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This is Chapter 16/Section 2 ("The History"), of the 2024 Serialization of the Second Edition (2013) of the book by Steven Jonas: "The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022." The book was first published in 1996. This 2nd Edition is available in Kindle on Amazon. A third, printed, edition of the book is currently in preparation and should be in publication sometime this month.
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Author's Commentary [1]
"The Treaty of Comity"
"The Treaty of Comity Between the New American Republics and the Republic of Quebec (RQ)" served to affirm in their entirety a new set of territorial arrangements within and between the two countries made at the expense of a third, the former nation of Canada. The latter was for all intents and purposes dismembered. Signed and ratified by the NAR and the RQ in 2017, the treaty be came effective on the second Monday in October (in that year, October 9), which happened to be Canadian Thanksgiving Day.
In making their new treaty effective on Canadian Thanksgiving Day, the North American fascists (for the RQ was, like the NAR, a fascist state) exhibited the same high sense of irony their ideological and historical forebears, the German Nazis, had. For instance, during the Second World War, the S.S. had hung over the gate to their principal extermination camp for Jews and other national mi norities at Auschwitz, Poland a sign saying Arbeit Macht Frei ("Work Makes You Free").
The treaty quickly became known as the "Legitimation Treaty," for two reasons. First, it simply legitimized changes in national boundaries and determinations of sovereignty that had already been accomplished through economic power playing, treachery, and the force of arms, rather than diplomatic negotiation. Second, few people knew what the word "comity" meant.
Oddly enough, since the treaty had everything to with force, it had nothing to do with comity in any case. A dictionary definition from the pre"'fascist period [Guralnik] of the word "comity" as applied to the relationship between nations indicates that it was a term implying grace and elegance:" the courtesy and respect of peaceful nations for each other's laws and institutions." Grace and elegance, however, were terms which could be applied neither to the two governments that made the treaty nor to what it meant for the nation of Canada. To use the word "comity" in the name of such a treaty, however, was entirely consistent with the respective claims of the NAR that it was not racist on the basis of skin color and the RQ that it was not anti"'Semitic.
The Treaty's Historical Precursors
As to the economic and political events leading up to the dismemberment of Canada, from the NAR's perspective its "Resource Based Economy" underlay the territorial push northward in the West where the available untapped resources were. As previously noted, during the Transition Era certain Right"'Wing Reactionaries such as Patrick Buchanan (1989) had advocated the annexation to the old U.S. of the four western provinces of Canada: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
Annexation of all or part of Canada was not a new idea in the United States, however. Although nothing came of it at the time, it was one of the impetuses for the War of 1812 with Great Britain. Then in the early 1840s, when the "Oregon Territory" in the lower northwestern region of the North American continent was being opened up to European settlement, it was at first jointly controlled by the United States and Great Britain. The territory encompassed what eventually became the states of Oregon and Washington, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and parts of Alberta (Chernow and Vallasi).
Those settlers of the Oregon Territory with allegiance to the growing United States wanted to incorporate all of it, extending to latitude 54 deg. 40 min. N, into the old U.S. (Chernow and Vallasi). The territorial slogan of those settlers was "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight." The settlers with British allegiance did not like that idea at all. In 1846, the "Oregon Controversy" was settled with an agreement between the U.S. and Great Britain to fix at the 49th parallel the boundary between what would become the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington and the four Western Canadian Provinces.
Just after the First U.S. Civil War a campaign for annexation of all of Canada was undertaken in the U.S. Congress. It held strong appeal to such men as General William Tecumseh Sherman (Fast), (who happened to be one of the early inventors of modern total war against civilian populations). That campaign was an important factor in the passage in 1867 by the British Parliament in London of the British North Amer i ca Act that created the modern Canada (Taylor).
The 1867 Act unified the then separate British colonies of Upper Canada (Ontario), Lower Canada (Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into the "Dominion of Canada," which was then made part of the British Empire. ("Upper" and "Lower" refer to the provinces' relation ship to the location of the headwaters, at the outlet of Lake Ontario, of the northward flowing St. Lawrence River. The terms do not refer to the provinces' north"'south geographical relationship.) Over time, the four Western provinces and the two additional Maritime Provinces, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, were added to the country (Jenson).
