The USA sent Canada its draft dodgers. In exchange, Canada sends us physicians, successful entrepreneurs and other highly productive people. I’d say we have gotten the better of this exchange.
16 thoughts on “A Reflection on Watching Krauthammer”
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Wrong! some 560 thousand gutsy Americans went to Canada. Whenm they had the chance to return, most decided not to. Canada, at first, disliked the Americans but now it seems they are delighted with what they got. How many physicians actually migrated to the US compared to the 50 thousand Americans who stayed in Canada?
Wrong about what? American leftists went to Canada, Canadians with American values come here. If Canadians are delighted with the American emigres, that would reinforce my point. Remember also that Canada has a small population relative to the USA. If you look at the respective emigration rates I think you will find that Canada’s is higher than ours.
David Still,
Wrong! some 560 thousand gutsy Americans went to Canada.[Emp added]
I think you meant 560 thousand screamingly narcissistic elitist who scampered off to Canada to fight the sexual revolution while someone more principled or simply poorer went to war in their place.
Why are you still “fighting” the Nam war? were you in it? what did we gain by going itno that place? Why are we now trading with them and do you approve of this? Yes: college kids got deferred and the poor got sent to get killed–not unusual. Much the wame way the most congressmen manage to keep their kids out of the military and still have others go to fight wars they initiate in DC.
The American publid turned against Viet Nam war. A Republican president in power when it ended. And please don’t call me a coward flleing to Canada. I served in a war.
I don’t think I’m the one who is still fighting the Vietnam war.
Americans who went to Canada to avoid military service during Vietnam were mainly leftists, and Canadians who migrate to the States tend to view free-market individualism more favorably than do Canadians as a whole. Are these statements incorrect?
Anonymous,
Why are you still “fighting” the Nam war?
Because many Americans drew the wrong conclusions from our abandonment of the people of Indochina to oppression and mass murder. A lot of Americans still believe that millions of dead and millions of permanent refugees was an acceptable outcome as long as they were not personally inconvenienced. They seem to have the same standards in regard to Iraq.
…were you in it?
No, I tried to join up but I was reject on the account of being 9 years old when Saigon fell. Purely as matter of coincidence I was also not in WWII, the Civil War or the Revolutionary war but I still have valid observations about those conflicts.
…what did we gain by going itno that place?
Nothing, since we pissed it all away. Its as if we walked thousands of miles but turned back a few yards from our goal. We did however, manage to damage our deterrence credibility to the point where every street gang with a few Ak-47s and an RPG thinks they can take us on and win. Reference to out cut-and-run in Vietnam populate the training literature of every armed group we have struggled against since.
Why are we now trading with them and do you approve of this?
Why not? The war was never against the people of Indochina but against the Communist superpowers who attacked them by subtle means. Integrating oppressive regimes into the world economy is often the surest means of reforming them.
The American publid turned against Viet Nam war.
Largely because the monopolist media of the day lied to them about how the war was going. As soon as a Republican became president the media suddenly decided that the war was a bad idea. They turned the Tet offensive, which everyone else, including the Communist, viewed as a massive strategic defeat into evidence that the enemy was unstoppable. Morons.
And please don’t call me a coward flleing to Canada.
I didn’t call them cowards, I called them “screamingly narcissistic elitist who scampered off to Canada to fight the sexual revolution while someone more principled or simply poorer went to war in their place.” I don’t think they were cowards in the traditional sense. I think they just couldn’t be bothered to put themselves through any sought of inconvenience for the greater good.
A Republican president in power when it ended.
And yet it was a Democrat controlled congress that pissed victory away by legislatively cutting off all the support we had promised.
I served in a war.
That doesn’t keep you from having idotic opinions about foreign policy. History is littered with idiot generals and I image the effect goes all the way down the chain of command.
“…what did we gain by going into that place?”
Vietnam was a campaign in the Cold War. The Soviet Union expended fantastic quantities of materiel it could ill afford. Ralf earlier cited a Jerry Pournelle post on this topic. As Pournelle wrote, in 1972 the PAVN invaded the South with more tanks than the Wehrmacht had at Kursk, and more trucks than Patton’s Red Ball Express, all at Soviet expense. Our aircraft, and our ARVN allies, destroyed it all. Vietnam damaged both of the superpowers. Our open society allowed the wounds on our side to be visible. But the war was a disaster for the Soviets. So, one thing we got was a very expensive attritional struggle against a weaker Soviet economy, which favored us in the long term struggle.
What else did we get? Read Lee Kwan Yew’s memoirs. He says that our ten year commitment to Vietnam gave Southeast Asia the time it needed to develop economically and politically to the point that communist insurgency was not viable. Far from a waste, he considered the Vietnam war to be essential, by staving off communism for ten years.
What else? Nixon’s determination to stay in the fight and bomb the North convinced the Chinese communists of our seriousness, leading to the rapprochement of 1972. That was a key moment in our ultimate victory in the Cold War. Abandoning Vietnam earlier would not have led to that outcome. To the contrary.
We also “got” proof that we were committed to fighting an evil ideology, which was the morally correct thing to do.
