Canadians Don't Like the US Anymore

 Many posts have dealt with tariffs and trade.

Sofia Hernandez Ramones, Jonathan Schulman, and Andrew Prozorovsky at Pew:

With Donald Trump back in office, Canadians’ opinions of the United States and its president are at or near historic lows, based on more than two decades of Pew Research Center polling.

Canadians express little confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs or to handle several key global issues effectively. And a majority of Canadians now see the U.S. as the country that poses the top threat to their own – a marked shift from 2019, when China was most often named as the top threat.

At the same time, more than half of Canadians view the U.S. as the world’s top economy, and two-thirds say it’s more important for Canada to have close economic ties with the U.S. than with China.

These findings come from a survey of 1,024 Canadian adults conducted from Feb. 19 to April 15, 2025. The survey was being fielded as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took office and after Trump announced initial tariffs against Canada, China and Mexico.

Russian Influence, Fall 2024

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

ALAN SUDERMAN and GARANCE BURKE at AP:

The Kremlin could not have asked for better publicity at a better time when Ben Swann, a self-described independent journalist who promotes conspiracy theories, released a 12-part video series he promised would reveal dark truths about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Swann’s flashy documentary-style videos were filled with innuendo, attacks on Zelenskyy’s character and commentary from guests sympathetic to Russia in its two-year war with Ukraine.

The series, titled “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” launched in April as Congress was debating increasing military assistance to Ukraine, and it quickly caught the attention of conservative social media influencers who hyped the project to their millions of followers.

Among those who promoted the series was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son.

“Curious about the billions of dollars and weapons Congress sent Ukraine?” Trump Jr. posted on X, Truth Social and Threads. “You need to watch the first episode of the explosive 12-part series.”

Unlike other conservative media personalities who last month expressed shock upon learning they may have been secretly financed by the Kremlin, Swann has no such qualms. He’s worked for Russia’s state-owned media empire for years, with one of his companies earning millions of dollars for producing Kremlin-friendly shows.

The creation of “Zelenskyy Unmasked” and its viral spread reveal how widely Russia-backed talking points are traveling on social media — a trend that concerns current and former U.S. intelligence officials and disinformation experts.

An investigation by The Associated Press also provides insights into the shadowy and profitable world of political influencers who are not required to disclose who is paying them, raising transparency concerns about their political endorsements in the largely unregulated realm of social media

Alia Shoaib at Newsweek:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said under oath that Tucker Carlson is funded by a Russian state-owned media outlet, without providing evidence for the claim.

Trudeau made the allegation about Carlson and fellow conservative media personality Jordan Peterson while testifying at a public inquiry into foreign interference on Wednesday.

The Canadian prime minister was addressing alleged Russian influence in spreading anti-vaccine messaging in the media and on social media during the "Freedom Convoy," a protest against COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions in Canada in early 2022.

"We have seen that anti-vax messages during the convoy, during the pandemic, were amplified by Russian propaganda, especially in the media of the right," Trudeau said, per a translation from French by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

He added that after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several of these channels began spreading "pro-Putin propaganda."

"We've recently seen that RT is currently funding bloggers and other YouTube personalities of the right, such as Jordan Peterson. Other names that are well known, Tucker Carlson as well, in order to amplify messages that are destabilizing democracies," Trudeau said, naming the Russian state-controlled network.

American Strengths

Many posts have discussed energy, technology, and immigration.

Joel Kotkin:

Overall, natural resources account for more than half of all Canada’s exports and roughly one-quarter of those of the US. Together the US and Canada produce roughly twice as much oil as either Russia or Saudi Arabia. Fossil fuels, the demon rum of the green catastrophists, are not going away, even in Europe. They still account for a vast majority of all global power generation, and the demand for fossil fuels will remain high for the foreseeable future.

Europe, meanwhile, seems to be tilting towards ‘energy suicide’, thanks to the green-fuelled rush to shut down nuclear reactors, natural-gas plants and coal power plants. This has driven energy prices to unprecedented highs. In contrast, the US has been greatly empowered by the growing demand for fossil fuels. It became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG) last year. Indeed, its LNG exports are expected to almost double by 2030 on already approved projects. And around two-thirds of those exports go to Europe.

...

Today, of the top 10 tech firms by market capitalisation, eight were located in the US, one in Taiwan and one in the Netherlands. Over time, the only substantive threat to North American tech dominance comes from China, where firms are shielded from competition with the likes of Google, Amazon and Meta. These protected firms could pose a challenge in artificial intelligence. But America’s firms, venture capitalists and universities maintain an enormous lead in developing cutting edge AI.

