The Welcome-To-Canada Party

I really like the apartment building I live in, not only because it's reasonably well-maintained and comfortable, but also because it provides me entertainment on the weekends. The damage done to the hallway areas is like a drive-through version of CSI- you can figure out which drunk broke what, just by walking by. My favorite discovery this morning was the broken lamp and the eviscerated chest of drawers, which some drunken genius had decided to perpetrate directly in the view of the security cameras.

One of the smaller clues about last night was one of the typical party flyers you find around every college campus, which I found on the floor of the elevator. Since I read everything (I mean everything- it drives my brother nuts) I picked it up, and found that the front cover of the flyer featured a now-famous cartoon of the political leanings of North America. (It's available here: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04485.html.) The title read, "Screw it, we're out!!!!" and below, with a time and address, the flyer advertised the "Welcome To Canada Party."

I regretted missing it, because the idea of a bunch of liberal Maryland college students dressed up in flannel, drinking Molsen Golden and saying "Eh" sounded like a lot of fun. On second thought, I doubt anyone would have gotten into costume except me. But regardless. I did wish I'd been able to witness the shindig itself. It probably would have been reminiscent of a tongue-in-cheek article I read, describing how Canadian immigration authorities had been flooded with 55 million telephone requests for citizenship, most of them sobbing incoherently.

I wanted to flee the country as much as the next guy when we found out that Ohio had gone red. Personally, I wanted to go to Ireland, because they'd recognize my EMT certification and the beer was better. The leaving-the-country jokes were a morning-after coping mechanism, a way of reassuring ourselves that it was only our country that was crazy. But it keeps going. The Canadian immigration page, I'm told, had its biggest day ever on Wednesday. I've heard of at least three people around here who are actually trying to transfer to college in Canada. It's becoming an assumption among the left that our country is now occupied territory.

This crap has got to stop.

The appeal of leaving Jesusland for Canada is that, in our minds, we know that the rest of the world doesn't conform to the anti-abortion, fundamentalist Christian viewpoint that's marching on Washington. And I understand that very few people actually want to leave the country. We know it, and any semi-intelligent conservative knows it, too. But even the casual references to leaving are killing the credibility of the left.

One of the Bush administration's favorite digs at the left is to claim that we don't really love our country; that the liberal ability to recognize and address the glaring problems in American society reveals some kind of deep-seated distaste for the country and its heritage. This is ridiculous- we know it, and they know it. We love America, and so do they. The fundamental difference is how we love America.

Al Franken once said that conservatives love their country like a six-year-old loves their favorite athlete or movie star; they idolize and blindly worship, throwing a temper tantrum whenever anyone points out that the object of their affection might not be completely perfect. Liberals love this country like husbands and wives love each other; the succesful ones aren't squeamish about identifying the other's strengths and weaknesses, and since they love each other, and want the relationship to last, they work through the good times and the bad.

Think of the message we're sending. Conservatives already love to assail the left on charges of disloyalty to America, and being soft on defense. And now we're acting like a bunch of spoiled children. We didn't get our way, so we're throwing a temper tantrum and talking about running away where the people will understand us, and love us for who we are. If I were Ed Gillespie, I would be doing the Conservative Happy Dance right now, because the left would be doing my job for me. If you talk about leaving the country, you're handing over one more victory to the elected representatives of Jesusland.

So even if you're kidding, for crying out loud, put a sock in it. It undermines the liberal commitment to make America stronger and smarter, regardless of the fight some of our fellow citizens put up. Think about it. The motivation behind the Republican platform is to scare people into voting for them. Scared of a mythical gay threat to straight families. Scared of abortion clinics, even though they'll never see one. Scared of terrorism, even though the sparsely-populated, rural Red States probably aren't too high on Osama's hit list. The Republican agenda is pushing the country back to the 1950s, but the only way it'll work is if we let it.

At this point, I'm just preaching, and so I'll step down from the soapbox for the moment. But 56 million of us voted against the fundamentalist, conservative agenda, and goddammit, it's our country, too.