I suppose this would be a good time to write about Canada and our birthday, but given the ongoing fallout from Brexit I'm inclined to forgo dwelling on "our home and native land, in all thy son's command."
Besides, with our mediocre leadership in Ottawa and the fact that next year will be our 150th, there might not be too much to say anyway; once again, our country is left behind to quietly and pathetically navel gaze while the world rises to bigger things without us.
But for the sake of appearances, I can tie all this together - though I can't promise you'll like it. For the fact of the matter is that Canada's birth was a direct result of the Civil War in America, and the Civil War was a direct result of government overreach into state's rights. That is effectively the argument behind all the furor in Brexit, even if no one has the eyes to see it. What's especially ironic are pro-remain voices in Canada, as we owe our autonomy to the Confederates.
Let's start from the top. Anyone who's told you that the American Civil War was about slavery is an ignoramus. It was a fratricidal conflict about who had the right to tell who what to do and whether states could leave the Union voluntarily. After holding democratic conventions to secede, the South left, and would have peaceably gone its way had Lincoln not baited them into conflict. In the end, it took rape and pillage by the North to finally beat the South into submission.
America now had a giant standing army and a population hell bent on continental domination. This would lead to bloody and terrible wars, but John A. Macdonald saw a way to head them off by forming a single country stretching from sea to sea. During our negotiations for confederation, the principle of federated powers resulted in provincial and federal authority; John A. believed he'd created a stronger central authority than the U.S., and hoped for a more peaceable life for Canada.
However, leaving education, health care, and property in the hands of the provinces, as well as creating no single Bill of Rights (we simply inherited all rights, including gun rights, from Mother Britain's constitution) resulted in constant bickering between provinces and Ottawa. Our supreme court of appeal lay in Britain, and some of the jurists who argued there were former Confederates in exile. They always argued in favour of decentralizing power and individual rights.
And so we come full circle to our own time where the bread and butter of most Canadian life actually resides with the 10 cantankerous cantons we call provinces and their single mission of dumping on Ottawa until they see the money. This arrangement has lead to a bizarre situation where most Canadians are actually "British Columbians" or "Albertans" first, and regionalism plays a big part in our identity. We actually make many Brexiters look quite moderate.
But now that we can see our constitutional history without the leftist blinders it usually comes with, Britain's decision to leave the EU ought to make infinitely more sense.
Like the Confederates, Britain wished to be left alone in sovereign affairs, and like our federation, Britons want more localized authority, not decisions made by faceless, distant bureaucratic czars.
In short the British wanted their country back, even as Remainers tried to give the last of it away.
Make no mistake, last Thursday's referendum was the single most important vote taken in the English-speaking world since the South began to call conventions on secession. The entire project of the anglosphere has been individual rights and freedoms. And, since Agincourt, anglo-saxons have been making a well known gesture to their continental cousins' schemes.
We in Canada have actually contributed to this result, and we should be proud to have our Mother returned to us from servitude.
Our entire constitutional history, until 1982, refuted arbitrary, unelected authority. Hopefully we remember that, as Britain did, before it is too late.
