Canada: something worth defending
I’ll get right to the point.
Canada is a great country.
Canada is a beautiful country.
Donald Trump has succeeded in reminding Canadians that Canada is a great country, and something worth defending.
Donald Trump has succeeded in reminding Americans that Canada is a great country, and that our friendship matters.
Great countries fight back.
Great countries raise their flags when they are attacked.
Next week, I will be writing from Juno Beach in Normandy, France, and from the Canadian Cemetery at Bény-sur-Mer.
It is my hope to awaken a deep anger in as many Americans as possible about the outrageous misconduct and desecration of America’s most important relationship in the world.
America’s sick president has chosen to wage war on liberty, assault the Constitution, strangle due process, and poison the alliances that have made possible the upward mobility of billions of people from poverty to prosperity over the last 80 years.
Donald Trump has chosen to attack Canada, while sipping champagne with Saudi royalty and crypto pimps at Mar-a-Lago.
While I am there, my Canadian wife and stepson, along with my American mother, will stand in silence, gratitude and the deepest respect for the men who helped save the world from slavery.
Together, two Canadians and two Americans — one family — will show the same respect that the people of Vilnius, Lithuania, showed four dead American soldiers about whom Trump couldn’t care less.
What unites us as Canadians, Lithuanians and Americans in this moment is a love of freedom and liberty. They are threatened by an American president, which shames and dishonors the United States in ways over which multitudes of Americans are enduring real grief.
I am one of them.
What Trump is doing isn’t just wrong and stupid.
It is vile.
It is evil.
Prime Minister Mark Carney will be the first leader of a G7 country to win an absolute mandate to stand up and fight back against Trump.
Canada, like always, is the first to the fight when freedom is at stake.
When Americans wanted to fight Nazis in 1939, 1940 and 1941, they joined the Canadian Forces.
Do you know what the markings on this house mean? Would you recognize them?
Perhaps you can imagine seeing this particular house on a dark and quiet night, lying hidden in a field after walking 800 miles, escaping slavery.
This house was special. It was the last stop on what history recalls as America’s “first subway.”
It was called the Underground Railroad, and it led to Canada.
This house was the last stop before freedom. Before Canada.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is called to be a great “Champion of Freedom.” The second he wins the Canadian election at the end of this month, it will begin with a giant mandate to defend freedom. The Canadian prime minister will assume a command held by men with names like Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.
He will become the leader of the English-speaking peoples of the world who are united in the cause of freedom.
He will become the leader of the freedom-loving people of North America, who wish to live in peace, liberty and harmony.
He will become the defiant spine of an opposition that will harden the resolve of America’s feckless Schumercrats and the silly Keir Starmer, whose approach to Trump alongside King Charles, has been farcical, tragic, demeaning, ludicrous and delusional, all at once.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Canadian people should know that millions of us now look to them to carry the torch.
Hold it high.
There has never, ever been a moment during which the United States of America and the American people have not been able to count on Canada. That is what makes this betrayal done in our name — absent our consent — so abysmal and shameful.
The shame is just overwhelming.
Every decent American feels it.
Yet, every decent American has not been to Canada. Many of you may not get a chance to do so, so I encourage you to read this brilliant summation of Canadian feeling below, written by Dan Gardner:
Here are some photos that make the point:
When you are done reading this piece, reach out to Canadian politicians:
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office
Let them know that you are an American who will stand against the threats and attacks on Canada.
This matters.
Friends must hear from one another when they are in trouble.
We are all in trouble together.
I have a lot of trouble with the grotesque ghouls who elected this. It is not even about one man, but about the cadre he brought with him to destroy this country.
When my father was an officer in the United States Air Force, he worked and trained extensively with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Brothers in arms, once upon a time.
I feel embarrassed when I look north, but I am inspired by Canada for showing us that a nation can actually coalesce around justice, can act as one outside of internal politics. I hope there’s enough of us to rise up and do the same down here in the lower 48. I began flying a Canadian flag a month ago. Enough said.