Second, what do you propose with the ethnically non-western Canadians? The Chinese, Indians, and Arabs?
You see, about 70 years ago your solution would have been viable. Figuring out that existential crises back then and rebuilding the civilizational state you propose would have worked. It doesn’t work now. The egg is broken and you can’t put it back again. You can only make an omelette. Based on peace, order, and good government (and not American). But nothing like the old. A good starting point is no later than the late 80s. Right before the unipolar moment dragged us along with it. But anything else won’t work (imho).
As American financial power unravels, the standard of living in Western countries will decline, while it will improve abroad. Many recent immigrants, those who have come in the last decade or so and have shallow roots, will probably just go home - they're only here for mercenary reasons.
Others won't. Depending on how many stay that may or may not be a problem. Cosmopolitan cities with multiple ethnic enclaves are historically common and generally stable so long as everyone stays in their lane. If they aren't, a West that longer apologizes for itself may simply start mass deportations. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. From my perspective the primary problem isn't the presence of local minorites per se, but the preferential treatment they're given - remove that preference, make it clear that they will no longer get special treatment, and I for one would be content (although I also suspect this would incentivize a fair fraction to leave, as without eg tax breaks and diversity hiring policies, they'd be at a severe competitive disadvantage).
I fully agree. The key weakness of Canadians (and Australians) has been a willingness to make unwarranted concessions in relation to freedoms of association and speech.
At the moment preferential hiring/contracting and the prioritisation of diversity at all costs are laying the foundation for a racial caste system that is at odds with Anglo law and that over time will guarantee otherwise preventable conflicts. The rate and sources of migration should be negotiable, but the civil status of any existing citizens should never be compromised.
Deportations are unthinkable now, but they are not impossible. After the Irish established their state they drove out 9/10 or more of the non-Catholic population, almost all of whom were ethnically indistinguishable from their neighbours. This was done by economic and social pressure, above all through employment/hiring. By the time of WW2 the only non-Catholics left were either a tiny set of very wealthy people, a handful of professionals and a few self-employed tradesmen and small business people.
I am not arguing that this should be applied anywhere today but the reality is that economic power is routinely wielded as a weapon in the real world. Just look at the Tamils in Malaysia, the Chinese in Indonesia or the Koreans in Japan.
Some in some cases because their home countries are unstable due to the West’s actions and/or just inherently. But by NO means all immigrants. It used to be that many who emigrated were highly educated and/or individuals who were already leaning to the West. It’s only in the last decade or two that the bar was substantially lowered.
On Deportations: if they’re a Canadian citizen you CANNOT deport them. If they haven’t done anything outrageously illegal and they’re a permanent resident, again you CANNOT deport them. I don’t think I need to say more.
I am not sure what you mean by “stay in their lane”. My comment was to point out that the anglo-saxon ethnic based argument to a better Canada does not work. It is not the 1950s. Sorry but what you’re proposing sounds a lot like Nazism and it will make Canada a pariah.
The country’s ethnic composition has changed - that is a fact. The way forward is a sovereign independent non-globalist non-woke multiethnic Canada with a Western Civilizational foundation.
Any “true” blood tribal remake will destroy the country.
P.S. Also I doubt the French Canadian would appreciate an anglo-saxon Canada. Try that and see what happens.
I'm not proposing an ethnostate at all; if I had been, I would have called it that. I don't think that would work in Canada. A civstate is a rather different thing - you can absolutely have minority populations. However, you're not going to have a Western civ foundation if the ethnic composition is majority non-Western, which is the demographic composition our current policies are explicitly designed to achieve. That's a liberal pipe dream.
I've met relatively few who came due to instability, caused by Western meddling or otherwise. The overwhelming majority came to make money. Unless you're suggesting that India and China are particularly unstable?
Regarding deportations, indeed citizens cannot be deported. Many however are not citizens, and regulations governing how long visitors can stay can certainly be changed.
As to "stay in their lane", I mean simply this: don't cause trouble. In the context of ethnically diverse cosmopoles, that generally means that the different groups stay mostly in their own territories and don't mess with each other. See: Singapore. So far that's generally been the case in Canada, so we've been fairly lucky.
Citizens cannot be deported it is true. But those with dual citizenship, who have acquired Canadian citizenship after immigration, could have their citizenship stripped from them for committing serious crimes (and perhaps many not-as-serious ones) as was the case in Canada when Stephen Harper was PM and as some other countries do. Trudeau's insistence in the 2015 English election debate that a "Canadian is a Canadian!" is not true. Someone who immigrates here and becomes a citizen while maintaining citizenship in their birth country is fundamentally different than someone such as myself who was born in Canada and is a citizen of no other country. It is absurd to pretend otherwise.
I’ve met an Iraqi in high school who moved after the first gulf war. Wicked smart. Went on to get a phd in engineering from top universities in the country. He’s not the only the one. That was in the mid 90s. The later comers in the last decade or so however haven’t been all stars.
Visitors, yes. Permanent Residents, no. The idea of PR is you want to be Canadian. So maybe reform the rules around giving it out, but once you have it you have it.
The last paragraph I disagree with. Many people use Singapore as an example for things that work there but that’s it though - they work there. A small island state with a small population, resource poor, and an authoritarian police government. Not the same as Canada. I actually think that we should encourage cultural mixing. Naturally, different ethnicities will tend to stay together but that doesn’t mean we should encourage that.
In my circle of friends, in no particular order, I have friends with a background from Italy, Hungary, India, China, Russia, Vietnam, Philippines, France, England, Netherlands, Jamaica, and from Newfoundland, British Columbia, and French Canadians. Some first generation, others second, and more. I am richer for it and if they had all stayed in their lane I wouldn’t have had that.
From my travels, in my experience it is that which makes Canadians well adjusted and well liked and I wouldn’t have wanted my friends to only stick to their own.
I don’t see these two concepts - Western Civ and multiethnocultural - as oppositional but the balance and boundaries are tough to draw and enforce. We used to do it well - not anymore.
Like it or not, Toronto is Singapore now. So is Vancouver for that matter. Toronto's motto used to be 'industry, intelligence, integrity'. In the late 90s it was switched to 'diversity our strength'. That says it all right there. We gave up the former for the latter.
It doesn't matter if you don't think Western civ and multiculturalism are antithetical. They clearly are. Western civ is several hundred years old, multiculturalism is decades old, and in the decades since the latter was forced on us by our traitorous ruling class our civilization has gone down the toilet. The experiment has been done and the results are in - in Canada, and everywhere else it's been tried. That you have a diverse friend group is irrelevant to this.
The point is not whether we as individuals find it agreeable or not, but the welfare of the vast mass of ordinary people. The metrics involve trends in real wages and the levels of trust and civility within a society.
Western civ is besides the point if you cannot travel in safety on the buses, if young women find themselves told to adapt to alien dress codes or if young men discover that their ethnic peers now carry knives as per the old country. No abstraction means much when you are getting stabbed.
In the past only port cities and imperial capitals were multicultural. This was a side effect of actions undertaken by ruling dynasties. Now diversity is imposed as a moral imperative or as a form of social engineering (if not as a punitive measure) on all communities. It is no longer a side effect but a central aim of the regime. And dissenting voices are silenced.
The change in Toronto’s motto is risible! Agreed. That says it all.
I know that multiculturalism (as defined by the elites) was forced on by the elites. And I even understand part of the reason for it (yes I’m well aware of the dilution). If I was to design a rational immigration policy it would be: “I want the best people, from the countries/cultures/religions that is compatible with Classical Western Civilizational values, in adequate numbers that allows for proper integration into Canadian society. Exceptions are on a case by case basis”.
That’s not what they always did and absolutely not in the last two decades or so.
To clarify, by multiculturalism I don’t mean it should be the official policy of the state. I’m not advocating for saying “hey you know we don’t have enough Somalians we need to get more”. That’s absurd! I mean multiculturalism is the end result unless we restrict the immigration source to Anglophone countries and France only - which we didn’t - so we need a way to deal with it now in a way that retains Canada’s national identity without causing ethnic friction.
(Also, I have to say I stand by my circle of friends. They came during a different time when Canada was much more selective of who they let in and they are all highly educated functional contributors to Canadian society and proud Canadians)
In any case, we need to stop the bleeding and a way forward - and that starts with removing the Ken doll in Ottawa.
Would ya mayhaps fancy a peanut butter & olives sandwich? How aboot(* jelly & skittles & carrots? No? With a caveat you’re not a pregnant woman (person!) 😏 (h/t freevoices.substack.com/p/diversity-is-our-weakness)
I suspect that Trump's threats of mass deportations are aimed at this goal of self-deportation. Finding myself in that position, I would certainly choose to leave on my own terms rather than someone else's In the short run, the invaders will probably choose the sanctuaries so those are going to have to be dealt with. Or not. If CA fills completely up with Mexicans, we could simply cede it back to Mexico. Mexico, at least, would develop the resources.
True, true. Trouble is we in the West are detribalized and the reconstitution of old ones is likely to end in farce.
