THE PUT-DOWN of "the narcissism of small differences" as a description of the search for minor, cross-border variations in values and attitudes has often been hurled at Canadian nationalists when they try to find reasons to describe Canada as a distinct nation rather than just a watered-down version of the United States.
Most of these differences are in fact pretty small. The single really striking cross-border exception almost always gets overlooked out of embarrassment by these nationalists because almost all of them are liberal and secular. This is that Americans are deeply religious and Canadians much less so.
Another cross-border difference is becoming more and more marked to the extent that it could be described as a defining national characteristic. This is that Canadians belong to the world and Americans belong only to themselves.
We are global North Americans and they are American North Americans.
The latest example is the way that Washington has just rejected the International Criminal Court, the same court that Canada played a key part in getting created. Very deftly, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham remarked on the irony of the U.S. not being willing to take part in the international consensus that produced this court while "tend(ing) to extraterritorially apply its laws and jurisdictions rather widely" (all the way from the war on terrorism to protectionist tariffs on softwood lumber).
This follows on the U.S.'s rejection of the Kyoto environmental accord and its decision to renege on the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Earlier, it declared unilaterally that its al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners were "unlawful combatants" and so not protected by the Geneva Convention.
If a treaty to ban slavery were proposed in the United Nations today, the U.S. would probably reject it as an invasion of its sovereignty. That isn't entirely inconceivable. The U.S. refused to sign the UN's convention on genocide for more than 20 years until the early 1980s, and the Senate then added so many riders that it is effectively inapplicable to whatever the U.S. does.
And that one in three Americans thinks that Canada is a U.S. state, as has just been reported in the Ipsos poll done for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre, confirms just how few Americans ever look beyond their own borders, even to peer next door.
Every comparable poll in Canada finds far more interest in international affairs and far more support for the government to be active abroad. A new survey by the Ottawa-based Centre for Research and Information on Canada found that 35 per cent of Canadians said Canada should be actively involved in peacekeeping (only 12 per cent wanted less involvement) while 39 per cent wanted an increase in foreign aid (17 per cent wanted it decreased). All the positive responses were higher than a year ago, before Sept. 11.
Indeed, although comparisons with other countries aren't available, it's entirely possible that interest in international affairs is higher in Canada than in almost any other country, Britain and France as two likely exceptions.
Since we are so alike in most other respects on each side of the border, the Canada-U.S. difference is worth a closer look.
History plays a part. We started off as part of the British Empire, so looking outward came naturally to us. Once on our own, we quickly realized that our best chance to escape the overwhelming influence of the U.S. was to get into bed with as many others as possible, at the United Nations, at NATO, in the Commonwealth and Francophonie, in (belatedly) the Organization for American States.
Splendid isolation, if not isolationism exactly, comes naturally to the U.S. because it is continent-sized, in population and resources as well as in geography, and so is, or can think of itself as, complete unto itself.
We both are missionary societies, each certain that our ways are the best for everybody else. But we pursue our missions entirely differently. Canadians get involved emotionally in others peoples' problems. Americans assume that just letting others know what the U.S. is like (all those movies and TV programs are superb ambassadors) is enough to turn them toward the light.
The most important difference is the most obvious. As the single superpower, the U.S. doesn't need anyone else and can get away with doing just about anything it wants.
We need the world, economically, politically, and culturally. Perhaps our greatest need is psychic. Each time we get involved abroad we send out the message that there are two quite different kinds of people on the North American continent. At least as important, if not a good deal more so, we send that same message right back to ourselves.
Richard Gwyn is a columnist for The Toronto Star.
http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/05/12/f161.raw.html
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