Pax Canadiana and the tragedy of the 4th of July

With the same calm sense we display on Canada Day, we turn to reflect on the neighbor’s Fourth of July. Typically, our comments are admiring, with only a wry reference to their exuberance and our civility. We note contemporary shortcomings in both federations and generally leave the past alone. But there’s a restless spirit in the land: imagine how better things would be if British North America, rather than the United States of America, led the world.

Here’s Conrad Black, the dream’s most popular voice, in his clearest English:

“If the Americans had just remained within the British Empire, they would have been running it in one long lifetime, would have ruled the world less than a century after Yorktown, would have made short work of any Confederate insurrection, and would have avoided the World Wars. (Not even Germany’s hyperactive Kaiser would have gone to war simultaneously against Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S.) The Declaration of Independence, 239 years ago, defamed poor old George III and even accused him of trying to impose French civil law on Americans.”

Of course. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and all the other defamers of British rule would have (1) left notions of popular liberty to mature within the vast machinery of Britain’s empire and its Parliament or (2) they would have been hung.

Set aside all that the defamers inspired (supremacy of a citizen’s bill of rights, constitutional separation of powers, democratic federalism, a transcontinental political and economic union, the Atlantic Charter, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Abraham Lincoln and Jazz, for starters) that, presumably, for lack of space, Black had to set aside.

Let’s go along with the proposition that the Europeans in the four original Canadian and the 13 original American colonies carried on as loyal British subjects.

Let’s grant that the less vehement and less arrogant voices on the two sides of the Atlantic had held the old heart and the young heart of the 18th-century British Empire intact.

Let Black savor the consequences of choosing “peace, order and good government” rather than “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as the management vision for, at least, an economic and security commonwealth of the British colonies.

Imagine the old souls of the Westminster Parliamentary model keeping their grip on the machinery of government from the North Atlantic right down to Bermuda’s cane fields.

But that’s as far as Black’s British North America has the right to rearrange modern history on this continent.

Black suggests that in one “long lifetime” the English-speaking empire would peacefully move its head office and then lead a global talk-shop commonwealth—without, of course, the “gridlock” of America’s decentralized system of popular government. I should live so long.

The assumption that Tory loyalists would have promptly accommodated America’s ruthless, unruly mass immigration and their expansion west or would have promptly paid off their slave-holding aristocrats defies how they played the US Civil War and how they micro-managed the settlement of Western Canada.

Furthermore, would those British loyalists have actually received an offer from Napoleon to purchase the vast Louisiana territories? Without Motor City and the resources, industries and uncouth human capital from there to LA, would the loyal colonies of 1776 have stopped the Germans twice and won a global cold war on behalf of all sides of Westminster’s Parliament?

The implied narrative that the British Empire would, on its own, become less imperial defies precedent, including Britain’s own behavior in India and Africa. It didn’t even surrender unconditional independence to its loyal white dominions until well after WWI.

Great Britain lost the leadership of the English-speaking world before it decided to concentrate on being more civilized and a better listener than America.

There’s nothing wrong with being lucky, if you don’t confuse luck with virtue. The English Channel and the liberal American union, in fact, have helped mightily keep their island free and their liberal influence global.

Rather than "what ifs" to slag each other, it’s time we transcended the trivial insults of the 18th century and congratulate ourselves on the many smart ways both sides of the Atlantic have taken advantage of their dumb luck.

Conrad Black’s Canada: a country for old men

A retreating empire and its retreating ideology made Canada. For a shelter, it’s been a brilliant success. Along with living peacefully beside the Number 1 success of the last two centuries, Canadians with over-sized ambitions have built an enviable place to live. A few have even overreached abroad. Conrad Black demonstrates that you can come home after experiencing a world of misfortune. Unfortunately, he wants us to join him in his retreat.

