — which is exactly why PR, in which 3.8 million Spanish-speakers are concentrated, worries that the island could lose its Spanish culture in statehood, even tho the concentration of Spanish speakers would scarcely diminish, even if several hundred thousand retirees from the mainland were to take up permanent residence there and a few more hundred thousands of PRans should move to the mainland. This is the same fear that drives some Quebec separatists, even tho there is no sign that some regions of Quebec (e.g., the Chicoutimi area) are making any move toward English). [Return to index]

Letter No. 85

[To El Nuevo Dia en Linea, a Puerto Rican newspaper's online edition, July 8, 1998] [Published]

The general strike [that occurred that week] has given Puerto Rico a taste of what independence would bring: "caos" [the acronym for the name of the strike organizing committee, but also the Spanish word for "chaos"], disorder, sabotage, Communist-influenced union violence against business and individuals who do not toe the party line. Perhaps the disorder will shock Puerto Ricans out of their complacency and make them realize that only statehood can guarantee their personal liberties. . . . The independentistas have shown their Castroist hand. Let the people of Puerto Rico cut it off. Sincerely, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Chairman, Expansionist Party of the United States / Partido Expansionista de los Estados Unidos [Return to index]

Letter No. 86

[To a Puerto Rican independentista (July 18, 1998) who wrote in response to the letter published by El Nuevo Dia en Linea]

Estadistas and independentistas both have the best interests of Puerto Rico at heart: we both want Puerto Ricans to grow up and assume the responsibilities of political maturity. It is 'commonwealthers' who are the enemy, who are keeping Puerto Ricans political children, irresponsible and self-subvertingly dependent on their rich Uncle Sam. Independentistas should demand of the U.S. Congress that it unilaterally end the destructive neither/nor and temporary status, 'commonwealth' — which really should be called 'commonpoverty', because that is what it prolongs — and force Puerto Ricans finally to choose between the only two mature and permanent statuses available to them: statehood and independence.

'Commonwealth' is ripping Puerto Ricans' identity apart, into two mutually antagonistic parts, nationalist and 'American' ; Latin American and 'gringo'). It is best for us all if independentistas and estadistas JOIN FORCES to put an end, once and for all, and as soon as possible, to "Commonwealth". Abajo La Isla de Ni/Ni; Arriba el Estado — o el Pais — de Puerto Rico. [Down with the Isle of Neither/Nor; Up with the State — or the Country — of Puerto Rico.] [Return to index]

Letter No. 87

[To a teenage independentista who wrote in response to the same published letter]

Hopefully you will not influence the course of events, so Puerto Ricans generally will not have to suffer from the infantile unwillingness of independentistas to admit that an independent Puerto Rico would, even in the best of times, face enormous problems, and, in the worst of times, such as severe economic depression or the aftermath of a terrible hurricane [Puerto Rico was in fact struck by a powerful hurricane in 1998, soon after this exchange], face problems it could not possibly solve by itself — but it would BE by itself, so have to compete with 186 other countries for attention from the United Nations, European Union, United States, and other possible helpers — none of whom would feel any special connection or responsibility to Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico independence is a misty, soft-edged dream only because it's not real. If it were real, it would be a glaring, sharp-edged nightmare. [Return to index]

Letter No. 88

[To U.S. Senator Frank H. Murkowski (Republican of Alaska), July 16, 1998, re Puerto Rico statehood]

Dear Senator Murkowski:

RECENT hearings on Puerto Rico statehood may have disgusted you with that small island's inability to make up its mind about anything. But realize that WE DID THAT TO THEM, in keeping them as colonials for decades longer than made any sense. The essence of colonialism is depriving people of either the ability or the need to think and act for themselves. Take away people's responsibility and they end up being like Puerto Rico, which I call 'The Island of Neither/Nor' (La Isla de Ni/Ni), neither state nor country: a people incapable of accepting responsibility for themselves, incapable of making decisions that bear consequences.

Puerto Rico is an embarrassment to the United States, to Latin America, to the world. It is THE WORLD'S OLDEST COLONY, and 40% of its population would be happy to have the island retain that crown forever.

I am infuriated when people from historically recent former territories, like Alaska (yourself) and Hawaii, consign their fellow citizens to continued colonialism and the emasculation and irresponsibility it produces. Alaska, which is practically empty, went from purchase to State in 82 years, despite having almost no people — less than 1/6 as many as Puerto Rico to this day. Hawaii went from annexation to Statehood in 51 years, despite having a population, even now, with all that Statehood has added, substantially less than one third Puerto Rico's.

Here we are, in 1998, commemorating 100 YEARS of U.S. colonialism and another 405 years of Spanish colonialism over Puerto Rico, yet the Senate of the United States does nothing, as tho the United States — which threw off British colonialism and started this entire planet on an anticolonial course — invented colonialism rather than anticolonialism! Appalling.

Let us be plain. I accuse the Senate of the United States of religious bigotry. You and I and all the world know that throughout U.S. history scores of millions of people who wanted to join the larger community have readily given up ancestral languages, and Hispanics all around the Nation are doing this same thing very fast. Relatively rarely, however, do people born to Catholicism convert to Protestantism. Publicly proclaimed worry about the primacy of English in the Nation is an obvious cover for anti-Catholic bigotry. English isn't threatened in the United States. Protestant hegemony, however, IS.

I accuse the United States Senate of gross and revolting anti-Catholic bigotry in refusing even to CONSIDER Puerto Rico for immediate statehood after an unprecedented 100 years of colonialism. NO other territory has EVER had so LONG a period of 'preparation' for statehood without being granted statehood. For much the same reason, the Philippines, 90% Catholic, were never given the option of becoming a territory on the road to statehood. The Catholic-and-Moslem Philippines were cast out of the fold and forced into independence, even tho it would have been in everybody's interest if the Philippines had been brought into the Union.

Plainly the powers that be in this country are somehow scared that immigration from Latin America, combined with full integration of Puerto Rico, foreshadow the day when Catholics will be the majority. Anti-"papist" nonsense still holds sway in the corridors of power in this country, and I'm tired of it. We've had ONE Catholic President in the 223 years of this Republic. ONE! I don't know if you are yourself Catholic, as your name would suggest, but all Americans should be indignant at the hold that anti-Catholic bigotry has on the Nation's Government, and the insidious but hidden role it plays in denying 3.8 million Americans in Puerto Rico the full citizenship to which they are entitled AS citizens.

If the proponents of "Commonwealth" — which should really be called "Commonpoverty" — are sincere in saying they would boycott a referendum on status, this is the IDEAL time to launch a referendum, since statehood would, absent opposition by Commonpoverty advocates, win hands down! But the anti-Catholic bigots who dominate Congress, from the rednecked Trent Lott to the pink-necked Newt Gingrich, do not want Puerto Rico statehood to win, because they would then have to vote against statehood when the bill came up for approval even tho the bulk of Puerto Ricans vote for it, and thus reveal that their actual controlling principle is mindless anti-Catholic hatred.

The Protestant ruling class of the United States is scared sh**less that Catholicism will, unless Hispanic migration/statehood be stopped, become the majority religion of the United States. They pretend that they are concerned about church interference with politics, but what they are really afraid of is that the interference in politics of THEIR ministers will be more than offset by the interference in politics of Catholic priests. The most bizarre feature of this entrenched anti-Catholic bigotry is that on many political issues, conservative Protestants and mainstream Catholics are in 100% agreement: as regards abortion, homosexuality, and a hundred other issues, the Catholic hierarchy and Protestant conservatives agree point-for-point. If right-wing Protestants would realize that the Catholic Church is the greatest force on Earth for stability, "family values", and resistance to changing morality to comport with the fashion of the day, the natural alliance between these two great forces would emerge plainly, for all to see.

Puerto Ricans speak Spanish because Puerto Rico is not a State. Once it becomes a State, Puerto Ricans by the hundreds of thousands will quickly abandon Spanish and become unilingual in English. The rest will speak both, brilliantly, and provide us a rich resource of translators and salespeople to help us succeed wildly in our dealings with the entire Spanish-speaking world.

Puerto Rico is indecisive, confused, and lost in negativism because that's what colonialism and dependence DO to people. End colonialism and you will end Puerto Rico's disgusting lack of initiative and decisiveness.

I am sending copy of this message to the National Conference (formerly, National Conference of Christians and Jews), Catholic News Service, and National Council of Churches. I challenge you to challenge the Senate into acting THIS SESSION to submit to the people of Puerto Rico a STATEHOOD bill for ratification — NOT a meaningless 'status referendum', but a binding yes-or-no statehood plebiscite: if "yes", Puerto Rico becomes the 51st State IMMEDIATELY; if "no", Puerto Rico becomes an independent country, with no further claim to payments from the U.S. Treasury, IMMEDIATELY. [Return to index]

Letter No. 89

[To an Albertan who implied on a Canadian-affairs forum that "Rome" interferes in the day-to-day operations of all Roman Catholic institutions and tries to dictate to governments]

THE key word that justifies the (half- but only half-playful use of the term "anti-Catholic propaganda") is "Rome". The Catholic Church is "Roman" only at the highest levels; in all other ways it is totally local, and may indeed be staffed and headed very high into the hierarchy by people who differ, sometimes starkly, with the official stance of the Vatican. As [a forum participant from British Columbia] has pointed out, the Catholic bishops of Canada are regarded as "renegade" in Rome, as are a lot of American bishops. "Rome" controls almost nothing about the church as a day-to-day matter, and suggestions that "Rome" has its hand in every local church and, for instance, orders politicians about in countries around the world is indeed anti-'papist' propaganda, deeply offensive to most Catholics. John Kennedy had to fight that kind of scurrilous nonsense, and assure the American people that he might kiss the Pope's ring, but not his a**. [Return to index]

Letter No. 90

[To the organization English First re their public opposition to Puerto Rico statehood, December 28, 1997]

Imperialism is always wrong. If 25% of Puerto Rico's people speak English fluently, that shows how well we are doing in assimilating them. Only neglect leaves them outside the mainstream. With statehood comes attention and a will to integrate and assimilate, as well as more English TV and cable, films, etc. The population of PR is small; of the US, huge. You leave yourselves open to charges of racism, anti-Catholic bigotry, etc., in opposing equality for your fellow citizens.

