Despite all its internal detractors: God bless America, my native land, while Canada's my home

Despite all the detractors America has at home, in her own grand dwelling of internal dissidents and dissonance, I love the United States of America, and pray for her to receive, as often in the past so now also, God's richest blessings thru all these difficult times.

Despite all the detractors America has here in my adopted and adoptive home, dear Canada, I claim America's good, by God's grace, and lament its bad, its failings, and its historical errors which little by little it seeks to overcome. In Canada, I have been witness to the most nauseating swelling of mindless anti-American, anti-Bush, and anti-civilizational spewing that I ever have experienced. Most notably, the Canadian fellow who phoned a Canadian friend in New York City soon after the 9/11 attacks to tell his "buddy" how wonderful that the bombs/planes had hit their target and what a pleasure it was to see those people jumping to their deaths to escape the flames, fumes, and gaseous airpressure. This guy, was no fundamentalist, just a good Canadian liberal and socialist, not a mental health patient, just an ordinary fellow with prejudices crystallized and fired with fervour by the drama.

Thank God I know other kinds of Canadians, lots of them, some of them immigrants from all over the world, some of them very wonderful native-born Canucks and Québecois/es.

On the Fourth of July, a continentalist salute from one who appreciates and who hopes for the maintenance of the difference, and loves both the USA where I was born and Canada where I've lived for thirty years. Come what may in politics, government corruption, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the pangs of deprized love! - Owlb