People love big ideas. They give our life meaning, our daily grind purpose. Big ideas are also how our basic decency is given away to serve those in power.

It doesn’t matter what kind of big idea you are talking about. “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” is what Samuel Johnson observed. We have seen very recently how questioning someone’s patriotism was used to silence debate on a war with no purpose and no goals. Certainly, more people have died in the name of the Prince of Peace than just about anyone. How can these things happen?

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Between Canada Day and Independence Day in the United States there are few days to contemplate the different histories that together make up the North American experience.

We are all one people in many ways, along with Mexico, bound up by a ruggedness and vastness that typifies our nations. Our people all have a pioneering spirit and sense of getting things done that was born out of the empty spaces that surrounded more genteel notions of civilization. What we value on this continent are the skills that allowed us to survive in spite of constraints from afar.

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