Over time, China’s authoritarian structures will likely stunt its technological rise. The Chinese Communist Party’s assault on property rights and the rule of law is making foreign companies reconsider their tech investments. Japanese firms, including Sony and Nintendo, have already moved operations out of China, as part of an exodus of over 1,700 companies in the past year alone. SoftBank, the giant Japan-based venture-capital firm, has seen its revenues crater as its Chinese investments fell due to government clampdowns. It has now suspended future investments in China.

Arguably the real ‘secret sauce’ of North American power lies in immigration. Of course, the recent surge in illegal migration at the southern border has brought many towns and cities to breaking point. But legal migration, on the other hand, has been a huge success story, enabling the US to attract some of the world’s brightest minds and best talent.

The US and Canada together have more foreign-born people than the next five countries combined. Migration has allowed the population to grow, if not rapidly, far more than any major European country. In fact, several European nations, like Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia and the Baltic states, are actually shrinking. China, Korea and Japan are all experiencing similar declines.

Deliberative Democracy and Citizen Assemblies

Claudia Chwalisz at Noema:

Since the 1980s, a wave of such citizens’ assemblies has been building, and it has been gaining momentum since 2010. Over the past four decades, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have received invitations from heads of state, ministers, mayors and other public authorities to serve as members of over 500 citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative processes to inform policy making. Important decisions have been shaped by everyday people about 10-year, $5 billion strategic plans, 30-year infrastructure investment strategies, tackling online hate speech and harassment, taking preventative action against increased flood risks, improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and many other issues.

...

While the Parisian Citizens’ Assembly stands out for the extent of its competencies, it is not the only example of citizen representation and deliberation being institutionalized. In my recent OECD policy paper, I have outlined eight models of institutionalization, with examples spanning the globe and levels of government, from Bogotá to Toronto, Oregon to Brussels, Vorarlberg to New South Wales, Victoria, and more. Reflections in more places are taking place.

...

Other models including standing citizens’ advisory panels, such as the two-year Toronto Planning Review Panel, where residents are chosen by lot to provide input on planning issues after an initial series of learning sessions. In Brussels, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and in numerous Polish cities, regulations give citizens the right to trigger the establishment of a citizens’ assembly if a petition collects enough signatures. The Australian state of Victoria has taken yet another path by embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning through its Local Government Act 2020.

COVID Vaccination in Canada and the US

Many posts have discussed the politics and policy implications of COVID-19.

Doyle McManus at LAT:

Three months ago, Canada, which has no domestic manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccines, lagged far behind the United States in immunizations. Only 3% of its population was fully vaccinated. Canadians watched glumly as friends and relatives south of the border lined up for shots, while residents of Toronto and Montreal suffered repeated lockdowns.

No longer. Last month, Canada blew past the United States in the share of its population that’s fully vaccinated — 58% as of Friday, versus 49% in the U.S. — to take first place among the seven big industrial democracies. (The United States ranks sixth, ahead of only Japan.)

How did Canada, the country that most closely resembles the United States, do so much better, even though it had to wait longer for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to deliver their vaccines?

The simple answer is that in Canada, the pandemic didn’t become a politically polarized issue, as it did in the United States.

Canada’s major political parties, including the opposition Conservatives, joined early in full-throated support of mass vaccination. Leading politicians didn’t dismiss immunization as unnecessary, deride mask mandates or attack scientists.
...

Like the United States, Canada has anti-vaxxers — just fewer of them. An Angus Reid Institute poll last month found that only 8% of Canadians said they definitely do not intend to get a COVID vaccination, including 15% of Conservative Party voters. Polls in the United States have found refusal rates at least twice as high.

And there lies a clue toward a deeper, more complex explanation for Canada’s vaccination success over that of the U.S.: the underlying differences between the countries’ political cultures and, especially, their conservative parties.

“There is much less polarization in Canada overall,” Peter Loewen, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, told me. “There’s not a lot of political mileage in appearing to be anti-science in Canada; there is in the United States.”

COVID Deaths

Alyssa Bilinski, Ezekiel J. Emanuel at JAMA:

The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates.1,2 An unanswered question is to what extent high US mortality was driven by the early surge of cases prior to improvements in prevention and patient management vs a poor longer-term response.3 We compared US COVID-19 deaths and excess all-cause mortality in 2020 (vs 2015-2019) to that of 18 countries with diverse COVID-19 responses.

