About 4% of Canadians over the age of 15 are alcoholics. So are about 4% of people in the U.S. over the age of 15. But we thought their attitudes to alcohol were more European, and so more civilized, and so less problematic. Hmmm.

Half of Canadian women over the age of 16 have been assaulted, sexually or otherwise. One to two women per week are murdered by a current or former domestic partner.

While Canada has a significantly lower murder rate than the U.S., somehow or other the U.S. rate has been declining more rapidly since 1991 than it has in Canada, and some Canadian cities (e.g., Regina) would, if parts of the U.S., rank among the top ten most violent.

As for the wonderful harmony between the aboriginal peoples and the rest of Canada, you might note that even though aboriginal peoples make up only about 3.5% of the population, they account for more than 20% of the prison population. The problems that aboriginal people face with poverty, disease, and substance abuse are also well known. Of course, it’s nice that Canadians tend to care, even officially, about these problems and that they recognize the history of those peoples. But you might have noticed that the unenlightened rednecks that you disdain in the U.S. are often absolutely insane when it comes to Native American culture, and that being able to say you’re ‘part Indian’ is a serious point of pride. And if you think the U.S. whitewashes its history, then you certainly didn’t go to any sort of school like I did, where we learned in gruesome detail from about 3rd grade on about terrible things done to Native Americans. It also seems impossible to account for the almost cult status of otherwise dreadfully boring movies like Dances with Wolves without recognizing a significant interest among (at least certain sub-cultural groups of) Americans in Native American culture and an accompanying awareness of how those people were mistreated.

So, in short, I’m not trying to play your ‘U.S. vs. Canada’ game so much as to bring you back to reality and help you see how pointless it is to play in the first place. Canada is not a utopia where everybody does more than their required part to contribute to the common good and everybody loves one another. They, like most of us, have problems that they don’t know how to deal with, some of which can’t be blamed on anybody’s being unenlightened or having the wrong political ideology. I’m with you on admiring Canada a great deal; but you’ll do yourself a favor if you don’t pretend that being better than another country in some respects makes a place great.

On the other hand, I heartily approve of your disparagement of the Hamptons.