You should be working to promote English as a positive thing, and not attack Spanish, as in your hostility to Puerto Rico statehood. Urge the U.S. Virgin Islands, the bulk of whose people speak English, to join with PR to create the 51st State, as a way to speed the assimilation of Puerto Ricans to English. Promote spelling reform, at least as a teaching tool, to make it easier for people to learn English, especially people who come from a phonetic orthography like that of Spanish. The Expansionist Party of the United States is a small international organization that has confidence in the ability of the US to absorb PR and many other areas that now speak other languages, to everyone's benefit. We will be posting materials in favor of PR-VI statehood soon on our netsite (see PR.html). And materials relating to reform of English spelling appear at my personal homepage: http://members.aol.com/Fanetiks. Be positive, not negative. Have faith in the magic that is the United States. [Return to index]

Letter No. 91

[To The New York Times, September 2, 1998]

MISSISSIPPI Governor Fordyce declared at the Southern Governors Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that he opposed granting statehood to Puerto Rico because a State of Puerto Rico would likely send Democrats to Congress! Astounding. Puerto Rican citizens of the United States are to be denied the right to vote for Congress because they might not vote Republican? Where is it written that allegiance to the 'right' party is a precondition to statehood? What next? Shall the Republicans introduce legislation to disenfranchise mainlanders who vote Democratic?

The Republican Party plainly subscribes to a profoundly anti-democratic (not just anti-Democratic) creed if it blocks Puerto Rico statehood from the belief that Puerto Ricans would vote Democratic and Democrats must not be allowed to vote. Let the Republican-dominated Senate apologize for its offense to democracy by passing a Puerto Rico Statehood Act — not a meaningless law to permit a nonbinding status referendum whose main purpose is to delay statehood, not grant it. And let Congress kill two colonies with one bill by merging the U.S. Virgin Islands into a new State of Puerto Rico, and thus free us of one more disgrace to democracy in maintaining colonies in the Caribbean. While it's at it, let Congress as well merge our Pacific colonies, Guam and American Samoa, into the State of Hawaii, to end the disgrace of colonialism in the Pacific. (The enabling legislation should provide that if either territory rejects such merger, they vote themselves independent of the United States entirely by that act, and sever their legal connection to and rights with regard to, this country — and its treasury — by their refusal to step up to full citizenship.)

Puerto Rico is the world's oldest colony, and the one country that should never have had colonies, the country that started the entire modern drive toward worldwide decolonization, is the colonial overlord. That must end. Puerto Rico must be forced to make up its mind: statehood or independence — fish or cut bait. [Return to index]

HAWAIIAN SEPARATISM

(see pro-Expansionist item on the Pacific that ignores such separatism: Pacific.html)

Letter No. 92

[To the executive director of a Hawaiian independence organization, September 29, 1998, under the heading "HI sovereignty: dangerous nonsense"]

HAWAIIAN advocates of independence from the U.S. who pretend that Hawaii's current status is somehow unfair and that Hawaii "has never been a state" are talking nonsense that could get them hanged. No joke. I would remind you that the last time any group attempted to take a state out of the Union, a huge war erupted in which over half a million people were killed. Today, that formerly secessionist region is gungho American nationalist, and is brimming over with people willing to slaughter the entire membership of any Hawaiian secessionist movement. The bulk of mainlanders would gladly stand aside to let them do so.

By all means try to leave the Union. Just remember that the Union is not just a political fancy but a legal structure entitled to defend its territorial integrity against all challenges by military force, and that the United States is the world's only superpower, so that not all the rest of the planet put together could stop us from preserving our Union by any means necessary. How difficult, really, do you think it would be to find people to fill any spots in a tropical paradise emptied by Hawaiian lunatics executed and cremated? How difficult?

In all seriousness, I must urge you and all your ilk to stop talking nonsense and instead deal with the real issues of social and economic justice by the means afforded by a rich, generous, fair-minded democracy. Devise reasonable, sane solutions to what are, in planetary terms, trivial problems. Look around the world at other small countries with minimal resources and thick populations, and stop pretending that the people of such ministates can live wonderful lives in the modern world. You're carrying rose-colored nostalgia way too far.

Life in backwaters is not what most people nowadays want, as the progressive depopulation of Samoa demonstrates. Hawaii is part of the modern world and will remain so, no matter how many fools wish to turn Hawaiians' eyes backward to a nonexistent golden age. Even if the U.S. were to allow Hawaii to leave the Union — which is so unlikely as to be unworthy even of contemplating — Hawaii would only become a cultural colony of the United States, without the resources to resist. The only alternative to being a colony of the United States would be to become a colony, or integral part, of Japan. I suspect, indeed, that non-Japanese Hawaiian sovereigntists are being played for fools by Japanese imperialists who also look backward to nonexistent "good old days", when Japan could dream idiot dreams about world domination. Mighty Japan couldn't stand against the much-reduced power of the U.S. fifty-three years ago. Hawaii doesn't stand a chance against the vastly greater power of the United States today. GROW UP.

[The Hawaiian separatist movement itself links from its homepage to an article about the miserable turnout for an election for delegates to a convention on sovereignty that shows the utter lack of popular support for their moronic proposal:

"Less than 9 percent of [ethnic/racial] Hawaiians voted to elect delegates to a native Hawaiian convention, but Ha Hawaii officials contend the low turnout does not change a thing.

"In results released today, of the 101,951 Hawaiians registered to vote in the Jan. 17 election, only 8,867 cast their ballots.

"Ha Hawaii Executive Director Kaipo Kincaid said despite the low turnout, this is the strongest sovereignty initiative taken in the state to date. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 27, 1999"] [Return to index]

AMERICAN INDIANS / AMERINDS / "NATIVE AMERICANS"

Letter No. 93

(This is the ingenious logo of the American Indian Movement.  
We show it here as a colorful example of Indian creativity,
not to imply that we endorse that group's program or they ours.)

[To a Canadian correspondent, September 29, 1998]

ALL "treaties" with Indian "nations" are legal dead letters that no sensible modern state heeds in any major legal area. Democracy requires only equality among citizens, not special treatment of "nations" within their nation. Treaties can be "denounced" or "renounced" and rendered legally void by any power that wishes to do so. Indian "nations" could denounce the treaties that bind them to Canada or the U.S., but that would not compel either of those larger countries to acknowledge the independence of such trivial "nations".

The ultimate resolution of silly pretensions to independence is found in force. As Andrew Jackson remarked (approximate quote; my old Bartlett's does not include this for some reason), "Justice [whoever, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court] has rendered his decision. Now let him enforce it." Jackson, then President of the United States, had just been told by the Supreme Court that he could not forcibly remove the Cherokee Indians to Oklahoma. He did so anyway, in pushing them onto the infamous Trail of Tears.

Modern states do not have to consent to fragmentation unless they so choose. The world has had many civil wars and will have many more until people stop confusing independence with sovereignty, and sovereignty with rights. Independence does not itself confer practical rights, only legal "rights"; but if legal rights cannot be enforced in the real world, they are meaningless and unreal. Do national boundaries void the force of international economics and technology? Of course not. Small countries become helpless reeds against the winds of world economics, politics, technology, and culture. And tho one may gain the right to speak one's own language in a small, sovereign state, if he can't make a living in that language in the real world, he's going to have to learn an international language anyway; learn to use technological devices of foreign origin; etc.

The world is becoming more interdependent, not less, and every new "advance" that pulls people apart runs afoul of human nature, which seeks ever larger unity. My sister in California just opened an office outside her home because working at home was driving her nuts. People like to get out of the house, and when the national "house" a people are confined in is too small, they leave for wider horizons.

Small towns have their uses, but so do great cities. And tho some people can move between the two worlds in daily commutation and others on vacations, neither place alone is enuf for all of us. We in the cities like to know there are small towns out there. People in small towns need the productions of the great cities. And what is true of towns and cities is true of states and countries. It is when one builds walls between areas that naturally complement each other that we get into trouble. Besides, people tend to flow around such walls, no matter how high we try to build them: witness the U.S.-Mexican border. Local autonomy with shared national sovereignty is the best way to go. It meets the need for control over those things that most frequently touch us, the things nearest us, while allowing everyone to participate in something larger and more ennobling than trash collection and sewer service.

So let Indians have reservations/reserves as touchstones to their past; but let them also commit to take advantage of everything the modern world has, and to share with the wider world such aspects of their ancestral culture as have value. Breaking up this great world into tiny, inward-looking and defensive tribal enclaves is not and cannot be the wave of the future. [Return to index]

Letter No. 94

[To the Seattle Times, October 4, 1998, under the heading "Makah whale hunt"]

A CERTAIN band of savages pretending to be a "nation" not signatory to and therefore not bound by the international prohibitions on whaling intends to slaughter gray whales in defiance of U.S. and world standards. If killing whales is what the Makah culture is all about, I should much prefer that we slaughter not whales but the Makah Indians and exterminate the evil, worthless culture they wish to "preserve" — a culture that hasn't existed for decades and wasn't worth preserving in the first place.

It is time for the United States to denounce all "treaties" with Indian "nations". There are no nations within the United States, and no group of citizens has rights superior to everyone else's (Fourteenth Amendment). Even the text of the treaty the Makahs pretend authorizes them to whale, says plainly that the Indians are to have only the rights that other Americans enjoy:

"Article 4, The right of taking fish and of whaling or sealing at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the United States,..." (Stevens Treaty, 1855)

Inasmuch as non-Makah Americans don't have the right to kill gray whales, neither do Makahs.

Some Indians have become offensive troublemakers, flouting the laws of the states and Nation. That's got to end. The Indian "nations" were conquered and annexed; those that weren't formally conquered would have been had they continued to resist the incorporation of their territory into the United States. These "treaties" are legal fictions; it's time for us to get real. "Treaties" with Indians were not international agreements between equals; they were mere written promises to insignificantly small groups of backward people by governments that left office generations ago.

The pretense that Indian tribes are separate "nations'"has done nobody any good. The bulk of Indians have lost their cultures beyond restoring; many live lives of misery for refusing to accept that the past is over but the modern world has much to offer. Indians have got to leave the reservation, accept that they are Americans like everybody else, then come into the modern age and bring with them only features of their culture that have genuine value, value that the larger culture can appreciate and benefit from.

The reservation system must be abolished outright or reformed to corporate structure, on the model of the Alaska native claims settlement; all special rights for Indians must be abolished; and Indians must admit aloud that they are no better than the rest of us and that the extraordinary rights they enjoy as Americans are enough for anyone. American Indians enjoy rights within the U.S. that hundreds of millions of would-be immigrants would literally kill for. They don't need more.

