Warning! Canada could take over the United States. This isn’t hyperbole—it’s political mathematics.
Our northern neighbor encompasses ten provinces and three territories, including the legendary Yukon. While Canadians may appear reserved, underestimating them at the negotiating table would be a serious miscalculation. They certainly won’t accept becoming a single state. Instead, they’ll insist on statehood for each province and territory. Under our Constitution, each state receives two senators—meaning Canada would instantly gain 26 senators, enough to form the decisive swing bloc in our upper chamber.
That’s troubling enough, but the scenario worsens when considering Canada’s vast geography. Their shrewd negotiators would undoubtedly invoke American precedent to subdivide their political entities. After all, in 1889, our Dakota Territory was split into North and South Dakota. Maine was carved from Massachusetts in 1820, and West Virginia separated from Virginia during the Civil War. Following this established pattern, Canada could reasonably demand twice as many states—and twice as many senators.
Yeah, all this speculation about senators and electoral balance and whatnot skips lightly over the more immediate effects that would come from an American attempt at annexation. If the Americans thought trying to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan was bad, well, this would be like that, except that Canadians can pass for American and can access America’s home soil quite easily.
How would rampant assassinations and terrorist attacks against Republicans (and the particularly spineless Democrats that enabled them) affect the electoral balance, Forbes? Ever hear of the FLQ, by any chance?
Americans still have this basic delusion of being “welcomed as liberators” when their Freedom and Democracy rolls in to town, even after all the times they’ve stuck their hands into ovens and been burned.
I’d argue it’s the same hubris that led to the modern wars in Europe; the thought that we’ve done this elsewhere in the world, we can do it easily next door. Well, next door means you’re exposing your own home to serious damage. Only 0.4% of the US population actively serves in the military, and 6% are veterans. That is a tiny part of the population that has even a hint of first-hand knowledge of how bad this could be. American government and media make these operations look quick, safe, efficient, and relatively bloodless, with relatively little capital–buildings, equipment, people–lost. They are not.
On the flip side, I think Canadians may underestimate how much they’re putting this on other subcultures within their whole to fight an insurgency. There is this confidence that the FLQ, the aboriginal peoples, or some other group with a history of standing up for themselves will be the ones to stand up instead of them. The reason this is ridiculous is because it contradicts their basic thesis statement, that Canadians pass as Americans. You know who doesn’t easily pass as American? Someone with a strong French accent or an aboriginal complexion.
Obviously I’m not saying the FLQ will be the ones to “stand up,” the FLQ are long gone at this point. They’re just an example showing that Canada’s had brutal terrorist insurgencies acting within it before. We’re not the easy-going doofuses that American popular culture portrays us as.
Right, I agree.