...

Compared with other countries, the US experienced high COVID-19–associated mortality and excess all-cause mortality into September 2020. After the first peak in early spring, US death rates from COVID-19 and from all causes remained higher than even countries with high COVID-19 mortality. This may have been a result of several factors, including weak public health infrastructure and a decentralized, inconsistent US response to the pandemic.4,5

Limitations of this analysis include differences in mortality risk: the US population is younger but has more comorbidities compared with the other countries.6 In addition, since late August death rates have increased in several countries, and how mortality will compare with the US throughout fall remains unknown.

According to data from Johns Hopkins, the US compares poorly with other democracies that have federal systems.  Deaths per 100,000 population:

• United States ..... 66.29
• Canada.................26.23
• Germany..............11.72
• Australia..............03.62 

India, Canada, and the Geography of Immigration

From last year, Andy Kiersz at Business Insider:

For 32 states, the most common country of birth among respondents who said they were born outside the US was Mexico. Therefore, the map above looks at the country other than Mexico that is the birthplace of the most foreign-born respondents in the survey.

India tops that list in 21 states. Several states have Canada as a major source of immigrants. Several Asian, African, and Central American countries also have large immigrant populations in various states.

US, UK, and Canada on Universal Basic Income

R.J. Reinhart at Gallup:

A recent survey by Gallup and Northeastern University finds a slight majority of Americans opposed to a universal basic income (UBI) program as a way to support workers displaced by AI adoption. Conversely, about three-fourths of residents in the U.K. and Canada favor the idea.

These findings come from a Gallup/Northeastern survey of over 10,000 adults in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. conducted from April to June 2019. By some estimates, up to 50% of jobs are expected to be automated within the next decade. An OECD study across 21 countries suggests that while only 9% of jobs are currently at high risk of automation, low-skilled workers are most vulnerable to job displacement.

The way that colleges, universities, governments and businesses can respond to this disruption is the topic of a recent report by Gallup and Northeastern University detailing the results of the three-country survey. The probability-based survey was conducted online with 4,394 Americans, 3,049 Canadians and 3,208 U.K. adults.

In the survey, UBI was defined for respondents as a government-instituted program that would provide every adult with a specific amount of money each year. These funds would serve as income support for people who lose their jobs or occupations because of advances in artificial intelligence. UBI programs have been endorsed by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, as well as high-profile business leaders such as Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg.

• 43% of Americans support a universal basic income program
• 77% of U.K. adults and 75% of Canadians also support UBI
• Majorities in all three countries support taxing tech companies to fund it

Lies and Silence

At WP, Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta and Erica Werner report that Trump bragged about lying to an ally's head of government.

President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech Wednesday that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S. ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether that was the case.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio of the private event in Missouri obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.

“ ... So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. ... I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’

‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber. … And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”

The Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.

 Peter Baker at NYT:

Britain’s tough response in holding Russia responsible for a poisoning attack on its soil increased the pressure on President Trump to join with a NATO ally in taking action, even as he has been reluctant to retaliate for Moscow’s intervention in the 2016 election in the United States.

Mr. Trump, who was visiting Missouri on Wednesday, has not personally addressed the attack since London assigned blame to Russia and left it instead to aides to express public solidarity with Prime Minister Theresa May after she expelled 23 Russian diplomats, canceled high-level contacts and vowed to impose more sanctions.

The White House issued a boilerplate statement saying the attack was bad.

But for whatever reason, Mr. Trump avoided saying so personally in public, much as he has generally avoided condemning Russia for its election meddling. He has allowed top advisers to denounce Moscow for its interference in American democracy, but when it comes to his own Twitter posts or comments, he has largely stuck to equivocal language, seemingly reluctant to accept the consensus conclusion of his intelligence agencies and intent on voicing no outrage or criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, for whom he has expressed admiration.

The Border Patrol Can Conduct Warrantless Searches of Most Americans

Daniel Dale at The Toronto Star:

A U.S. law gives the Border Patrol the right to board and search any vehicle within a “reasonable distance” of the country’s boundaries. A 1953 regulation defines “reasonable” as within 100 miles (160 kilometres).

Because “boundaries” include coasts, the “100-mile zone” includes entire states — all or almost all of New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont, the American Civil Liberties Union notes.

The zone also includes Houston and Los Angeles. All in all, well over half of Americans, more than 175 million people, live in a place where the Border Patrol believes it has the right to question people, search their vehicles and detain people it believes are unlawfully present.

