Millions in your country??

Submitted by J.S. (Canada), Oct 20, 2006 at 17:17

May I be so bold as to ask which country is that - you've got *millions* of Muslims? Are you in the States? Anyway, when I said Alberta, Canada has been characterized (usually derogatory) as "red-neck" -- it means that most Albertans are working-class (not many with university educations), farmers, oil-rig workers, and they're not particularly keen on "foreigners" (that is, "outsiders" to a rural community -- tend to be "xenophobic" (?)-- the opposite of "cosmopolitan" or "sophisticated" -- they're more down to earth.) And that was one of the surprising things about the Premier of Alberta suddenly taking a fancy to opening up the flood gates to third world immigrants...

The province of Alberta has been "ruled" by the Conservative Party since 1971 (and, prior to the Conservatives it was the Social Credit Party -- from 1935 to 1971 -- the Social Credit Party was a populist party *and* during the dirty thirties Premier Aberhart was a fundamentalist Christian, I believe it's accurate to say he admired nazis and eugenics -- it took the Alberta legislature until the 1990s to get sterilization laws off the books -- Aberhart had the nickname of "thumpin' Bill" because he was a kind of hell and brimstone preacher who'd give these firey radio addresses/biblical sermons/rants...fuming against the "elites" in the East, hmm, along with other railings (that's against Torontonians, etc.)

In a way, it's interesting in that the two "prairie" (ie farming provinces) in Canada went in completely different (opposite) political directions during the "dirty thirties." The province to the east of Alberta is Saskatchewan -- during the 30s Saskatchewan went totally Socialist (origins of the ultra leftist federalist New Democratic Party), thus Saskatchewan produced Tommy Douglas (another preacher, but leftist, who railed for socialized medicine, farmer collectives, unions, etc.) Anyway, some have claimed that the difference between Alberta (being to the right) and Saskatchewan (being to the left) was due to the influence of Americans living in Alberta (there was a cattle drive -- straight from Texas up to Alberta.)

I don't know how much weight to give that theory -- but, it's seems all to have vanished -- the city I live in is as Leftist (as "politically correct") as anything you'll find in the Netherlands...(hmmm, there's also been, I think, a lot of political corruption going on in Alberta politics-- but it's behind closed doors -- the media is in bed with the politicians, so there is no public, investigative journalism.)

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".