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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Arguably the best defense any Canadian has against annexation is the balance of the Senate.

Any establishment party in Canada is plausibly closer to the American Democratic Party than the Republican Party. An annexation / accession to US statehood would, in turn, credibly provide an enduring- even generational- advantage in the Senate to the Democratic Party, with all the relevant implications this has for annual budget passing on reconciliation (bare majority) grounds.

This may not be what happens, but absent actual credible expectation that such an annexation wouldn't be against their political interests, this would be a strong bargaining friction against such an effort, since even the success could be politically catastrophic against the principle agents.

Especially since the current situation of an eastern-dominated Canada... isn't bad from an American point of view?

Republicans may not like/share values with the Liberals, but the nature of city-centric polies only caring about two-three zones of interests is that it's far more willing to trade away other interests- especially distant resources- as concessions to their primary trade partners, i.e. Americans. This provides leverage for better deals regarding some interests than you would if they were higher in their own polities' interest list.

An example would be the Canadian dairy system. Very few economists consider it a good deal for the Canadian consumer, but it exists because it's politically powerful. Because it is politically powerful, though, Americans can use credible demands against it to provide for other concessions to walk back those demands, i.e. the Canadian dairy system is subsidized not only formally, but via other concessions.

This wouldn't happen if you broke apart the system willing to provide those sort of concessions for niche-but-politically-dominant interests.

Even setting aside any moral objections to partitioning one's neighbors- and involuntary partion is bad, m'kay?- there are a number of downsides that make it not-obviously-preferable even in an amaoral self-interest state.

Add to that your moral objections, and...