Posted on 01/19/2014 10:15:37 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
My relations with my National Post colleague Diane Francis have had their ups and downs over three decades or so. We have gotten over some rough patches, including a period of a couple of years when her chief public conversational gambit seemed to be the moral imperative that I be sent to prison. But we had put that behind us well before I was, in fact, to her apparent regret, actually sent to prison, and our relations have been fine for years.
She is a very nice person and often an interesting business writer. And I have enjoyed reading her recently published book about a federal union between Canada and the United States, “Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country.” I don’t agree with her conclusion, but neither do I recoil with horror at the idea and tremble with patriotic loathing and snarl “annexationist” at her as if it were the ultimate condition of moral turpitude.
I was for a time reviled in those terms by some of the traditional, leftist Canadian nationalists, though I was never an annexationist myself. After many years of fighting the very good fight with the Quebec separatists, I made the point that if Quebec prevailed with “sovereignty association,” and the rest of Canada was sorting out what to do next in national terms, a connection with the United States would be a good deal more appetizing than the fairy tale being peddled to the nationalist voters of Quebec by René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, and ultimately Lucien Bouchard: essentially a sovereign Quebec still receiving transfer payments from English Canada and basking in the full faith and credit of the Canadian treasury....
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
First, I’m from Canada. Harper may be a conservative, by American standards I’m not sure, but it won’t last forever. Likewise, the pendulum will swing hard after Obama. Maybe we’ll both have conservative administrations, but Canada will still have single payer health care and Human Rights Tribunals.
Not going to happen, but fun to think about in these days from which there is no real escape.
Mr. niteowl77
As most of us on this forum enjoy the musings of Mark Steyn, we would also gain the elegant insights of one Rex Murphy. Rex could fillet Mr. Obama effortlessly.
Given our current condition what advantage would Canada gain from union with us? Bad deal for them; like a polished and well to do lady marrying a bankrupt self absorbed wastrel
Never had so much fun as a Saturday night in Cameroon with Cajun neighbors. We got out of there around 4 AM.
Agreements and mergers are too messy. Wait until hunting season and just cross the border and finish the job we quit in 1812 for Pete’s sake.
This way the Quebec thing is solved - speak SPANISH!
And that should help our Global Warming Carbon Credit search enormously!
Hey, now. There's no call to bringing the Kerry and McCain families into this!
We may have our difference and there are good a bad things on both sides of the border but putting them aside, should both countries decide to merge, we would become one hell of a great and strong nation.
Personally, I love the “Canadians”, they play great hockey.
*** they are good folks who will treat you right***
Our first plant manager here was THE MANAGER FROM HELL! A Cajun, who left all of us with a very bad impression of them. The other Louisianans were fine in comparison.
I saw a photo of that man not long ago. I jumped and quickly made a cross with my fingers (like in a vampire movie)to frighten his memory off.
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