You no longer hear much about about Canada being absorbed into the U.S. as the 51st state, perhaps because our (former) good friends to the north despise the idea. After all, who wants to join a country being led by a certified lunatic? The same might be said of Trump’s other hallucination … purchasing Greenland from Denmark. It was apparent during my recent visit to their Capital (Nuuk) that they have zero interest in such a notion. As I recall, a referendum on the question had been rejected recrntly by an overwhelming majority of the population.

In the end, this form of territorial expansion is little more than the feverish delusions associated with the Make America Great Again silliness emanating from our autocratic wanna-be. Stuck in the past, Trump seems to have forgotten what happened to the colonial powers of bygone eras, of Hitler’s dream of Aryan lebensraum (German living space), of Serbian expansionist thrusts in the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s breakup, and of Putin’s incursion into Ukraine to recreate a Soviet empire. These things seldom go well for the aggressors in the end.

Still, I might be in favor of Canadian annexation if each distinct province were admitted to our Union as a separate state. If you disregard Alberta and Manitoba, the remainder likely would tip our divided nation into the blue column. At least it would make the propaganda campaign of Fox News et. al. a great deal more challenging. Canadians apparently are not as dumb as the typical American. They could not possibly be.

I can remember a good neighbor of ours when my late wife and I spent our winters in Florida … a cultural wasteland but admittedly warmer than Wisconsin in January. Anyway, perhaps a dozen years back, our friend Mike (who migrated south each winter from the Toronto area) vented one day while we were on the golf course: What the f#%k is wrong with you Americans. We love Obama up in Canada.

I had no answer for him, other than the possibility that those residing south of the border with Canada are hooked on stupid pills. The other, and more likely, reason can be attributable to the virulent strain of racism that America has never been able to shake. Despite Obama’s charisma and political success, his election spurred a growth in hate groups and set the stage for the tea party movement and later the MAGA phenomenon. Nothing drives Americans more than irrational fear.

However, there remains a question of why the nation of hockey players to our north has resisted integration with the colossus to their south. After all, we do share a common language, culture, and ethnic origins, at least to some extent. Some kind of union seemed likely. But it never happened, though not for a lack of effort on the part of the U.S.

As we all know, the fate of Canada was determined on the Plains of Abraham when a British invasion force under Major-General James Wolfe defeated a French army led by the Marquis de Montcalm. Both generals perished in the fighting but the outcome sealed British dominance over most of the eastern portion of North America from that point on, though a Frankish culture remained embedded in the Quebec area. Ironically, while the so called 7- Years War between France and England protected the sovereignty of British loyalists in the colonies (and along the eastern provinces), the crown’s efforts to tax its American subjects to pay down their consequent war debt led to escalating rounds of protest. In the end, this revulsion at paying for the Crown’s protection indirectly led to an outright Colonial revolt by the mid-1770s. Americans were tax deadbeats from day one. They still are.

Even as the Colonies struggled for independence, they looked avariciously toward the north. The first campaign of the Continental Army in 1775 was to venture north in a quixotic attempt to enlist French speaking settlers in Quebec to the rebels side in what by then seemed an inevitable revolutionary conflict.  Richard Montgomery led an army from Lake Champlain while Benedict Arnold (yes, that Benedict) led another thrust through Maine. These foolhardy efforts ended when the colonial forces were defeated at the Battle of Quebec in December of 1775.

In the War of 1812, America once again set its sights on bringing an independent Canada (well, what would become Canada in 1867) into the bosom of the United States. Armed forces initiated incursions into Canadian territory at three points along the border. It was thought by some that residents of our northern neighbor would welcome being part of the U.S. But America’s expansionist dreams came to a quick end when all three incursions were quickly turned aside. The residents to our north shared no such happy vision of union with us. The net result was the native population across the border cemented their identity as belonging to a separate nation, one yet wedded for the most part to their British roots.

