. . . about college students having sex. Got your attention? It’s not what you think. My attention was called on Facebook to a piece on the NYT site: “At Tufts, an Attempt to Prohibit Sex When a Roommate Is in the Room.” Kids having sex in public naturally did not turn the incisive historical minds on FB to our own college experiences — speaking for myself, we ate a lots of  pizza, drank a lot of beer, and studied a lot, without nearly as many opportunities to test our sexual ethics as they seem to have at Tufts these days. Instead, we early American historians thought of bundling, the scandalous youth sexual practice of colonial New England.

For civilians who happen on this post, bundling was a courtship custom where unmarried young men and women slept together, bundled up in blankets on a bed. Lest it seem too sexy,  a board was put in-between the two and the girl could be encased in a stout bag to protect her the virtue. Mom and Dad (and presumably others) often stayed in the room, just like a Tufts roommate.

From a decent-seeming scholarly article on bundling that happens to be available online:

Bundling is probably the best known courtship practice of colonial America, even though very little research on the topic has ever been published. It appears to contradict the otherwise sexually strict mores of the Puritans. It meant that a courting couple would be in bed together, but with their clothes on. With fuel at a premium, it was often difficult to keep a house warm in the evenings. Since this is when a man would be visiting his betrothed in her home, they would bundle in her bed together in order to keep warm. A board might be placed in the middle to keep them separate, or the young lady could be put in a bundling bag or duffel-like chastity bag. The best protection against sin were the parents, who were usually in the same room with them. It may not have been good enough, however, as records indicate that up to one-third of couples engaged in premarital relations in spite of the public penalties, such as being fined and whipped, that often resulted (Ingoldsby 1995).

[Read the rest here.]

During his recent trip to Ghana, President Obama did not discuss the brutal history of the Atlantic slave trade that began in Ghana, and only mentioned the word slavery once during his speech. Instead, the President spoke in general terms about “oppression” and “evil.” In fact, in the opening sentence that he delivered standing outside the haunting Elmina Castle, Obama likened his trip to Ghana to his visit to a concentration camp in Germany.  For decades, historians have been trying to dissuade the American public from comparing the slave trade to the Holocaust, which often leads to explosive debates on which group suffered more, and to the imminent question: would the President standing on the grounds of a former concentration camp evoke the history of slavery?

By discussing the history of the slave trade in Ghana as part of larger history of “evil” and “cruelty,” the President missed the opportunity to educate the American public (and the world for that matter) about the actual history of the slave trade: the 2 million slaves who died en route to the Americas and the millions more who suffered in the crowded, disease-ridden, dark bowels of the slave ships. He also gave up the chance to discuss the effects of the international slave trade: the destruction of African cultural traditions, languages, and religious practices by New World slaveholders; the pain felt by African families torn apart by the hands of Dutch, Spanish, and English traders and merchants; the greedy profits gained by European nations and the burgeoning colonies in the Americas; and even the transformation of West African economies; political structures; and military strategies.

Throughout his speech in front the 15^th century slave castle, Obama only mentioned the word slavery once and when he did invoke it, he made enormous historical leaps. He reflected on the 19^th century abolitionist movement when whites and blacks fought together to end slavery. While white and black people did eventually work together in the early to mid-nineteenth century to terminate slavery, one cannot ignore that on the ground where the President made such a comment, whites and blacks worked together during the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries to send Africans into chattel slavery in the New World. While Obama more than likely made this remark in order to illuminate a moment of interracial solidarity with the hope of improving race relations, he forfeited the opportunity for Americans to actually reflect on the horrors of the slave trade—a cultural memory that most black people acknowledge but one that most non-black Americans know little about. A more informed reflection on the actual history of the slave trade could do more to improve race relations than cherry picking a moment in history that happened after the international slave trade ended and did not even lead to the abolition of slavery. President Obama ought to know that it was not just abolitionists who ended slavery, but enslaved people themselves. Southern blacks dismantled the institution of slavery by fleeing from plantations across the Confederacy and joining the Union Army, contributing mightily to the North’s victory in the Civil War and the collapse of the slaveocracy.

