An Open Letter to My Liberty-Loving Canadian Friends,
As your nation celebrates its 148th birthday today and mine its 239th on Saturday, I want to inform you all of a much less significant upcoming anniversary and one of the surprising conclusions that I arrived at while considering it.
At the end of the month I’ll celebrate six years as a full-time new media writer/editor. Throughout this journey I’ve worked with writers, activists, and various troublemakers around the United States and globally at a variety. Here’s some truth: Canada is an underappreciated, untapped gold mine of creative talent and fascinating, wonderful people.
The nation’s greatest resource is its people and the unique cultures and skills they’ve developed and I want to learn more. The Canadian writers I’ve worked with over the years (they know who they are) have deeply inspired me to explore your country, its cultures, its history and to find other like-minded people within it.
Now, understand that I’m not seeing your country through any kind of mythical, Maple Leaf-shaped, pink-tinted glasses. I’m well aware of (some) of the cultural problems and political challenges you face from the writers that I’ve worked with and followed. The Canadians who inspire me are the kinds who have congregated around The Rebel, my kind of people: Counterculture Canadians who are rebelling against their nation’s groupthink and conformity enforcers.
Everywhere around the world there are people committed to defending the rights of the individual and it’s those Canadians I embrace in brotherhood. I want to offer my solidarity and encouragement as you expand Freedom in your nation and we seek to promote it everywhere around the planet.
I can relate on many personal levels. As a libertarian-conservative Zionist and hawkish, Bible-thumping new media editor in Los Angeles I can understand what it’s like to live as a “political minority.” But I’m well aware that the level of socialist government and limiting of liberties you all have to deal with up there is in many ways much more problematic.
My range of “conservative” views make me marginal and “extreme” enough in polite, “mainstream” society in the United States. I can only begin to imagine what freaks the Canadians who share my values are regarded as. But I hope to learn more as I continue to support Ezra and his Rebels however I can.
I want to see more US-Canadian teamwork and camaraderie and that begins at the individual level. If any kindred Canadian spirits want to reach out and swap ideas or educate me more in your nation’s challenges then please shoot me an email DavidSwindle @ Gmail.com or lets dialogue on Twitter @DaveSwindle. I’m brainstorming a variety of different creative projects across mediums and genres and I’d very much appreciate to hear more compelling Canadian perspectives on life and the world and the challenges facing humanity today.
Best wishes,
David M. Swindle
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Meant to say – July 4th
It was only about a year ago that my mind was warped with the far-left’s “progressive” beliefs. The previous me would have enjoyed throwing creative insults at you for being an American.
I very much look forward to reading what you have to say on here.
Peter: “Who controls education/indoctrination in Ontario? In L.A.?”
I’ve shifted to a more radical position on how to fix education in research years. I don’t think the public school systems are fixable. I think at root they are flawed and obsolete. Education systems designed in Europe in the 19th century to train factory workers are not appropriate for training 21st century entrepreneurs. I’ve worked with many home schooling moms and advocates of that educational approach and they’ve convinced me it’s the way of the future. I don’t like a lot of things about Ayn Rand but her advocacy of “Going Galt” — just dropping out of failing systems and building our own alternatives — is a legitimate strategy and the one that seems to make the most sense with the public school system.
True North: that’s a wonderful story. I look forward to hearing more of your perspectives and will be in touch soon.
Jason: I think the rarity of the Canadian conservative kind of mirrors the rarity of the California conservative. I’m going to plan to explore that more in the future… There could be some interesting parallels in considering Canada and California as sort of oddball edges of the continent.
Best wishes to Deborah, Yvette, and Kevin too! Thanks for your kind comments and encouragement!
I needed that.
Alas, Common Sense seems to be in the Minority. How do we fight that?
Who controls education/indoctrination in Ontario? In L.A.?
When he finished filling his car, he came my way. Now I was a big guy myself, but he was monumental; gargantuan, and the closer he got, the more sure I was that my life was over and my Mother would see my corpse lying in a ditch, crushed like a morning tea bag. He finally stood towering over me as I fumbled for a pen and paper to write my last will and testament while I still had time.
He looked at my car and then said ’You’re Canadian?" I was sure that he must have a special way of dispatching Canadians.
I said, feigning brevity in the face of death “I sure am!”
As the last seconds of my life on this world slid passed he said “I just want to thank you for what you did for our guys in Iran.” He then shook my hand in his huge paw ( my hand has just recently returned to full use) and began to turn away.
In complete shock that I was going to see another sun rise, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind and said, “You’re very welcome!” as though I was directly responsible! And then " It was nothing really! Americans are our friends and we need to stick together!"
He looked at me, turned and walked away from the jabbering fool. I learned about preconceptions.
But the funny thing is, and it became clear over the years, that I was right. Canadians and Americans are friends and we should stick together and we do. Canadian search and rescue teams were some of the very first on the ground after 911. Canadian support troops were the first on the scene along the gulf coast after it was ravaged by a hurricane. When the ice storm of ’98 put eastern Ontario in the dark for up to two weeks, it was linemen from Michigan who put the lights back on in my area, and we gave them a parade down main street to say thank you.
Yes we burned Washington.
Yes we regularly beat you at hockey.
Yes our engineers from the cancelled Avro Arrow project put you on the moon.
Yes we sent you William Shatner and Justin Bieber.
But we know you do not hold any of these against us. Well no more than we hold the Kardashians against you. We stood together through two world wars, a cold war and numerous other wars and natural disasters and we must stand together into the future as friends.
Cheers “eh”