If the Makahs demand special treatment, we should remind that that special treatment can mean hostile treatment. We surely have the firepower to sink any Makah vessel that attempts to whale and kill any Makah who takes automatic weapons onto the water. A few Makah lunatics threaten to undo all the progress in Indian-Caucasian race relations of the past century. Do they really think white people can't hurt them? [Return to index]

Letter No. 95

[To the Vancouver Sun, October 5, 1998 re its article "Whalers have tool for the task", Oct. 3]

SOME Makah Indians pretend that they need to hunt whales to restore and preserve their culture, but they intend to use early anti-TANK rifles in that hunt. When did the Makah culture develop anti-tank weapons? [Historically, "The Makah used 18 foot harpoons tipped with mussel shell blades and bone points. — Carl Waldman, Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (New York: Facts on File Inc., 1988)]

The pretense that Makah hunting of gray whales can be "humane" is outrageous Newspeak. These are whales that have become used to human beings as friends in a number of places where touristic whale-watching has become a major industry. Off Baja California, rafts of tourists glide among mothers and calves, and tourists actually stroke the backs of relaxed whales. Now these same whales that have come to trust people are to be slaughtered by Makah Indians. Talk about shooting ducks in a barrel!

Any culture that depends upon the slaughter of whales is a culture overdue to vanish into history. If Makahs insist that whaling is essential to their culture, then it is time for the bulk of humanity to exterminate the Makah culture, by any means necessary. There is no place in modern North America for savages. But modern Makahs, like tribal elder Alberta Thompson, know that whaling is NOT an indispensable part of a modern Makah culture. Throwbacks must be bounced out of Makah leadership, and modern people installed. But in any case, the whale hunt must NOT proceed, even if to stop it should require savage violence against savages. [Return to index]

Letter No. 96

[To the Vancouver Province October 5, 1998, under the heading "Makah whale hunt"]

MAKAH Indian elder Alberta Thompson is a heroine for our times who understands that times have changed, and the Makahs must change with them. ("Elder sheds tears for whale", October 4)

Makahs do not need to kill whales to survive, so cannot make a 'subsistence' case for exemption from the international ban on whaling. If a "cultural" exemption is made for the Makahs, then all "cultures", worldwide, that have at any time whatsoever killed whales can assert the same right. That means not just B.C. Indian bands but also Japanese, Icelanders, Norwegians, New Zealanders, and even Yankee whalers out of Mystic Seaport, Connecticut — plus dozens more. In short, a "cultural" exemption would fill the international ban on whaling with more holes than Swiss cheese.

Neither the U.S. nor Canada can reasonably permit "natives" to claim exemption from world standards of behavior on some ridiculous "cultural" ground. The modern world has obsoleted many traditions, and just as white people have renounced the rapacious behavior that produced the destruction of the passenger pigeon and near-destruction of the bison and wolf, so too must Indians and Eskimos (by any name) renounce rapacious behaviors of their own. Some scholars suggest that Paleo-Indians wiped out a number of major game species, perhaps including the wooly mammoth, thru insane overhunting: "Pleistocene Overkill". We must prevent recurrence of such idiot outrages.

We must also declare unambiguously and without shame that Indians cannot claim more rights than everybody else. The flip side of special treatment is specially adverse treatment. If Indians don't want to be singled out for discrimination, they must give up all pretension to superiority.

Perhaps Makah "culture" has positive features worth preserving. But whaling is surely not one of them. [Return to index]

Letter No. 97

[To the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, June 2, 1998 re American Indians]

YES, some Indians are doing very, very well in the U.S. today, taking advantage of their specially privileged status to ignore laws that apply to everyone else. In large part, the huge growth in legalized gambling in the U.S., with all its challenges, is a direct result of the activities of Indians in creating bingo and casino operations on reservations beyond state and federal law.

And yes, there are an unknown number of Americans who are of mixed ancestry, with some Indian thrown in. I suspect that there never were enough Indians to account for all the people who claim to be part Indian — that being very "in" nowadays; so much for U.S. anti-Indian racism — but there are some tribes, like the Cherokees, who did make efforts early on to integrate. Alas, their efforts didn't save them from being uprooted by the worst American President ever, Andrew Jackson, and forced out of their ancestral lands to Oklahoma, hundreds of miles away over a Trail of Tears.

People interested in what is presently happening with American Indians have many places to check on the Internet; the listing of links at http://pop.life.uiuc.edu/~alynch/native.html [or http://www.lookup.com/homepages/74329/indian.html] might be a good place to start. In investigating a couple of months ago the truth or falsity of the claim that the Mohicans had been largely exterminated by the Iroquois, I came across a site (the URL of which I have lost) that had extensive discussions of the histories of various Amerind tribes — more indeed than I wanted to know. What these histories did show, however, is that Indians were slaughtering each other quite nicely without the white man's help, not just on the Plains but even in Eastern woodlands long before whitey arrived. The white man just brought more effective weapons into the battles.

The life of American Indians is a lot safer, longer, and better in the United States than it ever was in the separate Indian "nations". And a Mohawk from New York State can go safely thru the former territories of hundreds of tribes all across the Nation without risking death at the hands of hostiles from other tribes. Amerinds can even form transtribal organizations, even international organizations, to defend and promote their many different cultures ONLY because outsiders established peace and much larger political entities within which they can operate. [Return to index]

Letter No. 98

[To a member of the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, re British harm to American Indians before the establishment of the United States; April 28, 1998]

AMERICAN Indians have all the rights of other citizens, plus some. There is, as I have said, no outflow of Amerinds to any other country, and scores of millions of people in the Third World would literally kill to take over an Amerind's identity and gain his rights in the United States.

Moreover, much of the harm done to American Indians was done during the BRITISH era, and especially during the rivalry with France (including the French and Indian War, which produced many Indian deaths), then during the Revolutionary War, when the British used Indians as proxies for its own soldiers in attacking and massacring Americans, as naturally incited counterattacks and countermassacres of Indians by Americans. Even after Britain supposedly gave up the ghost in the U.S., it continued to incite Indians in the interior of the U.S. against Americans until at least the War of 1812, which such incitement helped produce! The bitterness this engendered caused immeasurable harm to Indians.

Much of the "decimation" of Indian populations that supposedly occurred in what is now the United States (but probably did not really have any significant impact) took place soon after initial contact between Europeans and natives, as natives contracted European diseases. Americans had nothing to do with that, which long pre-dated the establishment of the United States and of American policy toward Indians. There are, however, some incidents during the Indian Wars of the 1870s-1890 in which smallpox-infected blankets were supposedly passed out by the U.S. Army to Indians. Whether this actually happened or is just Communist-origin, anti-U.S. propaganda from the Vietnam era I do not know. [Return to index]

CUBA

(Elian.html)

Letter No. 99

[To a Canadian correspondent, October 5, 1998, under the heading "Investment is not speech"]

YOUR suggestion that U.S. prohibitions on sending economic aid to enemies of the United States is somehow a restriction on freedom of speech is absurd. Substitute "Hitler" for "Castro", and you may see the distinction. Castroite propaganda can be published with impunity in the U.S. We just don't care to give Fidel financial resources with which to ravage the world in trying to spread his insane "revolution". You would have us do "business as usual" with Hitler. We'd rather not. [Return to index]

Letter No. 100

[Two messages to members of a British public-affairs computer forum who suggested that the U.S. has no justification for embargoing Cuba. First message, August 19, 1998]

U.S. SANCTIONS against Cuba are narrowly targeted against a rogue state that has killed uncountable thousands of Americans in sending an army of criminals mixed in among the Mariel Boatlift people and has engaged in and promoted a number of guerrilla and other wars in places as far apart as Bolivia and Angola. Cubans have, according to the statements they are willing to make to the international press, been Castroized, so deserve any hardship they face.

[Second message, September 12, 1998]

CUBA has intervened militarily in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, at the least. Che Guevara, Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary, was killed while promoting Communist revolution in Bolivia. And on, and on. [Return to index]

BRAZIL

Letter No. 101

[To Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, July 14, 1998, under the heading "Copa do Mundo" (World Cup)]

BRAZILIANS should be glad their soccer team lost the World Cup, because a win would have caused Brazil to celebrate, and Brazil has precious little to celebrate. If Brazilians would put less energy into playing soccer and more energy into bringing their country into the modern world, into achieving quality education for all, finding homes for Brazil's uncountable homeless children, building decent housing for everyone, pushing thru land reform and progressive taxation to spread the nation's wealth more equitably, and otherwise making of Brazil the fabulous country it could be, then Brazilians could celebrate every day in the way that counts most: by living well. [Return to index]

KOSOVO

Letter No. 102

[To a European-affairs computer forum re Serbian "genocide" in Kosovo, October 13, 1998]

THE borders of Eastern Europe were redrawn in about 1921 to create relatively homogeneous little countries out of what had been polyglot empires that suffered defeat in World War I. Yugoslavia was one such creation, the understanding being that the South Slavs had enough in common despite linguistic and religious differences to hold together in a mutual appreciation society. Didn't work. What reason is there to think that Albanians and Serbs, who feel they have very little in common, can make a go of living together in the same country?

There IS an Albania. Albania for the Albanians! Albanians TO Albania! In the same way, there IS a Serbia. Serbia for the Serbians! Serbs TO Serbia! It is not for Serbia to take over parts of Croatia and Bosnia, nor for Albanians to take over parts of Yugoslavia and Macedonia. If they want to live in an Albanian cultural and political climate, they can simply move to their beloved Albania, just as Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia can move to their beloved Serbia.

As for "genocide", it really is long past time for people to stop throwing around that very serious word. The KLA is not a cultural organization but a guerrilla army KILLING Slavs to take part of Yugoslavia OUT of Slavic control and INTO Albania. That is an act of war against which Yugoslavians have every right to defend themselves. Civil wars have always been and presumably always will be ugly affairs. But just as Sherman's march to the sea in the U.S. Civil War was not genocide, tho Cromwell's atrocities in Ireland might have been by some people's lights, the outside world should not presume to intervene in civil wars, lest their own country's turn comes around, and they find their own capital bombed and their own country shattered by arrogant outsiders.

Genocide refers to extermination, not dislocation or relocation. It refers to systematic slaughter of an entire population, not unorganized, isolated massacres (some of which may indeed have been committed by KLA fanatics; after all, Algerians are slaughtering Algerians and blaming each other (government killers blame fundamentalists; fundamentalist killers blame the government; nobody knows the whole truth). These things happen. Fanatics can justify anything, even crimes against their own people, if such crimes bring the outside intervention they need to achieve their ends.