Jim Downs is a history professor at Connecticut College, focusing on African-American history and 19th century U.S. History. His books include Taking Back the Academy and Why We Write. His articles have appeared in History Today, the Chicago Tribune, The Southern Historian, Prologue, History News Network, and Reviews in American History, among other places.

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Now playing: Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians – The President
via FoxyTunes

I am driving off to the Society for Historians of the Early Republic (SHEAR) annual meeting in beautiful downtown Springfield, Illinois, this morning. Worthwhile national history conferences in easy ground transportation range of mid-Missouri are something of a rarity, so I would not miss it. Perhaps I will “live blog” some of the proceedings. Also, perhaps I won’t.

Just one brief item before I go: Dan Mandell of Truman State called my attention to a Wall Street Journal article discussing the latest target for Texas shootin’ irons in the educational culture wars: our own field of U.S. history. This kind of history standards debate is not new, of course — we can say a little prayer of thanks that Lynne Cheney never got her own CIA hit squad, or whatever Dick’s most recently revealed scheme turns out to have been. Yet back in the day, it was usually conservatives complaining about what was left out of the National History Standards; in present-day Texas, they are looking to put a tendentiously right-wing Christian view of American history into the public schools. The agenda seems to go considerably beyond LCheney-like complaints about the insufficient love given to George Washington. I will supply some key passages for myself or others to take up in the comments or later. The whole thing is worth reading, if you are feeling calm:

The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.

The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.

Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith, and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

“We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it,” said Rev. Peter Marshall, a Christian minister and one of the reviewers appointed by the conservative camp. . . .

The three reviewers appointed by the moderate and liberal board members are all professors of history or education at Texas universities, including Mr. de la Teja, a former state historian. The reviewers appointed by conservatives include two who run conservative Christian organizations: David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America’s Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War, and Hurricane Katrina were God’s judgments on the nation’s sexual immorality. The third is Daniel Dreisbach, a professor of public affairs at American University.

The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.

Colonial historians, would you like to take a guess about what figure some of the Texas reviewers wanted removed from the curriculum, apparently as part of this biblical program? From the specific suggestions listed at the end of the story:

• Delete Anne Hutchinson from a list of colonial leaders

Students learn about colonial history in the fifth grade, and three reviewers suggested that the standards not include Anne Hutchinson, a 17th century figure, among a list of significant leaders. Ms. Hutchinson was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for teaching religious views at odds with the officially sanctioned faith.

So rebellious female Christians just don’t count when it comes to America’s biblical principles, and/or Puritan orthodoxy is alive and well deep in the heart of Texas. I don’t think that’s what Bob Wills intended, do you?

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Now playing: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys – Cotton Eyed Joe
via FoxyTunes

. . . when I probably should have been doing something else.

• The Tea Party protesters do not even like the Republicans any more, if they ever did. They are also the number one source of “comment spam” on this blog, or at least of the stuff that gets through the filters. That is just how revolutionary they are. Teabaggers go where online slot machine and Canadian payday loan purveyors fear to tread. [Actually, I think the spammers must think the teabaggers are a little bit confused and thus a good target market for people who sell things by getting other people to click on links accidentally.]
• Sarah Palin is in it for the money. Some conservative pundits do not approve, but Rush is all for it. Making money is the highest social good in their philosophy, right? So I guess they have to take the greedy with the bad.
• People who comment on the American political scene for national publications should be forced to read a pile of several hundred student papers. Then they would not find Palin’s habit of speaking/writing “in half-expressed thoughts and internal contradictions” so singular. It’s more or less the norm as far as I can tell, here in the mid-ranges of higher education that Sarah could not quite hack. It’s also pretty common to just disappear from classes or change schools in mid-semester, with or without explanation. Of course, it takes a truly special person to take that approach to being governor of a state. That said, making fun of a populist leader’s syntax, as the MSM and liberal blogs like to do with Palin, just plays into their hands. Ask the Federalists how well the supercilious grammar criticism tactic worked against various upstart northern Democratic-Republicans.
• Racist humor (and, one might add, racism) is fairly common, and often tolerated, in some conservative circles. Actually, I already knew that from personal experience, but it is quite revealing that some young white conservatives thought nothing of slapping that kind of thing up on Facebook.
• You can learn colonial history on Hulu. I learned that  Captain John Smith worked out a lot and liked to hang around in Jamestown with his shirt off. It was surprisingly hot, dry, and dusty there in the Virginia Tidewater hills. Also, John Rolfe was his sidekick. And Pocahontas looked good in her miniskirt. Ahead of the curve fashion-wise, as well. To be honest, there’s something to be said for the 50s he-man version of John Smith over Colin Farrell’s big-eyed nature lover in Terence Malick’s The New World. Smith is a rather sensitive fellow for a globe-trotting mercenary in both versions, which probably says something about how Americans like to remember their conquering forebears: a little sentimental, with just a hint of tears as they regretfully wipe off the blood.

