At a recent motorcycle camp out, I was given a book called "A Nation of Serfs", by Mark Milke which I have since read through in my typical way. I start at the end, then work my way back, skipping sections that don't seem too interesting until I arrive at the foreword. You may think that is not a good way to read a book, and you may be right. Now I'm going to write about this book, which I probably do not really understand. That is why I nearly failed literature 101.The first thing I notice about the book is that this nation of "serfs" is Canada. Then there is an alternate title, "How Canada's political culture corrupts Canadian values." So even before I open the cover, I feel kind of defensive. Who would write such nasty stuff about Canada? I wonder, and checking the back I find that the author is from Alberta, so it makes a bit more sense. Then, since I am still at the camp out I ask the donor where he got this book, and he replied that he bought it for $0.50 at a bargain bin, just to see what the "enemy" was up to.
Just as some background for those who may not understand, Alberta has become Canada's centre of conservatism. Our Conservative Prime Minister is from Alberta, and his main political, financial, and popular support is in Alberta. Alberta is also Canada's oil province, meaning it is rich, and has been for about the 50 years since oil has become big business. In Canada we call that a "Have" province as opposed to some others that are "Have not". Hopefully that terminology is not too confusing, because Canadians like to talk that way.
In Canada we take some money from "Have" provinces and give it to "Have not" provinces. So in the eighties, there was the beginning of a separatist movement in Alberta, when they discovered that some of the money from the oil would be taken to shore up the Have not provinces budgets. Apparently the Albertan separatist mentality has died down, especially as Albertans remain the richest people in Canada.
In my opinion, Albertans also are the people in Canada most like Texans in the USA, which is understandable since most of the oil companies have headquarters in Texas. Albertans were the people in Canada who liked George W. Bush the most (or should I say disliked him least). Albertans supported the Iraq war the most, and wanted to send Canadian soldiers on combat rather than peacekeeping missions. If our Albertan Prime Minister had his way, we would have been heavily involved in combat in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. But he only has a minority government, so he his power is severely limited.
That should be enough background to put the title of the book into perspective. I can figure out now that it is the left-leaning liberals in the east of Canada who are the serfs. And that the values which have been corrupted are probably the conservative family values of Alberta. Although the cover does say "corrupts Canadian values", I will just mentally substitute "corrupts Alberta values".
As I flip through the book I see a lot of it is complaining about taxes, and about redistribution of wealth. One chapter explains why Enron (a big Texas energy/oil company that went bankrupt due to corruption) is not as corrupt as the Canadian federal government (referring to a particular scandal called Adscam)
A particularly interesting chapter examines why the people of Eastern Canada love big government so much, and hate America. I like this chapter because it goes into the history of the American War of Independence, and how the original Ontario settlers were actually Americans driven out of their homes and country for loyalty to the British government. Mark simply reminds us that they developed a survivalist garrison mentality as a result of their ill treatment, that survives to this day. And this garrison mentality results in them supporting an inept federal government, and opposing Americanism.
So that's my comment on this book. It probably has not sold well in Ontario, judging from the 50 cent price. Even though it was only printed in 2006, it is already looking out of date now that capitalism and the free enterprise system have collapsed, and that Obama is the new US president.
I did a lookup of Alberta in Wikipedia because I have not visited Alberta recently. I do have a nephew living there though, and coincidentally he is in the military. So in my research I turned up the interesting fact that Alberta has no rats! We have a lot in Ontario though.
It looks like I need to get to Alberta, I hate Rats.
ReplyDeleteNot very many of the rattus rattus or rattus norvegicus variety left out there in Alberta (thanks to the questionable Alberta government policy of spreading hundreds of tonnes of of arsenic trioxide and Warfarin all over the damn place!) but plenty of the rattus conservativus kind.
ReplyDeleteAnother failure of the educational system, I fear. All too many Albertans are simply not aware of the long-standing federal subsidy flows into Alberta prior to the oil boom of the 1970s. All very well for them to accept money from the Have provinces until their own cashflow turned positive. At which point they quickly turned to bite the hand that had fed them.
Ironic, then, isn't it, that part of the reason rattus norvegicus is so often used in lab experiments is because its tenacious memory. Would that rattus conservativus had similar qualities of memory.