"Ethnic cleansing" is objectionable if it involves violence and murder, but it does not rise to the level of genocide unless it kills off the bulk of a targeted population, as Nazis did manage to eliminate the bulk of Germany's Jewish population. [Return to index]

Letter No. 103

[To a member of a European-affairs computer forum who nastily criticized my defending Yugoslavia's acts in Kosovo to maintain its territorial integrity, October 14, 1998]

KINDLY do not try to condescend to me. It is very likely that I am your intellectual superior.

As for dictators, the bulk of planet Earth has always been ruled by dictators, still is, and will continue to be so ruled until (a) the democracies can get their act together and democratize the world — which is what the Expansionist Party of the United States is working for; or (b) someone invents a "new, improved" human race that does not need strong leaders but shares responsibility for public policy broadly across society.

We are not, in Kosovo, talking about unprovoked attacks upon helpless, peaceful people. We are talking about CIVIL WAR, in which a guerrilla army, the KLA, has announced publicly its intent to take Kosovo out of Yugoslavia and has resorted to arms to do so. Tho the present pretense is that Kosovo would be independent, the bulk of informed people around the world believe the real goal is a Greater Albania, which would as well incorporate portions of Macedonia and perhaps even Greece equally ripped from those countries by force. Fighting against such revanchist empire-building is no more illegitimate than was resistance to Mussolini's attempt to recreate the Roman Empire, or Palestinian resistance to Zionism's ongoing attempt to recreate ancient Judea and Israel at their widest geographical extent by killing Palestinians, Lebanese, etc., to make room for Jews.

As for the Kurds, another violent mountain people like the Albanians who have always preyed upon sedentary peoples, if indeed they are descendants of the Medes it is worth remembering what the Medes did: they created some empires and destroyed others. Persia and Iraq suffered the ravages of the Medes, and no sensible person can blame Turks and Iraqis for not caring to fall victim to the same kinds of history.

You attack Saddam's treatment of Kurds, who are ALSO involved in a violent guerrilla war to create a Kurdish nation to be carved out of three countries (Iraq, Turkey, and Iran), but do not mention that Turkey, member of NATO, was given express permission by NATO to invade the northern no-fly zone of Iraq to KILL KURDS who had attacked Turkey!

You need to learn distinctions between innocents and combatants. [Return to index]

Letter No. 104

[To a member of a European-affairs computer forum who suggested that my sources of information on Kosovo are limited and biased, and that Yugoslavia's actions in Kosovo are indefensible, October 14, 1998]

My understanding of what is going on in Kosovo and elsewhere comes from many sources, American, Canadian, and European (e.g., ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, The New York Times; CBC Radio; European Journal from Deutsche Welle (Germany), France 2's Le Journal from Paris, etc.).

I do not defend atrocities but suggest that COMBAT always entails casualties, and the conflicts in Kosovo and Kurdish areas are NOT one-sided atrocities but COMBAT, in which BOTH sides commit outrages. I'm tired of guerrillas hiding amid noncombatants in villages and thus bringing down destruction upon innocents. But in modern warfare, and especially guerrilla warfare, it is increasingly the case that POPULATIONS, not armies, are at war, and the argument can easily be made that all members of warring populations are fair targets. I would remind you that in World War II the Allies bombed CITIES, not just military installations. [Return to index]

Letter No. 105

[To a member of a European-affairs computer forum who suggested that removing ethnic Albanians from Kosovo to Albania would be genocide, October 16, 1998]

PERHAPS you do not know that 8 million ethnic Germans were removed from former territories of Germany after World War II, "returned" to areas they had never been in. That was "ethnic cleansing" of Poland, the Sudeten, etc., but it was not genocide. [Return to index]

Letter No. 106

[To a different member of that European-affairs forum re the costs of war, October 16, 1998]

AT LEAST [one forum member] understands the distinction between casualties in a TWO-SIDED civil war, on the one hand, and genocide on the other. There is a lot of romantic nonsense about 'innocents' in wars between populations. The engaged populations in such conflicts do not believe in innocents, so do not draw such naive and unreal distinctions. Any child can grow up to be a soldier — by age 12 in many cases. Any woman can be recruited into a modern army and taught to kill. Any old person can use a machinegun. War is not just for the young adult or even for men anymore. Everyone involved in modern inter-ethnic wars of mutual extermination understands that. Outsiders need to understand that too. [Return to index]

Letter No. 107

[To a European-affairs computer forum re selective indignation, July 23, 1998]

OUTRAGE over "genocide" is very selective nowadays. Europe and the U.S. were hugely exercised ten days ago about efforts by the government of rump-Yugoslavia's acting to cut off arms and soldiers from Albania who are trying to rip part of Yugoslavia away by force. The total number of people killed in this two-sided fighting was on the order of >500. The same day the report of European and U.S. outrage aired on the U.S. evening news, another report ran, this one about 300,000 Sudanese blacks being at the edge of imminent death from starvation induced by brutal, genocidal warfare in combination with drought. No outrage issued from the governments of Europe or the U.S.; no NATO intervention was threatened; nothing was done. And as far as I know, all 300,000 of those people have now died.

Let us have one standard on politically induced violent death, please, worldwide. And let's not throw the word "genocide" around loosely. Fighting separatist guerrillas is not genocide. Killing a few hundred people out of a population of hundreds of thousands or millions is not genocide. Killing hundreds of thousands in any given year, and many more over the course of years in an effort to destroy their culture, religion, race, etc. — THAT is genocide. And that warrants very aggressive outrage indeed. [Return to index]

Letter No. 108

[To the Toronto Globe and Mail, October 5, 1998, in response to its editorial that day "Where to go on Kosovo"]

IT ILL behooves NATO to be taking the side of separatists, given that NATO is an alliance many of whose members have present or potential separatist movements of their own. Canada especially needs to think very carefully whether it wants to establish the precedent that NATO can rain down death and destruction upon a central power that tries to restore national unity against armed separatists. In like fashion, Spain should consider whether it wants NATO to bomb Madrid to protect Basque separatists; France, whether it wants NATO to bomb Paris to protect Corsican separatists; Italy, whether it wants NATO to bomb Rome to protect Northern League separatists; Britain if it wants NATO to bomb London to protect Ulster separatists; and on, and on.

Albanians in Kosovo are not helpless, innocent victims of rump-Yugoslav imperialism and "ethnic cleansing". They have taken to guerrilla warfare to rip Kosovo, which Serbians regard as the historic heart of Serbia's fight for independence from the Ottoman Turks, out of Yugoslavia and probably thereafter into a Greater Albania. Albania itself is the most backward country of Europe, and Albanians a violent mountain people given to vendettas and interpersonal violence. Civilization is not on the side of ethnic-Albanian warfare against Yugoslavia. If Serbs were on the wrong side in Bosnia, they are on the right side in Kosovo.

NATO and the UN should butt out of a civil war that is none of their business. How can an organization, the UN, which lost a Secretary-General in its effort to hold the Congo together, now reverse its historic preference for territorial integrity of member states, instead to promote violent separatism? It boggles the mind. [Return to index]

Letter No. 109

[Letter sent by feedback form to The Washington Post, January 19, 1999]

NATO policy in the Balkans is confused and dangerously insane. Whereas in Bosnia, when NATO finally decided to act, the policy was to oppose violent separatist movements inspired, directed and assisted from outside, in Kosovo the exact opposite is proposed, by The Post not least: that NATO side with the Kosovo Liberation Army in ripping part of Serbia away from duly constituted legal authority by force. What an extraordinary precedent that would set.

There is scarcely a NATO member that does not itself have at least one separatist movement, violent, nonviolent, or both violent and nonviolent at different times. Here's a partial list:

Britain: Northern Ireland (Irish Republican Army: violent); Scotland (Scottish National Party, nonviolent); Wales (Welsh National Party (nonviolent);

France: Corsica (A Cuncolta, FLNC Canal Historique, and various other nationalist groups: violent); and Savoy (nonviolent);

Italy: Northern Italy (Northern League: nonviolent);

Spain: Basque country (ETA: violent); Catalonia (nonviolent);

Turkey: Armenia (violent)[; Kurds (violent)]

Canada: Quebec (presently nonviolent (Parti Quebecois), but with violent episodes in the past (FLQ)); Western Canada (Western Canada Concept: nonviolent);

Denmark: Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) was granted autonomy within the Danish realm in response to Greenland separatism (nonviolent) but might not be forever content to remain dominated from without.

Even the United States has separatist movements (Hawaiian separatism, advocated even by some people in state government!; Alaskan separatism; even small militia-based separatist movements in Texas and Montana, not to mention the FALN in Puerto Rico). And we had a horrendous Civil War in the last century in which violence vastly exceeded the levels in Yugoslavia's current civil war. Had there been a NATO then, would it have sided with the South to destroy the Union? (In truth, the government over Serbia at the time, that of the Ottoman Empire, did not intervene in our Civil War, when such intervention could have been troublesome. Why would we even think of intervening in Serbia's civil war now?)

Aside from existing separatist movements, there may be dozens, even hundreds of simmering group resentments that could become separatist movements, and nonviolent movements that could turn violent, if it becomes official NATO policy to side with armed separatists against the territorial integrity of present-day states. For one, right near Kosovo, Greece also has an ethnic Albanian minority that may very well turn separatist, and violent. Indeed, why wouldn't a KLA military command that won a war for Greater Albania with NATO help, simply shift to a Greek theater of operations? Or to a Montenegrin or Macedonian theater first if it were not quite ready to act against a NATO member? Would NATO side with the new KLA in Montenegro and Macedonia also? If not, why not? If so, how could it hold the line if the new KLA were, after winning against Montenegro (enfeebled Yugoslavia) and feeble Macedonia, to move on to Greece? See how dangerous this gets? — and quickly?

Outside the Balkans, Breton nationalism (Brittany) has occasionally been voiced in France. Belgium is just barely holding together, with its Flemings and Walloons as far apart as ever. Sardinia has had rumblings of discontent with the central Italian government. Several million residents of former East Germany, who have been mainly unemployed for nearly ten years, feel it was a mistake to unite the Germanies. And on, and on.

NATO should not take sides in Yugoslavia's current civil war. Serbian action against the KLA is not one-sided slaughter but a completely justified military response to murderous guerrilla warfare from a violent mountain people who are not merely a disaffected group within Kosovo but are in fact a transnational army of Albanian Kosovars and invaders from Albania proper.

