Towards a World of Sovereign Republics: A Necessary investigation of two constitutions
PART 2 of a series
Part one is here
Before embarking upon a comparative study of these two systems, it must first be noted that Canada has no explicit single constitution. It has a list of “founding documents” which include the Quebec Act of 1774 included among the intolerable acts of the 13 colonies[2], the Act of 1791 that established Upper and Lower Canada, the failed Act of Union of 1840 and the British North American Act of 1867. The later was established as a response by a bankrupt British oligarchy to keep Canada from developing a real constitution modelled on that of Lincoln’s USA after the British-run Confederacy operation failed in its attempted dissolution of the Union with Lincoln’s victory in 1865[3]. While this Act lasted another century, a final Canada Act passed by an order in council in the British and Canadian Parliaments in 1982, now called The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, was added to the mix of legal documents. Many believe (falsely) that this document is now the sole Canadian Constitution.
In the case of the United States, two founding documents exist, amended over time, but unchanged in principle. These are the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787). Just as Abraham Lincoln argued that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were to be viewed as one doubly connected document, so too will we here.
The American Declaration of Independence begins with the words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
In the midst of a laundry list of rights granted by order of the Queen, we find article 7 of the Canadian Constitution of 1982 that reads;
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” And then a little later, in article 15: “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability”.
After a comparative reading, a nominalist would conclude that both systems are almost equivalent. The right to life, and liberty are to be found in both, as well as the acknowledgement of individual equality. So why is the Canadian Constitution vastly inferior to its American counterpart? To answer this, it is useful to pose another question, namely, what is the source from which these rights are derived in both cases? In the case of the American system, such rights are deemed self-evident and inherent in the soul and as such to be given or taken by no mortal as one would treat a physical object. In the Canadian Constitution, a very different beast rears its head. These rights are granted to the people, as a form of legal contract! While souls cannot be made null and void based on whim and circumstance of a dictator, a contract always can. If the source of Canada’s true director is still ambiguous to the reader, let them merely refer to the last article (62) of the act; “This Act may be cited as the CONSTITUTION ACT, 1982, and the Constitution Acts 1867 to 1975”
It is here that the cat is let out of the bag. The Constitution Act of 1982 did not replace the longstanding British North American Act of 1867 as most Canadians have been led to believe. Rather, the Act of 1867 was merely amended, and renamed, though its principles and intent never repealed. Thus, let us see what the 1867 constitution establishes clearly in its preamble, as the true purpose of Canada:
“Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom: And whereas such a Union would conduce to the Welfare of the Provinces and promote the Interests of the British Empire”
There it is. The rights of people in Canada are presumed to be derived from the “fount of all honours” otherwise known as the monarchy, while Canada’s stated purpose is nothing more than to “promote the interests of the British Empire”! Looking towards the geopolitical dynamics of Canada’s history, one is struck that not one ounce of blood was ever dropped for liberty in establishing our founding documents, and for that reason, no honest liberty was ever won. Only a cheap counterfeit for liberty prances around the Canadian soul calling herself “comfort”, or the freedom to ”go along to get along”.
Let us compare this with the “mission statement” of America by looking at the preamble of its Constitution:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The liberty derived from this idea is a far different matter than the thing roaming around with the same name in Canada. The fact is that nowhere in the U.S. founding documents do we find that the republic is at all a party system, nor even a democracy, but rather a democratic republic, designed explicitly around the principle of the General Welfare, not only for present generations, but into infinite posterity. That is an idea of freedom worth fighting for.
Canada’s founding documents were modelled explicitly on the British geopolitical doctrine known as balance of power, derived from the bestial social program of each against all. The absolute power of a monarch using her appendages of the Privy Council and Governor General must “counter balance” the power of an unelected House of Lords representing the aristocracy and nobility (in Canada known as “The Senate”) who in turn “balance” the power of the those elected by “the commoners” known as the House of Commons. The Commoners must not be allowed to decide their destiny on principle, but only according to a perverted form of group think known as “party politics”.