IMHO the future in much of the West will be a new wave of ethnogenesis. No single standard, but variety. In some places new nations emerging from the rubble, in others old nations shredded and reconstituted as servile biomass for conquerors to exploit. In a few corners old tribes will make a comeback.
There will be lies aplenty. New ones. Old ones. Delusions for minds formed by video games and apps. The only place for the honest man in Chulhuland is in the slave-pits.
True, but realism offers some grounds for hope. The situation is becoming more dynamic. Whatever happens, emerging conditions pose terrible problems for the authoritarians. For several generations governance in Norh America has been very easy. Gov'ts have been able to rely upon a contented, loyal, stable, population with predictable behaviours. Compare how easy it was to govern Minneapolis a generation ago compared with today. The governing classes are already being taxed to their limits of their abilities.
That very ease is likely what lulled them into thinking that they could get away with all of this. Of course now that they can no longer rely on obedience by default thanks to civic mindedness, they are resorting to various forms of distraction and devitalization, together with an increasingly heavy hand.
Complacency is possibly the ultimate foundation of all the regime's problems. The routine incompetence at the top is derivative of this as is the wholesale neglect of human capital. You see complacency in every sector at every level. The suppression of dissenting opinions guarantees that the scale of problems is never understood properly until things have reached catastrophic proportions.
It is possible to enact your vision by *enshrining* democracy.
Objective fact: democracy does not scale. The greater the polity, the more your vote is diluted. Democracy at the world government level is utterly meaningless.
Objective fact 2: Wide open borders lead to world government. If one polity opts for Bernietopia, then the residents of Galt's Gulch can send their welfare cases to Bernietopia. Meanwhile, the rich in Bernietopia can move to Galt's Gulch to avoid the progressive taxation.
The ultimate *liberal* vision is thus independent polities where you can *shop* for the government/society you like. That is, you can choose where you want to live but you have to pay. This is the exact opposite of the U.S. system of anti discrimination laws granted to immigrants. Immigrants should prove their worth to the country they move to. (This includes US expats living in Latin America.)
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I propose this alternative to nationalism because my country has long been multi-national. And the areas of the U.S. that peg out the Anglo/White meter are the wokest generally. (Exception: West Virginia.)
If someone is willing to pay to be an American, they are likely to be more Real 'Merican than many native born. Elon Musk comes to mind. The convenience store up the highway which caters to Mexican farm workers also comes to mind. The delightfully sexist beer posters remind me of the 'Merica that I grew up in.
Let people sort themselves up. But preserve home court advantage. The purpose of a polity is to serve its citizens.
It's occurred to me that civilization-states need not necessarily be 'states' as we classically think of them. Something more like the Catholic Church in the medieval period, an overarching framework that everyone participates in, but which maintains effective sovereignty at a small scale.
Historically, our people have generally preferred the highly subsidiary federation to the centralized state. A form which preserves the ability to cooperate at large scales while leaving most matters in the hands of local authorities seems ideal to me.
Germany was once hundreds of semi-independent principalities with a great deal of shared culture.
Western Europe launched modern civilization in part because it had a large number of semi-independent states with enough shared culture that people with ideas could shop princes.
Ancient Greece had a similar dynamic.
Russia was not always a huge empire. Ukraine has been under the rule of Mongols, Tartars, Russia, Poland, Austria, Lithuania, and Vikings. There be fighting there because there are no pure ethnic boundaries. Perhaps the solution for Ukraine would be to break it up.
People pay too much attention to the current maps of everywhere. It is like when the colonialists divided up Africa and drew straight lines without regard to ethnicity, language or geography. And these lines have become sacrosanct with the current indigenous elites. Same for Eastern Europe and to a certain extent Western Europe. The United States was a plural noun before the War of Northern Aggression. Canada is logically 4 nations not counting the First Nations. Russia is still an empire, albeit a smaller one. China is an empire as is India. India has already be split twice since independence an perhaps another one is coming.
My idea is that nothing larger than 1900s Switzerland is going to remain honest or uncorrupted by sociopaths seeking exploitation and domination. In order to have a worthwhile world, we need to balkanize, not dream of sprawling empires. If no one is within reach of some dream of eternal world domination, then governments will be forced to play nice with their citizens, and on a scale that their citizens can actually capture their own states rather than be captive to them and abused by them.
In order to make any of this work, we need the ability to miniaturize everything that is currently done on a mass scale. When a small country can field a force that will prevent larger empires from threatening them (or at least make it very clear their demise will be Pyrrhic poison to an invader), they'll be able to hold their own and be a model for further breakaway states. (In the modern world, that means they need to be able to make their own machinery, their own silicon, their own nukes, etc.) (Actually, nukes seem like something that, had the turn of the century gone differently, would be a powerful weapon to fend off empires. Acquiring enriched uranium is a bottleneck.)
Every mass technology started as something on a benchtop or workshop. In fact, the mass manifestation of a technology is also a form that becomes frozen solid and incapable of further development, sclerotic and brittle. Before the die-off and the shakeout, when people are still tinkering in their garages, that is when all the invention occurs.
If there were garage-scale oil refineries, garage-scale smelters, garage-scale pharmaceutical plants, etc etc, then the abusive empires of the world could rage and menace, but they couldn't throttle their people. (Just like at present, the copyright cartels rage about Sci-hub and libgen, and the various rent-seekers hate the personal computer and the things people can do on and with them.) This should be *possible* - atoms are small.
Decentralized federal systems are much older than America, and indeed are implicit in most of European history when they are not implicit, as in Switzerland. Pushing as much decision-making power as possible down to the level of the individual (and above that, the township, county, etc.) is not necessarily incompatible with being part of a larger networked whole that can still cooperate economically and militarily.
“In contrast to America’s screaming fist-fight with its father and subsequent departure from the household in fury and bitterness, Canada patiently waited until mom judged that it was good and ready to move out on its own. “
If Daddy George had listened to the colonies and let them have representation in the house of commons and house of Lords, we would have still been British Citizens, but the King, in his finite wisdom chose to ignore the colonist, and when he didn’t ignore them, he raised taxes on basic goods.
It’s ironic that even though we left home (England,) We’ve flown to father’s defense every time someone attacked him. We did it during two World Wars, during Vietnam, and every time England has called, we’ve helped them.
“When we took Vimy, it wasn’t by blindly rushing the machine-guns. It was when we figured out that if our troops walked just a few steps behind the artillery barrage, the enemy would have to keep their heads down until we were right on top of them ... a tactic that required the sort of precision and cold-blooded disregard of the instant annihilation lying just a few steps away that one might associate more with battalions of T-800s than with men of flesh and blood.”
I’ll be the first to admit that we should have learned that strategy, as it would have saved many lives, but American Soldier have bravado, and that Bravado compels them to sprint to the bunker and toss a grenade through the opening.
Later in War two, we learned to hide behind the Sherman tanks and use their flame throwers to flush out the enemy.
The American Military could learn a few things from the old Canadian military, however, maybe not so much anymore.
The Canadians are our “polite cousins up there,” and if they called for help, we’d be there, just like we were for Daddy.
“ Did you know that multiculturalism was invented, and first adopted as official government policy, in Canada? That happened under Trudeau pere, the Marxist who slithered his way into the Prime Minister’s Office in the 70s, and whose nominal son is now completing the cultural demolition that his father began.
It doesn’t stop there, of course. Those native land acknowledgements you’ve been seeing all over on university campuses? You’re welcome for those. Insanely restrictive tobacco regulations? We’ve been at the forefront. The legalization of Moron Jane? Yep, that’s us. COVID tyranny? No one went harder for longer. Freezing bank accounts to shut down a political protest? You saw it here first.
Not that these things aren’t happening all over the world. They are. But they meet essentially no resistance in Canada, so the Canadian government is able to engage in such social engineering experiments to its heart’s content, working out the kinks in a given tactic or policy before their colleagues in other countries roll out the fresh new horror elsewhere.”
I sometimes wonder if that would be the case, if the Canadians hadn’t given up their weapons. Would they have easily caved under to Castro Jr and his lackeys? It saddens me to watch Canada fall under the sway of Tyranny, because you guys are Americans, you just aren’t United State Americans. We all live on one continent, and should be able to help each other.
“Fealty to a feckless and hollow crown that could not care less about us, or any of its subjects?”
That statement right there is why the colonies left the Empire, we felt that they didn’t care about us, only our riches.
“Transgenderism already seeks to free humanity from the gender binary. In the near future, transhumanism will separate humanity from humanity itself”
That is frightening to a rational person, if we cease being human, what will we become? If we become cyborgs and we are dependent on Musk’s Neurolink, then we might well could become Borgs unwillingly.
“How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”
You let them grow up and they’ll come full circle. I couldn’t wait to get away from my small town and see the big city. After living there for a few years, I yearned to return to the farm, only by then it was too late, the farm was gone. Now, I have to settle for living in a small town just outside a medium sized city, and to this day, I still yearn to return to that farm.