But if NATO is to take sides, it must be on the side of maintaining the territorial integrity of duly constituted national states, a fundament of the international order, not breaking them up. To do otherwise would be more than contemptible hypocrisy, given NATO countries' own separatist movements. It would be suicidal, for it would put the moral imprimatur of the entire Western community on the side of violent separatist movements everywhere, including within NATO's own member states. "What goes around, comes around." [Return to index]

EAST TIMOR
AND INDONESIA

Letter No. 110

[Three messages to a British public-affairs computer forum on the plight of East Timor, a small former Portuguese colony surrounded by Indonesia that Indonesia annexed by force and has occupied brutally.]

[First message, July 24, 1998

PART of decolonization has been the retaking of enclaves by the large countries that surround them. India retook Goa, Diu, Pondicherry, etc., from the Portuguese and French, without so much as a pretense of indignation from 'the world community'. India took Sikkim, first marching in to 'help' the native ruler restore order, then deciding to stay. (Compare the USSR and Afghanistan.) Indonesia retook East Timor. If the East Timorese had merely accepted that takeover and not tried to fight against massive odds, perhaps the slaughter would have been minimal. But Indonesia did have a bloody civil war in which some 500,000 Communists and people accused of being Communists were purged, and Sukarno ousted. 'The Indonesian solution' worked; Indonesia was saved from Communist takeover, but at a heavy cost. I don't know if the East Timorese opposed to annexation were Communists. I would prefer democratic union. But democracy has its limits, and when a country robbed by a colonial power decides to retake its stolen territory no matter what the colonials still resident there may think, there are limits to the world's sympathy. Goans have found a way to accommodate to reintegration with India. East Timorese may find they have no choice but to find an accommodation with Indonesia.

Flag of what Collier's encyclopedia calls "the nationalist, left-leaning Revolutionary Front of East Timor (Fretilin)".

[Second message, July 27, 1998]

NOWHERE do I say that what has happened and continues to happen in East Timor is okay. I merely suggest that selective outrage, homing in on one small tragedy while glossing over others even worse and larger, is immoral. As for U.S. sanctions, against whom is the U.S. to apply sanctions? especially as there is no universal agreement about the efficacy of sanctions as against engagement. Rediff on the Net, a daily Internet service about India, says the U.S. Congress is trying to undo recent sanctions against India and Pakistan in reaction against their nuclear weapons testing, because they are hurting U.S. farmers, and a partial reversal, to the point of exempting food from sanctions — be it genuinely on humanitarian grounds or actually to help U.S. farmers — is likely to be enacted very soon.

Indonesia is receiving special treatment, no doubt about it, but not just from the U.S. I don't know why. Compare IMF packages: $87B for Indonesia, $18B for Russia, a much larger country physically, and a nuclear power whose stability we must care about, with a comparable population. Why the disparity? The world seems to think Indonesia hugely important and essentially untouchable. I don't.

But what exactly "should" the U.S. do about East Timor? Does the U.S. or any outside power have the moral right to contend that a geographical and cultural division imposed by European colonialism "should" be perpetuated indefinitely in that region, or should outsiders largely step aside, to let the local people sort things out for themselves? And if there is no democracy in Indonesia, how are we to target the responsible parties and leave the innocent masses alone if we impose economic sanctions? Sanctions are a blunt instrument that damage far more than the guilty parties; indeed, they usually leave the guilty untouched, and affect only the innocent.

Still, one must always come back to the Hitler analogy: would it be alright to do "business as usual" or rush IMF aid or do this or do that with/for Hitler's Germany, as with present-day Indonesia? But one must then decide (1) if Indonesia really is a fair approximation in evil to Hitler's Germany and (2) if some form of contact less than "business as usual" but more than embargo is appropriate.

Should we mouth off with platitudes and lecture Indonesia from one side of our mouth and issue approvals to the IMF from the other? Should we cut ourselves off from Indonesia such that we lose all possible influence with people there who are presently in power or might eventually come into power? Whose call is it? Short of "surgical strikes" to "take out" the bad guys, or a localized military intervention to save East Timor, what is likely to be effective, and who is going to go in on this with us if the U.S. decides to act?

[Third message, July 28, 1998]

Macau is a colony on the edge of extinction, a la Hong Kong. When China reclaimed Hong Kong and subjected 5 million people to creeping Communism, I didn't hear loud demands that Britain do everything possible, up to and including military resistance, to protect those people's freedoms or to evacuate all freedom-loving Hong Kongers to Britain or other free countries of their liking.

When Macau is reannexed to Communist China [December 20, 1999], presumably peacefully, will Macau's residents fight the People's Liberation Army and demand the world's sympathy? I doubt it. Yet when East Timorese took on the vast armed forces of a nation hundreds of times their size, they did demand the world's sympathies. There's only so much sympathy due to people who commit suicidal acts out of little more than stupidity.

Now you criticize me for suggesting that East Timorese who are unhappy with being part of Indonesia should be evacuated to places more to their liking! How does advocating that people be helped to escape danger and find a compatible culture get to be condemnable?

Flag of the Portuguese governor of Macau.

People can't always have what they want, in part because other people want the same thing and they won't share or can't. You can't have both an independent East Timor and a reunited Indonesia expunging the last blemish of colonialism. Whose interest, then, prevails? Well, that's pretty much been settled, for now, by Indonesia's arms. East Timor has LOST its war. I advocate we accept that loss and salvage something of a Portuguese-and-Catholic culture for such East Timorese as want it, by helping them escape a country they don't want to live in. Or we can intervene militarily, drive Indonesia out, and help East Timorese set up their own microstate. What we mustn't do is bitch and moan that the poor East Timorese are being mistreated but do nothing about remedying that situation. [As of early January 2000, East Timor's voted-for independence is being 'guaranteed' by a feeble international force that Indonesia could oust overnite, should it so choose.]

For my part, I would oppose the U.S. or Europeans' using military force to reinstate a terminated colonial condition. If East Timorese want to live a Portuguese-speaking, Catholic lifestyle they must either persuade their de facto government to allow that — or GET OUT. If they choose to get out, I'd be very happy to see the U.S. or EU provide transport and resettlement assistance. Now, go ahead, condemn that too. [Return to index]

THE PHILIPPINES

(http://members/XPUS/Phil/Phil.html
and links therein)

Letter No. 111

[To the Manila Bulletin, August 11, 1998 re promoting Pilipino over English.]

PRESIDENT Estrada would, apparently, have Filipinos play stupid games with reality.

Already the Philippines pretends it is celebrating 100 years of independence, whereas we all know that the U.S. (stupidly) played colonial overlord to the archipelago for 48 years, whereas we should have offered the Philippines statehood, so that today the Philippines might be a sensibly-populated region of a First World nation rather than an overpopulated nation of the Third World.

How many more stupid — and potentially devastating — games with reality are Filipinos to play? Are you to pretend that technological modernity and international commerce do NOT require mastery of English, but that Filipinos, speaking Pilipino proudly — and ONLY — can first wade into the ocean of world trade and technology, then swim confidently to a prosperous future without need of a transnational commercial language? Filipinos aren't stupid. (BOY, are they not stupid!) They know better than that. President Estrada isn't stupid either. Why is he playing stupid games with reality?

The Philippines NEEDS English. Any fool knows that. And the Philippines has a 'leg up" in the world of international commerce and technology BECAUSE it has a huge body — millions — of fluent speakers and readers of English. President Estrada knows full well that Filipinos who are fluent in English are not going to forswear that magnificent and almost-magically useful language to revert to unilingualism in Pilipino. So he's LYING to the people of the Philippines in pretending that the Philippines could thrive without English.

He KNOWS that the Philippines would be plunged into stark decline if it tried to "go it alone" in Pilipino, or even seek to create a new Malay-Indonesian-Pilipino cultural area (that would inevitably be dominated by violent, dictatorial, militarist Indonesia).

The Philippines' ultimate political, cultural, and military freedom depends upon English — whether President Estrada cares to admit that aloud or not. He knows it. Let him admit it, and stop talking nonsense. Dear President Estrada: Speak the truth about English and the Philippines' future.

What exactly is the point of pretending, publicly, to poor Filipinos, that they can have a brilliant future without English. NO THEY CAN'T! And we all know it.

The Philippines can have a brilliant future, but only if it jumps on its American-English bandwagon and uses the most useful of all international languages to advance its prospects. The Philippine Republic should recruit hundreds of thousands of American kids (in the Peace Corps, Vista — and you should demand that the Philippines be eligible for Vista, a 'domestic' U.S. service — or a Philippine-funded program) to teach Philippine kids perfect English.

The Philippines is the victim of obsolete American racial prejudice. The U.S. has changed — truly; starkly. Filipinos are the largest Asian minority in the United States, and Asians are among the fastest-growing minorities in the U.S.

1898 was too soon, and the Philippines was too far, for the U.S. even to think of making the Philippines a permanent part of The Union. 1998 is just about right. It's time for the Philippines to throw in its lot with the U.S. and end its isolation.

Democracy is hard, especially if your country is poor. Social justice is hard to promote when your country overall is poor and the people who aren't poor believe, or want to believe, that they are prosperous while the great preponderance of people are poor because they are good and the others bad. But prosperity does NOT reward the good and poverty does NOT befall the bad. It's all happenstance.

The Philippines and the United States BELONG TOGETHER. We are a perfect match. Our pluses fill your minuses. Your pluses fill our minuses. Join the Union! Confront Congress on its former racist refusal to prepare the Philippines for statehood. Demand redress, AS OF RIGHT.

Let us together create the Philippines into three states of the United States: Luzon, Mindanao, and the Visayas — American all, Philippine all, proud all, and prosperous all. [Return to index]

BRITAIN

(Britain.html) and links therein

Letter No. 112

[To a Briton concerned that Expansionism focuses too narrowly on the English language and promotes English-speaking chauvinism, October 14, 1998]

IF YOU look to our netsite and not just to the message announcing our netsite, you will find that English language is only one of many things that, to our mind, make amalgamation of democracies feasible. The Association to Unite the Democracies is another of many world-federalist organizations that have a presence on the Internet.

