When They say "I hate America", what do you think They mean?

I don't think there are any Canadians who hate Americans. (Unless it's a personal thing, but that's not the issue here.) There may be dislike of Americans by Canadians, there may be annoyances Canadians find in Americans, but I've never had a fellow Canadian tell me they hate Americans in the true sense of the word.

OK, so no one here hates America or Americans, but some know or encounter many who do. The feelings that Canadians express so frequently on these threads are not hatred but merely dislike or annoyance.

Why is it that Canadians have, or at least express, these feelings towards Americans so much more frequently than do Americans towards Canada or Canadians?

Are we worse, or are you merely more irritable?.

Blatham is right though, this time period is unique.

"The Americans"

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the world.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Well, Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did, that's who.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. And I was there. I saw that.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan... the Truman Policy... all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. And now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or a women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are right here on our streets in Toronto, most of them... unless they are breaking Canadian laws... are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the bonds, let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both of them are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name to me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their noses at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters... with the year less than half-over... has taken it all and nobody... but nobody... has helped.

It's difficult to picture a more red-blooded American than Gulf War veteran Cmdr. Harmon "Harm" Rabb of CBS' JAG. But David James Elliott, the man who brings Rabb to life every week, isn't an American citizen. Elliott, 41, has lived in the USA about 10 years but felt no rush to become a citizen -- until Sept. 11. Now he wants to "become a full-fledged member of this fabulous place. Even when I was a kid, I wanted to move to America. There's something about this country that has always attracted me." "Will & Grace"'s Eric McCormack, 38 -- who, like Elliott, grew up in Toronto -- says he always felt as American as he did Canadian. But two years ago, after years of shuttling between the countries, he made it official and got dual citizenship. For McCormack, the events of Sept. 11 highlighted that allegiance: "Canada wept from one border to the next, the same as Americans." Patriotism, however, is more difficult to express. "That's one of the interesting areas where Canadians and Americans differ," McCormack says. "Canadians have the American influence, but they also have the British influence, which is not to wear anything on one's sleeve, not to be too outspoken. To be Canadian is not to express it. It's to be embarrassed by how outrageous the Americans are, always with the flags on their cars and the flags on their hats. They've got three national anthems, for God's sake! [Canadians] have one anthem, no one knows the words, and we're all embarrassed to sing it. I'm exaggerating, but it's a very different mentality."

I remember hearing this as a kid, the music playing in the background was the battlehymn of the republic right?