1 Oh yeah.  Because those Brits never hurt anyone - just stayed on their little island and ate crappy food.  It was the mean old Americans who caused every problem known to man!  I bet we'd even have gotten along better with the natives ... or the ones that survived smallpox anyhow...

2 Sweet - you got linked on Hot Air again!  

3

4 Please refrain from using the word faggot on my blog.

5 I deleted that post, sorry, but I choose not to use that word, nor have it on my blog.

I also got a Headlines link from Ace!

6 I think I'm going to work up a "MoronBlogger" pic to use as my link to Ace.  His blog is what got me into this thing.

7 You should, though there is a pic like that floating around.  Go to mesablue & WickedPinto's site Absolute Moral Authority in my blogroll and take a look on their sidebars.

8 The United States wouldn't have any of those nasty issues about mixing religion with politics- just look at northern ireland.

9 I gotta say I like their beer. Oh..and the Spitfire was/is the most beautiful plane ever. Other than that, you gotta be feckin kidding.

10 Kevin, good point.

The Spitfire is beautiful, isn't it?  I kinda like US bombers though.  Dunno why, but I love bombers.

11 Holy crap!  I got linked in an actual post at HotAir for my zombie story too!

12 Their beer is only so-so, god I love American micro-brews...and I just dont see the beauty of the Spitfire...

13 It is that kind of half-baked revisionist crap that really gets me wound up. Some over-educated egomaniac thinks that every woe in the world falls on white, Christian, conservative Americans and that if we went back and changed one thing, the world would all be Rosie (pun intended).

First, I was educated and have a degree to teach Secondary Education (History), but walked away from my original choice in careers because of the uber-liberal "system". Don't teach them about Lewis and Clark, but tell them all about Sacajawea. Don't tell them the laundry-list of accomplishments by Thomas Jefferson, tell them about his slave-holding and his affairs.

Yes, the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers were all about making a buck. God Save Adam Smith. Along the way the "flawed" Founding Fathers pulled together some pretty darn good concepts like the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We're these men perfect? Heck no, but they were great men.

I disagree with the guy's view of how the Crown would have handled their "American cousins" as a colony. He takes a head-in-the-sand approach to the other global forces that helped precipitate the Revolution and only looks through the moral scope of today to judge past events.

Of course, his theorizing on slavery and social reform was off, in my opinion, but in the end I think this individual would change his tune if he got his hands dirty for a living.

14 I see I'm not the only guy with a history degree that decided the education system wasn't the right place for me.

15

As a Canadian, today on the blogs has been a bit wierd and so I am going to throw in a comment here...a bit of "Canuck-talk", if you will.

This piece combines with the ABC news story about an increase in the number of Americans moving to Canada, though in my mind still a negligible number. What has been wierd, however, is the hostility towards Canada that has appeared in the comments section. For the life of me, I don't understand it. I don't think we have ever invaded you (in fact it is quite the reverse, an invasion which, thankfully, failed). Apart from Iraq, we have been allies in every war...more accurately you were our allies (again, thankfully), given that we had been in WWI almost 4 years before you arrived and 2 1/2 years in WWII before US soldiers came.

The criticisms seem to be about Iraq and health care.

About health care, we have a diffierent system than you do. So what? It's not OUR fault that Michael Moore holds it up as a model for the world...go after him for goodness sakes. We have made a decision to have national medicare and to pay for it through extremely high taxes. It has a lot of flaws and a lot of benefits...anyway, it's a national decision we have made, for better or worse. By why crap on us for it...it's our country, not yours. if you don't like it, then, fine, don't get it.

About Iraq, we didn't go in. Again, there are a lot of people in the US that wish the US had held off on that decision. But it was your decision to go, and our governemt made the decision not to go (at the time, I disagreed, but that's the way it goes in democracies).

But we HAVE gone into Afghanistan full bore. We were the only "peacekeepers" ever to take artillery, and now we have tanks. We have had over 60 soldiers killed in action over the last 2 years.

Indeed, it is a source of puzzlement to me the reaction you guys have to the Australians versus Canadians. The Aussies, bless their souls, have spoken loudly in favour of the Iraq intervention and have contributed troops. But, realistically, they have not been carrying the ball there the way Canadians have in Afghanistan. Not a single Ausrralian soldier has been killed in Iraq, (thank God for that). Yet the Aussies are the heroes and get all the great press. Canadians are losing troops every week, yet we float between being ignored or attacked by you guys. I'm not sure which is worse...I would like to see thanked, actually.

Finally, one guy said that our beer was worse than US beer. I respectfully disagree, but that is the kind of disagreement that i would prefer we had...settle it over a friendlt taste testing contest.