XP's own view is that to try to create a world democracy from scratch is a hopelessly difficult project, inasmuch ALL laws, in ALL areas would have to be written new, and pass a legislature of many regions and traditions in which a wide array of views exists on everything from securities exchanges to environmental protection to gay rights to capital punishment to broadcasting to anything else you care to name. If, instead, you start with a well-established major state that already has legislation on many of these issues (legislation that is well understood by legislators in other Western countries) but has also reserved to its constituent parts — the States — many areas of subject-matter jurisdiction in which they can write legislation appropriate for their own area without interference from the center — you are far more likely to be able to create a workable wide union. Consider, for even one moment, how MUCH legislation there is in how MANY areas, in any advanced country, and you see the problem of STRIKING OUT all such legislation and starting over.

Just as the European Union started as the European Coal and Steel Community and an atomic energy agency and then broadened and deepened ties, any wide union of democracies has to start somewhere. But the EU is more dictatorial than is the United States, believe it or not. For instance, the U.S. Federal Government would never tell Britons that they have to stop using traditional measures but convert everything into the metric system or be punished, or put only certain ingredients in sausage or be punished. We don't do things that way. We are INclusive, not EXclusive. We use BOTH metric measures AND our own traditional measures, and we allow all kinds of variation in foods as long as everything is labeled clearly enough that consumers are on notice as to what they might be eating.

If you have not yet seen it, you might want to check out the recent British book Bring Home the Revolution: How Britain Can Live the American Dream by Jonathan Freedland. It may well be available in libraries by now, inasmuch as it was issued several months ago. In that work, Mr. Freedland discusses how the founding ideas of the United States derive in substantial measure from British (and, I would add, other European nations' Enlightenment) notions, which somehow took hold in the United States but not in Europe itself. We're not the Mongols, trying to impose utterly alien ideas upon an unwilling mass by violence. We are descendants of and full participants in Western civilization, given to democratic expansion by popular consent (no new area can become a state without a ratifying PLEBISCITE).

We are all, across the West, pretty much on the same side. [Return to index]

Letter No. 113

[To the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, re metric/nonmetric measures, April 11, 1998]

THE U.S. does use metric measures for many things it exports to metric areas. We even have wrench sets and such with metric measures available in the U.S. to people who need them. My basic point is that the United States is a "both/and" country, not an "either/or" country. If something is useful, we will use it — but only for what it's useful to us FOR. Almost every commodity sold in the U.S. that bears a label has both traditional and metric measures imprinted. Some will look at one number as meaningful; others at the other. My objection is to the imperial mindset that a single standard must be imposed on everyone whether they like it or not. The U.S. doesn't tell the rest of the world that since the U.S. is the dominant power on this planet, everyone must conform to our measures. And we sure as HELL won't let foreigners tell us we have to use their measures. We'll use whatever we feel like, when we feel like, and even if that confuses outsiders, it doesn't confuse us. It may even make us more creative, in being able to juggle different types of measures for different types of things. [Return to index]

Letter No. 114

[To a Briton who objected to our British "Private Action" piece]

* * * As for XP's proposals being "wild schemes", what could be a wilder scheme, shortly after World War II, a horrendous conflict in which Europeans slaughtered each other to the toll of some 20 million, than a European Union that would unite formerly warring countries? I suggest you dream timid dreams. [Return to index]

Letter No. 115

[Here are replies to two messages from a websurfer who can support merging the rich, English-speaking countries but rejects the idea of wider union, as by granting statehood to Third World countries. First message, December 31, 1999]

YOUR selfishness is short-sighted. We can go out and annex or otherwise transform the Third World or be drowned in waves of refugees from vast misery who will not respect out borders nor our culture. We've assimilated over 60 million immigrants over the years, and are assimilating new immigrants at unprecedented speed, thanks to TV, radio, cassette instructional courses, films, records, etc. Mexico's transformation under the impact of NAFTA shows how much can change for the better, quickly, thru the influence of even limited economic union with the United States. Business Week recently ran a story about stark transformations in Mexico's trading patterns and a marked diminution in anti-U.S. feeling as a result of increased opportunities flowing from NAFTA. With Mexico in our sphere, our borders become markedly more defensible, since Mexico will provide little threat of mass migrations of Third World refugees, from Mexico and points south, across that nearly-indefensible border. (Remember the Roman Empire's problems with barbarians?) With all of Central America in our sphere, our border on the south would be reduced to 50, easily-defended miles.

As for Latin, you plainly don't know enough about that language if you think it nearly "went extinct". Latin was spoken by the educated elite of most of Western and Central Europe well into the 18th century! and even today, the Roman Catholic Church uses it in some areas (encyclicals, for instance), and used it in the liturgy until 1964! To this day, new plants and animals are given LATIN names, and the International Scientific Vocabulary is constituted mainly of Greco-Latin combinations. Moreover, the several major Roman(ce) languages are spoken by over 700 million people, and they are all very close to Latin. Their speakers in the Middle Ages thought they WERE Latin, and it is perfectly logical to consider them forms of Late Latin. Some, like Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, can be mutually understood if people talk slowly and carefully. And Latin words fill English (some 65% of modern English derives from Latin). So the language of Rome is still very much with us, in itself and its progeny. The "Fall of Rome" was political, not cultural.

Whether you have faith in the ability of U.S. civilization to assimilate hundreds of millions of people in place in their own countries, whether they all learn English or not — and the idea that everyone in a given political entity has to speak the same language is very recent and not very sensible — you do seem to agree that joining the prosperous English-speaking countries together would be sensible. If that is as far as you're willing to go, you're nonetheless on our side, whether you conceive yourself as being so or not.

New states would have their own network of contacts and concerns. Britain, for instance, has a long history of involvement with outsiders, and is presently in a "Union" (the European Union) that has it vastly outnumbered by speakers of other languages. Britain's ongoing contacts with many former colonies would expedite the re-creation in democratic federal form of much of the old British Empire, which would hugely contribute to our security and influence, and to world development. Canada, for its part, is a member of La Francophonie, a grouping of several dozen countries in which French is the language of the people or the elite. Mexico of course is the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, and would tie us into Latin America more firmly. Etc.

Tho the U.S. has to date not been severely adversely affected by the economic downturn in East Asia, Brazil, and elsewhere, there are some people, like billionaire investor George Soros, who foresee a worldwide depression — including the U.S. — if governments do not make sensible adjustments to the forms of relationship among countries. A global depression would be hell on people inside the U.S. as well as outside, and the safeguards we created in the Thirties against a return of the catastrophic conditions of the Great Depression might not suffice in an even Greater Depression.

Pre-emptive measures against worldwide cataclysm from overpopulation and poverty are in our own best interest. So a bit of selflessness might be the best guarantor of our continued self-interest.

[Second message, January 1, 1999

WE agree on some of the points you raise, as you may see if you look to our presentation, "Where We Stand". If you have already looked there, I apologize for mentioning it again. I don't know what you've seen. We have many presentations on different areas of the world, all indexed at http://members.aol.com/XPUS.

As to your specific points: (1) the death penalty is entirely appropriate for crimes of unusual viciousness. If the object of justice is for the penalty to fit the crime, then plainly murder (unjustified taking of life) warrants execution, and cruel and unusual crimes warrant cruel and unusual punishments, so the part of the Constitution that forbids such punishments regardless of the crime needs to be revised. The thing we must always keep in mind is that everyone dies, so in executing a death penalty we are merely bringing death sooner rather than later. And the death penalty is plainly a powerful deterrent to many crimes, as can be seen by crime rates in the U.S. When the death penalty was put on hold, crime rates rose year by year, and the news was progressively filled with more and more gruesome and casual murders by younger and younger offenders. Then the death penalty was gradually reimposed, state by state, and crime rates of all kinds dropped. In New York State, where I live, the death penalty was reimposed — for only a few types of crime — and crime rates PLUMMETED in a single year, in many categories. Two years later, crime is down to levels of the 1960s — that is, before the insane and illegal Supreme Court ban on capital punishment. (The Fifth Amendment expressly refers to "capital ... crimes", so plainly capital punishment is expressly permitted by the Constitution; a judicial finding that it is not was an atrocious absurdity by our judicial dictatorship (see "Rein in the Supreme Court" at reforms.html).)

What happens is that some criminals realize that once they set foot on the path of criminality, they may eventually [find] that the end of that path is "the last mile" to an electric chair, gas chamber, or lethal-injection table.

[Aside: To people who refuse to see a tie between the reinstitution of capital punishment and a drop in crime, let me simply repeat what I said November 17 to a Canadian and November 23 and 24, 1997 to an expatriate American in British Columbia:

I GUESS you haven't heard about the steep drop in crime in the United States since all those prisons were built and stocked with incorrigibles. Oh, some opponents of harsh treatment for criminals insist that the improved economy is mainly responsible for the crime drop, but they are whistling past the cemetery, hoping that no one notices that the restoration of capital punishment and the tough laws sending criminals to prison for longer and longer periods, and even for life, have produced a steep drop in crime. But the economic arguments don't wash, because we've had good economic times without a concomitant drop in crime. We'll know for sure when the current boom turns bust.

'THERE are lies, damned lies, and statistics.' Anyone can gather / invent any set of statistics to "prove" anything he wants, and anyone else who disagrees with the "proofs" someone else's statistics offer can disparage those proofs and demand others. Pretend that prison and capital punishment have nothing to do with crime rates if you wish. No sane person will believe you.

Let's follow your "logic" to its ultimate conclusion: if prison and capital punishment do not produce a drop in crime, let us simply abolish both and stop even trying to punish wrongdoers! That should leave society no more crime-ridden than it has ever been, right? WRONG. Your "logic" is profoundly defective, indeed, off-the-wall nuts.

NO set of statistics I can produce would persuade you that capital punishment works to deter serious crime. NO statistics would "prove" to you that harsher sentencing reduces crime. You are doctrinaire. Your dogma does not allow of disproof. All the rest of the world, of simple, honest folk, looks at the world in nondogmatic ways, sees that restoration of capital punishment and institution of severe sentencing for serious crime correlates with a steep reduction in crime, and is grateful that legislators aren't always susceptible to sophistry.]

The human creature is only an animal, and animals are best trained by a combination of positive reinforcement and negative punishments, comprising mainly physical fright and pain: the carrot and the stick. The ultimate stick is capital punishment, and when you replace it with a "punishment", incarceration in comfortable prisons, that is no punishment at all for many of the people sent there, because life there is at least as pleasant as life outside, you replace it with another carrot, except that this time the carrot is an incentive to people actually to COMMIT crimes!