Siamese Twins: The Party System and Free Trade
In observing the root evil of the Party system, we must come to recognize that its foundation hinges upon the total destruction of individual conscience. Not only that, but any standard of truth and justice upon which competent deliberation about national policy should be based is reduced to a “hedonistic calculus” of pleasure versus pain. This same “pleasure-pain” fallacy can be clearly seen when evaluating the unprincipled structure of the bastard sibling to the Party System known as British Free Trade. It is impossible to evaluate one child of the British System while ignoring its ugly twin. A useful excerpt from the official architect of Free Trade Adam Smith in his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments will suffice to communicate the issue at hand:
“Hunger, thirst, and the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sake, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.”
Just as the Party system is designed around the negation of truth and its replacement by popular opinion, so too is British Free Trade designed around the pre-eminence of hedonistic personal desires, and popular opinion before the well being of the nation as a whole. Why plan for the future, when the “hidden hand” of the market guides our personal vice to those mysterious “beneficent ends” which only “the gods” may know… but not lowly man.
With that said, we may ask: how could it be possible that the superior reason and morality of an exceptional individual be permitted to win over adherents to his or her policy initiative, when that individual’s views and opinions must a-priori conform to the desires of “the party”? How can a place exist in a civilized society for such a function as a party “whip” whose function is to ensure that all party members are kept in line with “the party”? How can the general welfare ever be assured when the Party’s primary mandate is to be maintain power by being popular with “the right demographics”? Where do we find a place for “truth” in such a world?
Similarly, in the case of Free Trade let us ask: How can the wise understanding of a nation builder favour the debt incurred to build a hydroelectric dam, relative to a network of whorehouses, when the monetary sums associated with both of them may be equal, and in fact promise a far greater return when invested in a whorehouse (or a hedge fund)? In the logic of free trade, a nation must allow both its infrastructure, and productive powers to rot in favour of the types of “investments” that bring ever more obscene rates of momentary pleasure (aka monetary profit) by the gods of “the market”, even at the expense of the future survival of society. How else could one explain the recent explosion of derivatives to the scale of 10-20 times the world GDP? How about the satanic case of 40% of a nation’s corn production transformed into ethanol for gas tanks and speculation in a world that suffers the deaths of 30 000 children by starvation every day?
While the British system has been sometimes adopted and sometimes resisted by America (seen in hindsight as times of alternating growth and collapse), it has almost perpetually held the Dominion of Canada in its clutches, with very few respites from the corruption, confusion and impoverishment which are its children. As one American economist observed the sad case of Canada in the early 1850s:
“Though the ratio of the increase of the population has been greater in Canada than in the United States, yet their increase of wealth has barely kept pace with the population, and they are all as poor as they were half a century since. They have enjoyed the blessings of free trade all of the time, we only a part of the time. Whenever we have attempted to supply ourselves by our own industry, with the comforts and necessities of life, we have improved our condition as a people; and during the intervals of free trade and large importations of foreign goods, we have relapsed again into a condition bordering on bankruptcy; while the Canadians have been constantly exhausted, and kept so poor by free trade, as to be unable to get sufficient credit to have the ups and downs of prosperity and bankruptcy in succession”[4].
A leading American political economist of the Hamiltonian school named Henry C. Carey not only led Abraham Lincoln’s national economic program that turned the USA into the preeminent force for progress by the end of the 19th Century but explicitly laid bare the methods of the Union’s true enemy in his many books, speeches and pamphlets, one of which is called The Harmony of Interests in 1858:
“Two systems are before the world; the one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labour of all; while the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the labourer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits… One looks to underworking the Hindoo, and sinking the rest of the world to his level; the other to raising the standard of man throughout the world to our level. One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.
This story will continue in a few days with an investigation into the principle of progress
Footnotes
[2] The Quebec Act was designed to bribe French Canada with superficial rights… mostly religious as long as loyalty to the Crown were maintained, and thereby subverting Quebec`s near entry into the revolution as a 14th colony and blocking the western expansion policy of America by bringing the Quebec possessions down into Ohio. See Pierre Beaudry`s The Tragic Consequences of the Quebec Act of 1774, published in The Untold History of Canada vol. 1
[3] See 1932: Speak Not of Parties
[4] Ezra Champion Seaman, Essays on the Progress of Nations (1853)