The bus and train checks are not new. But they appear to be happening more often near the Canadian border than they did in the five years prior to Trump’s tenure. And they have attracted renewed scrutiny around the country as Trump touts his crackdown on illegal immigration and gives the Border Patrol more money and leeway.

Trump Embarrasses the Country

Maureen Dowd:

Summits are always elaborately choreographed, but never before have allies had pre-emptive plans on how to counteract an American president’s handshake. Trump’s are more like dominance tests than greetings. First Justin Trudeau in Washington and then Emmanuel Macron in Brussels prepared to out-grip him on his patented “I’ll-rip-your-shoulder-out-and-show-you-who’s-boss” handshake.

When Trump pushed aside Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, to get in front of the NATO pack in Brussels and then straightened his jacket with primate panache, J. K. Rowling tweeted: “You tiny, tiny, tiny little man.”

Donald Trump is not a tough guy. He’s a faux tough guy. That is not even in the American tradition. All of our famously tough icons, on screen and in life, were able to exude strength without using brute force. And they did it while standing up for people, not smacking them down.

  Aris Folley at AOL:

Social media was abuzz on Thursday after another video emerged of an awkward moment surrounding President Trump's body language at a NATO summit in Brussels.

After a video of Trump appearing to push past another European leader to get a prominent position at the NATO gathering went viral, another clip surfaced that seemed to show France's newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, dodging his U.S. counterpart's handshake attempt.

Changing Sources of Immigration

From Pew:

With more than 40 million immigrants, the United States is the top destination in the world for those moving from one country to another. Mexico, which shares a nearly 2,000-mile border with the U.S., is the source of the largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States.

But today’s volume of immigrants, in some ways, is a return to America’s past. A century ago, the U.S. experienced another large wave of immigrants. Although smaller at 18.2 million, they hailed largely from Europe. Many Americans can trace their roots to that wave of migrants from 1890-1919, when Germany dominated as the country sending the most immigrants to many of the U.S. states, although the United Kingdom, Canada and Italy were also strongly represented.

In 1910, Germany was the top country of birth among U.S. immigrants, accounting for 18% of all immigrants (or 2.5 million) in the United States. Germans made up the biggest immigrant group in 17 states and the District of Columbia, while Mexico accounted for the most immigrants in just three states (Arizona, New Mexico and Texas). Behind Germany, the second-most number of immigrants in the U.S. were from Russia and the countries that would become the USSR (11%, or 1.6 million).

A gif of immigrant origins by state, 1850-2010 

Citizenship and the Presidency

Our textbook discusses the Natural Born Citizen clause of the Constitution:  "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

 Aaron Blake reports at The Washington Post:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced Monday evening that he will renounce his Canadian citizenship, less than 24 hours after a newspaper pointed out that the Canadian-born senator likely maintains dual citizenship.

“Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship,” Cruz said in a statement. “Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator; I believe I should be only an American.”

The Dallas Morning News wrote in a story posted late Sunday night that Cruz likely remains a Canadian citizen, by virtue of being born there to an American mother. Having never renounced that citizenship, Cruz was technically a Canadian and an American citizen, according to legal experts.

Also at The Washington Post, Dylan Matthews writes: "Between Carl Schurz, Robert Wagner, and Alexander Hamilton, it isn’t hard to name potentially excellent presidents who were barred from office due to the natural-born citizenship clause."  But as far as Hamilton goes, this assertion errs by overlooking these words: "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution."  UVA law professor Edward White explains:

Alexander Hamilton, born on an island in the British West Indies to parents who were not American citizens, was not a “natural born” citizen, even though he was a delegate at the 1787 convention. Some have claimed this barred him from the presidency, and have even suggested that the clause was drafted with Hamilton in mind. But Hamilton had been a resident of New York well before the Declaration of Independence was issued and the Articles of Confederation ratified. Those documents made him, and all similar residents of the new America states, “citizens of the United States.”

Patriotism and Public Opinion

At AEI, Karlyn Bowman, Jennifer Marisco, and Andrew Rugg summarize surveys on patriotism and related matters:

How patriotic?: Last year, when the Pew Research Center asked people whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “I am very patriotic,” 52% said they agreed completely with it and another 36% mostly agreed. Only 9% mostly or completely disagreed.

Patriotic activities: The Public Religion Research Institute recently asked respondents how likely they were to engage in a variety of patriotic activities. Eighty-one percent said it was very likely they would thank a member of the military for their service. Sixty-nine percent said the same about singing the national anthem, 59% displaying the American flag at their home or car, 53% attending a public 4th of July celebration, and 50% said they would make a special effort to buy products that are made in American.