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Now playing: Beulah – Queen of the Populists
via FoxyTunes

The blogger Atrios likes to highlight articles about the incongruities between urban life (with its walkability and density) and automobile culture (which demands curb cuts, parking spaces, fast-moving highways, and suburban developments). He’s especially giddy when drivers are driven mad by cities–because suburbanites perceive them to be unsuitable as places to live, yet they still want to visit urban attractions (or work their urban jobs).  So when they can’t find a place to park, their frustration is palpable (particularly on internet comment boards).  For an urban planner, the only solutions seem to be: a) destroy your city, or b) resist the suburbanites’ car-centric frustration, possibly by coming up with transportation alternatives.

Atrios highlighted an article on the parking shortage in Newport, RI, particularly this quote:

Though a modern streetcar system may seem out-of-place with the city’s colonial appeal, officials say it could actually be a throwback to the early 20th century, when trolleys operated in the city. Plus, Bronk said, there’s nothing quaint about the city’s traffic.

“Does four lanes of automobile congestion, is that in keeping with the colonial period? It’s not,” he said. “Is a highway downtown in keeping with the colonial era? It’s not.”

Of all the cities I discussed in Rebels Rising, Newport is the best place to discern a surviving colonial landscape and surviving colonial buildings.  After that, I’d rank them as follows, from best to worst: Charleston (SC), Philadelphia (where Atrios lives), Boston, and New York City.  (Obviously there were other cities at the time, but those are the five that got the most attention in my book.)  Of those five, Newport has grown the least, economically and demographically, over the years, so it’s not so surprising that more of its colonial landscape survives.  The other cities have also struggled with transportation access in a lot of ways, and I’m sure visitors to all these cities (and to all cities, really) can call to mind the highways that lead into these cities, the neighborhoods that have been blighted by modern highway construction, and the public transportation alternatives that exist (or don’t exist) in these places.

All this is making me very grateful that my fellow fellow at the John Carter Brown Library used to offer me a parking space at his father’s office whenever I was driving down to Newport for dissertation research.

UPDATE: Why preserve historic buildings?  Because sometimes the findings are really cool.

Often amid the news stories of the day, we’re tempted to ask, “don’t these people have any shame?”  Matthew Yglesias quotes Senator Chuck Grassley today: the senator almost calls on the AIG executives to commit ritual hara-kiri, and then settles on expecting the executives to merely show some contrition.  Yglesias is doubtful that this is possible, though:

We’ve somehow managed to construct something of a post-shame society, in which elites have convinced themselves that the rational agent model of human behavior is not just a useful modeling tool, but an ethical guidebook. There’s something to be said for the idea of a sense of honor and personal responsibility. …

in a healthy society, you see some consideration of issues of honor and duty and moral responsibility and certainly Americans of more humble means don’t strike me as being nearly as taken with the “greed is good” personal ethic.

He continues by reminding us that Senator Grassley is, after all, a Republican, whose party platform suggests that he should lecture people on “personal responsibility” and promote trust that unfettered, deregulated business elites always have our best interests at heart.  Perhaps instead, Yglesias suggests, Grassley could show his outrage by supporting a budget that taxes the rich more heavily and give greater benefits (tax cuts, health care) to ordinary folks.

