My Exploration Of Canada-USA Amalgamation

2. People like to have a government which pursues policies reflecting their values and priorities. I viewed the American government's policies and past actions through Canadian eyes and found much not to like. I came to the conclusion that while I am currently proud of the policies of my federal government, I would have been ashamed of at least some of the policies of my government if I was an American citizen. I would conclude many of my governments in the last 50 years committed, supported, or criminally neglected to prevent acts of terror and war crimes. I would be particularly appalled by the fact that my government spends 40 (forty!) times more on developing the capacity to mutilate people of other nations than on the capacity to help them improve their lives (military vs. foreign economical aid budgets). While there will likely be some shift in policies if we shared a government, the relative size of the two populations would result in a relatively small adjustment.

3. People would like to have an efficient and responsive government. While I didn't do a comprehensive study, a rough assessment of costs vs. citizen satisfaction led me to conclude the federal Canadian government is significantly more efficient and responsive than the American one. Were the governments to join, I believe the American administration's inefficiency would dominate the joined result.

4. By now it should be obvious I concluded the idea of unifying Canada and the US is currently neither desirable nor feasible. I still think, however, that increased economical integration is worth pursuing, and, if done with care, can be achieved without compromising political independence. I'm still pondering what my conclusions imply regarding the prospects of a global federation that includes the US.

5. A lively on-line discussion forum where the participants hold different views on subjects of common interest is an excellent way for people to get engaged and excited, obtain new knowledge quickly and clarify their thinking. Provided the debate is civilized (and it can sometimes degrade into juvenile name-calling), participants who based their initial view on false assumptions may not immediately change their mind, but would often go away with doubts they didn't have before.

6. The "Bush Doctrine" is unsustainable because the American public will refuse to provide financing, or institute a military draft, to enable any more Iraq-like adventures for some years to come. The combination of a global constituency increasingly resentful towards the US and a US government powerless to impose significant economical sanctions is pushing governments of a growing list of countries to pursue foreign policies independent of Washington. The US is thus losing followers, ie, its global leadership position. Due to 9/11, the controversy around the war in Iraq, the proliferation of TV news and the Internet, world citizenry is now far more aware of international politics and human rights violations in far-away places than ever before. A consensus is developing that the current system of international diplomacy sucks. The smell of an impending change in how the world is governed is in the air. The experience, plus my growing awareness of the deficiencies and weaknesses of the current world governance system, led me to launch an online discussion forum (www.worldgov.info) dedicated solely to world governance.

Links for further exploration

For those of you who want to examine the basis for my conclusions, I am listing here some information sources I found very useful. Some of them are eye opening - prepare to spend an hour or more browsing through this fascinating stuff.

Attitudes and conditions of people in different nations

• www.people-press.org/pgap/ : results of comparative worldwide polls. The "What the world thinks 2002" survey is particularly interesting.
• www.worldaudit.org : the prevalence of public corruption, the state of human rights, political rights and the rule of law in 149 nations (all those exceeding one million population).
• www.nationmaster.com : a comprehensive, easily accessible, database of comparative statistical data about nations with an associated encyclopedia. Excellent!

Integration of North-America

• www.ppforum.com : specifically "Rethinking North American Integration"
• www.ekos.com/media/research.asp : presentation of various relevant poll results
• www.macleans.ca/topstories/polls/article.jsp?content=20031229_72597_72597 Maclean's 2003 year-end poll of Canadian attitudes (click on the links in "More Stories" for specific details)

Why do they hate America?

I started my exploration with resentment towards the Bush administration, but with a view that it was a historical aberration. My attitude towards past administrations and the American public in general was positive and friendly (hey, my sister is an American!). As I climbed the learning curve on recent American history, my limited initial resentment became wider and more deeply entrenched to the point I am now definitely an anti-American. Using the wonders of the Internet, you can easily separate fact from spin and become an expert anti-American yourself too:

• www.lossless-audio.com/usa/index0.php is a good starting point with references to some other relevant articles. Watch America not only turning friends into enemies, but also shooting itself in the foot, again and again.
• www.fas.org/man/crs/crs_931007.htm : 234 instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime
  purposes between 1798 - 1993. The list is certainly incomplete (I know of a few not mentioned there, and it doesn't include covert operations, such as murders of politicians, etc.). The total, including the
  operations since 1993, is probably more like 300. Certainly not all, however, involved actual violence.
• www.deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm is a reminder of what really happened during the first Gulf war. See many familiar names and faces amongst members of the 'impunity club':
• www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/
• www.rotten.com/library/bio/usa/ The above site is works in progress - some sections are incomplete or missing altogether. I couldn't find, for example, Eisenhower's and Kennedy's history of deceptions, sabotage, terrorism and murder in Cuba ( www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html). More importantly, they have not gotten around yet to tell the stories of McNamara and Kissinger, arch-butchers extraordinaire (more on Kissinger: www.zpub.com/un/wanted-hkiss.html , but don't miss the pictures at www.rotten.com/library/bio/usa/henry-kissinger, and a bit on McNamara: www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20010709&s=20010626)

A side comment: In debates about US foreign policy, I was sometimes attacked by Americans for not being even-handed and "fair" (we were not the only ones to do X, so why pick on us?). My response was that since US claims moral leadership (its "manifest destiny", it must subject itself to a closer scrutiny and be held to a higher morality standard than those it claims to lead. Moreover, I suspect that the per-capita body count resulting from US's foreign policy decisions over the last 50 years simply tops the list for any representative government.

Looking for a motive? Let me quote John F. Lehman, Jr., US Secretary of the Navy (1973-1987): "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." If we were Americans and felt all-powerful, we might have behaved the same way.