The way to the eventual annexation of the four Western provinces to the NAR was originally paved by the U.S."'Canada Free Trade Agreement of 1988. It had provided a major easing for the entry of U.S. capital into the Canadian economy. The North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 extended the process. This lead to the even tual domination of the Canadian economy by that of the U.S. A steady loss of manufacturing jobs from Canada to the U.S. and Mexico accompanied the implementation of NAFTA. Too, there was an associated decline of Canadian agriculture. During the time of the early Fascist Period in the old U.S., this combination of events lead to increasing social unrest in Canada, the kind of unrest that in the old U.S. had lead up to the founding of the NAR.
It happened also that there was a growing fundamentalist, religion-based, Right-Wing Reactionary political movement in Canada, paralleling that of the old U.S. (although some years behind in its historical development) (Freedom Writer). In addition, there was a long history of separatist struggle within Quebec, lead primarily by French-Canadian Right-Wing Reaction. As a late 20th century separationist leader, Lucien Bouchard, said in 1995 after the very close failure of a separationist referendum (Farnsworth, 1995):
"Quebecers don't want to waste time with fuzzy ideas about recognizing Quebec's 'distinct society,' based on failed past at tempts, with byzantine nuances only lawyers can draw. We want our own country, now."
The economic decline and resulting unrest led the Canadian economic decision-makers to desire the same kind of authoritarian government their counterparts did in the old U.S. They found strong political allies in the home-grown Canadian Religious Right, as well as in the traditionalist Catholic hierarchy in Quebec.
However, there were certain limitations on the ability of Right-Wing Reaction to undertake direct action in Canada. Racism (directed at blacks [Farnsworth, 1996] and Canadian Native Americans, and be tween the Francophones of Quebec and the Anglophones of the rest of Canada), homophobia, and xenophobia (especially directed at post-World War II Asian immigrants), certainly existed there. But because of the demographics of the country, and a strong tradition of tolerance among certain sectors of the Canadian population, they did not constitute nearly the potent political forces they were in the old U.S.
In certain parts of English-speaking Canada, especially Saskatchewan and Ontario, the traditions of personal freedom were actually more ingrained than they were anywhere in the old U.S. There was a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the British Constitution Act of 1982 which had established full independence from Great Britain for Canada (Canada). In many of its terms, that Charter was more explicit than the old U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. Under agreements reached in 1992, the Canadian Native American population had achieved a good deal of internal autonomy, especially in the old Northwest Territory. So the likelihood of the successful establishment of a fascist regime across all of Canada, as a result of internal action only, was not high. A different resolution was arrived at.
The Establishment of Fascism in Quebec
With covert military assistance from the NAR, in 2015 an armed fascist takeover in Quebec was accomplished. The fascist political entity in Quebec differed somewhat from its old U.S. counter parts, the Republican"'Christian Alliance and the American Christian Nation Party. First, the Right-Wing Reactionaries in Quebec openly and unashamedly identified themselves with fascism, calling their party the Parti Fasciste Quebecoise (PFQ).
Second, they relied heavily on anti-Semitism for their ideology. They proudly traced their fascist roots back to France, the France of the pre-World War I anti-Semitic hysteria of the "Dreyfus Affair," the anti-Semitic/fascistic Action Francaise and Croix de Feu parties of the pre-World War II period, and the World War II Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime. They also proudly traced their ancestry to the regime of the proto-fascist and anti-Semitic Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis, founder of the Union Nationale and Premier of Quebec Province from 1936 to 1939 and 1944"'59.
The decades-old threat of a Canada split both constitutionally and geographically by an independent Quebec was finally realized. As its days in existence anywhere were being numbered by the Canadian fascists and the NAR, the Federal government of Canada was forced to leave the Federal capital of Ottawa because of its physical proximity to the territory of the new nation of Quebec, just across the Ottawa River at Hull.
(The logical move was to Toronto, capital of the nation's most populous province, Ontario, and home of the perennially successful major league baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays. The Canadian government, however, made an effort to diminish its identification with the liberal majority in Ontario, while still locating the new capital centrally. They also wanted to evoke the tradition of the old ties to England. Thus they chose a place that looked for all the world like an English provincial town. Appropriately named London, it lay in fertile Ontario farmland about 60 miles to the east of the important Great Lakes port located at the southern tip of Lake Huron, Sarnia. The ploy obviously did not work.)
