It’s interesting to watch and listen to conversations about the US elections or guns by Canadians.  Most are disgusted, terrified, insulted, or just flat out hate the players. Of course when you start probing what makes them terrified or disgusted or dangerous, there usually aren’t any specific answers on policies. They will blindly mirror back what they’ve seen on the liberal leaning Canadian TV news or newspapers.

No thought of actually going to Youtube and watching an actual speech to see what is actually said. No thought of reading a platform to see if it makes any sense. Just hatred. 

Remember during the election when Trump questioned today's NATO. The press tore him apart and said he wanted to dismantle it. However, what he actually said was we should rethink it all, and why aren’t the other members of NATO paying their fair share? It was a very fair question. One glaring slacker in NATO is Canada.

All that got me to thinking about the difference between Canadians and Americans. That in turn widened into basically Americans and the rest of the world.

First, lets cover some facts.

Canadians have the right to bitch and moan and belittle the U.S. because of one unassailable fact. Canadian’s are free because the U.S. is our neighbour.

Think long and hard about that.  You can’t refute it. It is absolute fact.

If Canada bordered on Mexico and the U.S. was in some other part of the world, you could bet your last Tim Horton’s that we would probably be speaking Russian right now.

I have no doubt that our brave armed forces would fight tooth and nail to hold on, but the sheer disparity in war resources make it impossible to win. And most weapons of regular citizens have been legislated away years ago, so unlike in previous times, the people would be no help in defending our cities either.

Canada has no aircraft carriers, 5 Warships, 100 Combat Aircraft, 235 tanks, and 4500 Paramilitary personnel.
Russia has 1 carrier, 70 Warships, 3600 Combat Aircraft, 23,000 tanks, and almost 500,000 Paramilitary personnel.

Given the vast valuable resources in the Canadian arctic, and the resources across Canada itself, Russia would come over the North Pole in a heartbeat to take what is ours and most likely almost no country would come to our aid. Maybe Britain, perhaps because of our long history. Perhaps.

Ever see the movie RED DAWN? That would be us, except Patrick Swayze wouldn’t end up being the hero. There’d be no hero. It would be a slaughter.

Free speech? Gone, except for whispering under your breath in a prison camp somewhere north of the Inuits. Gay pride? Gone. Women's rights? Gone. Freedom as we now know it? Gone.

All of Europe won’t lift a finger now against Russia despite it annexing Crimea, and shutting off oil to Eastern Europe, or doing virtually anything else. All loudly whine, but ultimately do nothing. They have zero backbone. They all depend on the U.S. to protect them as backup. Do you really think, without the U.S., they’d come to Canada’s aid?

Unlikely.

That’s what Trump was pointing out when he was asking if NATO was obsolete. Twenty eight countries are in NATO, only five (Britain, Greece, Estonia, Poland, U.S.) pay their agreed upon share of a paltry 2% of GDP. Even Germany, the largest and most prosperous country in Europe, only pays half of what it agreed upon in 2002. Greece and Poland are broke. Estonia has less people in the whole country than Toronto's GTA. Yet those three pay. Why not the rest?

Canada? Surely you’re thinking we pay!  Actually, no we don’t. In a world yearning for freedom, we are deadbeats. Canada pays less than 50% of what it agreed to almost 15 years ago. We've been deadbeats every single year. Last year we skipped out on almost 1.6 billion.


To put it another way, the U.S. has been carrying the entire world, including Canada, on it’s back since 1949 when NATO began. They’ve been paying for everyone else’s freedom for sixty-six years. SIXTY-SIX years! One wonders why someone hasn’t asked why decades ago. Looking backwards it seems almost ludicrous that no one has until now.

But I digress.

Now, lets be an American for a second.

You are under attack from China or Russia or both.

Who comes to your aid?  Seriously. Who cares about you?

Mexico? No way. Canada? Maybe, because being taken over by Russia isn’t a pleasant thought. But then, given the very liberal frightened psyche of most Canadians, it may be a toss up. Even then, we’re an unarmed population so we’d be of little help anyway.

Most of the world seems to hate the U.S. They joke about all their guns and fat people. Most of the world would appear to love to see it cut down to size and eat crow. Europe won’t even help itself now. Would it really muster up and help the U.S. or just cower in the corner hoping they’re not invaded next? On the surface I’d bet on the cowering.

I think, instinctively, most Americans get that. Surely the Government does. They’re out their on their own and they know it.

Sure, there’s a ton of personal guns and a huge military complex. Yes, sometimes they’re loud and pushy. Maybe they do interfere too much. Maybe they want to get an advantage on trade or other things more than they should.

But think of this, long and hard.

Maybe it’s the price the rest of us in the free world should pay — no, needs to pay — to thank the U.S. for being there for us.

I shudder to think of how screwed up the world would be without them.
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Want more? See this CNN story.