Days like today I often find myself thinking wistfully about our public life in Canada. "Days like today" often referring to days after a particularly interesting event in the US. And so it is today.
Yesterday President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address. I'm conscious of the fact that we don't have many moments like this Canada, but I'll point you to Paul Wells' thoughts on this over here as they are, you know, better. With no disrespect intended to the 200,000 members of anti-prorogation group on Facebook and several tens of thousands who were out on a cold January day (a Saturday) to protest the same (and a similar number who were out for anti-coalition rallies just over a year ago), I would say that Canadians rarely respond to their politics with the same fervor that our American counsins do. None of these are more than superficial differences between our peoples in my mind, however. Then I came across this comment in a discussion of the State of the Union speech in the Politico Arena by an attorney, Eric Jaffe, who I believe to be a Republican:
"Which brings me to the most disturbing aspect of the speech for me – the notion that we have a “deficit of trust” in government...My objection is that it champions the erroneous and extremely dangerous notion that we SHOULD trust our government. America does not have a deficit of trust, it has a surfeit.The whole point of our constitutional democracy is that a national government – and the various regimes that occasionally control it – is dangerous...Americans should be suspicious of, cynical about, and lack blind faith in government precisely because politicians of all parties are likely to aggrandize their own power and attempt to create a majority faction that is a danger to liberty regardless which party is in control."
This paragraph graphically demonstrates what I think is one fundamental difference between our two countries - I don't think that many (I won't say there are none) Canadians feel this way about government. Even among Canadian conservatives, of whom I admit to only knowing a few personally, this particular streak of libertarianism doesn't run strong. Some Canadians may not like government, but most conservatives I've ever heard talk of smaller government talk about a dislike for wasteful, overreaching government full of "national projects" and little adherence to the constitution, not fear. Over at the Western Standard, where they certainly try to uphold some sense of conservative libertarian values, a recent blog post laments the absence of these in the current Conservative government. The post, "To Whom Does This Parliament Belong?" makes a case for a libertarian perspective on Canada's politics, but goes nowhere near the notion that a citizen should not trust his or her government or that it's dangerous. It says only that said government should be limited and answer to the people who put it in place.
I don't know how widely held Eric Jaffe's views are by others in the US, nor do I think that Canadians of any stripe are all particularly excited or impressed by their governments, but the difference in attitude seems vast and important to me. The chasm between fear of your government and seeking to put proper limits on its power allows for a higher level of state intervention. While Canadian "conservatives" often blame "liberals" for the size of the state in Canada it would be interesting to know how much of it is permitted by the different attitude that they take toward government than American conservatives do.