After affirming their enduring personal association, Black dismisses Diane Francis’s Merger of the Century as farfetched. In his review No Sale, Black doesn’t quarrel with her strategic case to Americans, as I do. Indeed, for an instant, he embraces her vision with trademark Black extravagance:

“In strategic-resource terms, the United States would be a born-again country, acquiring a well-educated, relatively law-abiding addition of up to 34 million people.”

But then he demurs. The merger can’t happen: the Americans wouldn’t pay; Canadians wouldn’t — and Quebecers couldn’t — accept American terms.

The cosmopolitan conservative who could sketch global alliances on paper napkins, the lover of words who tried to persuade Americans that FDR wasn’t the greatest liberal but instead the most effective conservative of the last century, despairs at the possibility of one more extension of America’s highly decentralized federation.

Apparently, neither side has the wit to pull it off. The calculations and prejudices in the way are as hard as diamonds. Besides, the dominant partner hasn’t the competence to do win-wins anymore. America couldn’t tolerate a vibrant Quebecois nation within their brittle union, and Quebecers wouldn’t knowingly “fast-track” their cultural assimilation.

In closing, he joins that polite mob of Canadian thinkers who’ve decided that we’re too superior even to be bought. “Canada is, by every measure,” Black coos, “a better-governed country than the United States.”

Mordecai Richler — the only other postwar English-speaking Quebec writer with the courage and brilliance to outrage Canadian nationalists — would turn over in his grave. Black seems to have given up the lofty illusions of the British House of Lords for invitations to wine and cheese at Hart House.

Black won’t lose any friends in the minuscule annexation movement. However, it’s a pity that such a savvy, resourceful mind has adopted small, fixed positions on a set of issues he must know inside out.

The past, as Black the historian knows, and the future that he loved as an entrepreneur aren’t taking us anywhere in particular. Business and politics are played at the margins by those who break what’s fragile and exploit what’s green. Consequently, making and writing history is for young minds.

Black seems to have confused growing up with thinking like a reactionary. There is zero reason to declare that the Americans would be less sensible, less flexible, and less intelligent about Quebec than we have been or that — with one less futile border — Quebec’s sense of itself would shrivel.

Black refuses to rule out the possibility that the US will yet again overcome its strategic shortcomings. Yet he can’t imagine that we could participate in that political drama.  Rather, we should simply hope for their success as economic beneficiaries.

Pity.

Too often ordinary old men disguise their loss of political influence by suggesting that they have already led us as far as we will go. Young adventurers shouldn’t press their luck. Fortunately, Black cannot be ordinary for long.

Conrad Black’s fix for a Divided Federation

Our late-fall reformer Conrad Black offers a new constitutional formula for Clearing the Quebec Air. Having spent millions of his own money on commercial lawyers, he’s found a way to re-employ teams of constitutional lawyers across Canada.

“What is needed now is an omnibus clearing of the air. Any province that votes by 60% or more to secede can do so, provided that any federal voting constituency that votes by 60% or more not to secede will remain in Canada, and referenda cannot be more frequent than every 10 years. Any seceding province will assume half the percentage of the Canadian federal debt that the seceding province has as a population of Canada’s (pre-secession) population. If necessary, joint censuses will establish these figures. Any federal government assets in the seceding province will be paid for, if the seceding province wants them, over 10 years, at a price agreed by joint commissions, with a casting vote, if necessary, from the International Court of Arbitration. If the province doesn’t want those federal assets, the federal government may sell or keep them as it wishes.”

So, off you go, everybody: this marriage contract can be kept inside your wallets for easy reference; it leaches out all the love, and it makes divorce impossible.

What would have happened if King George III had sent his rebellious North American subjects off to collect super-majorities in every county in his 13 colonies?

