← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · friedrich braun
Thread ID: 9903 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2003-09-19
2003-09-19 18:14 | User Profile
Subject: PITTSBURGH NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
Pittsburgh Post- Gazette.
Pittsburgh, Pa. Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003. IAN ROBERTSON..
It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada. You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud music or throws raucous parties. He doesn't gossip over the fence, just smiles politelyand offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is cared-for, his house is neat as a pin and you get the feeling he doesn't always lock his front door. He
wears Dockers. You hardly know he's there.And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends his weekends at peace marches and that guy you've seen mowing the yard is his spouse.
Allow me to introduce Canada.
The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they're up there, but they've been busy doing some surprising things. It's like discovering that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have been building an espresso machine.
Did you realize, for example, that our reliable little tag-along brother never joined the Coalition of the Willing? Canada wasn't willing, as it turns out, to join the fun in Iraq. I can only assume American diner menus weren't angrily changed to include "freedom bacon," because nobody here eats the stuff anyway.
And then there's the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are authorized to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering legislation that would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as you may have heard, but would reduce the penalty for possession of under 15 grams to a fine, like a speeding ticket. This is to allow law enforcement to concentrate resources on traffickers; if your garden is full of wasps, it's smarter to go for the nest rather than trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United States, bong.
Now, here's the part that I, as an American, can't understand. These poor benighted pinkos are doing everything wrong. They have a drug problem: Marijuana offenses have doubled since 1991. And Canada has strict gun control laws, which means that the criminals must all be heavily armed, the law-abiding civilians helpless and the government on the verge of a massive confiscation campaign. (The laws have been in place since the '70s, but I'm sure the government will get around to the confiscation eventually.)
They don't even have a death penalty! And yet ... nationally, overall crime in Canada has been declining since 1991. Violent crimes fell 13 percent in 2002. Of course, there are still crimes committed with guns -- brought in from the United States, which has become the major illegal weapons supplier for all of North America -- but my theory is that the surge in pot-smoking has rendered most criminals too relaxed to commit violent crimes. They're probably more focused on shoplifting boxes of Ho-Hos from convenience stores.
And then there's the most reckless move of all: Just last month, Canada decided to allow and recognize same-sex marriages. Merciful moose, what can they be thinking? Will there be married Mounties (they always get their man!)? Dudley Do-Right was sweet on Nell, not Mel! We must be the only ones who really care about families. Not enough to make sure they all have health insurance, of course, but more than those libertines up north.
This sort of behavior is a clear and present danger to all our stereotypes about Canada. It's supposed to be a cold, wholesome country of polite, beer-drinking hockey players, not founded by freedom-fighters in a bloody revolution but quietly assembled by loyalists and royalists more interested in order and good government than liberty and independence. But if we are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?
Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to polls. As a result, Canada's government isn't influenced by large, well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with those of Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran.
Canada signed the Kyoto global warming treaty, lets 19-year-olds drink, has more of its population living in urban areas and accepts more immigrants per capita than the United States.
These are all things we've been told will wreck our society. But I guess Canadians are different, because theirs seems oddly sound.
Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really demand that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more adult -- more secure. They aren't afraid of foreigners. They aren't afraid of homosexuality.
Most of all, they're not afraid of each other.
I wonder if America will ever be that cool.
2003-09-19 18:47 | User Profile
Let the US send them a few million people of color so they can be [I]really[/I] cool. :D
And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?
Perhaps because they're so busy stamping out freedom of speech?
2003-09-19 18:53 | User Profile
Canada:
Welcome to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".
2003-09-30 10:36 | User Profile
Interesting article. Sounds like they spend more time 'living free' than cozying up to mythical revolutionary idolatry.
I hardly think the Zündel case means all free speech is dead in Canada. Americans would do better worrying about Guantanamo and domestic espionage under the Patriot Act than worrying about Canada's Brave New World because of Zündel.
The Zündel arrest seems like a small deviation from freedom in comparison.
2003-09-30 12:59 | User Profile
I recently spent some time in British Columbia and returned favorably impressed with the land and its people. There might be some liberal stains in its body politic, but the quality of life is high and and the absence of a perverted hysteria created by the politicians and media is absent. The low crime rate and absence of ethnic thuggery as commonly found in most American cities is a fine relief. If one wishes one can even obtain high quality grass cheaply from a harmless white youth sitting in a park. Except for some things, like petrol, whisky and cigs. the cost of living is lower.
2003-09-30 20:47 | User Profile
My one visit to Canada was a port call in Halifax in January 86. I don't remember much about it for some reason. :beer:
I'm not worried at all what the Canadians do in their own country (and I am very worried indeed at what the US government is doing at home and abroad.)
Should the US be more like Canada? Saner drug laws, a less meddlesome foreign policy? YES.
Gun control, same-sex marriage, jailing dissidents in the name of tolerance? NO.
Socialized medicine? If the alternative is the system we have now, I'd say it's a toss-up.