High-speed rail coming to Canada!..in 4 years...maybe

[danbrotherston]

Heh, yeah Canada is definitely not a joke... but that speech was pretty shocking from a western liberal.

Western pragmatic centrist.

At this point, I take "liberal" and "centrist" to be synonyms.

And there's absolutely nothing pragmatic about what the American democrats are doing.

But unfortunately the US captures an inordinate amount of my mindshare (and realistically, most people in the western world also).

I will say, his speech was also pragmatic in that it advocated against increasing nationalism, and for continued and better cooperation. To me, this is a fairly liberal view, and it's one that I do like. I think globalization _can_ benefit us all, but these things tend only to be fair when we have a large number of smaller (and more equal) partners.

I've had this conversation with Canadians and Europeans alike. The "made in Canada" movement is a nice, but why not "made in the free world (i.e., not the USA)".  Also with things like Signal. Some in Europe say that it's no better than WhatsApp because they are both based in the US and that we should instead create/use some European messaging corporate monopoly. And to be fair, being located in the US _IS_ a legitimate problem. But to me, it's not as big a problem as monopoly control over our communication channels.

We need a better world order, not just a restoration of the previous situation with a new leader. That's not a view that those in power (liberal or conservative) typically express (well, unless their followers are particularly gullible).