Canada's sovereignty problem

"We are ending the proliferation of [assault-style] weapons and the militarization of our society." -- Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety, May 1, 2020

Blair is correct. The Government's move to ban 1,500 "assault-style" semi-automatic rifles will further demilitarize Canadian society.

And that's a problem.

It takes Canada's already perilous sovereignty and weakens it further.

Why would Canada (or any country) want to be sovereign?

In short, sovereignty is needed to protect a country's values. The social-contract (i.e. constitution) outlines a country's foundational values and means of achieving them. Canada, it is often argued, was formed to promote peace, order, good-government. It does this by creating a federal democracy that divides powers between various levels of government over matters needed to ensure peace, order, and good government. It explains succession and other subjects needed to ensure the sovereignty of the social-contract persists.

Sovereignty means being the final decision-making over the tract of land you claim as your own. You protect the values of the social-contact by ensuring that the body representing the social-contract has the final say in your territory. If the body representing the social-contract (i.e. the state) isn't sovereign, then another body is free to enter your territory and impose their values on you. It's not pretty, but it's a political fact.

To be sovereign, a country must meet one of three conditions:

1) Nuclear weapons

If you can completely annihilate another civilization that threatens you, you are a final decision maker over your own territory.

2) Strong army

Nuclear weapons destroy everything. Therefore, invaders are disincentivized from using them. Invaders normally want to exploit a country's natural, social, and economic wealth. Using a weapon that destroys all wealth doesn't make for a profitable invasion. As such, it's better to invade and take over. Therefore, you can be sovereign with a military strong enough to repel an invasion.

 3) Armed citizenry

A citizenry that is armed and trained in the use of small-arms -- such as assault-rifles -- can succcessfully terminate an invasion. The Vietnamese defeated the Americans. The Afghans defeated the Soviets and the Western allies. Canada's civilian militia, with British professional help, pushed out the American military in the War of 1812. Swizerland's armed militia deterred a Nazi invasion.

Canada meets none of these conditions.

Canada has no nuclear weapons. Its military is weak. Prior to May 1, it had a limited, highly restricted distribution of "assault-style" rifles -- not even real assault-rifles -- and now it doesn't even have that.

So, if Canada isn't sovereign, why isn't it being invaded? U-S-A! U-S-A!

Paradoxically, the first principle of Canadian nationalism is not being American, yet that principle is protected by the United States. Canadians like to celebrate the institutions and policies that distinguish them from the United States, yet, without the United States military, Canada couldn't protect those values. Like universal healthcare? Gun-control? The Queen? Canada has these only because it is assumed by other world powers that America's military will protect Canada. Put differently, Donald Trump means infinitely more to Canadian safety and security than Justin Trudeau. And that's true whether you like it or not.

Sovereignty also explains why Americans aren't lining up at the border to enjoy our more egalitarian, more humane country: it's not safer. The US military and American gun-laws -- despite all the additional death from war and gun-violence -- keep Americans safer than anything the Government of Canada provides to Canadians. Public-health care can't stop Russian troops. Gun-control doesn't scare the Chinese military. But both live in fear of the US military and probably also US citizens.

Problematically for Canada, the US is already making public statements that it won't protect Canada anymore. Other powers probably aren't taking this seriously, but as it becomes clear that the US is reducing military support for the West in general, Canada will be considered a soft target. Because it is.

There are two objections to my argument that need to be considered:

1) Few countries meet the criteria for sovereignty

This is true. Many countries meet the criteria for sovereignty through alliances like NORAD or NATO. In Canada's case, it meets this criterion by being an American ally. In effect, it free-rides off the American military. But, the US is less willing to protect Canada. Given that Canadian nationalism is routinely expressed in smug hostility toward the United States, it's natural for the American to stop protecting Canada. Why protect a bunch of ingrates?

