There was a recent debate at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington about the merger of Canada and the United States. The idea comes from Diane Francis, a Canadian journalist with dual US and Canadian citizenship. She says she is really advocating a customs union; integration, even to her, seems politically a non-starter. But what caught my attention was her rationale. She claims that the US is becoming more liberal and Canada is becoming less parochial. Well, maybe the latter point is true, I don’t know. But the idea that the US is becoming more liberal will come as major news to those who see a determined effort to return America to the late 19th Century, when mega industrial barons had the run of the place and bought as many sentient Congressmen as they could find.

No, the United States is not becoming more liberal. Being more liberal implies a consensus that a national safety net is important, that people should have a living wage and that the super-rich should pay a higher rate of tax than the rest of us. In other words the country would be more Epicurean.