Meanwhile, all this discussion of personal responsibility puts me in mind of a fascinating article by Joseph Bottum that I saw in First Things last year, entitled, “The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline.”  Since I’m on a Tocqueville kick this week, I’ll note that Bottum quotes Tocqueville as follows:

The oddity of American religion produced the oddity of American religious ­freedom.

The greatest oddity, however, may be the fact that the United States nonetheless ended up with something very similar to the establishment of religion in the public life of the nation. The effect often proved little more than an agreement about morals: The endlessly proliferating American churches, Tocqueville concluded, “all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man.” The agreement was sometimes merely an establishment of manners: “The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language,” he added. “Their opinions are in agreement with the laws, and the human mind flows onward, so to speak, in one undivided current.”

Morals and manners, however, count for a great deal in the public square, and, beyond all their differences, the diverse Protestant churches merged to give a general form and a general tone to the culture. Protestantism helped define the nation, operating as simultaneously the happy enabler and the unhappy conscience of the American republic—a single source for both national comfort and national unease.

…

Think of the American experiment as a three-legged stool, its stability found in each leg’s relation to the other legs. Democracy grants some participation in national identity, an outlet for the anxious desire of citizens to take part in history, but it always leans toward vulgarity and short-sightedness. Capitalism gives us other freedoms and outlets for ambition, but it, too, always threatens to topple over, eroding the virtues it needed for its own flourishing. Meanwhile, religion provides meaning and narrative, a channel for the hunger of human beings to reach beyond the vanities of the world, but it tilts, in turn, toward hegemony and conformity.

Through most of American history, these three legs of democracy, capitalism, and religion accommodated one another and, at the same time, pushed hard against one another.

Bottum’s thesis is that now that mainline Protestantism has faded from American public life, and Catholicism, evangelicalism, and liberal religion probably can’t reconcile sufficiently to take its place, the stability of this “three-legged stool” is under threat.  The result may be that American elites don’t have the same unifying moral compass that they did when mainline Protestantism held greater sway, with dire consequences for capitalism and democracy.  The article is very long, very well-reasoned, and very well-written—so I’m not doing it justice.  But I wonder if Bottum today is ruefully congratulating himself on his predictive powers.  Meanwhile, if you’re looking for an interesting mix of early American history, American religion, and contemporary commentary (particularly on higher education), I’ve been enjoying this blog by Professor John Fea of Messiah College.

Perhaps over the weekend you saw this silly article in the New York Times about conservatives reviving the shibboleth of “socialism.” Now, there’s not much about the Obama Administration that’s remotely socialist, and indeed, the article even quotes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (an actual socialist) as welcoming the fight: “I think this country could use a good debate on what goes on in places like Sweden, Norway, and Finland.”  But to me, this article was a reminder of just how bad politicians are at using historical analogies.  A good analogy, on the other hand, is something to treasure.  While doing some background reading for an encyclopedia article today, I came across a favorite passage.  Let Henry May show you how it’s done.

With boldness and considerable success, the Church [of England] carried its attack into the enemy stronghold, arch-Calvinist Connecticut.  In 1722 the new rector of Yale, one of the tutors, and five other promising young Puritans announced that they had come, through their reading, to doubt the validity of Presbyterian orders and were going to apply to the Bishop of London for ordination.  The effect in the colony was similar to that which might have been produced in 1925 if the Yale football team had suddenly joined the Communist Party.

–Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 77.

This is one of my favorite lines in all of early American history writing.  I’m a sucker for a scholar with a sense of mischief.

Times are hard so it’s time for some music, early American history rock, that is.

[Continued from a previous post.] Here we move into the Spanish Conquest section, which theme has allowed rock musicians to smuggle in some Spanish guitar and brass along with their power chords and hippie pieties. First, however, we have two more Columbus-themed tunes, an old one that is really about the historical Columbus, by Todd Rundgren’s imitation British Invasion band Nazz, and a much more recent number by Vermont roots-rocker Grace Potter that uses CC metaphorically to denote having “found the edge of the world.” Unless she’s talking about living near Canada, I am not sure I could vouch for the straight-ahead Ms. Potter’s claim of edginess on an artistic level, but the song is not uncatchy.

