And not just for the NDP as Publius elucidates:
As The Dipper Panders
…
In the ROC Medicare is not a social program, it’s a totem of national identity. What it means to be Canadian in modern Canada is the divine right to die on a publicly funded waiting list. Unless you die in a hospital bed, at which point the hospital will nickel and dime your family and estate…
The Quebecois are not so emotionally attached to Tommy Douglas’ brain child. It’s a nice freebie and all, one of many financed through the largess of the less kleptocratic jurisdictions in the country, but it ain’t anything special. Quebec is Quebec and the Quebecois are pretty sure of who and what they are. That whole neurotic obsession with national identity is very much a WASP thing. No self respecting Francophone nationalist is going to stay awake at nights wondering how he is different from the Americans…
No self respecting Francophone nationalist is going to stay awake at nights wondering how he is different from the Americans…
Two questions:
1) Does anyone really stay awake at night wondering how they are different from the Americans, or really wonder at all…not knowing?
2) If there really is such a creature as a self respecting Francophone nationalist, how do they respect themselves while living as a parasite on other people’s money?
The idea of medicare being central to our Canadian identity is a testament to how little appreciation we Canucks have for the things we have and how little we respect we give those who put us in this great country. If all we can do to forge a national identity is to point out how we are different than the US then we truly suck.
The US is a better neighbour now and through history than pretty much any other country on earth. So why do we need to put distance between us? More to the point, why is such a negative emotion central to who we are?
I want to plug a new candidate for the central pillar of Canadian identity: freedom. Most Canadians have ancestors (recent ones in fact) who came to this country for the freedom it offered. We may not preach it as much as the US does but Canada has offered freedom to it’s citizens on a scale that is almost unrivalled in this world. The immigrants who came here knew this. It is what Canada meant to them. So why don’t we start identifying ourselves that way. Maybe then we would not fritter our freedoms away for the sake of comfort and domestic tranquility.
No self respecting Francophone nationalist is going to stay awake at nights wondering how he is different from the Americans…
I can’t comment on what goes through the head of the average pequiste – pas grands choses, I suspect – but I can tell you that the PQ media pumps out hour upon hour of self-congratulatory crap that goes something like this: it is incredible good fortune and very exiting to be surrounded by truly liberated bon vivants who create a society that is so different, and so much better, than a couple of other small little islands out there.
Don’t know what poses a greater occupational hazard to Quebec media types – dislocated shoulders from patting their own backs, or chronic pretzelitis from navel-gazing.
And the idea of medicare-supported abortion as also central to Canadian identity carries that logic to ‘nth degree of mythological absurdity.
I happen to remember my Trudeau-loving hard-core Liberal 100% French-Canadian mother protesting in front of an abortion-provider Hospital when I was a kid. Other Liberals joined her and I’m sure there were not a few Dippers in those days who also opposed abortion, or who at least opposed the financing of it through tax-payer funded medicare.
So why do we need to put distance between us? More to the point, why is such a negative emotion central to who we are?
~john s
Speaking as an Albertan, this caricature of Canadians defining themselves as ‘not-Americans’ is a figment of the Ontario media’s imagination.
None of the people I’ve known and grown with think that way or ever have.
If Easterners think that way(I doubt they do) they’re even more pathetic than I ever imagined.
Oz
Here here. Albertans have never fused about differences between us or American, or lost a wink of sleep unless your a socialist. Nor do we define ourselves by a health care system that we all want changed. We keep getting told by papers or TV that this is central. In reality land, never meet anyone who did NOT want changes like Private clinics & such. I think this is crap made up by Marxists in Ottawa that don’t have the guts to do whats right. A Made up excuse for cowardice.
Albertans never ask themselves what are the Americans doing, we ask why are the Americans doing what we are. You see the subtle difference.
For various rewasons I have pondered from time to time this declared anti-americanism….probably in response to comnments by americans.
Basically Canada, with exception of French-Canadians was based upon UELs…IOW The Revolution Refused…Canadians are Canadians specifically BECAUSE they are not americans….politically that is.
Europeans regard Canadians as more or less americans.
BTW…The War of Northern Aggression was actually America’s SECOND civil war.
Video of an anti-American NDP rally in 1972:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs5bnVoZK4Q
😉
A country that promotes itself by touting
Socialized Medicine and Tim Hortons as defining our national identity is in seriously deep shit.
And I stay awake at nights wondering why we aren’t MORE like Americans.
Ralph, don’t confuse the shallow Leftwing media caricature of Canada with the real Canada and cut back on the caffeine if you want to sleep.
Be all you can be, love your family and country, learn to be content and think of sleep as being delicious.
Canada is as good of a God-blessed country as exists in this old world.
Envy is a sin that sickens the heart by causing one to overlook his own blessings.
this caricature of Canadians defining themselves as ‘not-Americans’ is a figment of the Ontario media’s imagination…
Posted by: Oz at February 22, 2012 4:37 PM
That’s pretty much it. Most of the Canadian media and press, together with other bed-wetters like the Council of Canadians, Liberals and NDP, have this streak of anti-Americanism that defines them, not us.
It’s really just little man syndrome…you know, the Oedipus thing.