“As the American dollar is abandoned as a reserve currency and as a standard of global exchange, the power of the American empire that backs up the liberal order will decline rapidly. At the same time, Russia and China are rising fast. With them come India, Iran, Brazil, Turkey ... all of whom are quickly reorienting their trading, diplomatic, and military relationships away from the liberal order, and towards their new Russian and Chinese allies. The multipolar world order is already essentially a fait accompli.”
As a Texan, I would love nothing more than to see my Lone Star State, become once again, the Republic of Texas. The death of the dollar can’t come fast enough, for with it would die the Empire of the rainbow brigade. Maybe then, we could regain our sanity.
As a Texan, I despise the NATO led war on Russia, since all it took was not to approach Ukraine and offer it a chance to join the rainbow brigade.
Russia has already escaped it’s madness of communism, and they deserve the right to grow.
“When the globalist order has collapsed, as is already happening, America will be left dazed and confused. Universal repudiation of liberalism’s universal values repudiates their universality. This is not something the American political establishment, including the satraps governing their vassal states, are equipped to understand.”
America is already dazed and confused, and the faster the center of the country lets the coastal elites drown in their stupidity, the better. The American Congress and Executive only knows one thing, and that’s how to bow down to the people who pay to keep them in office. Like King George, they no longer care for their people and we are in bad need of another revolution.
“
The Canadian political tradition has nothing to do with liberalism. Canada was born to protect traditionalism on the frontier, to carry the old world into the new, not to tear down what came before but rather to build on top of it, grow it, elaborate it. It is precisely this primacy of organic tradition that is the central organizing principle and raison d’etre of the civilization-state.”
Texas and Canada have much in common. We were both the frontier and unlike the rest of the States, we have not forgotten about it. In many ways, we are still the frontier. We have to deal with the stupidity of the rest of country. Where they see immigrant as a good thing, we have to deal with the fall out of rape, cartel violence, and illegal immigrants driving drunk and killing our children. Like Canada, we are friendly and wave at our neighbors when we meet them on the road.
“Some might read this and imagine I advocate for some form of authoritarian totalitarianism, a rigid tradition that allows no change. Chesterton’s fence, however, need not be a cage.”
Not at all, I see it as a confederation of like-minded people, from Canada’s First people to the Tribal Nations in the south to the Free people that coud result if the Central government falls apart. I can see a Nation where we all agree to respect one another and fall back on the mixed traditions of our ancestors. In our case, Britain, France, and Germany.
“Canada certainly cannot impose traditionalism on the wider Anglosphere. It is too small. It must teach by example, and before it can do that it must first remember itself.”
Hear, Hear! I agree fully. We must remember who we are before we can help others remember who they were.
“In the world I see, the West has rid itself entirely of its universalist pretensions. It no longer seeks to impose its values on the world, for it recognizes that what works for Westmen does not necessarily work for others; and while this does not bring peace, for there will always be friction with rivals, we are at least spared the guarantee of war and the infamy of tyrannical ideological bigotry. Likewise, the renewed West no longer assumes that its ways can be adopted by anyone who comes, and therefore does not pretend that it can continue itself with other peoples’ babies.”
Again Agreed. But I would like to see those new comers respect those that are already here, and at least adopt the “Life, liberty, property,” attitude that built the country, both countries. To do that, we have to stop killing our own babies and mutilating our children. We have to stop going after riches and settle for living with what we can make ourselves.
I enjoyed your description of the making of the Canadian spirit and nation. I feel the most important thing you left out is the great Jewish migration to Canada from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century. The vast majority of these people were poor communist farmers. Irving Layton, my favorite Canadian poet, was born Israel Pincu Lazarovitch, in Romania in 1912. His whole family and community was communist, and they all migrated together to Canada in 1913. My contention is that it wan't just English loyalism that has led Canada to become easily controlled by its government. I am not a hater of Jews. You can't love poetry and Jazz and hate Jews. Irving Layton did not remain communist, and many other people who are x-pats from communist states are outspoken against the communists as well. Even so, I feel Canada would be a different (more libertarian) place politically if it were not for the massive importation of Jewish communists a few generations back.
Of course, the Ashkenazim had a significant impact on the USA as well, and in a similar fashion.
There's a massive amount I left out: I only touched on the natives, which is a huge topic. Then of course the Chinese and Ukrainians, who contributed significantly to the British Columbian and prairie populations.
Dude you are delusional about Russia and China. West has its share of problems. But Russia is not even a proper state( its a mafia racket). And China is... its a communist digital control state. Where party nomenclature has all power.
Personally believe future lies in " Network States". Based on free association of like minded individuals. Going back to the past never works. Only going forward
Network states are an intriguing model, although it isn't clear to me how such organizations work in practice without some degree of terrirorial sovereignty.
As to Russia, it may be as you say. But it's holding its own fairly well so far. And no one said a civstate need be clean of corruption.
Balaji's vision is a powerful one and one that entices a lot of people with a lot of combined money and tech know-how and connections. Will be very much worth watching closely over the next decade
One minor point, John. You refer to the relationship between Roosevelt and "the City of London’s brandy-soaked bulldog" and the end of Imperial Preference.
The critical turning point in US and UK relations was Lend-Lease. FDR drained the UK financially. The scale of the financial transfers across the Atlantic was staggering. The US got the entire accumulated gold reserves of the UK before well before they entered the war. This guaranteed that post-war the UK would be helpless. You could call it economic warfare between nominal allies.
Yep. The USA bankrupted the UK. I believe the latter only recently paid off those debts, and they were so severe that the island remained impoverished for over a decade after the war.
The WW2 debt was repaid in full just a few decades ago, maybe less. The WW1 debt may have been repaid by now. It all depends on how it is structured.
The UK retained war-time rationing well in to the fifties. Probably did them a lot of good. People were a lot leaner then.
Few realise it but Putin paid off all of Russia's sovereign debts including bonds issued by the Tsars and the Provisional Government under Kerensky and the Lend-Lease loans taken out by Stalin. Details of inter-governmental finance rarely gets the attention it deserves.
Hitchens is indispensable, by far the leading columnist in the English media. His realism, lack of sentimentality and candour put the rest in perspective. I chased up some of Hitchen's sources on the financial stuff and was stunned by the story.
Just re-read a column by Hitchens in which he quotes President Wilson in 1918:
‘You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the US. Nor must too much importance in this connection be attached to the fact that English is our common language …no, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests’.
This history is my history. My fathers family is of the Metis, they were in Quebec by 1795. The name of the man who landed from France was Pierre Sauriol dit Sansoucy; 'to say you are without a care'. I am not exactly sure why he came to Canada, but the nom de guerre (dit Sansoucy) could imply that like many he was there in a military capacity, ie to fight 'savages'. Instead, or in addition to that, he seems to have married into them. I wish I knew more details, though the family histories are documented the details always get lost. I have an innate dislike of churches and religions, and all I can think is that I carry the scars of folks who were forced to take up the 'mantle of God' or else. I do credit this feeling with also keeping me from getting the jab, like my cells knew it was about death. I am currently reading the book Stringing Rosaries, by Denise Lajimodiere, which consists of interveiws of American boarding school survivors. The book is presented in a very sensitive and humane fashion, though the subject matter is of course brutal. Many survivors of these schools have never told their families what was done to them there, there is a lot of shame about it. Few Americans even know it happened here, and that essentially all the churches (Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, etc.) ran boarding schools.
My own family history from that period is quite murky. I wish I knew more about it.
If your French ancestor came over in 1795 it was unlikely he did so for warlike purposes. The French and Indian war was three decades in the past by then.
It's also worth emphasizing, because this is not so widely appreciated, that those wars fought on Canadian soil were only very rarely the white man versus the red. More commonly it was coalitions of white and red fighting alliances of red and white. For example, the English and the Iroquois versus the French and the Huron. They tended to be over access to the fur trade, with European powers seeking to cut off their European rivals from Canadian fur, and native powers seeking to cut off their native rivals from European manufactured goods. But in any case, by 1795 Quebec was conquered, and the next major war 1812, with the US.
Regarding the residential schools, yes, those were horrible, and a terribly misconceived policy. Yet they thought they were doing good ... another example of liberal/progressive meddling resulting in misery.
thanks John...i think its an extra important conversation now wrt who is viewed as 'unclean' and the historic ideas around cleanliness, in religions and in medical realms. The whole idea of 'clean' has been coopted into something antiseptic, hospitals a place of death even before this debacle when originally they were the supposed ideal of cleanliness. Like you alluded to, 'civilizing' the savages has ended up being deadly for most. At least we see it now, en masse. best
You are a brave man, John, tackling so many sensitive, even incendiary, themes in a single article.
You are spot on in your suspicion that a post-imperial America will intensify, rather than break from, its ideological fixations.
I suspect that the common sense Anglo ethnonationalism to which you incline has great appeal within many corners of Greater Anglostan (the Anglosphere), but I think that the fix is well and truly in on that one. The Anglosphere idea is being pushed very hard at the top. Extremely so. IMHO this is a Trojan horse for a series of industrial and geopolitical agendas that are unrelated to the wellbeing or survival of any ethnos.
