A recent piece by Hadley Arkas on Stevehayward.substack.com included the bit below:

But the real test of citizenship is whether one could give a moral defense of that regime that commands his loyalty as a citizen.

I'm Canadian, but I couldn't do that - and I've never met, heard of, or read anything by, a Canadian who could - although Conrad Black, in his History of Canada (Rise to Greatness) tries for something over 1200 pages, I read it as demonstrating the

This is an extract from (and revision of) something I put on this site last November - with a minor addition. The reason I'm doing this is that the current Russia/Ukraine peace process doesn't seem likely to produce a long term solution.

I'm writing this on March 5th, 2025 - one day after the latest "Trump tariffs" took effect. At present it seems highly likely first that Mark Carney will be elected liberal party leader, and so prime minister of Canada, on March 9; and, second, that he will run in either an immediate or slightly delayed election as the man to protect Canada from Trump.

Note

1. • Anyone not already knowledgeable about Canada and contemplating Mr. Trump's 51st state idea should consult at least Wikipedia's basic pages describing aspects of Canada's geography, population, governance, and economy before reading this essay.

      

   • Further, I take a very negative view of Canadian politics but anyone interested in the opposite view, that Canada is the positive and intentional construct of great men, should consult Conrad Black's epic 1,100 page History of Canada.

      

I have a number of "ignorant and abhorrent" ideas about how to do things - and I'm comfortable calling them that because I know first how little I know, and second that no expert would ever consider any of them. With that in mind, here are three of them, all variations on the poison pill idea  - with rational comments very much requested.

At present (September 4/24) the democrat campaign for president has re-iterated a proposal previously rejected by Congress to tax what they're calling unrealized capital gains. According to the campaign the new tax will only affect the very rich - those with net assets valued at over 100 million dollars - but, of course, the same people swore monies spent on an IRS hiring binge would only be used to pursue very rich tax delinquents instead of the poor and middle class filers they're really going after.

An Alberta Nuclear Strategy

Background information

Saskatchewan and Alberta are western Canadian prairie provinces both of which are currently run by conservative political parties; both have economies largely dependent on agriculture and hydrocarbons; and, both governments claim responsibility for the management of electrical power generation and distribution in their jurisdictions. Saskatchewan has about 1.35 million people; Alberta just over 4 million.

Read a broad cross section of on-line news and commentary sites from outside the progressive echo chamber and you'll see lots of seemingly intelligent and thoughtful people arguing that labeled groups such as Marxists, Greens, the Woke, or just Radical Democrats are communists out to destroy the United States.

A long time ago people said that if Steve Jobs was filmed walking across San Francisco bay, the systems industry media headlines would all scream "Jobs can't swim!", and that's really what's going on with major media coverage of Danielle Smith and the UCP too: the people involved generally know almost nothing about economics or governance but continually tell each other they're experts and that, combined with the left's assumed moral superiority and the federal government's massive subsidies to approved media organizations, is what powers their current campaign against Smith and anyone else

Disclaimer: there are so many unknowns in the history of Covid19, and so much that is thought to be known is actually of uncertain value, that this article is intended only as an imaginative alternative history.

(An aside: the title was inspired by someone else's debunking of a speculative paper on the grounds that it presented a theory without measurement, with the added LOL note that he intended no insult to string theory.)