6. Nazz – Christopher Columbus (3:23)

7. Grace Potter and The Nocturnals – Mr. Columbus (3:38)

Now we move on to the conquistadors proper. Interestingly, a common theme is the Spaniards’ confusion and defeat, which sadly did not happen often enough in real life, at least not to the ones who became famous. I have a feeling lot of the musicians were trying for that Aguirre, the Wrath of God feeling without actually remembering the name.

8. The Boo Radleys – Spaniard (4:01) — rather excellent also-rans from the early 1990s alternative rock scene as it was becoming “commercial alternative. This is followed by two chestnuts of 1970s AOR radio.

9. Procol Harum – Conquistador (5:11) — the orchestral version featured on Procol’s Greatest Hits and in regular rotation on Kansas City radio back in the day, in this delightful clip someone has set it to scenes from Herzog’a Aguirre.

12. Neil Young – Cortez The Killer (7:30) — Of course, this had to be here, if only as a reminder of having my young music geek’s mind blown by Decade back in the day. A 3-record set in a package was like an inch thick, or so it seemed! The Collected Masterworks over a count ‘em 10-year career! Who but Neil could be so ambitious, so long-winded, and yet so shamblingly casual? (I realize writing this that Neil Young must be one of the secret influences on my whole aesthetic, and I do have one.)

Like many of old Neil’s forays into history, this epic is perhaps best approached without focusing too much on the lyrics. I am sorry to report that Neil has misled some of the rock-listening public into thinking that “The Aztecs were peaceful, representing sort of a utopian nonviolent society.” With human sacrifice! Oddly Neil does mention the Aztec penchant for human sacrifice while also claiming that “Hate was just a legend/And war was never known.” That would have been news to the many peoples chafing under Aztec rule, the ones who joined up with the Spaniards to overthrow the Aztecs. And yet Cortez was indeed a killer, so the facts on Mr. Young’s side there, anyhow.

13. Splitsville - Ponce de Leon (2:15) — Hard to believe, I know, but this is indeed a boppy little ditty about the conqueror of Puerto Rico and “discoverer” of Florida, who was not looking for the Fountain of Youth but did enjoy siccing his dog on the local Indians.

14. The High Dials – The Lost Explorer (5:25) — This is a nice bit of neo-psychedelia that I have here representing the French colonies, because the band is from Quebec and Neil Young has not recorded a tune called “Champlain the Negotiator.” I am going to dedicate it to Réné Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the French explorer of the Mississippi who got so lost with his broken compass and his jumping to geographic conclusions that his men had to kill him when they missed the mouth of the Mississippi and wandered into Texas instead. It could happen to the best of us.

TO BE CONTINUED

As revealed formerly in this space, one of my many hobbies is making thematic playlists (and CDs) to listen to while I work, drive, or do pretty much anything else. Partly it is just a way to organize all the digital music that accumulates on one’s hard drive, without resorting to rating everything so that some software can mathematically reproduce my tastes. (Frankly, rating every song is too much like grading or serving on the salary committee.) The themes range from simple to really geeky, and naturally one of them is the American. Blogs are for sharing, and so are the holidays, so here we go.

I am make no representations about the historical value of these songs. Not that many musicians are very accurate historians — oh my no. Yet sometimes they do evoke the right feeling, and even the mistakes are often interesting in terms of what they reveal about popular understanding of history.

The order is roughly chronological, but with some concern for how well the songs flow or contrast sonically. In other words, the numbers are not ratings, but the order they appear on the playlist that I actually listen to. I have had to separate the playlists into periods, so today we have just the start of the Colonial Period. There will be some repeats from the American Indian History playlist posted a while back.