Many within the Australian political class are attracted to the US, UK, Canada thing (Five Eyes, AUKUS) because they are geopolitically and industrially illiterate and are easily played. They are being tempted with promises of reindustrialization, infrastructure spending, defence co-operation. These are all separate strands of a wider, largely concealed, project that started to come into view a decade ago, well before Trump. Think supply chains, social stability and the economic foundations of a slimmed down imperial project. The economic consensus at the top has been discretely shifting. It is a phenomenally complex subject and largely undiscussed in public. I once had the opportunity to see some aspects of this taking shape.
Long term planning for close co-operation across jurisdiction is way older than most people realise. Key ideas developed pre-WW1. The first steps to planning on a grand scale (think grossraum) was in WW1 and Karl Schmitt was not involved in the least. These ideas were later further developed in WW2 on both sides. Another great iteration of planning is well underway. The Great Reset is part of it, possibly a lucrative misdirection, but the main stuff is not Schwabian b.s. The Lizard People are curating other eggs.
I'd bet that the whole idea of a "civilization state" is being broadcast to market regional iterations of what is being cooked up. Not that it is a bad idea, just that caution (and more caution) is needed.
I'd suggest that you glance at the work of the late Panagiotis Kondylis, one of the very few political theorists whose head is not incorporated per rectum.
Projects such as AUKUS and Five Eyes are certainly organizationally in alignment with a Western civstate, but I feel that the liberalism animating the organizing elites undermines such efforts. For example, a more chauvinistic migration policy would do wonders for building the organic bonds between cousin peoples, but due to the liberal concept that humans are interchangeable biomass such favoritism is not allowed. Thus it is equally difficult for a Canadian to move to Australia as a Bangladeshi.
It seems to me that very often the ruling elites have 50% of a good idea, which then gets ruined by the other 50% of catastrophically horrible. Take the 15 Minute City. Personally I love walkable neighborhoods, and despise suburbs. Yet we all know that the Great Resetters hope to use such municipalities as prison pens - human chicken coops we're not allowed to leave without permission lest we exceed our carbon allotment.
It's like they can see the direction the arc of history bends, and seek at every stage to warp it in such a way as to ensure the worst possible outcome for everyone.
All of which is to say that it does not escape me that the geopolitical divisions I sketch out here are very similar to Orwell's....
The only organic bonds the elites are interested in are amongst themselves. They are not interested in anything like a tribal or ethnonationalist project for the masses, only better integrated networks between the elites of socially and culturally similar countries. They are keen on professional mobility (jobs in London or New York/Washington) for the kids.
There is a degree of genuine Anglomania amongst the more naive types in Australia, but they are either high on their own supply or are being played. There are still older, more substantial networks between Australia and Britain, for example, but they were long ago surpassed in influence by new ones based out of the US.
The organic bonds today are mostly formed at universities (Ivies and Oxbridge), corporate structures and a common language. They are almost never ethnic.
This largely matches my experience in Canada. There's a fair bit of cross-border interactions with our American cousins for obvious reasons, but relatively little with Britain, Australia, or New Zealand outside of elites. Travel is expensive, after all. Many Canadians I know have never been outside of Canada ... some have never left their home province. Perversely, it's cheaper to go to Europe than it is to fly between Ontario and BC.
What I am trying to say is that there is a distinction to be made between dissident oriented identitarian thinking and the regime sponsored kind. The former is often wistful and naive, the latter is a skin-suit worn by the usual suspects. I think a lot of the Anglosphere talk conceals corporate and military agendas that are unlikely to confer any benefit on ordinary people.
Policy-memes are spread by cultural vectors. Bad (even malicious) ideas developed on the UK or Canada get adopted very easily in Australia since they originate in another Anglo country.
Orwell's geopolitics was pretty acute. The smart people saw the writing on the wall at the time. You see references to blocs, proto-globalism etc, in a lot of mid 20th c. literature: Orwell, Koestler, Wells. Wells especially was a prophet.
Suburbs were designed for people escaping the cities for various reasons around affordability, freedom of association and big city corruption and violence. The private motorcar made this possible which is why the Left hates them so.
Before I read on consider that Canada is in America, so Canadians are Americans (too). Also, fighting the soil is stupid, better to work with it as it will last longer along with the identity of its protectors.
Increasing numbers of people are coming for Canada as it still has resources to exploit. When there is nothing left they will all leave.
Yes, and Central and South Americans will make the same point. But what's done is done - when anyone from the rest of the world hears 'American' they do not picture a Canadian or a Guatemalan, regardless of geographical inclusivity.
Technically true. I define American more narrowly to exclude anyone living in a big city (who may be citizens of the US or Canada) and to include anyone on either side of the border living in rural areas, small towns and small cities. Suburbs are up for grabs.
rebuilding itself according to its own best nature, banishing the solitary ennui of suburban housing developments for Shires of half-timber homesteads surrounded by gardens and laughing children,
Not much timber left they'll have to plant some trees - might as well plant food production trees. Make sense, more food production from trees (aka food forest) equates to less gardens and more space for trees.
A tribute like no other! 🔥 The meticulous history lesson is real impressive, more so owing to vibrant retelling. To complete the feat, let the hearts be gone a-meltin' --> youtu.be/6HT0oHsJX7s
Remember our telegram to-n-fro? I’m always amazed to run headlong into kinda ‘your obvs doesn’t equal mine’ 😁 Not a shadow of doubt entered my mind you were writing about the sibylline aspect of Art.
The history lesson was my favorite part to write; I did that as much for its own sake as to set the scene.
Of course, to be an Anglo-Canadian is not only to be from a stateless nation living in a nationless state, but to be from a stateless nation that has entirely forgotten itself as a nation. The ultimate liberal atom.
Karen Nation sounds quite terrifying. Like Amazons with bad haircuts, their numbers limited because they ritually castrate their man-children and can therefore grow only by hectoring other women into joining them....
Very well thought through and well written. Christendom died before Novalis though so the civilizational state lacks a true center other than plunder. The security of the Civilizational populace within civilizational boundary is sacrificed to greed. Berdyaev writes, “More keenly than ever I feel that night and shadow are descending on the world, just as was the case at the beginning of the Middle Ages, before the medieval Renaissance.” Many keen-sighted people recognize the situation, Berdyaev remarks, but few of them have grasped its essence. “In reality what is happening is something even deeper… a judgment upon not one epoch in history, but upon history itself.” The times, Berdyaev asserts, choosing his key term with special care, qualify as “apocalyptic.”
This unveiling corresponds not merely to “a revelation of the end of the world”; rather it corresponds to “a revelation of the inner events of history, of the internal judgment upon history itself.” Because “man’s existence in this world is historical,” the disintegration of history involves the disintegration both of man and culture. “The things man has planned do not come to pass, and the true significance of what takes place escapes man’s comprehension.”
Apt. Everything is disintegrating right now, including our sense of and knowledge about history ... not only that people are largely ignorant of it, but much of what they think they know, isn't so ... and the awareness of this is growing as things fall apart.
Point of order on history. The English did chop a king (Charles I) and when the Stuarts were restored, they dug up Cromwell and posthumously executed him.
First, thank you.
Second, what do you propose with the ethnically non-western Canadians? The Chinese, Indians, and Arabs?
You see, about 70 years ago your solution would have been viable. Figuring out that existential crises back then and rebuilding the civilizational state you propose would have worked. It doesn’t work now. The egg is broken and you can’t put it back again. You can only make an omelette. Based on peace, order, and good government (and not American). But nothing like the old. A good starting point is no later than the late 80s. Right before the unipolar moment dragged us along with it. But anything else won’t work (imho).
As American financial power unravels, the standard of living in Western countries will decline, while it will improve abroad. Many recent immigrants, those who have come in the last decade or so and have shallow roots, will probably just go home - they're only here for mercenary reasons.
Others won't. Depending on how many stay that may or may not be a problem. Cosmopolitan cities with multiple ethnic enclaves are historically common and generally stable so long as everyone stays in their lane. If they aren't, a West that longer apologizes for itself may simply start mass deportations. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. From my perspective the primary problem isn't the presence of local minorites per se, but the preferential treatment they're given - remove that preference, make it clear that they will no longer get special treatment, and I for one would be content (although I also suspect this would incentivize a fair fraction to leave, as without eg tax breaks and diversity hiring policies, they'd be at a severe competitive disadvantage).
I fully agree. The key weakness of Canadians (and Australians) has been a willingness to make unwarranted concessions in relation to freedoms of association and speech.
At the moment preferential hiring/contracting and the prioritisation of diversity at all costs are laying the foundation for a racial caste system that is at odds with Anglo law and that over time will guarantee otherwise preventable conflicts. The rate and sources of migration should be negotiable, but the civil status of any existing citizens should never be compromised.
Deportations are unthinkable now, but they are not impossible. After the Irish established their state they drove out 9/10 or more of the non-Catholic population, almost all of whom were ethnically indistinguishable from their neighbours. This was done by economic and social pressure, above all through employment/hiring. By the time of WW2 the only non-Catholics left were either a tiny set of very wealthy people, a handful of professionals and a few self-employed tradesmen and small business people.
