Although we are disagreeing, I hope that this is not in an antagonistic sense - I do find this conversation interesting because it's not often the opportunity arises to discuss this topic.
As someone who was raised American, went to American schools, lived and breathed American culture for over the decade I went from child to adult.. moving away and living and breathing Canadian culture has been an enlightening experience.
Getting back to the topic..
These rebuttals really fall flat to my ears. They sound like technicalities that are constructed to paper over the underlying reality. My feelings on this topic aren't from propaganda, but from having experienced how people feel, act, and behave when I was growing up in America.
It's only after I moved to Canada that I realized that most Americans have to live in fear of police. Police are able to break laws at whim, and abuse people's rights, and the mechanism for resource is so inaccessible to the average person that it might as well not exist. I thought this was normal and didn't detract from "freedom" when I was growing up.
Now, this happens in Canada too, but on average they are _less_ able to abuse people. They still do, but the government and society does a better job of ensuring consequences in more of those situations.
The institutionalized pipeline to slavery that exists in America doesn't exist in Canada. Now, this one is something that affected me less on a personal level, because that institutionalized pipeline is targeted largely at black people, and I'm not black.
That said, if I was black, and in America.. the processed plant flower I'm lighting up and enjoying this saturday in my basement would be very much a direct threat to my freedoms. That would be enough, in many parts of America, to brand me as a dangerous threat to society. And it would be enough for my freedoms to be taken away by the state, and then for my labour to be rented out to private companies against my will.
This is not a hypothetical circumstance. This is a reality that tens of thousands of Americans live. This is on the ground reality.
But really for me, the emotional aspect is how people just live in less fear of the government here. Their government, on average, abuses them less. It's less capricious. It's less mean to them. It doesn't step on them as much as the American government steps on Americans.
But you do have to live and breathe it to understand the change in mentality.
> But the one thing we do best is individual liberties
This is a cultural mythology. An earnest review of the evidence shows that America is, in real terms of delivering liberties to its people, at the back of the pack of the cohort of first world nations.
> It’s why we’re where we are in the grand scheme of human history and Canada is basically just our suburb enjoying all of the benefits (national security with next to no defense budget, unlimited free trade a short truck ride away) while avoiding the cost.
I'm not too concerned about the place of Canada in "human history". The human suffering it seems to entail to gain that acclaim seems not really worth it.
You're entirely right about your other points though. Canada has benefited greatly from the US's economic engine. In fact, I think part of the reason Canadians enjoy more freedom than Americans is because of this.
It's adjacent to the American market, but segregated enough to make it a much smaller market. This has historically made it less interesting for powerful commercial interests to come meddle in Canadian political affairs and laws, and over time that means Canada has been able to protect its individual liberties better.
That pressure to undermine freedoms through loopholes, creative interpretation, and just straight up ignoring some of them.. that hasn't been as high in Canada, and that's definitely a circumstantial reality having to do with its proximity to the USA.