Thanks for the interesting chat; i hope it’s nice for you. I am tearing my hair a little, but in a fun way.

By this logic, why have laws at all? Why not just have an absolute monarch and trust “the people will stand up” if power is misused? Laws aren’t magic, they’re often used to perpetuate awful things, but they do shape what people see as overreach. The reason cops who kill don’t get lynched is because people believe the legal system will eventually punish them.

I also don’t think the US being a republic makes no difference. Trump isn’t a king, and has struggled to get this far. He’s faced injunctions that actually stopped some harms. In Canada, it would be 100x easier. Parliament can just say “notwithstanding the Charter” and ignore all rights, and courts could not stop it (unlike in the US, where they could, but SCOTUS won’t because it’s been packed with lunatics).

One interesting proposal related to your ideas from constitutional scholars about how to do away with the relationship to the british royal family (looters, genociders, and pedophiles that they are) is to simply deem the King of Canada to be an individual…effectively making the King a fictional entity. That would actually make sure he has no power, eh?

I see your point that “if we all agree he has no power, any exercise will clearly be a problem” … except the monarchy is in constant contact with the governor general. You won’t know why the GG makes her choices. The monarchy has vast “reserve” powers (which as the name implies, are generally kept in reserve…like a Chekov’s gun). Australia’s governor-general dismissed their PM in 1975 using those powers. In Canada, the last clear example of undemocratic BS was 1961 when the LG of Saskatchewan refused consent to a passed law. But we have a perfect example in 2008: do you think the GG didn’t check with her boss about proroguing to save a minority PM from a no-confidence vote? That was a real exercise of real power by an appointee of the crown.

Or consider this situation: https://donshafer1.substack.com/p/the-day-37-british-columbia-mlas . Imagine the King has business interests in BC and would benefit from this financially. He calls the GG, who calls the LG of BC to say “get this moving.” If the LG (or GG) went public, she’d lose her job. So she’d quietly do it. And if it leaked? Conservatives would say “we must stay connected to the crown…tradition!.. and who wants these human rights laws anyway?” Plenty of Liberals would fold too, saying “well, technically, the king actually does have the right to pick whoever he wants, and we shouldn’t shake things up too much…maybe we could just get the king to agree to take it back and appoint her again? no? maybe another lady…an indigenous one? no? how about a white lesbian, would that do? okay, perfect, we’ll call that a win!”

I think I must not be making my point clearly.

You say “if the king oversteps” and my point about law and norms and all that is that they shape perception about whether a particular thing is overstepping. Lawyers don’t usually protect us from tyranny, lawyers usually enforce tyranny; it’s just the kind of tyranny that is commonly accepted. And that acceptance matters…because people think it does, sure.

I think you have a very idealistic understanding of what we call democracy these days…if a 60/40 split happened like I talked about earlier came up, you think there would be mass mobilization? You think Canadians have stronger political convictions than folks in the US? I dont…Canadians seem to love to not care about Canadian politics…disinterest in politics seems to be a point of pride to differentiate themselves from those annoying Americans. And it’s way worse than 60/40 there and just look at the place. It’s a mess.

You say you think the king should have no power and everyone knows it but the commander in chief of your military is a direct personal appointee who serves at their pleasure.

A crisis doesn’t occur without a context…it would be about something, and certainly something that one side thinks it can win on. I think you imagine any constitutional crisis would be immediately and unanimously handled in a democratic manner by everyone involved, no matter their interest in the underlying matter that lead to the crisis…we’d just all be on-side and do the right thing…I think that is extraordinarily naive!

Great article. Not sure it belongs on this community but whatever

I see what you mean about the optics of the governor general being Canadian, but legally they’re still bound to do what the monarch says, and the monarch is not bound to do what parliament says! Like, for example, if the UK wanted to drag us into a war, some Canadians might be keen…even if it’s a minority, if the governor general were one of them, we’d either be going or have a conditional crisis on our hands.

You’re right, of course…what’s going on in the US does show the flimsiness of “western liberal democracies” in the face of fascist tactics. When push comes to shove constitutions and laws are words on paper (and Canada relies on many norms that are not even that!) and they only matter if everyone with power agrees they matter.

On paper, the US has much more robust rights in respect of their government than Canada does, but to your point, that has obviously not lead to a more society with less government overreach!

So I basically agree, I think it’s not right to say it’s all completely meaningless though. Like…there may well be things that the king could do to abuse his power for which we wouldn’t have the will to remove the king from power. I guess that’s my point; let’s do it on principal first. I don’t see any reason to leave the letter of the law in a shitty place (and it doesn’t seem you disagree that having a king is shitty) just because outright fascists would ignore it if they came to power. Little fascists may be stopped, non-fascists may find their path smoother, etc.

That said, if you’re thinking the accelerationist approach of “let adversity harden the will of the people, and we’ll build a new world in the ashes of the old” then hey, more power to ya. Sign me up for the mailing list =P

That’s very true; I still would love to see him guillotined.

He’s being downvoted because this was the democrats’ race to lose and they lost it spectacularly. Don’t blame non-voters for not turning up for the candidate that said “shut up about the genocide that we support and that i intend to confine to support”

Or for a party that abandons every campaign promise other than “things will not fundamentally change.”

The Democrats could try a little leadership for god’s sake. The top level comment blames the party, the comment you responded to blames the people. That’s why it’s downvoted, I think.

It’s because they think they’ll win those lawsuits. They may be right. They’re gonna pull an Alex jones: “oh come on, it’s a bit! Everyone knows it’s bullshit!”

