America, Land of the Free

Recently, I had occasion to travel extensively through the American South. My journey took me to Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and a bit of Florida. I had the pleasure of visiting some magnificent ranches and meeting some great people. America, and Americans get such a bad rap these days one may expect to meet a bunch of gun totting, shoot em up red necks on such a journey, in fact the opposite was the case. As a whole the people I met were thoughtful, hard working and tended to be a lot more reflective about current events than many Canadians I know, keep in mind I am a Westerner. I had some great conversations with the cowboy in Southern Alabama, the lady in Louisiana, that bartender in Louisiana, the army reserve Leutenant Colonel practitioner nurse from North Dakota, the Mormon from Utah, the Vietnam Vet from Iowa and even an American Geologist who just recieved their Canadian citizenship. Also, my traveling companion, a colorful character from Southern Indiana and I went round and round on the war in Iraq, the American judicial system, racism and of course agriculture. What did I learn from my travels? Here it is: we share much more in culture, experience and values with the U.S. than any other country on earth. The U.S. is our natural allie in the world, not just because we share the North American continent, but because we have the same freedom loving, hard working, charitable, progressive values. I don't think that it was any accident that my experience caused me to draw such a conclusion. The people that I met on my trip were after all from the South and Western U.S.A, staunch opponents to the Liberalism that threatens our financial security and our liberty here in Canada. By Liberalism I mean Federalism which really is the opposite of Liberalism whether you realize it or not. The Media, Ignorance and Party Politics have done a lot to hurt our relationship with our Southern neighbour.

P.S.
It turns out that the polarization that exists in our country also exists in the U.S.A. as well. I discovered this while visiting with a fellow from Buffalo in the Chicago, Ohara International Airport. I mentioned my recent visit to the South, and his first comment was "they are a bunch of hicks down their".. no different really than the bias people from the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) have against us Westerners. Eastern Canadians along with Easterners from the U.S.A suffer from the very sickness that Liberalism attempts to purge "intolerance", yet they call themselves Liberals. Go figure.