(2) XP is for starkly progressive taxation and the elimination of obscene wealth and obscene discrepancies in income. You cannot have a social democracy if one person makes 3,000 times and more what another makes. Ross Perot, imitation good-ol'-boy, has 3,000 times what a MILLIONAIRE has, and a millionaire has a net wealth thousands of times what a paycheck-dependent blue-collar worker has. That must end. No one "needs" to make more than $5 million a year, and government can with no injustice simply take as taxes 99% of everything over that figure (and 78% or so of everything over $200,000; this was the rate in the 1970s!). That would still leave a multi-millionaire with $10,000 a year for each million over $5 million, which is equivalent to an entire year's pay for a part-time worker (student or mother) in the economy that real people live in. If a corporate executive or professional athlete makes $7 million, he would retain of the additional $2 million above five, $20,000, the equivalent of an entire year's income for a blue-collar worker in large parts of this country! and that's ABOVE everything he retained after taxes on his first $5 million!

(3) Nationalizing any industry, however, is probably a bad idea. What needs to be done is that sensible restrictions be placed on every abusive industry, from banks and credit-card companies to oil companies and everything in between, and punishments inflicted on the INDIVIDUALS responsible for wrongdoing. If a credit-card company, for instance, charges rates that would have landed a loan shark in PRISON in the 1950s, instead of fining a rich corporation that won't feel any pain from paying such a fine, you seize and FLOG the smart-guy executives who thought it would be great to victimize the little guy with 21% interest rates. Again, pain is the best way to punish human wrongdoers, because there are many guys who can do time "standing on their head", but few to none who can face 100 lashes with equanimity.

(4) It is very easy to say that foreign countries should stand on their own two feet — if you come from a rich country. Accept that we got a very good piece of real estate, but not everyone else was so lucky. And we inherited a relatively benign colonial system that we were able to transform by means of a violent revolution a long time ago into an even more benign system. But not everyone was so lucky. Most of the Third World is dominated by vicious crooks who steal millions or BILLIONS from the poor and control institutions that do not permit the people to have any say whatsoever in how they are governed. They also come from cultures where revolution is anathema and even talking back to your "betters" is a crime against your culture and disgrace to your ancestors. The way to empower these people to stand on their own is to destroy the institutions that oppress them and replace them with stable institutions benign in nature and enforceable by uncorrupted police power. That is essentially IMPOSSIBLE to do without "taking them over": that is, incorporating them into our Union so that our institutions, enforced by relatively honest police who are watched over by corruption-fighters, can transform their societies. The way, in short, for the Third World to stand on its own two feet is by giving each area local self-government in a world-spanning federal Union under the Constitution of the United States: making them states. And

(5) English-speaking union must not be the end of our work in the world but a beginning. English language can transform the planet by giving people in even the poorest countries access to a vast storehouse of information and to the literature of freedom that we have been heir to. By all means let us unite the English-speaking peoples, but let us then go on to help everyone who wants to LEARN English do so. [Return to index]

Letter No. 116

[To a member of the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, re alternatives to the EU for Britain, April 21, 1998]

MY position is that Britain has more than one choice in subsuming itself to a larger entity, and to choose the EU over the U.S. is bizarre.

The EU is a limited-reach organization of people many of whose leaders are hostile to the English language. The U.S. is a universally concerned superpower whose people speak English and whose work in the world naturally if sometimes inadvertently advances it. English is the world's auxiliary language of choice, and enlarging and strengthening the center of English would speed the growth of English worldwide, as would in turn speed transfers of technology and increase the influence of the democratic mindset, as people newly fluent in English read the literature of the solid democracies of Britain and the U.S.

Even tho the U.S. respects the right of minorities to use their own languages when talking among themselves, everyone understands that the language of the United States is English and that to rise as far as one's talents will take him in the United States requires that an American speak English, even if he also speaks (an)other language(s).

The EU, by contrast, cannot move toward a single 'national' language because it has several major language blocs within it, all vying for attention and a place of honor. The European Union may do useful work in Eastern Europe, but the inclusion of ever larger chunks of East Europe will reduce the EU's ability to do anything else — perhaps even paralyze it in other areas — whereas British accession to the United States would instantly revivify the antique and presently useless Commonwealth as to make it a worldwide alliance for development and democratization.

Indeed, Britain might even have been able to make a working economic union of much of the Commonwealth, with or without the United States, as a third option, which might also be a superior choice for Britain over being dominated by the EU.

I'm frankly surprised that the loss of Empire in the 1960s so completely crushed the British spirit that its leaders are now content to make Britain a mere appendage to Europe — and a reluctant appendage at that, resisting change but ultimately giving in to it, which serves only to make Britain look like a bad-tempered, noisily barking dog in the manger that has, however, no teeth. [Return to index]

Letter No. 117

[Two messages to a Briton who favors union of English-speaking countries but would permit monarchy and established religion. First message, October 19, 1998]

THE United States would never accede to a political union of English-speaking countries — or any political union of any group of countries — in which there were either monarchy or established religion(s). We understand the harm done to social mobility by monarchy and aristocracy (see Jonathan Freedland's 1998 British book, Bring Home the Revolution: How Britain Can Live the American Dream), and to religious minorities and freedom of conscience by established religion. So if the United States is to be part of an English-Speaking Union, that Union will have to be free of both monarchy and established religion. Without the United States, there IS NO English-Speaking Union, because, of the total population of the six countries you mention, the U.S. alone comprises 70%. Yes, the disparity in populations really is that great: all the other old English-speaking countries put together equal only about 40%of the population of the United States alone.

The "Commonwealth" is as close to an English-Speaking Union as the countries OTHER than the United States have managed to achieve, but it is not a union at all, just a largely pointless and purposeless club devoted to nostalgia for nonexistent "good old days".

Flag of the Commonwealth of Nations.

The old settlement colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) were from the outset excluded from the Parliament at Westminster by a "mother country" that at first did not think "colonials" entitled to representation — because of some presumed inferiority? — and then feared that representation for such colonials would fundamentally alter British law in ways the ruling class of England was unwilling to see it change. For their part, when the old settlement colonies were tiny in population and would have been willing to be bound by a single body of law issuing from a single Parliament in which they were all represented, Britain was unwilling to give them such representation; but by the time Britain was willing to give them representation in an Imperial Parliament (which would not have jurisdiction over British internal law, only over the nature of relations among Britain and its colonies), the settlement colonies were leary of being dictated to by a "mother country" that outnumbered all the settlement colonies' populations put together.

And of course Ireland WAS part of a one-sided "union" with Britain and wanted OUT desperately.

Even today, when the former settlement colonies' population approaches Britain's (some 52 million in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and with Ireland's would nearly equal it (nearly 56 million compared to 58 million for the UK), there is no drive to create a federal union of those countries, and Australia is dallying with republicanism.

Ireland has its "troubles' over entrenched political and religious inequality, and recognition of a special position for the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland and of the Anglican Church in Northern Ireland makes union even of that one island nearly impossible.

Flag of the Ulster Independence Movement,
which seeks independence from both Britain and the Irish Republic!

No, the only way the English-speaking world is going to unite is if it does so around the central core of the cultural attraction and built-in tolerance of the United States. Our Constitution has made us what we are. It has united 16 countries so far; it can unite others, and others, and others, into the future.

[Second message, October 20, 1998]

MONARCHY is socially limiting. In the United States, any American can aspire to be President of the United States, who is both head of state ('monarch') and head of government ('PM'). In Britain, almost no one can aspire to be King or Queen. The best one can aspire to is second-best, and that's not good enuf. Actually, it's far worse than that in most monarchies, because they also come with princes, princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls and counts and all sorts of other titled nobility and aristocracy whose presence tells everyone else that what you are from birth is all you will ever be, and if you're not born at the top of society, you don't belong at the top of society, so should keep your place. That is noxious, psychologically pervasive, and socially stultifying. It gives rise to social stratification, interclass resentment, and even class warfare. Monarchy is not harmless tradition.

As for religion, the U.S. Constitution in Article I of the Bill of Rights forbids establishment of religion by Congress. I seriously doubt [that writer's assertion] that any state had an established religion after the federal government took that stance. But in any case, the Fourteenth Amendment extended to states the restrictions on Federal power, so since the late 1860s, at latest, separation of church and state has been the law of all the land.

As for Ireland, I would have to check the facts, but 1972 seems an awful long time ago for Ireland to have bumped the Catholic Church from a special place. Certainly that does not comport with my memory of news reports, nor with the reticence of Protestants to accept reunification of the island.

Northern Ireland is dominated politically, socially and economically by Protestants who see themselves as Protestants more than just Unionists and hold animus for Catholics because they are Catholic, not because they are anything else. For what else would they be? They're not citizens of a foreign state, not immigrants, not 'colored', not speakers of a foreign language. No it is incontestable that religion plays a major part in the social and political divisions of Northern Ireland, and equally incontestable that the state has been used by the majority of one religious community to discriminate against members of the other. Whether the Anglican Church is technically "established" or the organs of government just favor one group over another is one of those infamous "distinctions without a difference" that debaters so love but sensible people have no patience for.

The constitutional separation of church and state goes further than a ban on proclaiming X Church "official". It goes to governmental action and social norms of acceptable behavior, acceptable public discourse, etc. As societies become more and more religiously diverse, government must not merely stand aside and not take sides, but must also encourage people to tolerate differences that may make them uncomfortable.

In any case, we welcome your feedback and hope that over time you will see the benefits of our proposal. [Return to index]

Letter No. 118

[To a participant in a British-affairs computer forum on harmful effects of monarchism, October 16, 1998.]