The final military campaign from America occurred at the end of the Civil War but was not a government-sponsored venture. A large group of Fenian volunteers (Irish nationalists) crossed the border in 1866. Many were hardened veterans of America’s recent descent into domestic  fratricide. They had a grand delusion of embarrassing Britain in a manner that would somehow lead to Ireland’s independence. That effort failed almost before it began, though the Irish did throw off the yoke of English oppression some 55 years later.

That was pretty much the end of military efforts to satisfy America’s expansionary dreams northward. Not that illusions of a greater America went silent. No, they were directed westward and included Hawaii, the Phillipines, Alaska, and so forth. There was a diplomatic kerfuffle about where to locate the border separating what is now Washington State and British Columbia but it was resolved peacefully during the administration of President James Polk. America was not immune from the colonial fever that struck the other big powers.

But there was one final negotiated effort to expand America’s influence over its northern neighbor. During the Administration of Ulysses S. Grant, the U.S. and England wrangled over assertions that the latter had prolonged Civil War by allowing naval vessels to be built at British ports, ships that wound up as Confederate raiding vessels. Grant argued that these marine resources enabled the South to hold out for two years after Gettysburg. He reasoned that these raiding ships caused significant damage to the Union’s efforts at strangling the rebellion by blockading all Southern ports.

Early in these negotiations, wild demands were made, including a proposal that matters might be settled if Britain recognized America’s claim to control Canadian sovereignty. We would replace them as lawful protectors of this vast land to our north. Either that, or compensation in the amount of $2 billion dollars (in 1872 dollars). In the end, Grant permitted an international tribunal to settle the dispute (on much more reasonable terms), an approach which set a precedent for negotiating future disputes among nations. Canada thus continued its march toward independence and full sovereignty.

Once again, what seems like a contemporary political obsession has deep historical roots. That is so often the case. For example, we have our current immigration craze. But that is nothing new, neither in the America policy landscape nor abroad. Read the British press and you will find many contemporary examples of xenophobic articles about alien invasions and lost cultural integrity. It is an international obsession.

Fear of immigrants has a long and storied history in the U.S., starting with newly arrived immigrants from the wrong Protestant sect. Roger Williams established the Rhode Island colony in 1636 after being banished by the Massachusetts Bay Colony for having unacceptable religious views. By the 1850s, a nativist party, the ‘No-Nothings’, were strong enough to win local and state elections. Their platform was largely based on keeping Irish Catholics and other ethnic or religious undesirables out of the country. They were not an isolated initiative by any means.

Labor demand has driven much of our ambivalence toward ‘questionable’ foreigners. We first invited Chinese workers in during the late 19th century to do the hard work of building our intercontinental railway system before excluding them by law. We next attracted Japanese workers to labor cheaply in our fields before pushing them out in the early years of the 20th century. Rising fears that American cultural purity was being despoiled after WWI by an influx of inferior immigrants led to draconian quotas in the early 1920s. Mexican and Latino workers have been welcomed and then reviled in several cycles, usually in response to larger economic cycles.

Without a sense of history, every issue takes on a dramatic hue. Oh my, the sky is falling. In truth, the sky has usually fallen several times before, and usually without much effect. Not that some issues  might ultimately prove to be apocalyptic. The kind of climate change we see coming is not new over the long history of our planet. However, we probably have not seen anything quite like it since the emergence of homo sapiens. Even here, a sense of history contains critical lessons. In this instance, we better pay attention. This rise in global temps might indeed be apocalyptical this time around.

Of one thing I’m rather certain. Trump’s dreams of a greater America, of expanding our control over other lands, will wither and die. Such dreams of usurpers and malevolent expansionists typically do. Sometimes, however, there is a heavy cost to be paid before returning to some kind of historical equilibrium.

What bothers me most is that conservatives would erase an honest and full understanding of our pasts … warts and all. As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has recently lamented, Trump’s attacks on our universities has little to do with saving money. Rather, it has everything to do with preventing us from pursuing the truth of things. That, indeed, would be unfortunate if successful.