That's silly. Canada is the loyalist colony. They are still part of the Commonwealth. If Theil is a monarchist, then surely Canada is more the good guy to him!
And we should question how "anti-Progressive" monarchism actually is. Given that the American Revolution was driven in large part by a desire to expand beyond the Appalachians (which King George III had banned with the Proclamation of 1763), and that the Empire banned slavery outright in 1833, a full 30 years before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, I think we can say that First Nations and enslaved peoples -- focus of core Progressive causes -- would have both been better off as subjects of the Crown, in a Loyalist America.
So maybe monarchism is good?
As an American, that just makes no emotional sense. My lifetime experience is that Americans just plain don't think about Canada much, and it wouldn't make much sense as a target for "a war to fuel the nationalist fire." Mexico makes far more sense in that regard. Canada (or at least parts of it) would probably be most useful as place for political enemies to be forced into exile.
I'm under the vague impression that Ukraine has a much more important place in the Russian psyche than Canada is in the US one. There are always important differences in the details with stuff like this, so it's not very enlightening to do a mad libs style substitution
When a place is a void in the public’s mind, that’s the ideal target to fill it with nationalist fury. The people of Belgrade didn’t think very often about Bosnia in 1980; thirteen years later their leaders were running a genocide to cleanse Bosnia of the elements that supposedly threatened Serbian unity.
Yeah, but that's moving the goalposts. I was only commenting on suitability as a target for "a war to fuel the nationalist fire." There are already hooks for that w.r.t. Mexico, but they'd have to be created out of whole cloth for Canada.
It’s because the advantages are either theoretical and illusionary, or only enjoyable by an extremely narrow oligarchy.
It’s like asking why North Korea seems to have all the disadvantages of Stalinism but none of the advantages.
Protectionist policies, focus on national identity, celebration of traditional values and gender roles; a “national CEO” whose transformative powers transcend the slow, frustrating democratic machinery. This describes both Putinism and the American right’s goals. It’s not a coincidence that they were increasingly cozy with Russia until Putin rolled into Ukraine.
Putinists love to make the claim that Ukraine isn’t a real nation (and Steve Bannon went on record to agree). It’s worth noting that the same arguments would apply to Canada. If the Thiel-funded right succeeds, they’ll eventually need a war to fuel the nationalist fire. Why not a reunification of the North American colonies? Canada is obviously controlled by decadent forces that need to be purged, just like Ukraine…
Trump wanted to buy Greenland. Good old territorial expansion is part of this value system.