Sasquatch I believe you are right if talking about Ontario. We Albertans have a very different perspective. Our ancestors were never chased out of the US like the UEL nor were we attacked in the war of 1812. We look south to America (Montana) much like we used to look east to Saskatchewan, simply as being miles and miles of nothing surrounded by miles and miles of nothing. Our ancestors came from the US seeing Alberta/Canada as the ultimate land of opportunity.
Yeah apparently the ROC doesn’t yet include the west.
Medicare is central to our Canadian identity?
Who says?
Never heard it said except as a slogan on TV.
Agreed Oz but I get sick and tired of hearing this crap from Canadians when abroad. I honestly am becoming embarrassed to tell people I am a Canadian thanks to these jokers. Indeed they parrot only what they hear from the MSM.
And don’t ask me about Quebeckers in Florida. They are despised by everyone, no exceptions.
Oz at February 22, 2012 3:54 PM
In answer to your 1st Q….NO…at least in Alberta.
Your 2nd Q can’t be answered as “self-respecting” and “Francophone Nationalist” are self-excluding(my new word for oxymoron).
I am not so sure we can dismiss this as an eastern problem. In my experience BC has a lot of folks who’s whole idea of canadian identity is based on antiamericanism. Of course, the proportion and home province of these folks isn’t the point. The problem is the lack of a definable Canadian identity. I don’t even know if it is a problem, but i can see where having a well defined ID would help to stop ideological drift (of the sort we have had here for 20 years or more).
I have no link to back this up, but I believe it was last year when it was mentioned somewhere that Quebec had as many private medical clinics as the rest of Canada had. So Nash’s attitude is not surprising.
Joe, I have a step brother in Alberta that has the same heritage and has that Albertan drawl. His grandfather came from Texas.
john s, I agree, as I have a daughter-in-law in BC who is anti-American. I hear it in her comments, but she denies it when I mention it. She also does not mind shopping in Bellingham, WA fairly often.
There is also a strong anti-American attitude in the Niagara area of Ontario.
Ken, I have to disagree with your Niagara comment.
I lived in St. Catharines for some 20 years and almost everyone would cross the river to shop, dine and go for entertainment. There was healthy love and respect for our US neighbors.
I moved in 1990 so perhaps things have changed since then but my daughter and grandkids still live there. I’ve never heard a bad word from them about the US and they continue to shop there on a regular basis. If anything, they are jealous of their American neighbors.
john s: “I want to plug a new candidate for the central pillar of Canadian identity: freedom. Most Canadians have ancestors (recent ones in fact) who came to this country for the freedom it offered.”
Hear, hear. That’s definitely why my ancestors came. Well, there was another little thing that was part of their dream when they came to Canada: Opportunity. Opportunity to make something of themselves. But that’s a very close relative of Freedom.
I live right on the US Canadian border,I mean it is one mile to the USA from my house.The only anti-Americanism I can remember was that fostered by “the Cretch and Mr. Dithers” in order to try and make their 65 cent dollar acceptable.No wonder some Canadians had an inferiority complex in those days when it came to the US.After all when your own government continually tells the world that you are only 65 % as productive as your nearest neighbor and your paycheck is only worth 65 % of the guys on the other side of the line it doesn t take long before your self esteem goes in the tank.Hopefully the philosophy of collective mediocrity has followed “the Cretch and Mr. Dithers into oblivion.
I, for one, am tired of hearing how “universal” healthcare is something intrinsically Canadian and that as a Canadian I am neurotic about Americans and how they see me.
Had to do it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRI-A3vakVg
The day a party runs on freeing up the medical system (ie. allowing private hospitals/private practitioners–not just clinics), allow citizens to opt out of provincial healthcare and purchase their own medical insurance–they’ll have my vote. Having options is the epitome of freedom. Less welfare state more self-determination.
Joe @ 6:36pm:
A big difference between east and west is as you suggested that many of our forebears came from the USA. 3 of my 4 grandparents families came up. They brought with them a distrust of big government and a rugged independance. I have often wondered what the continent would have looked like if eastern Canada had joined the American colonies in their Revolution.
Canada has always been a ‘top down’ form of government which was learnt from the monarchy. The USA is no shining example of what they were but creeping socialism has done that to them.
“That whole neurotic obsession with national identity is very much a WASP thing.”
Corection: he means “that whole neurotic obsession with CANADIAN national identity”. And since when did the neuroses of WASPs matter much anymore? The only WASPs we ever see much of these days are PM Harper and Peter Mansbridge. Ha ha!
Québécois obsessions with national identity are no less neurotic: they just happen to be wholly obsessed with Québec instead.
But I agree that there’s something essentially flabby and superficial about touting healthcare as a totem of national identity. At best (or worst), it might pass as a marker for revealing pride – or shame – in the government of one’s province of residence.
I do think the old line about our Canadian identity being defined by its “not-Americanism” to be increasingly tedious.
Enough already.
Can I add another suggestion?
Let’s stop using the term ROC (Rest of Canada). It only creates a false dichotomy that panders to Québec separatism.
And it is false because the supposed unanimity represented by “ROC” does not exist.
Screw “national identity”. It is a form of collectivism. Like nationalism (same thing, really), it’s the last resort of a scoundrel.
We should think only in terms of individualism. That way no one gets ripped off.