The only thing wrong with Vietnam is that the wrong side won. The wrong side won even though, despite initial errors, we destroyed the Viet Cong, and with US support, the RVN could have survived. But the Democrats in Congress were determined to hand the Vietnamese communists an unambiguous victory. So, funding was cut, the RVN was lost, and the Democrats got the outcome they wanted.
I will say that people who went to Canada instead of to Vietnam were not necessarily wrong to do so. When it became clear that the US government was drafting people but not waging the war seriously and aggressively, I cannot, looking back, blame someone for not submitting to being conscripted and sent into mortal danger.
Now that I think about it, Nixon ending the draft is something else we got out of Vietnam.
Wha
Lex said: “will say that people who went to Canada instead of to Vietnam were not necessarily wrong to do so. When it became clear that the US government was drafting people but not waging the war seriously and aggressively, I cannot, looking back, blame someone for not submitting to being conscripted and sent into mortal danger. ”
I have to agree with your take Lex. The writing was on the wall re. the situation by the late 60s. (Does a similar situation exist re. Iranian participation in Iraq? Iran better recognize that GWB is a product of the Viet-Nam war eara and he must be thinking about the limitations of a “limited war”. I wouldn’t bet the ranch if I were Iran.)
I visited my (then) 20/21 year old friend in Toronto in 1970 and he was living drab and close to the bone. It wasn’t a vacation for him, to say the least.
“Americans who went to Canada to avoid military service during Vietnam were mainly leftists,”
Jon, in those turbulent times the left made a lot of allies with the 18 through 25 year olds that saw a lot of inconsistencies re. the way the war was being fought and the draft applied (Really, a flat draft of 18 yr. olds out of high school would been more effective). I suppose you could call them leftists by default but I’m not sure that’s accurate. I’d say many were somewhat apolitical and very many adapted something of a leftist pose. You can say that they didn’t want to participate in that particular conflict and the left (whose aim was to weaken the status quo, of course, in an attempt to gain power) took every opportunity to assist them and made some political inroads with the young people of that generation.
a note to say that I mentioned I was in a war merely to let you know not to call me names…of course many in service and/or out of service are dunderheads.
I am amused how no matter what history records, lots of fellows here will somehow find the Democrats responsible for all that they dislike in history. I recll (I am old enough) that it was the strong urging of the American public and not the congress that got America out of Viet Nam.And it was Truman who stopped McCarthur from going beyond the Yalu River and bringing China into the war full scale (yes: they supported N. Korea)…but the, I am sure some folks out there would say we should have taken on China too.
According to migrationinformation.org, the US Census Bureau, and Statistics Canada…
In 2001, 258,000 people born in America were living in Canada. The US population in 2000 was about 280,422,000. So about 0.1% of Americans were living in Canada.
In 2000, 820,000 people born in Canada were living in the USA. The Canadian population in 2000 was about 30,750,000. So 2.6% of Canadians were living in America.
These are rough numbers (e.g., they don’t discount for foreign-born populations — sorry, I don’t have time to make those calculations). But they give you the general idea: America is over 25 times more popular with Canadian emigrants than Canada is with American emigrants.
As a Canadian person, I can understand the draw of the United States in certain situations. As I’ve experienced in my lifetime, the major reason for people I’ve been acquainted with moving to the United States was that they were in a position where they would be rich as a result of their job. Almost all of these people were professionals. For other groups of people, I find that they would not want to move to the US because of concerns about health care costs, crime etc.. Therefore, although your observation would tend to be correct, I would disagree that Canadians move to the USA because they support free markets. They do so because of avarice.
Bill,
They do so because of avarice.
Let me guess, you don’t consider yourself greedy even though you most likely have much more than many Canadians and you definitely have much more than most people in the world. I imagine you believe you worked hard for everything you got. I’m I correct?
I think the dividing line is between economically dependent and independent people. Dependent people consume more resources than they produce and independent people produce more resources than they consume. A dependent person gets more resources when the welfare state is larger and the independent person gets fewer. Clearly, a dependent person will remain in or migrate to a welfare state and an independent person will do the opposite.
Professionals are usually economically independent people and their means of production (their skills) are easily transportable. Other independent people, such as small business owners, would find it relatively difficult to move to another region or country. That doesn’t mean that more people would not chose to emmigrate had they the means
Bill:
… I would disagree that Canadians move to the USA because they support free markets. They do so because of avarice.
The difference between these two motivations, in the context of this discussion, is what? They both amount to doing what is best for one’s well-being, no?
david still petulantly whines: “Wrong! some 560 thousand gutsy Americans went to Canada“…
Hmmm, shouldn’t that actually be described as, ‘gutless, sniveling, cowardly parasites‘?
I mean who else can appreciate a socialist society like Canada other than gutless parasites?
I mean who else can appreciate a socialist society like Canada other than gutless parasites?
People who sincerely believe in leftist ideals. Canada is not “a socialist society” and the USA is not the opposite of a socialist society. There is a lot of socialism in both societies, and a lot of scope for individualism too. However, Canada is socialist to a greater extent than is the USA, and many leftists admire Canada for this reason.