Defining A Border: Why Are We Not One Country?

I was once involved in an interesting debate with an Irish professor of international relations.  This was at the University of London back in 2003, right after Iraq had been invaded by the American alliance, a time when the entire city was abuzz with discussions about the directions being taken in the war on terror, large-scale Muslim immigration to western Europe, and how the United States should now be viewed in the eyes of the rest of the world.  The talking always turned back to nationalism, and the professor and I had a historical sensitivity to the question; an Irishman teaching politics in the capital of the British Commonwealth/Empire was discussing what nationhood meant with a Canadian who had then been living in the United States for roughly a decade.

The crowds outside wanted to focus their anger for having Britain dragged into yet another battle in a conflict that was really getting ugly and being engaged on in a global scale.  They blamed the capitalistic giant across the sea, the United States of Imperialistic Christian Conservatism, and they burned her flag on Parliament square.  They were people of diverse nationalities and cultures, people that would just as soon raise a fist against each other but found common ground in their hatreds for a place they had never been to or had really come to understand.  Iranians, Cubans, Egyptians, Somalians, and so many others were burning a flag and even announcing that their national identity, in an adopted immigrant country no less, was about not being American.  The next day, we asked ourselves what we saw, and how it related to our sense of nationality.

For an Irishman, the answer was relatively simple.  Ireland has a different culture, pace of existence, religious foundation, and even landmass from the rest of Britain.  Her people speak in a different accent, if they even speak the same language that they do in the Sceptered Isle.  For a Canadian, the answer was a bit more complex.  We do share a common landmass with the United States, divided by an extremely straight artificial border for the most part.  Our indigenous peoples existed as the same nations on both sides of this line, except around Lake Ontario.  We both have the same fanatical love of hockey and baseball, we both (believe it or not) generally speak the same language in similar inflections and accents.  And yet...

We don't think alike.  Canadians by and large tolerate democracy with greater government oversight.  Americans generally deplore any level of government oversight, and certainly hate taxes, and yes, this goes for both the left and right, even if the execution does not end up being the same!  Canadians, now and in the past, are all about settlement.  Americans, now and in the past, like expanding all sorts of things, from the size of buildings and drinking cups to the settlement of frontiers both natural and man-made.  In Canada, one is more likely to hear a gun called a weapon.  In the United States, one is more likely to hear a gun being debated in the nomenclature of a tool.  In Canada, the struggle to define a national language has largely been settled in a divided country becoming a country of two national base cultures in recognition, even as the French portion grows smaller.  In the United States, the same struggle has long been quieted in the recognition of a single language (albeit one never actually given official status) both out of cultural pride and simplicity among a nation that would otherwise be a jumble of tongues, even as the Spanish minority grows larger.

Canadians were content to await the recognition of freedoms which had long been practically lived in if not codified.  Americans were unable to accept any alternative other than such a codification, even if the price was war and civil unrest.  Canadians would and do debate the nature of liberty.  Americans know liberty comes at a price, and that while debate can help realize what must be fought for, someone has to lead the charge.  Now this is not to say that Canadians have not crusaded for civil rights, no, quite the opposite!  This is not to say that Americans have never debated rather than come to a stand over issues, no, that is why this nation has such an immense legal tradition and a complex history of political theory.   As it was noted so many times in the nineteenth century, however, the United States of America is the great experiment in modern democracy, an experiment that Britain handed over to the colonies when she had to fight against a French powerhouse that was proclaiming herself to have the same role over in Europe (and we all know how that went for them in the first few decades).  Think of it this way:  The United States is like the fishbowl in which the world watches to see how civil liberty develops.  Canada has the front row seat, maybe even being the second fishbowl right next door.

I say this because in that talk with the professor I concluded that Canadian nationalism really started by us being... not American.  Oh yes, there is that distinct French flavor there, but even by the late 1700's the habitants of the St. Lawrence valley were not thinking in the same terms as the Parisians were, but were embracing a concept of parliamentary representation and coming to cherish things like religious liberty.  Educated men in Montreal were reading the same sort of things that Bostonians were, and the English-speaking leadership was getting nervous.  As it turns out, these educated people were historically-minded enough to know that they had it good under the ruling powers, and that together with the influx of Loyalists, were looking into the fishbowl while seeing where the water came from in the first place.  Canadians saw how the United States was developing, and they learned important lessons from her, and developed accordingly into a parallel but slightly different democracy.

Perhaps the most vivid way to see how this is the case would be a look at the unfolding of subsidiarity in both nations.  These days, Federalism can be an ugly word in both countries, and the desire to have a central government in service to local governments forged our two political systems, even as we both found ourselves really in need of unity in order to not be torn apart at conception.  The thirteen colonies had to "hang together, or surely all hand separately .  The diverse provinces of Canada had to make a stand as one body so as to not be swallowed whole by the Yankee to the south.   In both nations, no one wanted to give more power than they had to to the state or province next door.  In both nations, however, the emphasis on what was important to the states and the provinces rested on different foundations.

English liberty, after all, came first as a question of religion, only to be followed by a second question regarding individual property rights.

In Canada, the first question became the focus of what was truly important to the provinces, whereas in the United States, the second question ultimately took precedence.

Yes, I know we all come to the blog not to hear me rant but to see my pictures.  Here we have Wall Street, the modern heart of the "second question".  Interestingly enough, that is a TD Ameritrade building right there.  TD, of course, is Toronto Dominion.  Here again we see integration on economic and cultural levels, even as two different flags continue to fly on the northern part of our continent. 

This, of course, would be a very important part as to why we are not one country, a look at where our mentalities are truly focused.  We see that we define ourselves in part by not being something else.  Come by next post as we take a closer look at just how this happened, and what it means for us today.