The Difference Between Canada and America: Brian Lee Crowley

"In the United States, you have a society in which, in this wonderful, immortal phrase, people are free to pursue 'life, liberty and happiness.' Those were not the values that [Canada] chose to highlight when we wrote down in our constitution what it was that we were about.

We chose to talk instead about peace, order, and good government. And, you see, I think those phrases actually summarize, in a shorthand way, some slightly different angles on what is the purpose of government, how people fit into a larger society, and what we are trying to do together.

Remember that America broke away through a violent revolution from the Crown and the United Kingdom - from Great Britain. Canadians never experienced that. In fact, people often talk about the 13 Colonies, forgetting that there were actually 16 colonies, 13 of whom rebelled and three of whom remained loyal to the Crown. So, even back at the time of the revolution, there were parts of what became Canada who said, 'Yeah, that's not the route we want to go.'

We tend to be people who believe more in the quiet, thoughtful evolution of institutions, rather than liking this idea of: if you don't like what you got now, a radical break, start again, reinvent. That seems to us a very American way of thinking about things. I don't say that in a critical way.

I'm a great admirer of America, but Canada has chosen an evolutionary path, in which we put a little more emphasis on the idea of the common good, and a little less emphasis on the idea of individual liberty as the be all and end all. We're great believers in individual freedom, but we don't think that individual freedom is the entire answer to the purpose of Canada.

We think in individual freedom in the context of an ordered society that believes that we collectively can do things together that individually, we would find difficult. From the outside, those differences don't appear very great. Europeans come to Canada and say, 'Why are you so fussed about not being Americans?' But from the inside, the differences to us are quite obvious." - @brianleecrowley @MLInstitute

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