We Don't Have Your Back, But We're Glad You Have Ours.

I didn't write this letter in response to a recent article in the National Review blog, but I wish that I had. Because, like the author, I went to the same sort of painfully liberal Canadian University, and I too have endured the embarrassment of Canada's Swissesque high-and-mighty judgmental lack of support for the United States throughout the last 4 years. Nope, I didn't write it, but I should have. I can still share:

"I just read your Corner post regarding Canada's inferiority complex when it comes to all things American. I am a Canadian myself, and I just want to say that I certainly don't blame you for thinking this way - it's all too true of most of my countrymen, and I imagine it will only get worse as Canada's Europeanization continues apace, and the differences between our two nations becomes more stark.

However, not all of us are so blind. I belong to a small group of Canadians who believe that we are amazingly fortunate to be neighbors with a great nation like the US, and who understand the burden that the US has shouldered in fighting the war on terror. I know that you are fighting primarily to protect your own country - as you should - but the West will benefit from the inevitable victory to come, and there are some folks up here in the Great White North who understand this, and are deeply humbled by it. Your soldiers are dying on foreign soil, and we are all benefiting, and for that we are profoundly grateful. It pains me greatly that we have stood to the sidelines and done nothing but carp while this is going on. America deserves better neighbors and better allies than we have been to you over the past three years, and for that I am truly sorry.

I just though I'd let you know that we Canadians are not all bland collegiate drones in thrall to the gods of the Left. Actually, I went to a liberal arts university north of Toronto, and so I had no problem picturing the two losers whose company you suffered through on your train trip - I was surrounded by them for five years.

Hopefully, things will change. One thing that reading NRO (and Mark Steyn, and James Lileks, and Glenn Reynolds et al) has done for me, is open my eyes and energized me to promote change in the world around me. In the last two years, I've joined the Conservative Party, canvassed during the election, planted campaign signs, answered phones, and eschewed my normal Canadian restraint and started arguing with anyone who will listen (which means my boomer-in-laws, and my parents, who think I'm suffering through some sort of mental episode). I sat at my PC on US election night, and sweated bullets (while perusing NRO and waiting for the results), and was thrilled beyond words when President Bush was returned to office. I can't help you fight the war, or vote for President Bush, but I can't make a difference in my own country, and I intend to do just that.

And so, in closing, this Canadian would like to say: God Bless America, and thanks. And don't count us Canadians out quite yet. There is a well of common sense, and a spirit of resilience up here that simply needs to be tapped."

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the author was a classmate of mine at Guelph. It all rings just a little too familiar - daily protests outside my all-male penis-party dorm, vegetarian dishes taking up half of the cafeteria menu, my beloved Bullring being switched to a patchouli and clove cigarette doused coffee house - but at least this person is home, and attempting to help our collective conscience. I'm a million miles away, cringing everytime some ignorant Canadian politician or journalist opens their moonbat mouth. But I wouldn't be living in Boston if I didn't love and support the USA, so I suppose in the end that's activism enough.

Still, like a proud parent whose child has just farted onstage during the last act of the school play, I love Canada unconditionally. But am still beyond embarrassed.