Gorsnak I took a look at my reply again and I apologize for the snarky tone.
Look there are web sites that worship catsup, squirrels and Cap’n Kirk. why do you give this sad site the time of day?
Gorsnak and kinpengvin, I appreciate your pungent patriotism, but you must acknowledge that not all Canadians feel the way you do about this. Union with the U.S. is a live issue in Canada – in fact, it probably gets a lot more attention there than it gets here. Check out the website of United North America at www.unitednorthamerica.org. Also the Toronto-based American Millennial Order at www.angelfire.com/country/americaamerica2000/index.html; the Alberta Residents League at www.albertaresidentsleague.com; and Ontario USA at www.ontariousa.org.
The Canschluss is coming! Resistance is futile! Prepare to be USsimilated!
I think you don’t know what you’re talking about if you think a few fringe loonies indicate the existence of a “live issue”. This is not a live issue, and very few Canadians do not feel in ways similar (though some perhaps not as extreme) to myself.
Bollocks? You are from Texas, right?
I’m entirely in favour of joining up the UK, US, Canada, Australia and so on, although I go for the new government option. This would be a good time to sort out a few things people don’t like about the election system, and every country could control govern itself under a common leadership. The Queen could be completely cut off from the state and continue her worthwhile position as a figurehead, thus solving that little problem.
It’ll never happen, but I can dream…
This whole thread got me to thinking about the lyrics to the song by the Arrogant Worms: 
Oh, come back, proud Canadians
To before you had TV,
No hockey night in Canada,
There was no CBC (Oh, my God!).
In 1812, Madison was mad,
He was the president, you know
Well, he thought he’d tell the British where they ought to go
He thought he’d invade Canada,
He thought that he was tough
Instead we went to Washington…
And burned down all his stuff!
And the White House burned, burned, burned,
And we’re the one’s that did it!
It burned, burned, burned,
While the president ran and cried.
It burned, burned, burned,
And things were very historical.
And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies
Waa waa waah!
In the War of 1812!
Now some hillbillies from Kentucky,
Dressed in green and red,
Left home to fight in Canada,
But they returned home dead
It’s the only war the Yankees lost, except for Vietnam
And also the Alamo… and the Bay of… ham.
The loser was America,
The winner was ourselves,
So join right in and gloat about the War of 1812
And the White House burned, burned, burned,
And we’re the one’s that did it!
It burned, burned, burned,
While the president ran and cried.
It burned, burned, burned,
And things were very historical.
And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies
Waa waa waah!
In the War of 1812!
In 1812, we were just sittin’ around,
Mindin’ our own business, puttin’ crops into the ground.
We heard the soldiers coming and we didn’t like that sound.
So we took a boat to Washington and burned it to the ground.
Oh… we… fired our guns, but the Yankees kept-a coming,
There wasn’t quite as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and the Yankees started running,
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, oh, oh…
They ran through the snow and they ran through the forest,
They ran through the bushes where the beavers wouldn’t go.
They ran so fast, they forgot to take their culture,
Back to America, and Gulf and Texaco
So, if you go to Washington, its buildings clean and nice,
Bring a pack of matches, and we’ll burn the White House twice!
And the White House burned, burned, burned,
But the Americans won’t admit it
It burned, burned, burned,
It burned and burned and burned
It burned, burned, burned,
Now, I bet that made them mad
And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies
Waa waa waah!
In the War of 1812
Daizy
That’s classic, Daizy. Thanks for the chuckle.
Jeff
Not to point out the obvious, but union with the U.S. simply is NOT a serious matter of debate here. The population of Canada is 31,000,000. If you can find five thousand people who support American annexation, that’s an insignificant number of people as compared to the 30,000,000 plus who consider it an absurd idea. The odds of a majority of Canadians - heck, even 20% of Canadians - supporting such a move anytime in the next century is pretty much zero.
I like the USA; I respect it more than most Canadians. I do not want to be a part of it. It’s your country, not mine. And most Canadians feel far more strongly that way than I do.
And thank you for seeing the humour Jeff. 
Daizy
It’s the most bizarre proposal since the Expansionist Party won a majority in the House in Grand Fenwick!
Seriously, I grew up thirty miles from the Canadian border – I listened to CKWS and CKLC, watched Channel 11 (and Channel 8 out of Ottawa when we could get it, and 13 out of Peterborough after it signed on). And what it did for me is: I’m proud of my country – most of the time; we do have a way of being the sort of bumbling doofus who doesn’t know his own strength, and thinks he and only he has all the right answers to the world’s problems, and that attitude has got to piss people in the rest of the world off.
But I never thought that democracy was exclusively an American idea – John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, Flora MacDonald, and the rest ensured that I was exposed to political debates that had nothing to do with rural upstate New York. It’s possible I’m the only board member who recalls when Social Credit had a chance of becoming the Loyal Opposition.
And my personal opinion is that having the two countries, sharing a culture but with significant differences, sitting side by side for 3000 miles of border, is good for both of them. Face it, Canada is not a world power by itself; America needs to provide protection beyond what its own forces do, for its own sake. Canada has gotten rich exporting raw materials and manufactures to what is I believe the world’s richest market, sitting right next door to its big cities. And each country provides an opportunity for “experiment” for the other – we can learn how to do and how not to do health care from the Canadian example; Mackenzie King had a running list ready, when he took office, of what helped and what failed in combatting the Depression, courtesy of the New Deal. Examples are multifold. Each provides a different point of view for the other, ensuring that nobody’s opinion need be parochial if they bother listening to what’s happening a few miles away.