Canada, here we don’t come: In an April CBS News/Vanity Fair poll, 92% of those surveyed said they had never thought of moving to Canada. In another question in the poll, a resounding 70% answered “no” when asked if there were ever a time when they wished they were not an American. Of the remainder, 9% said they wished they weren’t an American when the government does something they don’t like, 7% when watching reality TV, 4% when doing their taxes, and 3% when travelling abroad.

Thomas Paine: Forty-four percent of Americans surveyed by CBS News/Vanity Fair pollsters were able to identify Thomas Paine as an American revolutionary who wrote Common Sense, and another 40% were not.

I pledge allegiance: In the poll, 61% told the interviewers it was very important for children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each school day and another 22% said it was somewhat important. More than 70% of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, respectively, said this was very or somewhat important.

If the Founding Fathers were alive…: The patriotic sentiments stand in stark contrast to views about Washington, DC. In Gallup’s June sounding, only 27% were satisfied with the way things were going in the country and 71% were dissatisfied. In a new mid-June Fox poll of registered voters, just 35% said they trusted the federal government. In another question in the poll, Congress had a 15% job approval rating. Only 13% said they thought the Founding Fathers would approve of how things are going in Washington today, while 82% disapproved.

il.

American Views of Other Countries

Gallup reports:

Americans show widely diverse attitudes toward a group of 22 countries around the world, ranging from a 91% favorable rating for Canada to a 9% favorable rating for Iran.

The broad ways in which Americans rate these countries follow predictable patterns. Americans are most positive about countries that are democracies and U.S. allies, and least positive about countries that are seen as threats to the U.S., those that are involved in major turmoil, and those that are not traditional democracies.

Americans are more favorable than unfavorable about only seven of the 22 countries tested, underscoring that there are a number of countries around the world that engender negative reactions from the American public.

A Gallup analysis shows that in Americans' minds, these countries are generally divided into three groups. Americans tend to view Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia in similar ways, such that those who rate one of these countries high or low tend to rate the others in the same direction. Likewise, Americans tend to rate a group of six democratic allies -- Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, and Japan -- similarly.

Argo: The True Story

Our chapter on national security and foreign policy contains an extensive discussion of the intelligence community, a topic that is doing fine box office right now.

Argo is a first-rate movie about the rescue of six US embassy employees during the Iranian hostage crisis that began in 1979.  The amazing nub of the story is true: the CIA set up a dummy production company in Hollywood and disguised the six as a movie crew. Argo is not, however, completely accurate.  At Slate, David Haglund points out ways in which the movie departs from history.  SPOILER ALERT:   the biggest departure involves the thrilling climax, so do not read the article until you've seen the movie.

On its website, the Central Intelligence Agency is now presenting a first-person account of the true story by Antonio Mendez, "exfiltration expert"  who got the Americans out (played in the movie by Ben Affleck, who also directed).  Here is a clip from an interview with Mendez:



Click here for the CIA's brief history of the episode.

Here are real-life artifacts:

Guns and American Exceptionalism

Our chapter on civic culture talks about cultural differences between the United States and other nations, citing crime and gun control as examples.  Dylan McLean, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, has a new paper on the topic.  Here is the abstract:

This paper attempts to extend three leading schools of thought on the nature of Canadian and American political differences to other countries with a common English heritage, namely Australia and New Zealand. In so doing it will use the political-culture surrounding gun regulation and gun ownership to critically evaluate these theories. The theories of Can-Am differences of interest in this paper are Lipset’s ‘Origins Thesis,’ the ‘deep structures’ approach from Grabb and Curtis, and the legal-culture approach taken by Kaufman. The theories will be reviewed and the possible ways they may be extended will be outlined. The cases under review are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For each of these cases three questions will be asked and broadly reviewed: 1) what does the current firearms regulatory environment look like, 2) what historical path led to the contemporary environment, and 3) what does firearm ownership represent to the citizens of these countries. The answers to these questions will show that gun control is most severe in the United Kingdom and Australia, while it is least restrictive in the United States. It will also be shown that the gun culture is most developed, by a fairly wide margin, in the United States. The findings will lend strong support to Lipset’s thesis, moderate support for Kaufman’s work, and no support for the deep structures approach. America is clearly exceptional on this issue and it is quite possible that, as Lipset would suggest, this American exceptionalism has its roots in the American Revolution. Also, the values that gun ownership represents for many Americans are the same values that Lipset suggests makes American political-culture unique. Americans stand apart from the commonwealth countries in the contemporary relationship of firearms with self defense and with the tendency to attach symbology to guns and gun ownership which is not directly related to their instrumental purposes. For example, it is common for Americans to tie concepts such as freedom, liberty, and individualism with their decision to own guns. It will be shown that this is clearly not the case in the members of the commonwealth realm to be examined here. This paper presents the broad outline of a research agenda which will likely prove to be quite fruitful and it displays the value of extending theories of Canadian and American differences to other countries with a similar heritage.