2) Commonwealth/NATO country

This leads to a second objection: won't Britain or NATO save us? No. The EU, like Canada, depends on the US military to protect all of its member states. France and the UK are sovereign, but the status of the other European states is less clear. Further, the UK is not going to protect Canada from the US. Britain cannot defeat the US in a non-nuclear war and Canada is far more integrated with the US than Britain.

All of this is to say that the Liberals and their gun-control clients are parochial naifs too full of idealistic sentiment to recognize that their efforts for marginal gains in safety undermine our fundamental security. They'll still be crying maudlin tears over the victims of mass-shootings while the Chinese tanks roll-off the RO/RO ships in the Port of Vancouver.

It's true that we're all sitting ducks. But the next great act of violence won't be a mass-shooting. It will be war. And Canada will lose.

Thoughts on the new government

Thoughts on the new government:

-- it will be weak and the policy will be empty pablum
-- interesting coalition of the Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, the Maritimes, and the North.
-- it means that the anti-Muslim sentiment in Canada is weaker than other Western countries; we are tolerant
-- hopefully marijuana is soon legal
-- hopefully prostitution is soon legal
-- hopefully the Liberals forget about gun-control, but I know that won't happen

Tonight's federal election

Quebec is a toss-up in tonight's election. If they vote Liberal, you'll see a Liberal majority and return to what Western conservatives derisively call the "Laurentian consensus". Basically, it's an electoral coalition of Ontario and Quebec voters led by centre-left intellectuals and politicos in those provinces.

What we've had under Harper is a coalition of centre-right voters in Ontario and Western Canada led by centre-right intellectuals and politicos from Alberta and Ontario. In Canadian history, there has never been a power holding coalition that included Western Canada. So, though the left and centre-left despise Harper, he's been good for Canadian unity. The West's alienation no longer exists and Quebec, not being a power broker during several election cycles, has stopped being able to use separatism as an ultimatum to gain concessions from the rest of Canada. Past Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments, like the Harper Conservatives, despise Quebec nationalists, but had to concede to their demands more because they, unlike the Harper Conservatives, were dependent on Quebec votes.

Yes, Harper made oil a bigger part of the Canadian economy and this has made our national economy more volatile, but it also included Western Canada more in national politics and has satiated previously unaddressed regional tensions. So, we've traded some economic stability for greater political unity. On balance, I think it's been a net positive. But it's time for change.

BBC, CBC, and the USA

The economic reason the UK has the BBC and the US does not is that UK leaders believed at the time that state-ownership of the commanding heights of the economy would better serve social-welfare. Most political debate focuses on this reason. It turned out to be wrong.

The moral reason, which goes completely unnoticed, is that Americans have a stronger commitment to democratic values. Commercial media has a model many intellectuals consider crass. Popular programming mixed with advertisements. Yet, this model is about programming by the people for the people. The market serves democracy well. It keeps the people sovereign in media matters. The more intellectual programming of the BBC remains the esoteric interests of an elite subsidised by majority taxpayers.

This model does not apply to Canada's CBC. The Canadian government didn't believe as strongly that the commanding heights of the economy should be controlled by state as the British. However, they did share the disposition of deference to authority which lead the Brits to believe in economic growth through government control. Instead, the Canadian reason for the CBC was cultural. The CBC was meant to protect Canadian culture from American domination. Yet, a greater concern with democratic morality over nationalist culture would have prevented the CBC's formation.

Progressives, guns, race, and equality

A quick question for progressives: if enforcing the equal-rights of black-Americans in the South was worth the resultant disorder of riots and lynchings, why isn't protecting the right-to-bear-arms worth the resultant disorder of gun-crimes and public-shootings? Why defend liberal value of equality in the first case and conservative value of order in the second? Why value equal treatment among citizens but not between equal power between citizens and those in power? Why the limited commitment to equality among self-professed egalitarians?

The NRA's (bad) armed-guard argument

The NRA's argument for a policy of armed policeman/guards/teachers in schools:

P1) The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is for there to be a good guy with a gun. (T)

C) Therefore, we need police-officers, armed-security-guards, or armed-teachers at schools. (F)

Even though many people are reacting against P1 as "insane", it's true. Your best chance of survival in an armed confrontation with a bad person is to be armed yourself (or to have another person armed with your interest at heart). There's no getting around that.

