(Submitter’s Note - I included MLA Brennan Day’s response to this jingoistic fuckstick because it gave me a warm-fuzzy. Hope that’s alright, this place could use some positivity sometimes. Also, the letter was a lot longer, this is just what was posted on the site.)

In multiple sections of the letter, Maine Senator Martin criticizes Canada on the topic of freedom.

For example, Martin claimed in the letter, “For too long, Canadian citizens have been subjected to an illusion of freedom administered through bureaucratic means.”

The letter continued, “Their speech would be truly free. Political expression, religious conviction, and the right to assemble — these would no longer be subject to the ever-changing winds of Canadian tribunals or hate speech commissions.”

“Perhaps the starkest example of this is the Second Amendment,” Martin continued. “Upon admission, residents of the new American states would have the same right to keep and bear arms as those in Texas, Florida, or Wyoming.”

The letter read, “New Americans would be expected to learn and respect the Constitution, salute the American flag, and teach their children the history of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln — not Louis Riel or Pierre Trudeau.”

In his response, Day said, “We believe in individual rights, but not at the expense of collective responsibility.”

“We are a distinct nation, forged through compromise, built on cooperation, and defined not by revolution, but by evolution.”

“We don’t measure freedom by the number of firearms owned (but we do own a few),” the MLA wrote.

“We measure it [freedom] by how we care for one another—how we build strong public institutions that ensure our kids are educated, our seniors are looked after, and no one goes bankrupt because they broke a leg or needed chemotherapy.”

Day said that Canadians are not “Americans with a maple leaf sticker.”

“What you call baggage—we call the backbone of a functioning democracy,” Day countered Martin.

UBC Political Science Professor Stewart Prest says the letter, laying out conditions for provinces joining the U.S, is just another example of throwing American weight around.

“No one is asking to join the United States with special Canadian conditions; it’s just making up a piece of a conversation that doesn’t exist,” he explained.