From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 2/7/2026 1:09 PM, Julian wrote:   
   > We Americans celebrate July 4, 1776, as our national birthday, and this   
   > year, of course, marks our 250th. But the American Revolution began   
   > before that. And when did it end? Maybe it never did. In 1812, warhawks   
   > in Congress and president James Madison – the man known to posterity as   
   > the very father of the Constitution – launched an invasion of Canada in   
   > the hopes of completing the American Revolution. Canada was unfinished   
   > business. We had invaded Québec in 1775, but that was a disaster. And   
   > even though the 13 colonies that became the United States succeeded in   
   > winning their independence from Britain, the newborn US was not   
   > altogether free. The British still had forts in our territory, British   
   > agents were suspected of inciting Indians to harry our western frontier   
   > and the British Navy wielded considerable power over our commerce.   
   >   
   > And then there was Canada, a vast territorial base from which the   
   > British could launch attacks against us, if they ever so chose. So was   
   > our war for independence really over? America’s first three presidential   
   > administrations didn’t want war. George Washington declared America   
   > neutral in the wars between revolutionary France and Britain – despite a   
   > mutual defense treaty we had ratified with pre-revolutionary France –   
   > and did his utmost to keep us from being dragged into Europe’s   
   > superpower conflict.   
   >   
   > John Adams hewed to the same policy, despite his affinity for the   
   > British and deep antipathy to the French Revolution’s ideology.   
   > Washington had earlier been disturbed by French meddling in American   
   > politics, notably in 1793 when the French ambassador (or minister, as   
   > the title then was) Edmond-Charles Genêt enlisted Americans to serve on   
   > privateers to harass British shipping and promoted pro-French   
   > “democratic societies.” Those societies were aligned with fully   
   > homegrown ones that were the nucleus of Thomas Jefferson’s political   
   > movement (and, eventually, party). France’s revolutionary regime   
   > eventually turned on Genêt, and he was lucky to be accepted by   
   > Washington as a refugee. But during the Adams administration, France   
   > persisted as a source of mischief, abroad and at home in the US, which   
   > led a Federalist Congress to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts,   
   > empowering Adams to expel foreigners at will.   
   >   
   > Yes, more than 200 years ago, American politics was riven by bitter   
   > partisan divides over foreign influence and whether to remain neutral or   
   > aid in a foreign war for freedom and democracy (or, on the other side,   
   > for the international order and to prevent the spread of radical   
   > leftism). During the Whiskey Rebellion – which Washington blamed,   
   > somewhat implausibly, on Genêt –Jefferson even questioned whether armed   
   > intimidation of judges and federal agents was truly an “insurrection” or   
   > just an occasional “riot.” The riotous mobs of Jefferson’s own   
   > “democratical societies,” in their pro-French ardor, were not entirely   
   > unlike today’s antifa types.   
   >   
   > The Alien and Sedition Acts added to Adams’s unpopularity and Jefferson   
   > won the 1800 presidential election. He believed some of the Federalists,   
   > notably Alexander Hamilton, really did want to undo the American   
   > Revolution while the British Empire harbored the same desire. Even so,   
   > he tried to keep the country out of the European bloodbath by means of   
   > an embargo on trade with the belligerents. But that only imposed more   
   > hardship on America’s export industries, including Southern agriculture.   
   >   
   > Trade, territorial acquisition, strategic logic and ideology all   
   > provided grounds for Madison’s War of 1812, a war that America didn’t   
   > exactly win – the British even burned down the original White House, and   
   > of course, we didn’t get Canada – but that made us stronger anyway. We   
   > fought well enough to dispel any notion, in our own minds as much as   
   > those of the British, that our independence was insecure. And Canada   
   > became, if not exactly our hostage, a vulnerable asset the British now   
   > knew would be expensive to protect.   
   >   
   > Yet more than 200 years later, Donald Trump likes to speak of Canada as   
   > fated to become our 51st state, although if he gets his way, Greenland   
   > will become a US territory first. Trump believes Canada depends as much   
   > on us today, both strategically and economically, as much as it ever did   
   > on the British Empire. So why shouldn’t it be ours, as it was once   
   > Britain’s? His thinking about Greenland resembles the way Americans   
   > thought about Canada in the lead-up to the War of 1812, too, in one   
   > respect: he sees it as a hole in our security fence. To forestall that,   
   > the US has already been the guarantor of Greenland’s security since   
   > World War Two. Isn’t it a rip-off if Denmark can extort security   
   > subsidies from us, forever, on the threat of Greenland going undefended   
   > or, worse, falling under the influence of a rival?   
   >   
   > Jefferson had some constitutional qualms about purchasing the Louisiana   
   > territory from France, yet he found the strategic logic irresistible.   
   > “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our   
   > natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.” Whether or not Trump   
   > feels that way about Greenland, he’s doubtless aware, real-estate man   
   > that he is, that Greenland’s 836,300 square miles exceeds the size of   
   > the Louisiana Purchase. It would be the largest single territorial   
   > expansion in American history. Forget the history books – Trump wants to   
   > write his legacy on the map.   
   >   
   > If it happens, it’ll be negotiated: even before Trump pledged at Davos   
   > not to use force, or tariffs, to take over Greenland, there was never   
   > any real risk of a War of 2026. But a problem remains. If Greenland is   
   > already a protectorate of ours in all but name, the same is true of   
   > Europe as a whole. Sooner or later, the price of accepting the American   
   > empire’s protection may be accepting that protection implies   
   > sovereignty. And Europeans may decide they’d rather lose Greenland than   
   > have to provide for their own defense.   
   >   
   >   
   > Daniel McCarthy   
    >   
   US spending exceeds that of all other NATO members combined.   
      
   The United States remains the largest contributor to NATO, accounting   
   for roughly two-thirds of the total alliance defense spending.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)