Jeremy Rifkin’s provocative speculations (“Continentalism Of A Different Stripe,” March) about “the incipient rise” of a North American union between Canada and the so-called blue states overlooks one troubling fact: the blue states are blue, as in sad, depressed, and powerless. While not contiguous with the Canadian border, no state in the Union would be more open to pursuing Rifkin’s dream than Massachusetts. And yet, here in Boston—a city with long historical links to Canada’s maritime provinces (during the period of active New England/Caribbean trade) and to Quebec and Ontario (fighting slavery through the Underground Railroad)—there is little talk about alternative political or economic relationships with Canada, or, for that matter, any other nation. In the final analysis, Democrats in America weren’t sure who they were voting for in John Kerry, and are now adrift. Mr. Rifkin’s thesis is interesting, but following through with it would require a level of political enthusiasm and openness absent from the present Democratic body politic in America. We’re too busy licking election wounds to take on new projects.
Katherine Williams
Boston, Massachusetts
The “regional spaces” to which Rifkin refers (e.g., New England and Atlantic Canada, Ontario and the Great Lakes states) primarily co-operate in quotidian matters like trade, the environment, border management, and so on. While Rifkin casts this co-operation as the potential seed for semi-autonomous existence of these regional clusters, he cites little evidence that the regions themselves are interested in such an arrangement—seeing themselves as having not only shared interests but also shared values, and that this common ground would lead them to try to merge more fully. Rifkin mentions former Ontario Premier Mike Harris saying neighbour states are more important to Ontario than are areas of Canada, but, I suspect, this was simply a public dig at Ottawa and have-not provinces, and nothing more.
Even as he emphasizes regional co-operation, Rifkin, like the map that circulated on the Internet after the November election, paints all of Canada with the same brush. Since the map in question consisted of just two colours, the blue “United States of Canada” and the red “Jesusland,” Rifkin seems to be wondering whether the blue states might indeed join a blue monolith called Canada. But he almost immediately moves on to discuss clusters of cross-border regional interests. His emphasis on “semi-autonomous” regions undermines his argument about the United States of Canada. It makes sense that BC and Washington state would co-operate, but it is not a given that they would want to assert their autonomy by becoming more entwined with one another than they already are, and the idea of Washington state joining le tout Canada is even more improbable.
Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Rifkin ignores the rural and suburban versus urban split. The blue states are not all blue—they are just states with more urban dwellers and urbane thinkers. This creates problems on two sides. Rural parts of the blue states would not go gently into that good north. And on the Canadian side, I imagine that progressive Torontonians feel it’s hard enough contending politically with North Bay and Kapuskasing, without having to deal with Michigan Militia.
I suggest, more simply, that progressive Americans consider turning Strom Thurmond on his head and begin to espouse the states’ rights option to incubate and nurture the Canadian Dream in their own less-than-perfect union.
Michael Adams
Environics
Toronto, Ontario
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