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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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Indeed, the issue appears to be so universally mandated up north that Carney’s nemesis, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, has primarily attacked Carney for… not being antagonistic enough towards the US, particularly in regard to said tariffs. Obviously Poilievre is falling into a classic bear trap tendency of conservatives: fearing the social isolation of a strongly differentiated viewpoint and therefore gradually moulding himself into “Liberals but sensible”

No, PP is responding to incentives.

Trump's response to the chance of having a potential ally as Canada's PM was to go out of the way to be so needlessly insulting and toxic that the Tories lost the election. The Canadian people are not offering a road to political power if you appear servile to a bully who keeps going around threatening to annex the country.

It's almost trolling to write an entire piece about the lack of Canadian nationalism and to opine on how conservative leaders in Canada should act and ignore the very thing that triggers nationalistic fear that makes it impossible.

It's almost trolling to write an entire piece about the lack of Canadian nationalism and to opine on how conservative leaders in Canada should act and ignore the very thing that triggers nationalistic fear that makes it impossible.

It sounds like the idea is that the function of the conservative leaders of other countries is advocating vassaldom to the US.