I’ve been following with great interest the newly invigorated Republican party doubling down on the very themes that seem to have put the collective all in this mess. One theme in particular that seems particularly stunning is the point of view that says government is bad, government involvement in the private sector is worse and the answer is tax cuts. Just to digress on the last point, how do tax cuts for business make sense when they’re all bleeding red ink?

I get the point about excessive involvement by anyone in my affairs, personal or business, but just stir things up, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Canada. This from Fareed Zakaria in a piece called Worthwhile Canadian Initiative . . .

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn’t grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada’s more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

There’s more. This, on the beast that has apparently consumed us, real estate lending . . .

Canada has also been shielded from the worst aspects of this crisis because its housing prices have not fluctuated as wildly as those in the United States. Home prices are down 25 percent in the United States, but only half as much in Canada. Why? Well, the Canadian tax code does not provide the massive incentive for overconsumption that the U.S. code does: interest on your mortgage isn’t deductible up north. In addition, home loans in the United States are “non-recourse,” which basically means that if you go belly up on a bad mortgage, it’s mostly the bank’s problem. In Canada, it’s yours. Ah, but you’ve heard American politicians wax eloquent on the need for these expensive programs—interest deductibility alone costs the federal government $100 billion a year—because they allow the average Joe to fulfill the American Dream of owning a home. Sixty-eight percent of Americans own their own homes. And the rate of Canadian homeownership? It’s 68.4 percent.

Well drats, that’s inconvenient. Two completely different public policies, one socialist, that subsidizes housing and the other that let’s people make housing choices on their own merits like a proper marketplace, both producing the same levels of home ownership. Oops. Except in this case, the socialists are us.

And then there’s that soggy truth that by keeping a tight rein on the the admittedly much smaller economy, the Canadian government sits now on a surplus, without a single bank upside down, delivering better health care outcomes, at lower cost. But none of that could possibly apply here.