Joe said:
You realize of course that if the US had not declared independence, the chances are that there would be no Canada. Instead, there's at least as good a chance that had it not been for the stabilizing effect of the United States, rather than three large, relatively peaceful governments North America would instead have spent a long period of time as a number of small, independent warring colonial nation-states not unlike South America or Africa.No, I don't realize that. It is impossible to look back on history and say with any certainty whatsoever, what the outcome would have been if a different path had been taken. Maybe there wouldn't have be a Canada. Maybe there would. Maybe there would have been one large democratic country across all of North America that gained its independence through negotiation rather than revolution. Maybe there would have been one or more countries that formed a sort of United States of the New World that democratically chose to be a part of the British Commonwealth and elected members to the British parliament. Maybe we would still have all been colonists of Britain, France and Spain. Or, maybe we would have broken down into a lot of warring factions. I just don't know. Nobody else does either. We just know what did happen. Joe said:
I guess they don't teach much about the American Revolution in Canada, but really, they did some pretty good writing back then. There's one really good one called the Declaration of Independence that's one of my favorites; it spells out the concepts quite clearly.Actually, I suspect that they teach considerably more about the American Revolution in Canadian schools than they teach about Canadian history in American schools. That's not a complaint. I wouldn't expect it to be any other way given the relative populations, economies and world power of the two countries. I agree that they did some pretty good writing -- and I'll add that they did some pretty good thinking -- back then. I said in a post to forum attached to another of my articles (I forget which one) that I feel that the core ideals underlying the founding of the United States and underlying the country today are second to none in the world. I believed that when I wrote it. I still believe it. How can any thinking human being argue against liberty and a society based on the rule of law? How can anybody argue against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the founding principles of a country? I sure can't. Does that mean that I've always agreed with the way that American administrations have implemented policies supposedly to further those ideals? No, it does not. Then again, there have been an exceptionally large number of policies adopted by Canadian governments that I've disagreed with. The conversation in this forum got into a discussion about gun control. (Don't ask me how an article about the way that technology has been used for both good and evil in the wake of the tsunami disaster evolved in to a discussion of gun control. Forums attached to my articles have this weird tendency to go off on bizarre and unexpected tangents.) The point I was making was that I, in what I admit is just my opinion, believe that the evils that guns facilitate are greater than the benefits of guns and, therefore, that there is the need for some gun control. The second amendment of the U.S. constitution which the gun advocates quote says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.I've just never been able to understand what a "well regulated militia" has to do with allowing every damn fool to own some awfully deadly weapons. Somebody jumped into the conversation with the contention that guns were necessary to protect us against evil people who may gain control of the government (I'm paraphrasing his argument for brevity). I found that proposition to be more than a little frightening. Who gets to decide who is evil and therefore worth defending with a gun? You are right. I don't know who "the people" are, except as their expression through democracy. If, despite living in a society that elects its governments through long-established democratic institutions, such as in the U.S., Canada and Europe, you feel the need to use a gun to protect yourself against your government then it means that you believe that democracy has broken down. If so, how do you measure the will of the people? Do you and a bunch of your friends get together and say "democracy has failed. We represent the people and this government is bad so we are going to start a revolution against it." Don't you find that frightening? You see, I too believe very strongly in democracy and do not take it as a joke. Since I turned voting age I have only missed voting in one election -- that includes federal, provincial and municipal elections. That one omission was due to a death in the family. I think that democracy is at the heart of all of the other things that are good about our societies. I think that we all need to protect it. I also think that the low voter turnouts in both of our countries is a sad commentary on our democracies, but that's another topic and this forum has already veered way too far off track. I just think that we need to explore ways to protect, enhance and expand democracy without violence and the threat of violence being the big gun (pun intended) that we use to do so.
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