JONATHAN Freedland in his book Bring Home the Revolution points out that in the U.S. all but the most hopeless members of the underclass believe they can rise in the socioeconomic structure; they do not so much resent the upper socioeconomic classes as (wish to) believe they can join them. Britons by and large believe they are hamstrung by the existing social order, so must (a) accept "their place", (b) emigrate — which millions upon millions have done and continue to do, all over the world, or (c) fight their way into the upper echelons of the economy and power structure — but even then, they are not likely to find that money and power equate with social standing! No, only birth confers 'true' social standing in the British "Establishment". People who don't come by a (presumed-temporary) exalted status by birth are parvenus, nouveau riche trailer trash. And it's not just the Old Rich who feel that way, in Britain. In the U.S., Bill Gates and his kind are instant royalty. Money, fame, and personal achievement, regardless of birth, confer status. That is a huge difference. And it makes ALL the difference in the world. [Return to index]

Letter No. 119

[To a member of the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, re his assertions (1) that most speakers of English use British spellings, (2) that British behavior in the "Falklands" and Northern Ireland is proper and democratic, and (3) that Guamanians and Amerindians are oppressed peoples who would gladly escape U.S. political domination; April 30, 1998]

WE in the U.S. still charitably continue to call a language we dominate "English", even tho 70% of all native speakers of that language reside in one country, the United States. In order that you might verify my calculation, I provide here approximate figures:

U.S., 270 million (of a total national population of c. 280 million actual, compensating for Census Bureau undercounts — for instance, I wasn't counted in the last census even tho I called the Census Bureau to ask that my form be picked up)
United Kingdom, 60 million
Canada, 20 million
Australia, 16 million
New Zealand, 3 million
Africa, Caribbean, others, 7 million; for a total of 376 million native speakers, 270 million of whom live in the United States: 71%. I rounded up some figures for native speakers outside the U.S., and rounded down for the U.S. in the final calculation.

As for the "Falkland" islands and Northern Ireland, to set up artificial communities and then buttress them with passionate rhetoric about "democracy" is convenient but dishonest. Ireland was gerrymandered into two units to prevent all of Ireland voting, in a single plebiscite, to leave the UK. The "Falklands" were populated by IMPERIALISM, and Argentines kept out. Neither area qualifies, therefore, as a democracy, any more than the U.S. South in the 1940s and earlier, or Israel today, qualifies as a democracy. Democracy requires that ALL the people be allowed to vote and have full equality before the law.

The Old South of the U.S. was WHITER than Northern Ireland is Protestant. Those great majorities decided, by democratic means, that "Negroes" should not have the same rights as whites, and instituted measures to enforce inequality before the law. The United States decided as a Nation that that was an abuse of majoritarianism, and used Federal law to free blacks from that kind of bigotry, even tho that meant UNDOING local democracy in the Old South and UNWRITING the laws that Southern democracy wrote. By contrast, Britain pretends that if the majority in Northern Ireland, a territory gerrymandered to create an artificial majority, votes against the interest of the minority, that is democracy and must be defended with all the force of the British state. We don't see it that way. So NO, a poll of the gerrymandered and artificial contrivance Northern Ireland does NOT mean anything, democratically speaking, and Brits should be ashamed of themselves for conspiring against justice by misappropriating the name of democracy.

As for Guam, that territory is a FUNCTIONING democracy in which outsiders have very little presence, and Guam's democratically elected government has consistently affirmed the tie to the U.S. I assure you that if Guam, Puerto Rico or any other nonstate territory of the U.S. voted for independence, the U.S. would INSTANTLY grant it, as it granted independence to the bulk of the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and retained only the insignificant Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.

As for the United States being Indian land, get real. The U.S., having a great and diverse population, belongs to all its people. No infinitesimal majority may walk off with the rest of the population's land. Nor have I ever heard of any serious drive by any American Indian or Eskimo population of size ever demanding independence anytime this century. Have you? American Indians served in the U.S. armed forces in WWII — and brilliantly. They served as code-proof radio operators in targeting artillery, etc., because neither Japanese nor Germans knew any Navajo or Arapaho. I suspect that the bulk of American Indians are very proud of their country — meaning the United States — and would be horrified if some antique petty nationalism were even to try to take their reservation out of the country they love — if with conditions. [Return to index]

Letter No. 120

[To a member of the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, re the tedious suggestion that Americans committed genocide to steal Indian lands]

YOU insist on living in an imaginary past. On the "Trail of Tears", some Indians did die. In the remainder of the resettlement efforts, just about everyone survived.

We can examine the past and trade recriminations endlessly, if you'd like. Why don't the Germanic peoples — Angles, Saxons, Danes — who invaded Britain, LEAVE and return Britain to the Celts who were there when the Germans invaded? As for the Celts, why don't they return Great Britain to the Picts and such other pre-Celtic-invasion peoples as may have lived there? It all gets VERY silly in VERY short order unless we are talking about some area like Antarctica where nobody would even THINK of trying to live, so there are no conflicting claims over the centuries.

American Indians, Eskimos, and the like are for the most part very happy to be Americans. If that makes you unhappy, then BE unhappy. [Return to index]

Letter No. 121

[To a member of the U.K. Current Affairs Forum on CompuServe, re (1) British abandonment of Hong Kong to Communist takeover and (2) historical British efforts to hem in the United States; after an initial aside concerning that writer's bizarrely calling the Chairman by a wrong name, and about that writer's general nastiness.]

I'M NOT Karl. Nor the English version, "Charles". You may call me "Mr. Schoonmaker". If EVER again you issue ad-hominem disrespect for me in the future, I shall act as tho you do not exist. I suspect you NEED proof that I (and such other people as you go out of your way to try to annoy) know you exist.

As regards Hong Kong, Britain was required to turn over only the New Territories, the enlarged and LEASED portion of its Hong Kong colony. It did NOT have to give Hong Kong proper to China. Britain is a nuclear power, as is China. But Britain can GET nuclear missiles to China, by means of its navy. China CANNOT get nuclear missiles to Britain. Ergo, Britain could have refused to turn over Hong Kong had it so desired, with or without support by the U.S.

Flag of colonial Hong Kong

Yes, Hong Kong would have had a problem with fresh water, but Hong Kong is an ISLAND, surrounded by water, and (a) salt water can be used for much public washing (streets, boats, people, etc.) and even cooking (which would save salting pasta, for instance), and (b) desalinization comprises several well-developed technologies easily capable, especially in a tropical (that is, HOT) setting such as Hong Kong, of producing vast quantities of sterile, fresh water with ease.

No, Britain abandoned the nonwhite people of Hong Kong — without even giving them British passports and the 'right of return' to Britain — in order to curry favor with the Communists of the Forbidden City: i.e., the Butchers of Beijing who slaughtered thousands in putting down the Tienanmen Square prodemocracy demonstrations.

I certainly don't recall any Hong Kong plebiscite on whether the people wanted to be turned over to Communist China either.

Flag of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Communist China

As for the Caribbean and other colonies of Britain that Britain might have transferred to the United States, it was obvious by 1861 (at latest) that Britain could not challenge the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere without risking vast devastation to its Navy and American colonies. That is why, despite British ruling-class inclination to assist the Confederacy in breaking up the United States, they hedged their bet and refused to recognize its pet, the Confederacy, or provide full allied support to its war against the United States. It was plain even to the boneheads who ruled Britain then (as now) that the U.S. was so powerful that it would not only assuredly win the war against the South but, if Britain allied itself formally with the South, the triumphant U.S. would as well take Canada and the Caribbean — at the least — from Britain, and maybe inflict a humiliating defeat upon the home islands, even free all of Ireland — intact — from British tyranny and maybe, if Americans were angry enough, annex all of Britain to the United States as territories — 'states in training' until their people had unlearned monarchism and become good democrats.

By 1895 the British ruling class had seen the handwriting on the wall. The British Empire was a spent idea incapable of moving on because its ruling class would NEVER admit Indians, Nigerians, and other colonials to Parliament in London, and if they refused colonials such admission, the British Empire was doomed to disappear.

By contrast, in 1895 the U.S. had consolidated the whole of its internal empire and made one working country of continental extent. Each year the United States became more tightly united and the British Empire more endangered. Every sensible person saw where this was headed.

In 1898 the U.S. inflicted a crushing, humiliating defeat on the Spanish Empire and thereby demonstrated that the age of European domination of the world was OVER. The United States had greater internal resources than ANY European empire save Russia, and Russia was so backward and backward-looking that it could not make good use of its superior resources. From then to now, a full century, the U.S. has dominated the world, and the British Empire has known that it has been displaced from its premier role in the world. A SMART ruling class would have proposed a MERGER, British Empire with United States. Cecil Rhodes (an ambitious homosexual man, like myself) saw the reunification of the two as vital to the future of the English-speaking peoples. He may not, however, have understood that the surviving entity of that merger would be the United States.

Instead of accepting, in 1860-61, that the British Empire would vanish into history and in so doing leave Britain a pitiful appendage of Europe dominated by BRUSSELS, of all places, Britain's ruling class tried to pretend that the U.S. could be hemmed in and therefore stopped from displacing Britain. So they willfully and maliciously encircled the United States with proxies for the British Empire: Canada and the host of future ministates/microstates of the Caribbean, including Belize and Guyana, plus a number of microstates in Oceania. They willed to Canadians undying hatred for the 'Yankee traitor' who destroyed the first British Empire, in North America, and in so doing forced the ancestors of much of the Canadian ruling class into exile in (the godforsaken wilderness of) Canada. The British ruling class as well did everything in their power to keep everyone in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and other parts of the (fading) British Empire from thinking of a "New Empire", based on the United States, which would grant all parts of the Empire full participation in a federal union on a basis of equality, new states with old. No, Britain might not have been able to hold on to its failing Empire, but it sure as hell wouldn't let the U.S. pick it up and make it work.

Think of this in personal terms. A father in failing health, seeing his death looming, has a single, vital son. His son and he are cordial, but his son is doing VERY well, and the father resents it. So the father drafts a will by which he leaves everything he has to others. If he had left it all to his son, his son might have surpassed him. As it happens, his son surpassed him anyway. All the father did was keep his son from becoming an even greater success than he could have been — and make his son's son, who knows what his father's father did, hate his grandfather with a permanent and glowing hatred. There is bitterness in the U.S.-British relationship on the part of everyone here who knows what Britain did to hurt the U.S. Some of us will never forget and never forgive.

As for Jay Leno's "credentials" [as a political commentator for having remarked on Britain's role as instigator that "England's back there offering to hold our coat [while we fight Iraq]"], the U.S. isn't hung up on credentials. If something a person says makes sense, Americans will heed it. Leno was commenting on the behavior of the PRESENT British government, which to this day is trying to get the U.S. to bomb Iraq.

The Vietnam "war" was not at all "foolish". Westerners' walking away to leave pro-Western Vietnamese to the wrath of Communists was detestable and unforgivable. The very least we should — all of us in the entire West — have done is evacuate every single person in Indochina who did not care to live under Communism to our own countries. But of course Britain wouldn't do that, because it doesn't want yellow people in Britain. [Return to index]

Letter No. 122

[To a Franco-Ontarian participant in a Canadian-affairs forum re French help to the early U.S. in breaking out of confinement by the British Empire, December 27, 1997]

LOUISIANA changed hands a number of times, and