11/30/2004

Advice from an American ex-patriot in Canada: "If you're thinking about coming to Canada, let me give you some advice: Don't."

Nora Jacobson wrote Sunday in the Washington Post the following:

But after nearly four years as an American in the Great White North, I've learned it's not all beer and doughnuts. If you're thinking about coming to Canada, let me give you some advice: Don't.

Nora is obviously speaking from her heart to the American people, as evidenced in her closing paragraph:

Right after the election, many asked me if I would now apply for Canadian citizenship.

I don't intend to do that, because experiencing the anti-Americanism I've described has been instructive: Living here and coping with it has forced me to confront my own feelings about America. And it's helped me discover what I do value about it: its contradictions, its eccentricities, its expansive spirit, all the intensity and opportunity of a deeply flawed, widely inconsistent, but always interesting country. Perhaps I am a typical American, after all.

my grandmother always said...you can take a pig out of the country...but you can't take the country outta the pig!

...or... something like that....

DR