Should Canada Build A Wall? January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 A lot of my friends are making a Plan B. Portugal? Italy? Chile? New Zealand? Israel? Canada? It’s hard for me to imagine it could come to that. I hope we all share a determination that it won’t. But Canada is thinking about this, too. In brief part: . . . For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto. Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals. I’m not surprised by what’s happening there – not at all. During my graduate work in the United States in the 1980s, I sometimes listened to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk show host and later television personality. I remarked to friends at the time that, with each broadcast, it was if Mr. Limbaugh were wedging the sharp end of a chisel into a faint crack in the moral authority of U.S. political institutions, and then slamming the other end of that chisel with a hammer. In the decades since, week after week, year after year, Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have hammered away – their blows’ power lately amplified through social media and outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity. The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. How should Canada prepare? . . . There’s much, much more; all of it hugely worth reading — and sharing. The author is not a crazy person. The warnings are real. I’m not sure about a Plan B, but I would suggest a Plan A: Join your local chapter of the League of Women Voters . . . join Field Team 6 . . . join Vote Forward . . . and, if you can — now, when your support is so much more leveraged than when most people will be giving next summer and fall — fund the Party.