Fascism in Western Canada
With the secession of Quebec, the pro-fascist forces in the four Western provinces recognized both their opportunity and their weaknesses. Due to the growing instability of the central government, the Western fascists knew that the time was ripe for the promotion of their cause. The Canadian Religious Right outside of Quebec was at its strongest in the West. While anti-Semitism was a non-factor in Western Canada, anti-Ontario and anti-French-Canadian/Quebec feelings had a long history. There had been independence/separationist sentiments in the region for decades, going all the way back to 1867. And the fascists worked hard to exacerbate them.
With the heavy dependence of the economy on the old U.S. and now the NAR, and with the need for forceful repression steadily growing because of increasing social unrest, simple independence was not a viable option for the Western provinces. However, there was another simple one, accomplishing the same end. In 2016, facing valiant but out-gunned local opposition, Canadian "freedom fighters" organized by the new Canadian Party of Fascism, massively assisted by "volunteer" units of Helmsmen "on vacation in the beautiful North" (with their heavy weapons, it happened), took over the four Western Provincial governments. They made a show of talking about confederation with their fascist counterparts in Quebec, but those two groups actually hated each other's guts, on religious grounds if nothing else. So the Western Canadian fascists formally "requested the cooperation" of the NAR. A de facto annexation of the four provinces by the NAR was arranged later in 2016.
The Dismemberment of Ontario
With an incredibly effective winter action early in 2017, a combined offensive of Canadian Party of Fascism forces from the west and RQ fascist forces from the east invaded Ontario. They both had air, heavy weap-ons, and significant logistics support from the NAR. The invaders quickly overran the Provincial defense forces. The RQ and the NAR then proceeded to divide Ontario between themselves, along the natural boundary provided by the Albany, Kenogami, and Aguasabon rivers, running from Terrace Bay on Lake Superior to Fort Albany and Kasechewan on James Bay, the southern projection of the Hudson Bay.
At the same time, the RQ annexed Labrador, the mainland portion of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which had a 1400 mile common border with Quebec and was rich in natural resources and hydropower. The four Maritime provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland (shorn of Labrador), and Prince Edward Island were left intact as a rump "New Canada." It quickly became a "protectorate" of the RQ, similar in form to the "independent" Slovakia that had been created in 1939 by the German Nazis after they had dismembered the Czech Republic in 1938. It was all of these geographical and political rearrangements that were recognized, by the regimes of the NAR and the RQ, at least, in the "Treaty of Comity" of 2017.
And what did the annexation bring to the NAR? It expanded its territory by more than one"'third, adding over 1.4 million square miles of land to a country that just six years before had arbitrarily reduced its size by about 200,000 square miles for reasons of race. More importantly, it more than tripled the area of prime land open for timber harvesting, strip mining for coal, and sub"'surface mining for minerals. [2]
Natural Resource Policy
From the late Transition Era onwards, the Right"'Wing Reactionary policies of "Wise Use" (Gottlieb), that is "private property rights above all else," had controlled natural resource use policy in the old U.S. (see Chapter 14). As predicted by the forces of environmental preservation and balance that at the end of the Transition Era had been over whelmed by the forces of greed and environmental destruction, these Right"'Wing Reactionary land"' and resource"'use policies had led to the gradual rape of the land. Following the passage of the Natural Resources Access Act in 2013, the process had intensified and quickened.
The clear-cutting of timber and the strip mining for coal, copper, and other minerals, had virtually destroyed the surface of the old U.S. Northwest. Rivers became clogged with silt, and both wild and commercial animal life declined precipitously. The precious natural re source, wood, over which the fuss was ostensibly being made, renew able if care is taken with forest management as it is now, virtually disappeared.
But with its new Resource Based Economy, the NAR paid little attention to these considerations. Preservation of neither nature nor employment meant anything in the face of preservation of the "free market" and profits. Thus, access to new untouched areas for exploitation was essential. The Treaty confirmed the accomplishment of that end.
The annexation of the four Western Canadian provinces plus Western Ontario by the NAR opened up tens of millions of acres of virgin forest to lumbering. It also brought directly under NAR control the remaining oil and natural gas reserves of Alberta as well as the huge new subsoil coal fields discovered in the Canadian Plains between Brandon, Manitoba and Medicine Hat, Alberta. Fortunately, the area opened up in Western Canada to the completely unfettered ravages of the "free market in natural resources" was so vast that there were still large areas left untouched by the time the NAR fell in 2022.
Expansion South
At the same time all of this military and diplomatic activity was going on north of the old U.S., there was quite a bit of the same kind of activity going on to the south of the old U.S. as well. With the infusion of new natural resources to exploit, the NAR economy was suddenly booming. The realization of the "Fourth Republic," through expansion to the south backed by military force, was a real possibility.