I love my own country. But I think I love Canada nearly as much – it’s “family” in the sense that you feel about your aunt, uncle, and cousins who live a short distance away, but their place is “home” too.
I think what is killing me here is the utter lack of understanding of the Canadian bill of rights, much less the Constitution Act of 1982.
I forgive the Yanks for not knowing this, but shame on my fellow Canuks!
Lets assume the U.S./Canadian merger was attempted peacefully.
Problem number 1)
Something of this magnitude would require by law, a referendum. I SERIOUSLY doubt that such a course of action would pass the Canadian people.
Problem number 2)
This would obviously require a change in our constitution. According to the Act, all the provinces and territories would have to agree unanimously. We can’t get Quebec to agree on the flavour of coffee to serve at First Minister’s meetings! You think they would go for merger with the US??? In the 1999 election, a majority of them voted in a party whose sole purpose is to LEAVE the Confederation for independence for Pete’s sake!
Problem number 3)
ANY act/bill in Canada CAN NOT become law without the Governor General signing it. (I realize most of you likely think that this is strictly a ceremonial thing, and that he G.G. is required to sign any bill that passes the Commons and Senate, but that isn’t true. The G.G. is Her Majesty’s official representative in Canada, as Her Majesty is the Canadian Head of State. Thusly, in a round about way, the Yanks would be required, BY CANADIAN LAW, to get Her Majesty’s permission to expand their “empire”!
Is it just me, are is it pretty much impossible for to imagine the average Yank wanting ANYTHING that the Crown had to give permission for?
Now, let’s look at it from the American side. This is easy to sum up.
Would anyone like to take a guess how long it would take the U.S. government to send in troops to one of it’s new “states” with groups like the P.Q., The Maritimes Separation Federation, The Alberta Independence Party?
Do you really think the American’s would WANT to honour the agreements already in place with the Indians? The American’s have never been in favour of the “Self governing” theories we use in Canada.
While our economy is CERTIANLY a lot better off them most countries in the world, the American dollar would plummet like Margaret Trudeau’s top in a disco!
HEH.
I think we should demand a large financial tribute from Mexico as compensation for the millions of it’s citizens who receive free medical care, education, etc.
The only country I can see the US annexing is Canada and that is pretty far-fetched. Any of the other countries mentioned? Dream on.
You can have my country when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Ireland’s already getting a lot of income from inward-investing American corporations, so the economic expansion has already begun (not to mention American tourists and their genealogy searches).
You’d certainly make sure the health service decided whether it wanted to be private or public once and for all.
We might get a little more value for money in taxation, too, and maybe we’d get some decent freeways out of the deal, not to mention deregulation and removal of tarrifs from key industries (or maybe not? cough steel cough).
However, you guys really don’t know how to make decent beer, and there is the little matter of the necessity for non-proliferation of guns, not to mention bombs, and a dislike for colonisation…
No. Absolutely not. Forget it. Not happening. This might piss off those of the contingent who say that anyone who doesn’t bend over for the Washington Monument is anti-American, but incredible as it might seem, not everyone wants to be American. Some of us quite like not being American, and more to the point we like being Canadian, and we get quite irritated when someone blithely suggests we ought to live in the United States. You haven’t done a thing to earn our allegiance that we haven’t done ourselves. Now go away.
In re the crackpots, the idea of political union was a squib that was vigorously pushed in 2001-2002 by the National Post, an extreme right-wing rag that during that time was the personal fief of Conrad Black, an extremely unpleasant individual who later stomped off in a huff and gave up his Canadian citizenship when he found he couldn’t become a British lord. It was around the same time that Nelson Mandela became an honorary Canadian citizen, which I considered an excellent trade. Literally nobody else was even talking about it, and despite all the frothing from the Post, Canadians very wisely refrained from picking up that particular grenade.
“Conrad Black, an extremely unpleasant individual who later stomped off in a huff and gave up his Canadian citizenship when he found he couldn’t become a British lord.”
Actually, he was to become a Knight, not a Lord.
As a side point on this comment, I think it was a VERY bad decision for the Canadian government to take peerage away. Many of our Prime Ministers and many, many notable people were Officer’s of the British Empire, Knight’s of the Order and a few were even Members of the Garter!
It’s amazing what people will do for a peerage. In the UK people will donate hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Pounds to Theaters, museums and arts in general hoping to a Knighthood or other such peerage.
It was removed in Canada because the government felt that the idea of Knighting someone, or appointing them to a house was seen as making on man less equal then another. What a load of hooey!
And as for Mr. Black, while I am no fan of him, I was rather happy with what he did. If a person is knighted in the UK, his rank and title may be used anywhere in the Commonwealth. The ONLY reason he had to do what he did was that the PM didn’t like him, and used a seldom-invoked law in which he can block a peerage. It was actually in bad taste if you ask me!
I want to add Ireland, Britain, Scotland, and Japan. Who wants Canada? They don’t have Cool castles and they don’t have anime studios? What kind of life is that? 
No offense to Canada. I’m sure its just fine up there. But I don’t really want to annex our neighnor to the north. I mean, really, we have very different ways of living within the same English philosphical system.
Regardless as to the OP:
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Why is it so bad that pople whould have control over their own healthcare? It may not be as easy as having the government give everyone stuff, but this way people get to make more fo their own choices.
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Why shouldn’t Americans take a special pride in their accomplishments? Isn’t that pride and patriotism part of what makes America great?
smiling bandit: Scotland is part of Britain.