• 1. Graham Parker – I Discovered America (right-click to save an mp3 of the whole song) — from the album Don’t Tell Columbus (2007)
• 2. The Toasters – History Book Version
• 3. Randy Newman – The Great Nations Of Europe — hilarious song, but also the first of many examples on this list of musicians who doubtless consider themselves very critical of European and Usonian imperialism while buying into the “vanishing American” trope concerning this and other continents’ native populations:
  

• 4. The Old Haunts – The Old World — somewhat gothic punk Americana, not sure what it means to be about, but I like it, the link goes to their MySpace page, where the song in question is available to play.
• 5. The Knitters (also X) – The New World

“Prorogue”: a word that appeared in the New York Times and other media outlets yesterday that I am fairly sure I never saw before outside of colonial history books, and I mean old-school colonial history books like that comps-list standard of yesteryear, Royal Government in America by Leonard W. Labaree (1930). It turns out that “royal government in America” still exists outside of Dick Cheney’s fondest imaginings:

OTTAWA — Canada’s parliamentary opposition reacted with outrage on Thursday after Prime Minister Stephen Harper shut down the legislature until Jan. 26, seeking to forestall a no-confidence vote that he was sure to lose and, possibly, provoking a constitutional crisis.

Mr. Harper acted after getting the approval of Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who represents Queen Elizabeth II as the nation’s head of state. If his request had been rejected, he would have had to choose between stepping down or facing the no-confidence vote on Monday.

The opposition fiercely criticized the decision to suspend Parliament, accusing Mr. Harper of undermining the nation’s democracy. “We have to say to Canadians, ‘Is this the kind of government you want?’ ” said Bob Rae, a member of the opposition Liberal Party. “Do we want a party in place that is so undemocratic that it will not meet the House of Commons?” . . .

Technically, what Mr. Harper did was to “prorogue” Parliament, a move that stops all actions on bills and the body’s other business, and thus goes well beyond an adjournment (which was not available to Mr. Harper in any event, as it requires parliamentary approval). It is not unprecedented — prorogation is used occasionally to introduce a new legislative agenda — but this is the first time any Parliament members or constitutional scholars here could recall the maneuver being used in the midst of a political crisis and over the objections of Parliament.

Mr. Harper declared the parliamentary suspension after a two-and-a-half hour meeting in Ottawa with Ms. Jean. While no governor general has ever previously rejected a prime minister’s request to prorogue Parliament, several constitutional scholars said Mr. Harper was the first one to have asked permission when he did not have the support of the legislature.

In colonial times, prorogation was one of the many sources of conflict between the elected colonial legislatures and the royal governors appointed from London. Proroguing (and dissolving) parliaments were among the traditional monarchical powers that English kings mostly lost after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, along with the ability to veto legislation, create courts, and remove judges. Colonial American leaders came to resent the fact that their often unprepossessing or untrustworthy governors, many of whom were stand-ins for absentee officials or owed their position to some influential relative or political favor performed back in the mother country, wielded greater powers than the King himself.

Another comps classic, Bernard Bailyn’s Origins of American Politics made the argument the royal governors’ use of their “swollen” powers led to chronic political instability and unrest in many colonies because the governors usually had neither the patronage resources (money and offices to hand out) nor the firm support (either in the local population or the home government) to fully back them up. To borrow the metaphor of another great interpreter of American life, Steve Earle, the royal governors’ power to mess with the elected legislatures were like “a cap and ball Colt,” a dangerously weak sort of weapon that was easy to use but tended not to actually stop your enemies. “It’ll get you into trouble but it can’t get you out.”

Eventually the Americans who formed the United States rejected the imperial connection that made such contradictory institutions as the royal governorships possible, and after some experiments with extremely weak or even plural executives, settled generally on a system that restored a few of the kingly powers, in a limited form, but only to elected officials like a state governor or the president.

Canada chose a different path, obviously, but for most of the past century their retention of British imperial  institutions like the Governor-General has just seemed quaint. This week, not so much. Let’s hope that Prime Minister Harper, who had to resort to this archaic device after some earlier ill-advised power moves against his opposite, does not get out of the trouble he has now gotten Canadian democracy into. Or perhaps Canada just needs to end its quasi-colonial status once and for all, eh?