In 2018, the Sixth Bankruptcy swept through Lat in America. This time there would be no last minute "save"'the"'nations" deal by the NAR banks or the NAR Treasury or the NAR's National Monetary Board (the Presidentially-controlled central banking successor to the old independent Federal Reserve Board) or the Multinational Bank or the United States of Europe Central Bank or the Cooperative Bank of the East Asian Confederation.
The previous time around the Latin American nations had been forced to put up their territories as collateral for further loans. This time the NAR, and the other international powers for which the NAR acted as agent, foreclosed. The Fourth Republic of the NAR became a reality in 2019. (Ironically that was the same year that the finally unit ed resistance forces within the three Republics that occupied the territory of the old U.S. issued the Restoration Declaration. The fight that would eventually lead to the overthrow of the NAR then began in earnest [see next chapter].)
There was a close-to century-old tradition of fascism in many of the Latin American nations: Argentina under Peron in the 40s and 50s and later The Generals of the 1970s; Uruguay under it nameless fascist leadership of the latter time; Brazil for 20 years under the military dictator ship that with U.S. help overthrew the democratically-elected Goulart Presidency in 1965; Chile under Pinochet in the 70s and 80s; Paraguay under Stroessner from the mid-50s to the mid-80s; Somoza in Nicaragua; The Generals in Guatemala. The fascist tradition had never died, and from its adherents the NAR received significant cooperation.
As with Canada, interest in the annexation of significant parts of Latin America by the Norte Americanos had gone back to the birth of the Republic. Thomas Jefferson thought that taking over Cuba from Spain would be a fine idea. That never occurred, but in the mid"'19th century Texas, New Mexico (including what later became Arizona), and California were taken from Mexico. After the Spanish"'American War of 1898, Puerto Rico was made into an American colony rather than being granted independence.
Early in the 20th century, the old U.S. under President Theodore Roosevelt created an artificial country, Panama, by forcefully separating its territory from Colombia. This was to make it possible to build an American controlled Panama Canal. Sovereignty over the land through which the canal had been cut, originally held by the old U.S., had been returned to the Panamanian government in the late 20th century, according to a treaty signed in the mid-70s.
(Under the Fourth Republic of the NAR, control of the Panama Canal reverted to the successor of the old U.S. government. That met a long time goal of Right-Wing Reaction. Blaming its existence on "the liberals," the Right-Wing Reactionaries had always called the Pa ama Canal Treaty "treason," even though it had been negotiated principally by Republicans.)
What happened to Latin America under the NAR was nothing new, in principle, just different in the form.
Latino Deportation
The deportation from the White Republic of the U.S. Latino population, whether U.S. citizen or not, got underway with a vengeance shortly after the creation of the Fourth Republic. Deportation of Latinos to their supposed "homeland" was simplified, since the "other side" of the Killer Fence along the old Mexican Border was now, technically at least, part of the same country. To the deporters, it mattered not that the families of many of the deportees had lived in the territory now con trolled by the NAR for some generations.
Internal deportation of persons based on ethnicity had a long history in the old U.S., from the forcible movement of Native Americans many times during the 19th century, to the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, to the forced mass movements of blacks and Native Americans which accompanied the founding of the NAR itself.
Revolts
These takeovers were accomplished primarily in a peaceful fashion, much as the original establishment of the NAR had been. In a short while, however, revolts against the NAR dominion in Latin America got underway. They began among the Quechua Indians in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, and spread rapidly, especially among the Indian"'dominant sectors of the population. Quickly it became apparent that the supply and communications routes were simply too long for the NAR to maintain. But until that happened, for the first time in history, if only briefly, there was one government holding sway on the American Continent from the Strait of Bering through the Straits of Magellan to the tip of Terra Del Fuego.
As the Latino revolts spread, there were increasing demands on NAR White Republic military forces to prop up the NAR Fourth Re public "provincial governors." The existence of an expensive foreign military drag on the NAR was an important factor in its ultimate down fall. This marked the first foreign involvement of American troops since the end of the Somalian/United Nations and Balkan/North Atlantic Treaty Organization actions in the 1990s.
