Aperte.org Jeremy Handcock

After a serious dry spell in my blogging pontification, let me tell you about a book I read recently. Canadian Michael Adams’ Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values is a fantastic read. I believe we could accurately rename Adams’ work as The Decline of America into Disaffected, Isolationist Ruin and the Rise of Canada into Egalitarian, Postmodern Utopia. Adams’ analysis really is so divisive.

Adams’ book is actually a comment on scientific polling data collected over a period of eight years in Canada and the United States. Although he is a scientific pollster by profession, he doesn’t try to hide his moral and nationalistic bias against the trajectory of values changes in the United States.

It didn’t take me long after signing my TN visa, which allows me to work in the United States, to realize that I “feel” different than the average American, even in the relatively Canadian-like city of Seattle. The first thing that registered to me as being starkly different about the United Sates was the staggeringly disproportionate population of African-American homeless people and the absolute absence of African-American co-workers at my cushy, high-paying software engineering job. The values that Adams generalizes as “exclusion and intensity” that are so pervasive in the United States relative to Canadian values of “idealism and autonomy” are also apparent, although less so in relatively liberal Seattle. Even in Seattle, however, the suburbs prevail as the home of the white, affluent American: very close to yet comfortably isolated from the devastating poverty and racial tension visible in Pioneer Square, the focal point of Seattle’s homeless. This is also the neighbourhood I chose to settle in; it’s the oldest part of Seattle and offers incredible industrial-cum-residential spaces to live in. Today as I was walking into my building from the gourmet grocery store in Pike Place Market with my bag full of fine Washington merlot, organic linguine, and pancetta, a stumbling African-American homeless man shouted, “Hey white boy, got any change? I’m talkin’ to you, white boy, got any change?” Adams is right: black versus white continues to be The American Dilemma. Continuing racial tensions in America aside, he states more generally:

How, ask Canadians, can a people so adept at making a living not figure out how to live? How can they allow so many of their fellow citizens to live in Third World squalor only blocks or a few kilometers from their fortress enclaves?

In Canada, things are generally pretty different. It is no doubt that the poor in Canada live infinitely better than the poor in the United States, partly due to the social welfare state that sloughs off half the salaries of affluent Canadians (and most of those Canadians happily accept such sloughing). Arguably, the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world exist in Canada, and those cities have among the lowest crime and violence rates in the world. Xenophobia, according to Adams’ research, is much less prevalent in Canada than in the United States. As a society comfortable in its assurances of collective welfare, Canadians are naturally less likely to descend into a violent, nihilistic, Blade Runner parody where everyone fends for oneself. Adams also points to the discrepancy in birth rates between Canada and the United States as a primary differentiating factor: women in Canada are much more autonomous and less deferential to authority than their American cousins, and as such, delay (or discount altogether) marriage and pregnancy. In Canada, we maintain and cherish cultural and individual differences: “Demography as destiny is the vestige of a bygone era,” according to Adams. We are also much less tolerant of violence and do not accept violence as a fact of everyday life. Adams predicts that this is rooted in Canada’s extremely strict laws with respect to ownership of firearms relative to the United States, where “Americans kill themselves and each other with the use of firearms at ten times the rate Canadians do.” Of course, the right to bear arms is enshrined in American law, whereas no such legal preference toward ownership of firearms has ever existed in Canada.

The difference in values between Canadians and Americans and the trajectory of such differing values are only increasing in measure. The reader must also consider that Adams’ research was conducted before the events in New York on September 11, 2001. One must interpolate that the gap has widened further since then. So what is the source of these differences? Adams points at many factors and traces the source of such differences back to the birth of the two countries. Consider the two taglines: the American “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” versus the Canadian “peace, order, and good government.” It seems contradictory that the United States, born in revolution, liberalism, and defiance directed toward authoritative rule has now become a neo-conservative state rooted in a revival of religious ideology while Canada, born in conservatism and deference to the authority of British rule, has become a socially progressive, diverse country that is increasingly postmodern in its outlook. I have always believed (and Adams agrees) that such differences can probably be traced in part to activist, majority governments in Canada. The Immigration Act of 1967 and the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 engrained acceptance of diversity in the Canadian legal framework, and the repatriation of the Constitution in 1982 with The Charter sealed the envelope.

My only criticism of Adams’ analysis is that he takes a blatantly moral stance against differences in American versus Canadian values and, consequently, his analysis somewhat lacks pragmatic context. Such differences do indeed have pragmatic roots. Modern Canadian values, of which Canadian immigration policy plays a key role, are shaped in part by a declining birth rate. We must acknowledge that, economically, Canada is doomed without hearty levels of international human imports. This is part of a self-perpetuating cycle: activist government, activist judiciary, and thus progressiveness engrained in Canada’s legal framework leads to increased egalitarianism, increased autonomy and individualism among women, and thus lower birth rates, which further fuels the need for open immigration policies to sustain economic growth.

In any case, both morally and pragmatically, my heart lies in Canada. The analysis presented in this book has solidified my intentions to settle in Canada and reject the seeming allure of the United States. I guess my decision to move to the United States was a bit hypocritical, but I assure you that I exist here while wholeheartedly rejecting the American entier.