Yeah I mean nowadays I feel like something like hello fresh or whatever meal delivery service (that still requires you to cook) is a big convenient treat. Delivery is so goddamn expensive, I ain’t made of money!

Everyone says this, because so far the monarchy has generally done what parliament asks in terms of, for example, appointing a prime minister, appointing senators, etc. Except there was the “King-Byng affair” in which the crown refused to exercise its constitutional power at the behest of the elected government. Now in retrospect, that may have been for the best…but that absolutely should resolve anyone’s question that the monarchy “has zero power in Canada.” People generally remember this as the crown “saving us from ourselves” …I don’t have any strong feelings about that, as long as we recognize that it had the power to do something and still does. I think it shouldn’t have power…if someone else wants to say it should at least we can talk about that…but when we pretend that the monarchy has no power we have to talk about that first.

But ask Australians…they had no interference from the monarchy in their democracy until their “1975 constitutional crisis,” in which the people voted for a prime minister (some evil socialist who did crazy dangerous tankie things like bring in universal healthcare and pull out of the war in Vietnam…practically stalin), the queen then dismissed him, dissolved parliament, and appointed the liberal party leader as her new prime minister, and told them to have a new election.

Legally, Canada is in the exact same position as Australia was at that time. The only real differences are: (a) another 50 years of the monarchy not going rogue and fucking with democracy, but also (b) precedent of the monarchy going rogue and fucking with democracy and getting away with it.

I’m a lawyer, and it blows me away that lawyers here don’t know this stuff…like your whole government is built on a rug that could be pulled out from under you at any time! And look…if the monarchy tried to do something that was overwhelmingly unpopular, it would create a constitutional crisis, but I am sure we would get through it and get to the right result. Absurd to leave that risk on the table if you ask me, but fine… What worries me more is when the question is a bit more ambiguous…what happens if it’s not overwhelming? what happens if the country is split 60/40 on an issue, but many of the 60% are not willing to cause a constitutional crisis, and the monarchy is willing to push the less popular option? (I mean, we know what happens, that’s what happened in australia!).

It’s kind of their thing really lol

That’s a good point, though powerful people do seem more likely to be a monster, to not see other people as people. Bring a members of the royal family is just one way in which one can be a powerful person. But certainly the way Virginia talked about prince Andrew was that he saw being a monster as his birthright.

I don’t know what majority of his privilege means…he’s still living a luxurious life on his estate with servants. That seems like a pretty extreme level of privilege to me…maybe privilege no human being should have, but certainly not just for being born into a family of historical mass murderers, and certainly not for being a pedophile. Until prince andrew is treated the same as any other person, I will not believe that he is not getting special treatment on account of his royal status.

I am an immigrant to Canada and I cannot understand how “chill” everyone here is about the monarchy. Is it not clearly an irredeemably evil institution? I really don’t get it.

Folks say they have no real power here but that’s definitely untrue, and even if it were (and again…it’s really not)…we should still sever ties, if nothing else to show that we don’t endorse what the royal family has done!

I, no joke, would rather Canada declare Justin Bieber king of Canada than leave it with the British royal family. Obviously we shouldn’t have a king, but we could at least pick a Canadian I guess. Anyone would be better.

I’m not sure what the point is in any case. Whatever about how the monarch is chosen…having a monarch is bad! And this monarchy is particularly bad!

I think we really should stick to calling him “Prince Andrew.” If we don’t we’re letting the monarchy separate itself from him…but that’s bullshit; he has the privilege of being a prince and his status as prince is not just what gave him the liberty to be a monster, but I think we can assume it’s what actually made him a monster.

I think your comment comes across as “she didn’t die so this is overblown” (and by extension so is the desire for traffic calming measures).

This is such awful history; of course it works because it serves the US, but it does blow me away that otherwise well-meaning people continue to parrot it. You don’t have to be a “tankie” to stop spouting this nonsense.

You’re referring to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. That was a non-aggression treaty, not an “alliance.” The soviets would be pretty foolish to make an alliance with a country whose fascist genocidal leader, hitler, made clear the inescapable need to invade the soviet union in mein kampf.

You know who else had already made non-aggression pacts with the Nazis before that? The UK, France, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia. You think they were “allied” with the Nazis?

Hell the Spanish civil war was a proxy war that the soviets had to pull out of to get ready for invasion (much to the ire of western anarchists forever).

No, man. The soviet position was pretty damned clear: they needed time to mobilize. You think they were mobilizing to deal with…what, Poland? Everyone knew what was happening between the Nazis and the soviets. They still weren’t ready, and got slaughtered.

Dislike the Soviet Union for other reasons. There are plenty of good ones. This is nonsense.

lol I’m no statistician but I feel like a thanos snap would reduce car accidents by way more than half…it’s like that quirk about how you only need 23 people in a room for there to be a 50% chance two of them share a birthday!

Still, I expect that if the safe street folks had their way there’d be a lot less trauma than if thanos did.

Frankly, I’m a grouchy old man I guess because I hate the electric scooters. Get a bike! They’re way less dangerous because of the physics of falling down from one hahaha

I don’t think we gotta litigate who’s fault it is she got hurt; I don’t think it matters much. If she’s not at fault that doesn’t make the driver a bad person or bad driver. If she is at fault that doesn’t make her a bad person or bad scooter…operator? rider? (Actually is Scoot-er a person who scoots?)

Accidents happen, and more cars (or electric scooters for that matter) make them more likely and more dangerous even if everyone is doing the best that can realistically be done!

Lol, I don’t think anyone would assumed she died…it’s just ironic that she was injured by the danger she was trying to help us all with.

Broken wrist is pretty brutal. I don’t want to get hit by a car.