Conrad Black Rattles the Bars

There ought to be a better way for a Tory to get upset about the status quo than spending time in prison. Nevertheless, the fitful winds of change are benefiting from Conrad Black’s misfortune. Here, in the pages of the National Post, is his poverty program for America:

“I am more conservative as a capitalist, because it is the only system that conforms to the almost universal human desire for more, and I favour low income taxes and less regulation than the administration. But, as I wrote here on Wednesday and especially after spending three years in American prisons, I am a strong leftist on protection of human rights and liberties, restraint of rabid prosecutors and a radical effort to address poverty. Yet Obama’s “sharing the wealth” approach won’t accomplish anything. Instead, I favour a wealth tax to be administered, under supervision as charities are, by the taxpayers and devoted to the reduction of poverty, a tax and program that would be reduced as poverty was reduced, giving the wealthiest an incentive to eliminate poverty.”

Conrad Black hasn’t shaken his distaste for liberals or his high Tory confidence—born of that privileged hilltop view of the unintended consequences of other people’s best intentions, especially the ones that lead to government action. However, as with that Canadian hyphen "red-Tory," Black undermines his intentions by serving two ambitions at the same time: doing something decisive about poverty and making government less intrusive, even in the social sphere.

Black wants to be a problem-solver without sounding like one of those ridiculous problem-solvers in government. In doing so, he echoes those less-intelligent billionaires who favor “self-taxation” as an alternative to giving government additional revenue to be more effective.

Should the rich—and a little more of their money—be assigned the lead in fighting poverty, because the rich know more about money, neighborhoods, career planning, and networking than elected politicians and their public servants? Why not, then, earmark the taxes of young people and the working poor to finance America’s national defense? After all, in big wars, they do most of the fighting?

Black is taking risks with common sense, because he’s divided and that’s a rare, good thing. And he’s acknowledging also that doing the decent thing often will cost more money—and that’s real progress.

Fact-checking Conrad Black

In helping fellow conservatives accept their shaky array of presidential candidates and their extreme economic prescriptions, conservative pundits must paint the status quo in flaming colors. Presumably, it’s easier to do something reckless in terrible times.

Conrad Black used this tactic in a friendly column about Herman Cain’s candidacy and the glories of Ronald Reagan. America, Black divines, “wants radical reform and lashings of panache.”

Click on: www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Where+Ronald+Reagan/5626492/story.html

But, are these radically bad times? Here, Black goes too far:

“Underemployment afflicts nearly 20% of the work force, and inflation in those areas that have not been flattened by deflation, like housing, is in double digits.”

The first part about underemployment is not inaccurate. It’s only hypocritical. Under-employment—holding a part-time or low paying job that doesn’t require your skills and experience and doesn’t pay you enough to be financially secure—is a long-term structural problem that has increased steadily with free trade and the rationalization of American industry. It is a 30-year-old problem that Republicans ignore in their opposition to federal measures to re-train workers and support education, and in their boundless faith that small business “job-creators” will restore the American Dream.

The second part is plain wrong.

Inflation doesn’t happen in some “areas” and not in others. Some prices go up and some go down. Inflation is only the overall net increase in the monthly prices of all those goods and services people typically purchase. Inflation and deflation are not measures of some things and everything at once.

Today, US inflation—with or without housing—is not near double digits as it was in the 70s. Energy price increases — not housing price decreases — has been the wild card this last summer.

“The 12-month change in the all items index, which was 3.8 percent in August, edged up to 3.9 percent in September. The 12-month change for all items less food and energy remained at 2.0 percent for the second straight month. The energy index has risen 19.3 percent over the last year, while the food index has increased 4.7 percent.”

            Click on: www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

The economist Arthur Okun created a catchy term for the sever stagflation of the 70s—the Misery Index. It was simple — like most things that hurt. The index just added up the pain of high unemployment and the pain of high inflation. Happily for Ronald Reagan, this simple tool made Jimmy Carter look terrible.

The suggestion in Conrad Black’s statement that the United States' economy has returned to the stagflation—double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation—of the late 1970s is entirely wrong, and only confuses necessary thinking about sustaining and expanding economic recovery and job creation.  

The policy response then — extreme monetary contraction to curtail inflationary expectations — is uncalled for today and would only precipitate a depression.