US renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America' on maps amid Canada-US tensions
Renaming Lake Ontario Is Not Comedy. It Is Usurpation in Small Letters.
When a ruler claims the right to rename a shared lake by decree, and giant private powers snap to attention, we see how easily arbitrary power walks in under a joke.
The story is told as if it were a jest. A president, amidst a trade quarrel, signs an order that Lake Ontario shall, in all his government’s usage, be called “Lake America.” The order reaches also to the Gulf of Mexico, now styled “Gulf of America” for his subjects. Canada replies with mockery, unveiling a great “Lake Ontario” sign and promising that the name remains “today and forever.” The president circulates fantastical images of signs kicked over and geese in martial trim. It is tempting to smile and pass on. Yet in matters of power, laughter is often the veil under which pretensions of dominion first enter unexamined.
To understand what is claimed, I return to the principles I laid down in my Second Treatise of Government. Men are by nature free and equal, the workmanship of one Maker, sent into the world about His business and subject to His law. No man comes into it with another born saddled and bridled for him to ride. Civil power is therefore not natural dominion, but a trust, placed by consent, to preserve the people’s property—that is, their lives, liberties, and estates. Whatever exceeds that end is not government, but bare force with a plausible name.
What then is it, when a single magistrate presumes, by his own order, to alter the public name of a great lake which bounds another country, and does so, not upon urgent necessity, but in the posture of commercial boasting? He does not merely direct his own clerks’ pens. He assumes a right to fix, by his pleasure, the denomination of a thing that equally touches others’ honour and understanding. Names are not trifles where jurisdiction, reputation, and claim are concerned. To rename a shared natural boundary without consulting those equally interested is to treat them, not as free partners, but as dependents whose title in the common world may be overwritten at will.
Some reply that the order operates only within his own state, that Canada’s law and practice stand untouched, and therefore no right is invaded. I must here demand clear ideas. By “consent,” I mean the free allowance of those affected, given with knowledge of what is proposed. By “legitimacy,” I mean such authority as those free and equal persons might reasonably have entrusted to rulers for their common good. By “property,” I mean every settled claim a man has in his life, liberty, and estate, including the credit of his country and the respect due to its boundaries. Judged by these measures, the unilateral renaming treats consent as needless and common property as if it lay wholly on one shore.
The danger is sharpened when we observe how private power follows upon this claim. A vast company that orders the maps by which millions steer themselves has already adjusted its descriptions, showing “Lake America” to users in the president’s country, “Lake Ontario” to those in Canada, and both to the rest. Likewise with the gulf. Here is a new combination: the state speaks; a commercial giant, which governs an important channel of information, obeys within its reach; the world is partitioned into differing official realities. Who is judge between these rival claims? There is no impartial tribunal; one government, aided by its information‑master, becomes judge in its own case.
The surrounding quarrel about tariffs reveals the same temper. Duties are laid “dollar for dollar,” not as a sober remedy under known, standing law, but as strokes in a contest of pride, threatening real injury to commerce, which quietly sustains men’s livelihoods on both sides. I have elsewhere maintained that when rulers take away or destroy the people’s property under arbitrary power, they put themselves in a kind of state of war with the people. I do not affirm that one froward order about a name dissolves government; revolution belongs only to a long train of abuses. Yet a pattern of using prerogative to irritate neighbours and endanger trade is a manifest breach of trust.
What, then, is the fitting resistance? Canada’s leaders answer with words, signs, and reciprocal trade measures, asserting their own sovereignty and the true name of the lake. This lies well within their right of self‑preservation and honour. But the people on both shores should beware two contrary errors. They must not dismiss the matter as mere theatre, for names often prepare the way for stronger encroachments. Nor should they race, upon a single affront, to thoughts of dissolution. The sound remedy is simpler: call this act what it is—usurpation in small letters—and insist that executive power be recalled within the bounds of consent, known law, and the public good.
uncertainty_note":"I cannot yet see, from the accounts before me, whether this folly will remain a single abuse or ripen into that long train of abuses which alone would justify the people in altering the frame of their government."
From the works cited
- Second Treatise of Government — Political power defined narrowly as the right to make laws, with penalties, only for the public good — anything beyond that definition must justify itself or stand condemned.
- Second Treatise of Government — Government by consent and majority decision, with the legislative supreme but itself bound: a fiduciary power, held on trust, forfeited by breach.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — Assent must be proportioned to the evidence; believing beyond one's proofs is a failure of duty, not a mark of faith.