Dual Citizenship and the Olympics

An earlier post dealt with citizenship and Olympic competition. The National Post reports:

A Canadian has become America’s biggest hope to lead the nation’s swim team at the London Olympics.

On Monday, Missy Franklin, 17, a high school senior in Centennial, Colo., with dual citizenship, won the gold medal for the United States in the 100-metre backstroke.

The performance set a U.S. record of 58.33 seconds and bested Emily Seebohm of Australia (58.68 seconds) and Japan’s Aya Terakawa (58.83 seconds).
...


Both Ms. Franklin’s parents were born in Canada. Her mother, D.A., is a physician from Halifax, and her father, Richard, a director at a clean-technology organization, is from St. Catharines, Ont.

Although the teenager, nicknamed Missy the Missile, chose to swim for the States, she said her “favourite place in the entire world” is Pictou, N.S., where she digs for clam and grills oysters while vacationing with her parents. Her first international meet was in Vancouver when she was 13.

Charitable Giving in Canada and the United States

Our chapter on civic culture notes that the United States ranks high among nations in charitable giving.  The Fraser Institute, a free-market Canadian think tank, reports:

“By comparing the share of tax filers making charitable donations and the share of income donated to charities across North American jurisdictions, our report reveals a significant generosity gap between Canadians and Americans,” said Charles Lammam, Fraser Institute senior policy analyst and co-author of the report.

... 

[E]ven the most generous Canadians don’t come close to their American neighbours in terms of private charitable giving. Monetary generosity in the United States surpassed that of Canada, with 26.6 per cent of American tax filers donating to charity, compared to 23.0 per cent of Canadians.

Utah was by far the most generous jurisdiction in North America, with 33.4 per cent of tax filers donating 3.09 per cent of the total income earned in the state—nearly three-and-a-half times the share of aggregate income donated by Canada’s top province (0.89 per cent), Manitoba.

Maryland was second overall, with 40.8 per cent of residents donating 1.67 per cent of total income.

On a country-wide basis, Americans gave 1.32 per cent of their aggregate personal income to charity, more than double the 0.64 per cent that Canadians donated.
Had Canadians matched the generosity of their American neighbours by donating the same percentage of total income, Canadian charities would have received an extra $8.3 billion in private donations in 2009,” Lammam said.

Full report here.

Belief in God

Since 1944, Gallup has been asking about belief in God. The figure has always topped 90 percent. As of May 5-8 of this year, it was 92 percent, though there are differences among various groups:


As we indicate in the textbook, the United States remains a religious outlier among the wealthy nations. In April, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found: that 70 percent of Americans "definitely" believe in God or a Supreme Being. Here are figures for other countries

Italy.....................50%

Canada................46%

Australia..............29%

Germany.............27%

Great Britain.......25%

Belgium................20%

France..................19%

South Korea........18%

Sweden................18%

China....................09%

Japan....................04%

The poll also found that Americans were more likely than people in these countries to embrace creationism and rejection evolution.

"God Bless America" is the unofficial national anthem of the United States. In 2006, by contrast, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stirred controversy when he closed a speech by saying "God Bless Canada." Though a poll showed that most Canadians approved, about a quarter disapproved. In 2008, Robert Sibley explained in The Ottawa Citizen:

Admittedly, "God bless" does sound odd coming from a Canadian politician. To borrow Vancouver Sun writer Douglas Todd's judgment: "The first taboo of politics in Canada (is) don't talk about your religion."

So it seems. Claude Ryan, the former Quebec Liberal leader, felt the pundits' wrath after he admitted his Roman Catholic convictions influenced his politics. "I once said on television that I was guided by the hands of God," he said. "I never retracted that statement because I believe it was true, but I never repeated it." Reform Party founder Preston Manning has had a similar experience. "In the House of Commons, it is taboo to get in any depth into what your own personal convictions are and how (they) might apply to public policy," he once said. "'We don't talk about things like that here,' is the unspoken rule."