Escaping Americanism … in North Carolina

Posted: July 15, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
The chronic anti-Americanism of the Canadian left has lately found a new spokesman in one Michael Byers, a Saskatchewan boy with degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge who holds something called the "Canada Research Chair in Global Politics" at the University of British Columbia. From time to time, he writes learned articles in the Globe and Mail newspaper deploring what he sees as the gradual American absorption of Canada.
The Globe gave him half a page last week to decry and denounce the iniquitous American leanings of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, elected last January, whom he calls a "strange choice for prime minister." Treasonous pro-Americans like Harper, he writes, were foreseen four decades ago by political philosopher George Grant, whose book, "Lament for a Nation," views the enfolding of the Canadian economy within the American orbit as dooming the Canada he loved
Recounting his own political evolution, Byers notes that he was born in 1966, one year after Grant published his book. "I have lived with Mr. Grant's thesis ever since," he writes, crediting Grant as the principal inspiration of his resolve to resist the invading American monster.
At first, he says, some things went well. Canada developed national Medicare. There was the Canada Pension Plan, the Foreign Investment Review Agency, or FIRA, the National Energy Program, all working to divorce Canada from the U.S. But in 1988, the Mulroney government signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Four years later, "I left Canada convinced that the country was finished."
However, the resurgence of the Liberal Party under Jean Chretien gave Byers new hope. "I was brought back to Canada by Mr. Chretien's decision to stay out of the Iraq war," he writes. Also heartening was the subsequent Liberal decision to exempt Canada from the U.S. missile defense program.
Better still, "Around the same time, pollsters discovered that the values of Canadians and Americans were diverging. Canadians had become more secular, tolerant of diversity and questioning of authority, while Americans were moving in the opposite direction. In Canada, these changes manifested themselves in the legalization of same-sex marriage and the near-decriminalization of marijuana."
So Byers returned to his native country, now seeing it as perhaps negating George Grant's fears after all.
But something intrigued me. When he left because Canada was becoming dolefully submerged in American culture, where exactly did he go? Well, what do you know? His C.V., carried on the Web, shows him as tenured at a place called Duke University. He fled Americanism by moving to North Carolina. Some of us might have difficulty understanding this.
There's another notable point, too. The various governmental measures that once gave Byers such confidence in Canada – Medicare, Canada Pension Plan, FIRA, National Energy Program– all have one thing in common: failure. Medicare is in chaos. The Canada Pension Plan is bankrupt and will be unable to meet its obligations when the vast '60s generation retires. FIRA failed dismally to check American investment. The National Energy Program so crippled the Canadian oil industry as to leave it more vulnerable than ever to American takeover.
So, what's left to "distinguish" Canada? Why, our social "advances," of course – gay marriage and "Pride" days, prohibitions against quoting certain passages in the Bible, growing acceptance of the drug culture, easy divorce, wide acceptance of cohabitation without marriage and the least restrictive abortion laws in the world. Byers would have us believe that this is the "independent" Canada that would rejoice the heart of George Grant.
Well, I knew Grant fairly well, and Derek Bedson, the man to whom he dedicated "Lament for a Nation," was one of my closest friends. Both Grant and Bedson were very devout and articulate Christians, and I can guarantee that the squalid spectacle of moral disintegration this country now presents would be to them an object of indescribable horror. To have it cited as somehow vindicating their aspirations for Canada they would regard as both offensive and sadly misinformed.
A final note on the left's new oracle. The man plainly works very hard, and judging from their titles, his almost every book, journal article and newspaper commentary appears aimed at checking the power of the United States. But one subject is conspicuously missing: the little matter of some 200 million "radical" Muslims who are being urged and trained to murder people, particularly Americans and Christians, and are diligently putting their training to work worldwide. Apart from vigilant opposition to the Americans, what does professor Byers figure Canada should do about this? He doesn't seem to say.
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