I am not arguing that this should be applied anywhere today but the reality is that economic power is routinely wielded as a weapon in the real world. Just look at the Tamils in Malaysia, the Chinese in Indonesia or the Koreans in Japan.
“they're only here for mercenary reasons.”
Some in some cases because their home countries are unstable due to the West’s actions and/or just inherently. But by NO means all immigrants. It used to be that many who emigrated were highly educated and/or individuals who were already leaning to the West. It’s only in the last decade or two that the bar was substantially lowered.
On Deportations: if they’re a Canadian citizen you CANNOT deport them. If they haven’t done anything outrageously illegal and they’re a permanent resident, again you CANNOT deport them. I don’t think I need to say more.
I am not sure what you mean by “stay in their lane”. My comment was to point out that the anglo-saxon ethnic based argument to a better Canada does not work. It is not the 1950s. Sorry but what you’re proposing sounds a lot like Nazism and it will make Canada a pariah.
The country’s ethnic composition has changed - that is a fact. The way forward is a sovereign independent non-globalist non-woke multiethnic Canada with a Western Civilizational foundation.
Any “true” blood tribal remake will destroy the country.
P.S. Also I doubt the French Canadian would appreciate an anglo-saxon Canada. Try that and see what happens.
I'm not proposing an ethnostate at all; if I had been, I would have called it that. I don't think that would work in Canada. A civstate is a rather different thing - you can absolutely have minority populations. However, you're not going to have a Western civ foundation if the ethnic composition is majority non-Western, which is the demographic composition our current policies are explicitly designed to achieve. That's a liberal pipe dream.
I've met relatively few who came due to instability, caused by Western meddling or otherwise. The overwhelming majority came to make money. Unless you're suggesting that India and China are particularly unstable?
Regarding deportations, indeed citizens cannot be deported. Many however are not citizens, and regulations governing how long visitors can stay can certainly be changed.
As to "stay in their lane", I mean simply this: don't cause trouble. In the context of ethnically diverse cosmopoles, that generally means that the different groups stay mostly in their own territories and don't mess with each other. See: Singapore. So far that's generally been the case in Canada, so we've been fairly lucky.
Citizens cannot be deported it is true. But those with dual citizenship, who have acquired Canadian citizenship after immigration, could have their citizenship stripped from them for committing serious crimes (and perhaps many not-as-serious ones) as was the case in Canada when Stephen Harper was PM and as some other countries do. Trudeau's insistence in the 2015 English election debate that a "Canadian is a Canadian!" is not true. Someone who immigrates here and becomes a citizen while maintaining citizenship in their birth country is fundamentally different than someone such as myself who was born in Canada and is a citizen of no other country. It is absurd to pretend otherwise.
Behead diversity, no mercy for alien parasites or their traitor frens
Agree with you on the first paragraph.
I’ve met an Iraqi in high school who moved after the first gulf war. Wicked smart. Went on to get a phd in engineering from top universities in the country. He’s not the only the one. That was in the mid 90s. The later comers in the last decade or so however haven’t been all stars.
Visitors, yes. Permanent Residents, no. The idea of PR is you want to be Canadian. So maybe reform the rules around giving it out, but once you have it you have it.
The last paragraph I disagree with. Many people use Singapore as an example for things that work there but that’s it though - they work there. A small island state with a small population, resource poor, and an authoritarian police government. Not the same as Canada. I actually think that we should encourage cultural mixing. Naturally, different ethnicities will tend to stay together but that doesn’t mean we should encourage that.
In my circle of friends, in no particular order, I have friends with a background from Italy, Hungary, India, China, Russia, Vietnam, Philippines, France, England, Netherlands, Jamaica, and from Newfoundland, British Columbia, and French Canadians. Some first generation, others second, and more. I am richer for it and if they had all stayed in their lane I wouldn’t have had that.
From my travels, in my experience it is that which makes Canadians well adjusted and well liked and I wouldn’t have wanted my friends to only stick to their own.
I don’t see these two concepts - Western Civ and multiethnocultural - as oppositional but the balance and boundaries are tough to draw and enforce. We used to do it well - not anymore.
Like it or not, Toronto is Singapore now. So is Vancouver for that matter. Toronto's motto used to be 'industry, intelligence, integrity'. In the late 90s it was switched to 'diversity our strength'. That says it all right there. We gave up the former for the latter.
It doesn't matter if you don't think Western civ and multiculturalism are antithetical. They clearly are. Western civ is several hundred years old, multiculturalism is decades old, and in the decades since the latter was forced on us by our traitorous ruling class our civilization has gone down the toilet. The experiment has been done and the results are in - in Canada, and everywhere else it's been tried. That you have a diverse friend group is irrelevant to this.
The point is not whether we as individuals find it agreeable or not, but the welfare of the vast mass of ordinary people. The metrics involve trends in real wages and the levels of trust and civility within a society.
Western civ is besides the point if you cannot travel in safety on the buses, if young women find themselves told to adapt to alien dress codes or if young men discover that their ethnic peers now carry knives as per the old country. No abstraction means much when you are getting stabbed.
In the past only port cities and imperial capitals were multicultural. This was a side effect of actions undertaken by ruling dynasties. Now diversity is imposed as a moral imperative or as a form of social engineering (if not as a punitive measure) on all communities. It is no longer a side effect but a central aim of the regime. And dissenting voices are silenced.
First, thank you for taking the time to respond.
The change in Toronto’s motto is risible! Agreed. That says it all.
I know that multiculturalism (as defined by the elites) was forced on by the elites. And I even understand part of the reason for it (yes I’m well aware of the dilution). If I was to design a rational immigration policy it would be: “I want the best people, from the countries/cultures/religions that is compatible with Classical Western Civilizational values, in adequate numbers that allows for proper integration into Canadian society. Exceptions are on a case by case basis”.
That’s not what they always did and absolutely not in the last two decades or so.
To clarify, by multiculturalism I don’t mean it should be the official policy of the state. I’m not advocating for saying “hey you know we don’t have enough Somalians we need to get more”. That’s absurd! I mean multiculturalism is the end result unless we restrict the immigration source to Anglophone countries and France only - which we didn’t - so we need a way to deal with it now in a way that retains Canada’s national identity without causing ethnic friction.
(Also, I have to say I stand by my circle of friends. They came during a different time when Canada was much more selective of who they let in and they are all highly educated functional contributors to Canadian society and proud Canadians)
In any case, we need to stop the bleeding and a way forward - and that starts with removing the Ken doll in Ottawa.
Would ya mayhaps fancy a peanut butter & olives sandwich? How aboot(* jelly & skittles & carrots? No? With a caveat you’re not a pregnant woman (person!) 😏 (h/t freevoices.substack.com/p/diversity-is-our-weakness)
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(* 🤪🤸
Christcuck universalist, long overdue that the platonic theocracies were drygulched
Under this scheme, would not Quebec become its own state?
On Deportations: if they’re a Canadian citizen you CANNOT deport them
Imagine taking laws seriously... those are for the peasants (not the brown ones tho). Rulers ARE the law
I suspect that Trump's threats of mass deportations are aimed at this goal of self-deportation. Finding myself in that position, I would certainly choose to leave on my own terms rather than someone else's In the short run, the invaders will probably choose the sanctuaries so those are going to have to be dealt with. Or not. If CA fills completely up with Mexicans, we could simply cede it back to Mexico. Mexico, at least, would develop the resources.
Honor the cruel nature of man, no more lies. We exist to fight those who are not in our tribe... through this we find meaning.
True, true. Trouble is we in the West are detribalized and the reconstitution of old ones is likely to end in farce.
IMHO the future in much of the West will be a new wave of ethnogenesis. No single standard, but variety. In some places new nations emerging from the rubble, in others old nations shredded and reconstituted as servile biomass for conquerors to exploit. In a few corners old tribes will make a comeback.
There will be lies aplenty. New ones. Old ones. Delusions for minds formed by video games and apps. The only place for the honest man in Chulhuland is in the slave-pits.
Damn that's bleak.
True, but realism offers some grounds for hope. The situation is becoming more dynamic. Whatever happens, emerging conditions pose terrible problems for the authoritarians. For several generations governance in Norh America has been very easy. Gov'ts have been able to rely upon a contented, loyal, stable, population with predictable behaviours. Compare how easy it was to govern Minneapolis a generation ago compared with today. The governing classes are already being taxed to their limits of their abilities.
That very ease is likely what lulled them into thinking that they could get away with all of this. Of course now that they can no longer rely on obedience by default thanks to civic mindedness, they are resorting to various forms of distraction and devitalization, together with an increasingly heavy hand.
Complacency is possibly the ultimate foundation of all the regime's problems. The routine incompetence at the top is derivative of this as is the wholesale neglect of human capital. You see complacency in every sector at every level. The suppression of dissenting opinions guarantees that the scale of problems is never understood properly until things have reached catastrophic proportions.
'here will be lies aplenty. New ones. Old ones. The only place for the honest man in Chulhuland is in the slave-pits.'