In the meantime, we should say a prayer for the troops, American and Canadian who are fighting for us.

Regards

16 Look, here's the deal, I'm not ragging on you Canuckistanis, I'm just ragging on the leftists in the US who fawn constantly over Canada. Canadian style governance is just not for us.  I'm sure that Canadians feel the same about us in the states.

 I'm not even opposed to the lefties in the US being euro/canadian style socialists, up until they start trying to impose it on me, then I have a big problem. 

 If they want to build socialist utopias in their own states, go wild, just don't try and impose it on the rest of us.  Which to me seems to be the issue in the US, we need decentralization.

17

"What has been wierd, however, is the hostility towards Canada that has appeared in the comments section."

Where?  The only comment you mentioned specifically was about British beer (why else would it mention the Spitfire in the same comment?), and the other comments seem to be about Britain, not Canada.

18

so, we're all reading this, right? that this is what progressives mean when they say they "love america" and are "patriotic" yet "love" america in the "mature, critical" manner of a marriage and so on?

19 Sure, the key difference between liberals and conservatives is conservatives see their marriage to government as one of convenience, and liberals want it to be one of dependence.

20

Blaise MacLean -- "It's not OUR fault that Michael Moore holds it up as a model for the world...go after him for goodness sakes."

 

quite right, brian. it happens way too often where conservatives gather. it's soort of like those buggs bunny, daffy duck bits, where buggs tricks daffy into saying "duck season" so elmer shoots daffy. conservatives are highly susceptable to this sort of feint.

progressives do something similar. i remember seeing all the scorching blog posts about what a racist, reactionary, homophobic country poland is following their last major elections. but progressives have a built-in theme of scappegoating up in their rhetoric, whereas conservatives tend to see cultures as emerging from their people.

not me though. either way, i'm just grateful fopr all the black market freon i'm huffing down here.

 

the.... spots....the....sdfnm. .

 

21 Blaise MacLean - The source of my hostility towards Canada is the hordes you used to send in the summer to my local NJ beaches. Seems like 90% were fat, old men in Speedos. That kind of thing will scar a child and make him grow up mean ;-)

22 heh.

23 My beef with Canada? None overall, but having spent the last seven years working for and with Canadians it did rather tiresome hearing just how superior Canada was to the "stupid US".  Nearly every day I had to hear from the Canadians in our office about just how "stupid" the US was compared to them.

Of course, they all whined about having to pay high taxes when they had to move back.  They openly bragged about how they were making sure all their stock transactions were done while in the US so as to avoid the Canadian taxes.

And they whined about having to go back to waiting for health care where they didn't have to in the US.  My boss made sure his wife gave birth to all three of his kids here in the US and when he needed a kidney transplant he didn't rush back to Toronto to get it.

And seeing their shock to find out even under the most evil of all legislation--The Patriot Act--doesn't even come close to approaching the level of government intrusion, limit on freedom of the press, and severely limited personal rights that have been standard Canadian legal fair for decades.  Just compare wiretapping laws in Canada versus US--they would be so lucky as to have the freedom the Patriot Act would give them compared to existing laws.

Even the recent corruption scandal that brought down the leading Liberal government was completely covered up and forbidden to be covered by the Canadian Press and the story was blown open by a US blogger until the US press started to catch on.

It isn't Michael Moore who holds Canadians up as an example that bugs me. I never listen to his propaganda in any case.  It's the constantly harping on their superior enlightenment I get from other Canadians that gets me.  It comes across as an extremely annoying, pretentious smugness--and that doesn't include Quebec.

I think of it as the "Martha Stewart Effect".  If you go around long enough talking about how perfect you are don't act surprised that someone is going to get fed up and want to kick your ass.

24 I despise, deride, hate with my utmost being the leftist deranged, weird, despicable ideology. I go so far to say that their manner of thinking is irrational, infatuated and deadly to societies. The people that want to take power from the individual and ascribe it to the government are incapable of discernment or sound thought. They are enemies to my children and to myself. Cursed is the mind that claims that an educated person can make better decision on behalf of a less educated person. This discord is what revolutions are made of and I would go back in the streets to face the guns again. I lived under a communist regime that had a bloody end. Leftist demagogues can take over any country any time; whether Canada, US or Britain. I am dejected over the future of America. The only reason to own guns is to inspire fear in the government and I hope that people would buy more of them.

25 Uhhh ... not to be a jerk or anything, but I'm not sure that the government is terribly frightened by small arms.  They've got tanks and F-22s.

26 I'm not worried about our armed forces turning on or the government turning outright dictatorial.  In practice though, we must preserve the 2nd Amendment because we can't know what the future holds, for us or for our  kids.  Joseph, I think Du Toit explains why that assertion is wrong here. 