Over-Seas Involvement:
The Beginning of the End
Isolationism, not internationalism, had become the hallmark of Right-Wing Reactionary foreign policy from the end of the Cold War against the old Soviet Union on. Isolationism was in fact the traditional policy of Right-Wing Reaction, e.g., the refusal of a Republican-controlled Senate to join the League of Nations after World War I. The isolationist, some times anti-Semitic/pro-Nazi, "America Firsters" of the 1930s were primarily Right-Wing. The post-World War II Right-Wing internationalism was developed entirely to defeat the old Soviet Union. Then there was the increasing use of anti-UN/"New World Order" propaganda from Right"'Wing Reaction during the Transition Era.
With the demise of the "Communist Threat" and the decline in the importance of Middle East oil to the U.S. economy, according to the Right-Wing Reactionaries there was no reason for the U.S. to maintain any military forces outside of the Western Hemisphere. Certainly, they said toward the end of the Transition Era that neither "humanitarian assistance" (in the case of the African nation of Somalia, for ex ample), nor "protection of human rights" or "fighting the UN's battles," (in the case of Bosnia"'Herzegovina in the European Balkans) (Kramer), were any of the U.S.' business. One of the first orders of foreign policy business when President Hague had taken office had been to withdraw from the United Nations entirely (leaving $4.5 billion in debt unpaid).
But "Protection of the Legitimacy of the Republic" as the Hagueites called it was quite something else again (sort of like fighting to protect Saudi oil reserves in the Gulf War of 1991, some wags said). So off the forces went to Latin America. And once again the American government was involved in an expensive overseas war. As in Vietnam, it could ill"'afford the monetary investment. But this time around, because minority troops were not available to it, and so much manpower was required to maintain repression at home, it couldn't afford the manpower either (see Chapter 17). Both deficiencies begin to take their toll fairly soon. The Latin Wars marked one of the major beginnings of the end for the NAR.
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References:
Buchanan, P., Patrick J. Buchanan . . . From the Right, fund"'raising letter, c. 1989.
Canada, "The Constitution Act, 1982; amended by Constitution Amend ment Proclamation, 1983
(SI/84"'102)," Ottawa, Ontario: 1986.
Chernow, B.A. and Vallasi, G.E., Eds., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, "Oregon,"
New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 2021.
Farnsworth, C.H., "Ottawa Unity Plan Draws Fire From Both Quebec and West," New York
Times, December 1, 1995.
Farnsworth, C.H., "Canada's Justice System Faces Charges of Racism," New York Times, January
28, 1996.
Fast, H., The Last Frontier, New York: Blue Heron Press, 1953, p. 91.
Freedom Writer, "Religious Right Hits Canada," Religious Right Up date, February, 1994.
Gottlieb, A.M., The Wise Use Agenda, Bellevue, WA: The Free Enter prise Press, 1989.
Guralnik, D.B., Ed., Webster's New World Dictionary, New York: The World Publishing Co.,
1970.
Jenson, J., "Canada," in Krieger, J., Ed., The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Kramer, M., "The Art of Selling Bosnia," Time, December 11, 1995, p. 56.
Taylor, G.D., "Canada"'U.S. Relations," in Foner, E., and Garrity, J.A., Eds., The Reader's
Companion to American History, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
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Author's
Notes:
[1] Note: There is no indication or evidence that Patrick Buchanan, Lucien Bouchard, any Quebec or other Canadian separationist/independence organization, the "Wise Use Movement" or any of its leadership, membership, or constituent organizations, or any other historical personage or organization mentioned or alluded to in this chapter or elsewhere in this book in a similar manner, would have support ed or ap proved in any way of "The Treaty of Comity," or any of the institutions, events, laws, policies, or procedures created or carried out pursuant to it by the NAR or any Canadian or successor Canadian entity such as the "Republic of Quebec," mentioned, discussed, or alluded to anywhere in this chapter or subsequent ones.
[2] For purposes of comparison, the important territorial figures were: Western Ontario: close to 300,000 sq. miles; Manitoba: 250,999 sq. miles; Saskatchewan, 251,699 sq. miles; Alberta, 255,285 sq. miles; British Columbia, 366,253 sq. miles; four province total: over 1,400,000 sq. miles. U.S. territory total: 3,623,420 sq. miles. Idaho, 83,564 sq. miles; Montana, 147,046 sq. miles; Oregon, 97,073 sq. miles; Washington, 68,139 sq. miles; four state total (these were the major timber states): 395,822.
(Article changed on Jul 15, 2024 at 6:30 PM EDT)