Where the argument fails is the leap to C. C is false because armed-guards are not the only way to solve the problem of armed bad-guys in schools. The other way is having fewer armed bad-people. Thus, the problem with the argument lies in a false hidden premise, P2: no regulation of private-firearms ownership is ever justified.

The problem with P2 is that it places gun-rights above the principle-of-peace. And the principle-of-peace is the core of the social-contract. The reason we leave the state-of-nature and form society is first and foremost to end the war-of-all-against-all and have peaceful social-interactions. And in leaving the state-of-nature, we give up those liberties that threaten peace. Once society is established, if a liberty threatens the general-peace, we can justifiably restrict it. If things are getting to the point where the NRA, America's main gun-lobby group, is advocating armed guards in public-spaces to maintain order -- which assumes the threat of violence is ever-present -- then greater regulation of private-firearm-ownership is justified.

Though I don't believe the threat to public-order posed by mass-shootings is enough to justify either armed-guards in schools or gun-controls -- I think most people are over-reacting -- I do think that among the options currently available, regulation of private-firearm-ownership is preferable to having armed police-officers in schools. Many North-American high-schools already have armed police-officers, but this is something we should be moving way from, not extending to elementary- and middle-schools. Armed police in schools, like the heavy-security at our airports, is an unecessary police-state aspect of society that we should avoid.

Given that gun-control is preferable to armed police-offers in schools, I offer the following analysis of various types of gun-control.

1) Good gun-controls:

i) acquisition controls (acquisition permits, background checks, etc.)
-- these work to control who can get their hands on guns
-- they are probably the single most important gun-control

ii) controls on bearing-arms (bans on open-carrying of loaded weapons when weapon is not in use)
-- openly carrying a loaded-weapon communicates to others that one is prepared for violence
-- peaceful intent in public is important to a peaceful-society
-- gun-allowed zones aren't better than gun-free zones in preventing mass-shootings -- Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Ft. Hood all had armed-guards or police on duty, while Tucson is one giant guns-allowed zone (minus university buildings and some private-property)

iii) storage-controls
-- makes it harder for non-owners to gain control of weapons
-- promotes a culture of safe weapon use


2) Bad gun-controls:

i) keeping-arms controls (locking all weapons in central-storage)
-- leaves civilians defenceless at home and creates easy-to-steal-from weapons caches

ii) assault-weapons bans
-- prevents rebellion, the most important reason for civilians to have guns

iii) licensing ownership and registration of firearms
-- makes possible cultural-genocide of gun-culture through disarmament
-- makes gun-owners distrust government (especially in North-America)
-- makes public cooperation on matters pertaining to civilian-weapons more difficult


Gun-controls of unclear effect:

i) magazine restrictions
-- I have no idea whether this would work, or if it does, whether it's not worth the cost placed on rebellion

The intolerance behind arguments for gun-control

If you substitute the arguments typically made against gun-ownership for Islam, their intolerance becomes clear.

1) Practicing x is a choice and thus not subject to discrimination protection. It's not something you can't change like being black or handicapped.

2) Restrictions and prohibitions on x are justified because x is associated with increased violence.

3) The interests of those who find x offensive should be weighed against those like x.

4) You don't need to practice x. x isn't essential to your life like eating or transportation.

5) x gives you a false sense of security. Evidence shows x is more likely to harm you than help you.

The first and last arguments don't seem as intolerant as the middle three because, in the context of religion, they're generally made by atheists and atheists tend to be progressive. The middle arguments are made by conservatives and so sound more intolerant. Yet, they're all intolerant. This only goes to show -- in addition to our main point that arguments for gun-control reflect intolerance -- that progressive thought avoids charges of intolerance faced by other ideologies simply by virtue of being dominant.