6/30/2005

For "Rick Barnes", "Andy" and the rest of the "Moonbats"

From Macleans via NealeNews (copied verbatum because I didn't want to loose the substance):

"Un-Happy Birthday, Canada

Fox News has its share of Canada critics, none more outspoken than host John Gibson. This year, he's marking our national anniversary with a bash.

JOHN GIBSON

Happy Canada Day. We down here notice that you've managed to put the muzzle on Carolyn ("Americans . . . I hate the bastards!") Parrish. And the functionary who decided it was okay to call President George W. Bush a moron is locked in some closet somewhere. But despite your efforts at hiding your most egregious embarrassments, the view here is that Canada is still a vast ice-crusted wasteland dedicated to beer and America-bashing.

No serious person on either side of the border bothers arguing that Canadian anti-American hysteria is a mirage, or simple hypersensitivity on the part of Americans. It is clearer than Molson ale that Canadians have a serious anti-American problem.

Think tanks in both countries say it is true. So do newspaper columnists. The Canadian ambassador to the United States has chastised his own people for their smug sense of superiority over America (and got whacked around for it by Canadians in letters to the editor). A respected Canadian historian, Jack Granatstein, calls anti-Americanism Canada's "state religion," while at least one of your newspaper columnists called the mindset "as Canadian as ginger and rye." Teenagers answering pollsters' questions express anti-Americanism (America is "evil") without any guile or effort to conceal.

And we in the U.S. know Canadians quite well. Millions of your expats live and work among us. They blend in, take the big American bucks, pass for Americans and say they are our friends. But we are also quite accustomed to glancing up at the television and seeing a clip of some famous pop star we only barely knew is Canadian, telling a cheering Canadian audience how great it is to be back home among really civilized people after so long in that hellhole down south.


Canada claims to be America's friend, but sneers at us and bashes us, and welcomes admitted jihadist terrorists onto the continent like they were nothing more than dispossessed refugees. The Khadr family, for instance, should be a Canadian national disgrace. For years, its members have treated Canada as a free medical care pit stop and massive ATM while advancing the cause of al-Qaeda -- in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And yet the Khadrs have been welcomed home over and over, while Americans thinking they might go to Canada after John Kerry lost the 2004 U.S. election have been told to expect to wait months, even years.

American Nora Jacobson went north shortly after George W. Bush was elected in November 2000 and later wrote about life up yonder for the Washington Post. Despite being a Kerry voter simpatico with the average Canadian's political outlook, her advice to Americans thinking of moving to Canada: "Don't." She says the embedded anti-Americanism is really too much to take -- even for someone who disliked Bush and opposed the war in Iraq.

If things are so good in the multicultural, egalitarian quasi-socialist Canada, why do so many leave to come to the fearsome jungles of America? Was there a potato famine up north that we missed? Or is it just the news and entertainment industry exploiting Canadians for a few funny guys (Mike Myers, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd) whose senses of humor have been sharpened over generations of long winters indoors, yukking it up around a fireplace, a bar, or a hole in the ice?

If Canada has a problem, America is to blame. There's smog in Windsor? It's those damn Americans in Detroit, of course. Mad cow in Alberta? Oh, it turns out the disease was in America first, but they shipped it to Canada, kept it secret, and blamed Canada later. Softwood? Who cares if American lumber mills are closing left and right? We have a right to undersell them all and if they go out of business, tough. Seriously, Canada: nearly three-quarters of your trade is done with the United States, and you think it's okay to kick around the people who provide your standard of living?

By the way, despite your huffing about "national sovereignty," if the North Koreans fling a missile toward New York and the U.S. air force can shoot it down over Canada, no American authority is going to call to ask for permission if there is even a chance you would say no. We'll just shoot it down and you should watch out for falling pieces. That's just reality.

When I wrote Hating America, the New World Sport in 2003, the chapter that included Canada (sorry, you shared space with Belgium and South Korea) was called "The Axis of Envy." The Iraq war was fresh. Canadians were sure they only had to yell loud enough to be heard across the border and even the thick-headed Americans would get it. Then came the U.S. election and we notice you haven't had much to say lately.

But as you celebrate your national holiday, I suspect the truth about your innermost sentiment still applies: that precious and delicious pleasure called anti-Americanism is as strong as ever, isn't it?

I thought so."