So many Americans live on Planet America, oblivious to the universe beyond. They have always heard that the US is the greatest country in the world and that USA is freedom. Who wouldn't want that? Even benign progressive Americans are imbued with this cant, and would vaguely assume the guy has a point: everyone else ought to be American if they can.
For his recent column about why Canadians will eventually realize they would be better off as Americans, Ross Douthat, the New York Times commentator, has at least swotted up some information about current Canadian politics. But in the end, his argument just mixes some anti-Trudeau snark into generic Planet American myopia.
We may be joking that Americans should beg to be the 11th province (the healthcare, rights for women, respect for diversity and immigrants, sane gun laws, life expectancies...). But for Douthat, all that is just anti-Trumpism and obsolete liberal-democracy talk. All that matters is what happened lately on Planet America, which must be the model for the world.
A month or so ago a wise historian of Canada told me that that the more closely connected to the United States Canada becomes, the more strong the Canadian identity becomes. Close enough to see what the United States fails to be -- and far enough away to identify what we are seeing. Only Americans can still think the USA is the beacon unto the world, that's harder to grasp.
On the same theme: everyone considers the New York Times the great liberal newspaper in the US. But glancing at the Times' list of opinion writers (a glance is often enough), a Canadian can't help noticing that in Canada, most of them would be most at home in the National Post.