Business as usual then
Zeus needs to drown the human rats again
Who cares? Mankind needs another Zeus moment...
It is possible to enact your vision by *enshrining* democracy.
Objective fact: democracy does not scale. The greater the polity, the more your vote is diluted. Democracy at the world government level is utterly meaningless.
Objective fact 2: Wide open borders lead to world government. If one polity opts for Bernietopia, then the residents of Galt's Gulch can send their welfare cases to Bernietopia. Meanwhile, the rich in Bernietopia can move to Galt's Gulch to avoid the progressive taxation.
The ultimate *liberal* vision is thus independent polities where you can *shop* for the government/society you like. That is, you can choose where you want to live but you have to pay. This is the exact opposite of the U.S. system of anti discrimination laws granted to immigrants. Immigrants should prove their worth to the country they move to. (This includes US expats living in Latin America.)
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I propose this alternative to nationalism because my country has long been multi-national. And the areas of the U.S. that peg out the Anglo/White meter are the wokest generally. (Exception: West Virginia.)
If someone is willing to pay to be an American, they are likely to be more Real 'Merican than many native born. Elon Musk comes to mind. The convenience store up the highway which caters to Mexican farm workers also comes to mind. The delightfully sexist beer posters remind me of the 'Merica that I grew up in.
Let people sort themselves up. But preserve home court advantage. The purpose of a polity is to serve its citizens.
It's occurred to me that civilization-states need not necessarily be 'states' as we classically think of them. Something more like the Catholic Church in the medieval period, an overarching framework that everyone participates in, but which maintains effective sovereignty at a small scale.
Historically, our people have generally preferred the highly subsidiary federation to the centralized state. A form which preserves the ability to cooperate at large scales while leaving most matters in the hands of local authorities seems ideal to me.
Germany was once hundreds of semi-independent principalities with a great deal of shared culture.
Western Europe launched modern civilization in part because it had a large number of semi-independent states with enough shared culture that people with ideas could shop princes.
Ancient Greece had a similar dynamic.
Russia was not always a huge empire. Ukraine has been under the rule of Mongols, Tartars, Russia, Poland, Austria, Lithuania, and Vikings. There be fighting there because there are no pure ethnic boundaries. Perhaps the solution for Ukraine would be to break it up.
Indeed, yes - I think such a federated model is the way to go.
People pay too much attention to the current maps of everywhere. It is like when the colonialists divided up Africa and drew straight lines without regard to ethnicity, language or geography. And these lines have become sacrosanct with the current indigenous elites. Same for Eastern Europe and to a certain extent Western Europe. The United States was a plural noun before the War of Northern Aggression. Canada is logically 4 nations not counting the First Nations. Russia is still an empire, albeit a smaller one. China is an empire as is India. India has already be split twice since independence an perhaps another one is coming.
My idea is that nothing larger than 1900s Switzerland is going to remain honest or uncorrupted by sociopaths seeking exploitation and domination. In order to have a worthwhile world, we need to balkanize, not dream of sprawling empires. If no one is within reach of some dream of eternal world domination, then governments will be forced to play nice with their citizens, and on a scale that their citizens can actually capture their own states rather than be captive to them and abused by them.
In order to make any of this work, we need the ability to miniaturize everything that is currently done on a mass scale. When a small country can field a force that will prevent larger empires from threatening them (or at least make it very clear their demise will be Pyrrhic poison to an invader), they'll be able to hold their own and be a model for further breakaway states. (In the modern world, that means they need to be able to make their own machinery, their own silicon, their own nukes, etc.) (Actually, nukes seem like something that, had the turn of the century gone differently, would be a powerful weapon to fend off empires. Acquiring enriched uranium is a bottleneck.)
Every mass technology started as something on a benchtop or workshop. In fact, the mass manifestation of a technology is also a form that becomes frozen solid and incapable of further development, sclerotic and brittle. Before the die-off and the shakeout, when people are still tinkering in their garages, that is when all the invention occurs.
If there were garage-scale oil refineries, garage-scale smelters, garage-scale pharmaceutical plants, etc etc, then the abusive empires of the world could rage and menace, but they couldn't throttle their people. (Just like at present, the copyright cartels rage about Sci-hub and libgen, and the various rent-seekers hate the personal computer and the things people can do on and with them.) This should be *possible* - atoms are small.
Of course, I'm writing this as an American.
Decentralized federal systems are much older than America, and indeed are implicit in most of European history when they are not implicit, as in Switzerland. Pushing as much decision-making power as possible down to the level of the individual (and above that, the township, county, etc.) is not necessarily incompatible with being part of a larger networked whole that can still cooperate economically and militarily.
Great comment by the way.
neo-hunter gatherism? Sounds like libertarianism... how can they defend against the borg collective?
Warning! incoming wall of text. lol.....
“In contrast to America’s screaming fist-fight with its father and subsequent departure from the household in fury and bitterness, Canada patiently waited until mom judged that it was good and ready to move out on its own. “
If Daddy George had listened to the colonies and let them have representation in the house of commons and house of Lords, we would have still been British Citizens, but the King, in his finite wisdom chose to ignore the colonist, and when he didn’t ignore them, he raised taxes on basic goods.
It’s ironic that even though we left home (England,) We’ve flown to father’s defense every time someone attacked him. We did it during two World Wars, during Vietnam, and every time England has called, we’ve helped them.
“When we took Vimy, it wasn’t by blindly rushing the machine-guns. It was when we figured out that if our troops walked just a few steps behind the artillery barrage, the enemy would have to keep their heads down until we were right on top of them ... a tactic that required the sort of precision and cold-blooded disregard of the instant annihilation lying just a few steps away that one might associate more with battalions of T-800s than with men of flesh and blood.”
I’ll be the first to admit that we should have learned that strategy, as it would have saved many lives, but American Soldier have bravado, and that Bravado compels them to sprint to the bunker and toss a grenade through the opening.
Later in War two, we learned to hide behind the Sherman tanks and use their flame throwers to flush out the enemy.
The American Military could learn a few things from the old Canadian military, however, maybe not so much anymore.
The Canadians are our “polite cousins up there,” and if they called for help, we’d be there, just like we were for Daddy.
“ Did you know that multiculturalism was invented, and first adopted as official government policy, in Canada? That happened under Trudeau pere, the Marxist who slithered his way into the Prime Minister’s Office in the 70s, and whose nominal son is now completing the cultural demolition that his father began.
It doesn’t stop there, of course. Those native land acknowledgements you’ve been seeing all over on university campuses? You’re welcome for those. Insanely restrictive tobacco regulations? We’ve been at the forefront. The legalization of Moron Jane? Yep, that’s us. COVID tyranny? No one went harder for longer. Freezing bank accounts to shut down a political protest? You saw it here first.
Not that these things aren’t happening all over the world. They are. But they meet essentially no resistance in Canada, so the Canadian government is able to engage in such social engineering experiments to its heart’s content, working out the kinks in a given tactic or policy before their colleagues in other countries roll out the fresh new horror elsewhere.”
I sometimes wonder if that would be the case, if the Canadians hadn’t given up their weapons. Would they have easily caved under to Castro Jr and his lackeys? It saddens me to watch Canada fall under the sway of Tyranny, because you guys are Americans, you just aren’t United State Americans. We all live on one continent, and should be able to help each other.
“Fealty to a feckless and hollow crown that could not care less about us, or any of its subjects?”
That statement right there is why the colonies left the Empire, we felt that they didn’t care about us, only our riches.
“Transgenderism already seeks to free humanity from the gender binary. In the near future, transhumanism will separate humanity from humanity itself”
That is frightening to a rational person, if we cease being human, what will we become? If we become cyborgs and we are dependent on Musk’s Neurolink, then we might well could become Borgs unwillingly.
“How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”
You let them grow up and they’ll come full circle. I couldn’t wait to get away from my small town and see the big city. After living there for a few years, I yearned to return to the farm, only by then it was too late, the farm was gone. Now, I have to settle for living in a small town just outside a medium sized city, and to this day, I still yearn to return to that farm.
“As the American dollar is abandoned as a reserve currency and as a standard of global exchange, the power of the American empire that backs up the liberal order will decline rapidly. At the same time, Russia and China are rising fast. With them come India, Iran, Brazil, Turkey ... all of whom are quickly reorienting their trading, diplomatic, and military relationships away from the liberal order, and towards their new Russian and Chinese allies. The multipolar world order is already essentially a fait accompli.”
As a Texan, I would love nothing more than to see my Lone Star State, become once again, the Republic of Texas. The death of the dollar can’t come fast enough, for with it would die the Empire of the rainbow brigade. Maybe then, we could regain our sanity.
As a Texan, I despise the NATO led war on Russia, since all it took was not to approach Ukraine and offer it a chance to join the rainbow brigade.
Russia has already escaped it’s madness of communism, and they deserve the right to grow.
“When the globalist order has collapsed, as is already happening, America will be left dazed and confused. Universal repudiation of liberalism’s universal values repudiates their universality. This is not something the American political establishment, including the satraps governing their vassal states, are equipped to understand.”
