There’s been so much hand-wringing lately about the anti-Americanism that’s said to be afoot in the land that we’ve barely noticed a more worrisome virus in our midst — anti-Canadianism.

One of our charms as a country is that we take criticism well. It’s part of our modest, unpretentious character. If France were to criticize our foreign policy, I doubt if we’d give up french fries or even French kissing.

We don’t get all huffy when we hear a joke mocking Canadians. Chances are it’s a Canadian telling it; who else would notice us enough to mock us?

But I’m struck by the increasingly fierce attempts to disparage Canada, or at least to disparage the pride many Canadians take in the way we do things — a way that’s sometimes different than the way Americans do things.

These attacks are coming from a small but influential group of right-wing Canadian academics and media commentators. Their theme song is that Canada is in decline.

They’ve been saying this for the past decade, but they’ve become more strident lately.

It seems they’re frustrated that 9/11 didn’t finally push Canadians deeply into the arms of the United States.

Just the opposite has happened.

The extremism of the Bush administration has left us, according to polls, more wary than ever of American power and more determined to stick to our way of doing things.

This unexpected Canadian resolve — most openly expressed in the Chrétien government’s wildly popular decision not to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq — has left the neo-con crowd fuming.

They got a chance to vent some of their anti-Canadian rage when a number of them were interviewed for a feature article on Canada in the New York Times last month.

The Times presented Canada as a virtual cesspool of despair over the sorry state of the country.

“I’m in almost total despair,” University of Toronto historian Michael Bliss told the Times.

What is driving professor Bliss to despair? Could it be Canada’s high rate of homelessness, poverty, unemployment? Apparently not.

“You have a country,” Bliss continued, “but what is it for and what is it doing?”

What is it for? Couldn’t it just be our collective attempt to live well together?

What seems to infuriate Bliss and the other neo-conservatives is the value Canadians attach to social programs, particularly public health care.“A country is not just a health system,” scoffed military historian Jack Granatstein, also quoted in the Times, who apparently feels the size of a country’s military is a more appropriate measure of greatness.

True, a country is not just a health system, but how a country organizes something as important as its health system reveals a lot about what kind of country it is.

Canada’s system is organized around the principle that everyone should have access and everyone should be treated equally. It may sometimes fail to live up to this ideal, but that is the ideal, and it’s an ideal Canadians value. This sort of talk drives neo-cons to the boiling point.

During the recent political wrangling over medicare, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson urged everyone to abandon such lofty talk. “Let us agree to de-dramatize all future discussions about health, and ban such words as ‘moral covenant,’ ‘national identity,’ ‘the fight of our lives…’”

But the health debate is about more than just the technical provision of medical services. It’s about the difference between a public system, based on equality and inclusiveness for all, and a private system, where vital health services are available on the basis of market principles.

Some neo-cons appear almost glad to see Canada fail.

The Times reported that David Bercuson, a historian at the University of Calgary, was watching the recent Olympics when Canadian track star Perdita Felicien fell, losing the gold medal she’d been expected to win.

“Mr. Bercuson dashed straight to his computer,” the Times noted, “He knocked out a screed declaring that her sad performance, and that of the entire Canadian Olympic team, was just another symptom of ‘the national malaise’ that is making Canada a second-rate, uncompetitive nation.”

So, with Felicien lying devastated on the track, Bercuson’s response was to seize the moment: Gotcha now, Canada, you medicare-loving bunch of losers!

Meanwhile, Globe columnist Margaret Wente has mocked the Canadian fondness for the UN, which she recently wrote “allows us to congratulate ourselves that we disapprove of the lone gunslinger approach (unlike you-know-who). It allows us to believe that the world needs us, because even though we are neither powerful nor rich, we are good.”

Actually, we are relatively powerful and rich. But what seems to irk Wente and the neo-cons is that Canadians also have a yearning for equality and the rule of law.

It’s one of the things I like best about this country

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...