Today Canadians are celebrating Canada Day, their national equivalent to our 4th of July.  Their celebration reminds me of how fortunate I think we are to have such an independent country as our northern neighbor. 

 I will never forget a few winters ago when a friend and I drove to Mt. Ste. Anne in Quebec, to go skiing.  Shortly after crossing the border from Maine, we stopped at the Benedict Arnold Inn for dinner. A lovely place with good food and service, the Inn was named after a man Americans regard as a traitor and Canadians regard far more ambiguously. 

Or on another trip, when I stopped at a historical marker honoring Laura Ingersoll Secord for her death defying journey 30 km through the snow to warn troops of an impending American attack.  If American troops had discovered what she was up to, she would have been shot.  They did not, and Americans suffered a defeat in their second campaign to subjugate Canada during the War of 1812.

Or when I visited Quebec City, which has one of the most beautiful old parts of town I have ever seen.  While walking along the walls and cannons high on a bluff over the St. Lawrence River, I noticed the cannons mostly pointed south, towards us.

Or that Canada is culturally distinct from us in part because it became home to thousands of Loyalists who settled there after the American Revolution.  A different set of political values accompanied them, and gave a lasting distinctiveness to our northern neighbor.  Even now, despite American grumblings, Canada honors the many contributions to their country made by American draft evaders who opposed the Vietnam War enough to leave the US, and make Canada their home. 

These experiences were good for me if for no other reason than indicating one country’s heroes and villains might be another country’s villains and heroes. On such issues there need be no connection between a person’s historical position and his or her qualities as a human being.  But living in a continent sized country like ours can give us the impression that what we know from our national self-image is simply the way things are.  Travel to other nations is perhaps the only antidote to this error, though it requires some personal qualities to take root.

Respecting neighbors who see the world differently is a perfect antidote to infection by the stupidity of our national idiots such as Liz Cheney, who recently claimed  “I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, America is the best nation that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.” She added that President Obama is to be faulted for not telling the rest of the world a similar absurdity.  

Love of country need mean diminishing other countries no more than love of family and friends need mean diminishing other people’s families and friends.

Over at Daily Kos, where I found the Cheney quote, one of their own commentors, mjshep, observed

What if someone you knew said, “I believe in my exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, I am the best person that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.  Although I can make rules for you, and tell you what you can and can not do, I do not have to abide by those rules. Whatever I do is right, because I am doing it and I am exceptional. And, if you don’t like it, I will beat the crap out of you.”

    You would clearly think they are both dangerous and crazy. Either that, or a Republican. And you’d be right.

I wonder whether the ability to respect other countries is related to the ability to respect other people.  If it were it would explain Cheney’s jingoism and defense of torture.