Separatist scholar makes case for Alberta split from Canada
Our grandparents would not recognize the frayed and fractured country that was once admired across the seven seas and in the four corners of the world as the Dominion of Canada.
Several decades of nihilistic federal Liberalism, starting with the iconoclastic Pierre Trudeau, through the thuggish Jean Chretien and right up to today with the principle-lacking Paul Martin, have rendered our once great nation rudderless.
The federal Liberals really do stand for nothing except getting re-elected and to do so they will abandon each and every value and cater to every whim that might bring votes on side
Yet, when readers call saying it’s time for Alberta to go it alone, I have usually made a strong defence of Canada, suggesting the only people wanting to form an independent nation are fanatics.
I once thought just that about Quebec separatists, but have now been convinced, as Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe puts it, both Canada and Quebec will be far better off and like each other far more when Quebec achieves independence.
But when it came to Alberta leaving—still no.
Even though an independent Alberta would be fabulously wealthy, and we could surely negotiate some kind of an alliance with our true friend, the U.S., it seemed pulling out of Canada would be unpatriotic.
Yet, after reading Link Byfield’s “Time for Alberta to exit stage right?” (July 3), and pulling up various notes about the subject of that column, Leon Craig, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alberta, I’m rethinking the proposition.
Maybe all loyal Albertans—and patriotic Canadians—should rethink what our country now is and where it is going.
The 64-year-old professor’s essay is entitled, Let’s get out while the going is good and forthrightly argues the case for our province to declare unilateral independence.
His main thrust is the Canada we all know (used to know, is a better way of saying it), no longer exists.
Since Trudeau, the Liberals have stripped the nation of all the values it once had and debased it politically, economically, socially and culturally.
Who can doubt that?
If we go it alone, we would create a country reflecting our own political, economic and social beliefs, values and traditions.
We would become again what the Dominion of Canada actually was—or, in a very real way, take back the nation from those who have debased it and continue to destroy it almost day by day.
Craig has given us all a wake-up call.
Chatting with Craig, who is a very affable fellow, he told me he is tired of seeing his students graduate and then leave Canada never to return.
The situation in much of the rest of Canada is “hopeless” and if Alberta stays in Confederation in a generation or two the situation in our own province will be “hopeless,” too.
Now, Craig is not some fanatic—his main field of interest is political theory, along with traditional political philosophy, in particular philosophers Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau Nietzsche—and William Shakespeare
His most recent publications are a book-length studies of Plato’s Republic entitled The War Lover (University of Toronto Press, 1944) and of Shakespeare’s political philosophy, focusing on MacBeth and King Lear, entitled Of Philosophers and Kings (University of Toronto Press, 2001.)
Aside from his controversial essay, he is now putting the finishing touches to a critical re-examination of Hobbes’ Leviathan, with chapters relating it to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
This is a man of some intellectual stature—and stamina
Sadly, the Canada most of us loved so much no longer does exist outside of Alberta, and occasional patriotic hold-outs across the nation that the even the Liberals haven’t been able to wipe out yet. There’s really little left of the “true north, strong and free.”
One more grab by Ottawa for our energy resources—and it’s coming—and Craig’s conclusions will turn concrete as a huge independence movement stirs in Alberta.
Craig’s essay is not only a wake-up call for Albertans—it should be a wake-up call to Liberal Ottawa.
For we aren’t going to take much more of the Liberal penchant for national suicide.
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