America is already dazed and confused, and the faster the center of the country lets the coastal elites drown in their stupidity, the better. The American Congress and Executive only knows one thing, and that’s how to bow down to the people who pay to keep them in office. Like King George, they no longer care for their people and we are in bad need of another revolution.
“
The Canadian political tradition has nothing to do with liberalism. Canada was born to protect traditionalism on the frontier, to carry the old world into the new, not to tear down what came before but rather to build on top of it, grow it, elaborate it. It is precisely this primacy of organic tradition that is the central organizing principle and raison d’etre of the civilization-state.”
Texas and Canada have much in common. We were both the frontier and unlike the rest of the States, we have not forgotten about it. In many ways, we are still the frontier. We have to deal with the stupidity of the rest of country. Where they see immigrant as a good thing, we have to deal with the fall out of rape, cartel violence, and illegal immigrants driving drunk and killing our children. Like Canada, we are friendly and wave at our neighbors when we meet them on the road.
“Some might read this and imagine I advocate for some form of authoritarian totalitarianism, a rigid tradition that allows no change. Chesterton’s fence, however, need not be a cage.”
Not at all, I see it as a confederation of like-minded people, from Canada’s First people to the Tribal Nations in the south to the Free people that coud result if the Central government falls apart. I can see a Nation where we all agree to respect one another and fall back on the mixed traditions of our ancestors. In our case, Britain, France, and Germany.
“Canada certainly cannot impose traditionalism on the wider Anglosphere. It is too small. It must teach by example, and before it can do that it must first remember itself.”
Hear, Hear! I agree fully. We must remember who we are before we can help others remember who they were.
“In the world I see, the West has rid itself entirely of its universalist pretensions. It no longer seeks to impose its values on the world, for it recognizes that what works for Westmen does not necessarily work for others; and while this does not bring peace, for there will always be friction with rivals, we are at least spared the guarantee of war and the infamy of tyrannical ideological bigotry. Likewise, the renewed West no longer assumes that its ways can be adopted by anyone who comes, and therefore does not pretend that it can continue itself with other peoples’ babies.”
Again Agreed. But I would like to see those new comers respect those that are already here, and at least adopt the “Life, liberty, property,” attitude that built the country, both countries. To do that, we have to stop killing our own babies and mutilating our children. We have to stop going after riches and settle for living with what we can make ourselves.
A variation on the Canadian infantry cap badge would be an appropriate replacement for the 'stupid leaf'. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f0/1c/07/f01c072021ad3d3a2716f51ad32a1ac9.jpg
YES.
I enjoyed your description of the making of the Canadian spirit and nation. I feel the most important thing you left out is the great Jewish migration to Canada from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century. The vast majority of these people were poor communist farmers. Irving Layton, my favorite Canadian poet, was born Israel Pincu Lazarovitch, in Romania in 1912. His whole family and community was communist, and they all migrated together to Canada in 1913. My contention is that it wan't just English loyalism that has led Canada to become easily controlled by its government. I am not a hater of Jews. You can't love poetry and Jazz and hate Jews. Irving Layton did not remain communist, and many other people who are x-pats from communist states are outspoken against the communists as well. Even so, I feel Canada would be a different (more libertarian) place politically if it were not for the massive importation of Jewish communists a few generations back.
Of course, the Ashkenazim had a significant impact on the USA as well, and in a similar fashion.
There's a massive amount I left out: I only touched on the natives, which is a huge topic. Then of course the Chinese and Ukrainians, who contributed significantly to the British Columbian and prairie populations.
''the Ashkenazim had a significant impact on the USA as well''
We have them to thank for neo-conservatism... I suppose the black death had a significant impact also?
Cool post! Great thread. Thanks for hosting.
About a million Ukrainian ethnics down here. Biggest numbers are in the cities but biggest percentages are in rural communities.
Dude you are delusional about Russia and China. West has its share of problems. But Russia is not even a proper state( its a mafia racket). And China is... its a communist digital control state. Where party nomenclature has all power.
Personally believe future lies in " Network States". Based on free association of like minded individuals. Going back to the past never works. Only going forward
Indeed, forward is the only option.
Network states are an intriguing model, although it isn't clear to me how such organizations work in practice without some degree of terrirorial sovereignty.
As to Russia, it may be as you say. But it's holding its own fairly well so far. And no one said a civstate need be clean of corruption.
Balaji's vision is a powerful one and one that entices a lot of people with a lot of combined money and tech know-how and connections. Will be very much worth watching closely over the next decade
Interesting, informative , and brave take on American and World bob sled ride.
One minor point, John. You refer to the relationship between Roosevelt and "the City of London’s brandy-soaked bulldog" and the end of Imperial Preference.
The critical turning point in US and UK relations was Lend-Lease. FDR drained the UK financially. The scale of the financial transfers across the Atlantic was staggering. The US got the entire accumulated gold reserves of the UK before well before they entered the war. This guaranteed that post-war the UK would be helpless. You could call it economic warfare between nominal allies.
Yep. The USA bankrupted the UK. I believe the latter only recently paid off those debts, and they were so severe that the island remained impoverished for over a decade after the war.
The WW2 debt was repaid in full just a few decades ago, maybe less. The WW1 debt may have been repaid by now. It all depends on how it is structured.
The UK retained war-time rationing well in to the fifties. Probably did them a lot of good. People were a lot leaner then.
Few realise it but Putin paid off all of Russia's sovereign debts including bonds issued by the Tsars and the Provisional Government under Kerensky and the Lend-Lease loans taken out by Stalin. Details of inter-governmental finance rarely gets the attention it deserves.
The socialists taking over at the end of WW2 was a major factor in the impoverishment.
The special relationship, peter hitchens enjoys mocking that lie
Hitchens is indispensable, by far the leading columnist in the English media. His realism, lack of sentimentality and candour put the rest in perspective. I chased up some of Hitchen's sources on the financial stuff and was stunned by the story.
Just re-read a column by Hitchens in which he quotes President Wilson in 1918:
‘You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the US. Nor must too much importance in this connection be attached to the fact that English is our common language …no, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests’.
Southerners were the real Americans, Lincoln and co are soul cannibals.
Soul cannibals, I like this term.
I took it from the rogue faction guy yuno
This history is my history. My fathers family is of the Metis, they were in Quebec by 1795. The name of the man who landed from France was Pierre Sauriol dit Sansoucy; 'to say you are without a care'. I am not exactly sure why he came to Canada, but the nom de guerre (dit Sansoucy) could imply that like many he was there in a military capacity, ie to fight 'savages'. Instead, or in addition to that, he seems to have married into them. I wish I knew more details, though the family histories are documented the details always get lost. I have an innate dislike of churches and religions, and all I can think is that I carry the scars of folks who were forced to take up the 'mantle of God' or else. I do credit this feeling with also keeping me from getting the jab, like my cells knew it was about death. I am currently reading the book Stringing Rosaries, by Denise Lajimodiere, which consists of interveiws of American boarding school survivors. The book is presented in a very sensitive and humane fashion, though the subject matter is of course brutal. Many survivors of these schools have never told their families what was done to them there, there is a lot of shame about it. Few Americans even know it happened here, and that essentially all the churches (Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, etc.) ran boarding schools.
My own family history from that period is quite murky. I wish I knew more about it.
If your French ancestor came over in 1795 it was unlikely he did so for warlike purposes. The French and Indian war was three decades in the past by then.
It's also worth emphasizing, because this is not so widely appreciated, that those wars fought on Canadian soil were only very rarely the white man versus the red. More commonly it was coalitions of white and red fighting alliances of red and white. For example, the English and the Iroquois versus the French and the Huron. They tended to be over access to the fur trade, with European powers seeking to cut off their European rivals from Canadian fur, and native powers seeking to cut off their native rivals from European manufactured goods. But in any case, by 1795 Quebec was conquered, and the next major war 1812, with the US.
Regarding the residential schools, yes, those were horrible, and a terribly misconceived policy. Yet they thought they were doing good ... another example of liberal/progressive meddling resulting in misery.
thanks John...i think its an extra important conversation now wrt who is viewed as 'unclean' and the historic ideas around cleanliness, in religions and in medical realms. The whole idea of 'clean' has been coopted into something antiseptic, hospitals a place of death even before this debacle when originally they were the supposed ideal of cleanliness. Like you alluded to, 'civilizing' the savages has ended up being deadly for most. At least we see it now, en masse. best
Reading about this shame is one of the saddest things I've ever done.
You are a brave man, John, tackling so many sensitive, even incendiary, themes in a single article.
You are spot on in your suspicion that a post-imperial America will intensify, rather than break from, its ideological fixations.
I suspect that the common sense Anglo ethnonationalism to which you incline has great appeal within many corners of Greater Anglostan (the Anglosphere), but I think that the fix is well and truly in on that one. The Anglosphere idea is being pushed very hard at the top. Extremely so. IMHO this is a Trojan horse for a series of industrial and geopolitical agendas that are unrelated to the wellbeing or survival of any ethnos.
