Believe it or not, there is a real, serious, if very small organization, the Expansionist Party of the United States, which wants to – well, to reassemble the British Empire, and then some, under the United States Constitution. (If the British Empire had had such a thing in the first place, or something like it – a system which did grant all the colonies representation at Westminster – I think it would probably still exist.) You can learn more about the XP-USA by clicking http://members.aol.com/XPUS/index.html. They want to bring in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, and that’s just for starters.
A while ago I started a GD thre about these ideas, “Should the United States expand its territory?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=177216&highlight=expand+territory) which boiled the blood of a few patriotic Canadians – Canada being first on the list, obviously, if the U.S. ever does decide to follow an expansionist course. I like the idea of Canada uniting with the U.S. so we can have some Canadians in the U.S. Congress – maybe open some serious debate about single-payer health care. I’m a democratic socialist and I admire the Canadian New Democratic Party. We need the Canadians in Washington!
But having Australians in the U.S. Congress is something I haven’t thought much about – I don’t know much about Australian politics. What do you guys think? If there were Australians in Congress, would they push the political center of gravity leftward, or rightward, or whichward?
And let’s keep all this in perspective: A union between the U.S. and Australia would be a political union only. The currently existing states of Australia would remain in place as going concerns, and for national government, Australians would be voting to send representatives to Washington instead of Canberra. There is no reason why this would require the Australians to take up American sports, or change their electric voltage, TV formats, or traffic laws, or start drinking American beer.
Remember, also, there is no reason why such a change would lead to any massive shifts in population. That is, Yanks aren’t suddenly going to develop an interest in emigrating to the former nations of Canada or Australia, just because the political borders are down. It would be completely unlike earlier episodes of U.S. expansionism across North America, in which the U.S. flag was preceded by the slaughter of Indians and followed by Yankee settlers by the millions.