27

"Uhhh ... not to be a jerk or anything, but I'm not sure that the government is terribly frightened by small arms.  They've got tanks and F-22s."

Right.  Because it's impossible to find any examples of irregular troops with few or no heavy weapons causing a major headache for a modern professional army.  That never happens.

28 A) Your average American citizen isn't a whacko Islamist, so that comparison doesn't work.  We don't have the will, and we certainly don't have AK-47s.

B) Guys with guns would be just that for our military - an annoyance.  And I doubt that we'd even qualify as a major annoyance, depending on the rules of engagement.

That said, it's still a right, and there's plenty of other reasons to own a gun.  I accept the principle, but the "We keep them to resist the government" thing just doesn't hold much water anymore as a practical argument.

29

"A) Your average American citizen isn't a whacko Islamist, so that comparison doesn't work.  We don't have the will, and we certainly don't have AK-47s."

Can you really be ignorant enough of  history to believe that I was just referring to Iraq and Afghanistan?  We certainly do have AK-47s; not to mention SKSs, AR-15s, M-14s...  And ask the former Soviet army (and probably ours) about what a .303 Lee-Enfield copy made by an illiterate tribesman with hand tools can do.

 

30

Faith +1

Shouldn't that be "...standard Canadian legal fare.." ?

Slainte

31 Why don't you bear with me, ignorant troglodyte that I am, and explain how your fearless militia is going to hold off apache helicopters and predator drones?

1) The former Soviet army is not the modern US Military.  Not even close.  What we'd be dealing with is not the soviets and crazy tribesmen.  It's the aforementioned military and your average US citizen.  That's an apples to oranges comparison, and it still doesn't work.

2) The current US population isn't made of the same tough stuff that our founders were made of, and the weapons have changed.  We can't even manage the willpower necessary to let someone else fight our wars for us.  You really think that a bunch of soccer moms and 3rd assistant sales associates at Ikea are going to have the guts to take on an extremely sophisticated, well trained, extremely disciplined military with nothing but small arms and grit?  Sorry, not buying it.

I'm sure there'd be enclaves of resistance in certain parts of the country (and good for them) but I'd bet they'd be quickly isolated.  The only thing keeping those enclaves alive would be the restraint of the military.  If they proved to be too big of a problem ... well ... you've seen what our bombers can do.  There's no defending against that even if you do have an AK47.

Times have changed man.  It's not that I don't think it's worthwhile to own a gun to defend your family, hunt, and have fun ... but I just don't think we're capable of defending ourselves from our own armed forces and (by extension) own government.  It's time to switch arguments to the ones that work.  That's the whole point.

32

Blaise, your argument is based on an imaginary world. We don't need guns against our own government. That's why we have a constitution and elections. Even if there was an imaginary revolution, what are the chances that our military would use heavy armament against Americans (their own families)?

While it seems that Faith+1 may have good reason to be paranoid, leftist demagogues can't take over this country unless the majority of the country become leftist demagogues which is not likely to happen. The Founders drafted the Constitution to prevent any interest group from taking over this country. They're brilliance cannot be overstated.

Personally, I like my gun for personal protection and I would encourage anyone to own a gun for that reason alone. Other than that, I don't see Americans having to use their guns to fight any military in our lifetime.

 

33 Sorry, my comment should have been to Joseph and not Blaise.

34 WOLVERINES!!!

35 Ha!

36 "your argument is based on an imaginary world. We don't need guns against our own government. That's why we have a constitution and elections. Even if there was an imaginary revolution, what are the chances that our military would use heavy armament against Americans (their own families)?"

Indeed, it's a pretty out there hypothetical.  Which is exactly the point.  Arguing that we should be allowed to keep our guns because we need to defend ourselves from our big evil government is silly.  Our government doesn't fear our guns.  It fears our votes. 

What I'm saying is that trying to make that argument is a losing proposition, and should be avoided, because your average liberal retard is going to do just what I did - cite the fact that small arms mean precisely jack squat (in the long run) up against a modern military.  Sooo ... enough with the "our government fears our guns" silliness.  They clearly don't.

37 Soooo...are you for or against guns?

38 For 'em!  Well, I am...

39 Let me make myself clear: I'm very much for guns. 

I just think that we need to be really careful in how we argue the issue.  I loathe nanny state types to the bottom of my soul.  I quoted this on my blog, but I'll post it again because I really like it:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - CS Lewis

I'm also a bit of a defensive contrarian, and I sorta like to argue with people.  Probably shouldn't, but meh.

40 I'm with you on that. You get no argument from me. For the record, I like to argue too. (:

41 I forgot to mention...I'd rather shoot the tyrant and robber baron with my gun(: