The Mouse That Roared

The Liberal Party's captivity to its radical anti-American wing has not gone unnoticed in the White House and State Department:

U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins said overheated election rhetoric is prompting some Canadian officials to burnish Canada's image by sullying the reputation of the United States.

Wilkins made no official comment on the Bush administration's annoyance with Prime Minister Paul Martin's denigration of U.S. environmental policies during an interview with The Canadian Press. Instead, he expressed regret that the United States was being drawn into a campaign that it was trying to stay out of.

"It appears that oftentimes, some officials, in order to build Canada up, attempt to tear the United States down," Wilkins told CP Friday.

"I'm sure the election plays a role in that or is to some extent a cause of that."

God help us if the Liberals' poll numbers shoot through the roof because of this. It would be rewarding boorishness and ineptitude in handling our foreign affairs. And it will be further evidence of Canada's gravest structural problem: its lack of a coherent national identity beyond being "not American".

Peoples confident in their own identity and accomplishments do not need to continually denigrate other nations that just happen to be more powerful.