Many within the Australian political class are attracted to the US, UK, Canada thing (Five Eyes, AUKUS) because they are geopolitically and industrially illiterate and are easily played. They are being tempted with promises of reindustrialization, infrastructure spending, defence co-operation. These are all separate strands of a wider, largely concealed, project that started to come into view a decade ago, well before Trump. Think supply chains, social stability and the economic foundations of a slimmed down imperial project. The economic consensus at the top has been discretely shifting. It is a phenomenally complex subject and largely undiscussed in public. I once had the opportunity to see some aspects of this taking shape.
Long term planning for close co-operation across jurisdiction is way older than most people realise. Key ideas developed pre-WW1. The first steps to planning on a grand scale (think grossraum) was in WW1 and Karl Schmitt was not involved in the least. These ideas were later further developed in WW2 on both sides. Another great iteration of planning is well underway. The Great Reset is part of it, possibly a lucrative misdirection, but the main stuff is not Schwabian b.s. The Lizard People are curating other eggs.
I'd bet that the whole idea of a "civilization state" is being broadcast to market regional iterations of what is being cooked up. Not that it is a bad idea, just that caution (and more caution) is needed.
I'd suggest that you glance at the work of the late Panagiotis Kondylis, one of the very few political theorists whose head is not incorporated per rectum.
https://ia600902.us.archive.org/14/items/www.panagiotiskondylis.com/Planetary%20Politics%20after%20the%20Cold%20War%20%28Planetarische%20Politik%20nach%20dem%20Kalten%20Krieg%29%20by%20Panagiotis%20Kondylis%20%28
I'll give Kondylis' material a read.
Projects such as AUKUS and Five Eyes are certainly organizationally in alignment with a Western civstate, but I feel that the liberalism animating the organizing elites undermines such efforts. For example, a more chauvinistic migration policy would do wonders for building the organic bonds between cousin peoples, but due to the liberal concept that humans are interchangeable biomass such favoritism is not allowed. Thus it is equally difficult for a Canadian to move to Australia as a Bangladeshi.
It seems to me that very often the ruling elites have 50% of a good idea, which then gets ruined by the other 50% of catastrophically horrible. Take the 15 Minute City. Personally I love walkable neighborhoods, and despise suburbs. Yet we all know that the Great Resetters hope to use such municipalities as prison pens - human chicken coops we're not allowed to leave without permission lest we exceed our carbon allotment.
It's like they can see the direction the arc of history bends, and seek at every stage to warp it in such a way as to ensure the worst possible outcome for everyone.
All of which is to say that it does not escape me that the geopolitical divisions I sketch out here are very similar to Orwell's....
The only organic bonds the elites are interested in are amongst themselves. They are not interested in anything like a tribal or ethnonationalist project for the masses, only better integrated networks between the elites of socially and culturally similar countries. They are keen on professional mobility (jobs in London or New York/Washington) for the kids.
There is a degree of genuine Anglomania amongst the more naive types in Australia, but they are either high on their own supply or are being played. There are still older, more substantial networks between Australia and Britain, for example, but they were long ago surpassed in influence by new ones based out of the US.
The organic bonds today are mostly formed at universities (Ivies and Oxbridge), corporate structures and a common language. They are almost never ethnic.
This largely matches my experience in Canada. There's a fair bit of cross-border interactions with our American cousins for obvious reasons, but relatively little with Britain, Australia, or New Zealand outside of elites. Travel is expensive, after all. Many Canadians I know have never been outside of Canada ... some have never left their home province. Perversely, it's cheaper to go to Europe than it is to fly between Ontario and BC.
Same was true of European nobility up to the great crash in WW1. Still vestiges of it today.
What I am trying to say is that there is a distinction to be made between dissident oriented identitarian thinking and the regime sponsored kind. The former is often wistful and naive, the latter is a skin-suit worn by the usual suspects. I think a lot of the Anglosphere talk conceals corporate and military agendas that are unlikely to confer any benefit on ordinary people.
Policy-memes are spread by cultural vectors. Bad (even malicious) ideas developed on the UK or Canada get adopted very easily in Australia since they originate in another Anglo country.
Orwell's geopolitics was pretty acute. The smart people saw the writing on the wall at the time. You see references to blocs, proto-globalism etc, in a lot of mid 20th c. literature: Orwell, Koestler, Wells. Wells especially was a prophet.
Suburbs were designed for people escaping the cities for various reasons around affordability, freedom of association and big city corruption and violence. The private motorcar made this possible which is why the Left hates them so.
Exactly so.
Before I read on consider that Canada is in America, so Canadians are Americans (too). Also, fighting the soil is stupid, better to work with it as it will last longer along with the identity of its protectors.
Increasing numbers of people are coming for Canada as it still has resources to exploit. When there is nothing left they will all leave.
Yes, and Central and South Americans will make the same point. But what's done is done - when anyone from the rest of the world hears 'American' they do not picture a Canadian or a Guatemalan, regardless of geographical inclusivity.
My idea here is definitely swimming upstream in a torrent.
Technically true. I define American more narrowly to exclude anyone living in a big city (who may be citizens of the US or Canada) and to include anyone on either side of the border living in rural areas, small towns and small cities. Suburbs are up for grabs.
Classical neo-liberalism is not what you describe, which is neo-conservatism. Your belaboring the liberal point is just more misdirection to me.
rebuilding itself according to its own best nature, banishing the solitary ennui of suburban housing developments for Shires of half-timber homesteads surrounded by gardens and laughing children,
Not much timber left they'll have to plant some trees - might as well plant food production trees. Make sense, more food production from trees (aka food forest) equates to less gardens and more space for trees.
I don't see laughing children anymore.
I see very few of them, too. I should like to see more.
The soul cannibals dislike laughing children
Classical neoliberalism sounds like an oxymoron, so I assume you mean classical liberalism. In any case, what is your definition?
Not my definition although I could compare your definition as not neoliberal. Here: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-13/key-words-neoliberal-economics/
Careful now.
OK. But I wasn't talking about neoliberalism, or neoconservatism for that matter. Liberal universalism is a distinct phenomenon.
That's fine. Am happy to make this point.
A tribute like no other! 🔥 The meticulous history lesson is real impressive, more so owing to vibrant retelling. To complete the feat, let the hearts be gone a-meltin' --> youtu.be/6HT0oHsJX7s
Remember our telegram to-n-fro? I’m always amazed to run headlong into kinda ‘your obvs doesn’t equal mine’ 😁 Not a shadow of doubt entered my mind you were writing about the sibylline aspect of Art.
Nationless state or stateless nation: be sure to choose wisely 🙂 history.howstuffworks.com/world-history/people-groups-with-no-homelands.htm#page-wrap1. OT fun fact: Karen ppl is a thing; some ~5K of ‘em even found their home in Canada.
PS 💬 the Métis,[...] (despite the fact that the French manifestly predated their existence) 👌
The history lesson was my favorite part to write; I did that as much for its own sake as to set the scene.
Of course, to be an Anglo-Canadian is not only to be from a stateless nation living in a nationless state, but to be from a stateless nation that has entirely forgotten itself as a nation. The ultimate liberal atom.
Karen Nation sounds quite terrifying. Like Amazons with bad haircuts, their numbers limited because they ritually castrate their man-children and can therefore grow only by hectoring other women into joining them....
The liberal atom might prove not zizactly ultimate after all 🤸
🗨 it’s perhaps not too much of a leap to also contemplate the possibility that subatomic particles have “free will” or even experiences 🤷
What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun? – the late great David Graeber doesn't mince words --> thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun
I love David Graeber. He is sorely missed.
And I don't believe I've read this essay before....
Very well thought through and well written. Christendom died before Novalis though so the civilizational state lacks a true center other than plunder. The security of the Civilizational populace within civilizational boundary is sacrificed to greed. Berdyaev writes, “More keenly than ever I feel that night and shadow are descending on the world, just as was the case at the beginning of the Middle Ages, before the medieval Renaissance.” Many keen-sighted people recognize the situation, Berdyaev remarks, but few of them have grasped its essence. “In reality what is happening is something even deeper… a judgment upon not one epoch in history, but upon history itself.” The times, Berdyaev asserts, choosing his key term with special care, qualify as “apocalyptic.”
This unveiling corresponds not merely to “a revelation of the end of the world”; rather it corresponds to “a revelation of the inner events of history, of the internal judgment upon history itself.” Because “man’s existence in this world is historical,” the disintegration of history involves the disintegration both of man and culture. “The things man has planned do not come to pass, and the true significance of what takes place escapes man’s comprehension.”
Apt. Everything is disintegrating right now, including our sense of and knowledge about history ... not only that people are largely ignorant of it, but much of what they think they know, isn't so ... and the awareness of this is growing as things fall apart.
History is bunk
Ford of course believed in his history not official history.
Official history is most definitely bunk.
Lifted my spirits! A vision I can get behind.
Point of order on history. The English did chop a king (Charles I) and when the Stuarts were restored, they dug up Cromwell and posthumously executed him.
Fair point.