Canada is more than Toronto
Here is a revelation about Canada -- we're not all from Toronto. In fact, most of us live nowhere near Toronto. I've lived in Canada my whole life (21 years) and never been anywhere close to Toronto.
I am coming to Taiwan this week from Regina, Saskatch-ewan, a western Canadian province with 1 million people and no cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Still, upon arrival I will be quarantined for 10 days. Why? Because politicians in Taiwan do not know the facts about Canada.
Canada is geographically the second largest country in the world, next to Russia. We also have a very small population -- 30 million -- not much larger than Taiwan. Yet, Canada has small lakes which are bigger than Taiwan. I am as close to the infamously SARS infected Toronto area as people in Taipei are close to Beijing.
Is it necessary to quarantine me, a small-town boy from little-known Regina? No. Is it necessary to quarantine someone from the larger, and SARS-affected, Toronto? Maybe, but don't get us confused.
I may be from Canada, but there's no SARS where I come from.
Mike Towle
Regina, Canada
Lee misrepresented ideas
Lee Long-hwa's April 24th reply to my letter (Letters, April 16, page 8) on America's aggressive new unilateralism presents some clear and correct ideas about such issues as the US role in protecting Taiwan and the futility of appeasing dictators such as former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or Hitler. But at the same time it tendentiously misrepresents what I wrote in my original letter.
I never stated that the US as a country was more similar to "fascism than a democracy with a healthy sense of realism." As a country, the US is nothing of the sort.
I only stated and still would insist that since Sept. 11 there is a growing minority in America that is openly cheering on the Bush administration's ever-more-aggressive disregard of international norms and agreements. And whereas the Bush administration's pronouncements may be couched in careful diplomatic terms, this sizable minority of Americans is speaking and writing in racist and nearly fascist terms.
This Republican minority is nothing if not arrogant (I find it funny that Lee accuses me of arrogance) in its attitudes toward the rest of the world. I see this arrogance in the "patriotic" forwards sent me daily by Republicans who have no patience for anyone who would criticize or even question current US policy.
It is sad that so many in my country are forgetting that their nation, if it is to lead, should lead by example rather than mere might and must itself follow the rules it (often correctly) blames others for breaking.
America is presently nothing like an authoritarian police state; it is certainly not an example of fascism. But there are now far too many Americans, ignorant of history, who are enthusiastically supporting policies that, step by step, are pushing America closer to authoritarianism and militarism than it has ever been before. This is something American patriots should worry about.
To love America is to love its Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the culture these made possible. As for US President George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the American patriot can take them or leave them.
Eric Mader-Lin
Taipei
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