I have long been puzzled by accusations of being “anti-American,” in other words as though it’s an epithet.

I am anti- many things: Robert Mugabe, torture, the tedious triumvirate of Roth, Bellow and DeLillo, lawn pesticides and, of course, Tony Blair.

The Canadian journalist Linda McQuaig approaches this matter in a fresh way in her new book Holding the Bully’s Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire, casting new light as she always does. She writes, “I am not anti-American. I like many aspects of American culture; I admire many of its political traditions, its literature, its energy and its creativity. But I am opposed — fiercely opposed, in fact — to American exceptionalism.”

She is referring to the increasingly shameless U.S. tendency to believe it is above the rule of law, that it is exempted from the rules other nations are expected to obey. It hasn’t ratified Kyoto, or the Convention on Discrimination Against Women or even the Convention on the Rights of the Child. John Bolton (remember that screaming mustachioed U.S. ambassador to the UN?) even claimed that the ultimate purpose of international law was to constrict the United States.

Alexis de Tocqueville came up with the phrase American exceptionalism in 1831. I still marvel at the ability of this little oddity of a man, a truly ramshackle person, to have described not just the America he saw 200 years ago but the place it was to become.

McQuaig writes with shame and shock about how Canada has aided America in its quest for destruction. Here’s the test. When America does something, like invade Iraq without the permission of the UN or rampage through Afghanistan, how would we assess that act if it had been done by Syria or Libya? Dreadful, we would say. Action must be taken. We would call on the UN to place sanctions on Syria, to starve its citizens (as was done to Iraq), to bomb it back to the Stone Age, or however non-thoughtful people phrase it.

But when America does it, any Canadian complaining about American arrogance and bullying is vilified. I still don’t understand why Prime Minister Stephen Harper would call NDP Leader Jack Layton “Taliban Jack” for daring to raise questions about our quagmire in Afghanistan. Layton despises the Taliban, as does any sane person, but he is devoted to Canada and appalled by troops being sent to a pointless death in a land that has repelled invaders throughout history. This is name-calling worthy of The O’Reilly Factor, and I shudder to see it sneak up into Canada like some kind of foul smell.

McQuaig makes the startling point that such comment is not so much pro-American as it is anti-Canadian. For when a commentator defends Canadian values, which swirl around the poles of universal health care and peacekeeping, Canadian neo-conservatives sneer. Historian Jack Granatstein has actually spoken of the “harmful effect” of Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s Nobel Prize for peacekeeping after the Suez Crisis.

The Harper government has been a boon to the military, although I wish it would buy the equipment for peacekeeping and for fighting global warming. How eerie to find that Harper is scaling down his praiseworthy plan for icebreakers to patrol northern waters. The expectation is that soon there will be no ice to break.

The military is happy now, because — as with any military — its purpose is to fight. As Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier puts it, its role “is to be able to kill people.” Soldiers love Hillier calling Afghan insurgents “scumbags,” but it leaves a bad taste with citizenry.

For the world is full of scumbags, especially in Darfur. But the Americans don’t want their obedient Canadian followers to help Darfur and its black-skinned victims. Afghanistan is a war against Muslim extremists, and there we fight under the NATO commander who previously ran Abu Ghraib.

The political right seems to regard Canadian values as “soft.” “No more girlie-man peacekeeping,” as McQuaig puts it. And for some reason, the journalistic mainstream has taken this up in the belief that their readers agree.

Their readers do not agree. They are unhappy with Canada becoming less like Europe and more like an American or British “plutonomy,” an economy where growth is largely consumed by the wealthy few. Nations with a huge gap between rich and poor are much more difficult to live in, full of turmoil, violence and the kind of relentless unfairness that makes Canadians recoil.

I do wonder if this is why newspaper readership is sliding. Are Canadians tired of being lectured about how they should be less Canadian, and more American? The rest of the world couldn’t disagree more. Even some Americans don’t think this way: OK, 28 per cent of them don’t. Hilariously, we’re being told this just as the American empire begins its disastrous slide into economic failure and more panicked military writhing-about.

McQuaig also magnificently makes the case — I cringe here — that Canada has held the bully’s coat as it pummelled the weaker nations, while being beaten up itself. Here we are, grovelling for a country that screws us over — over softwood lumber, torture of our citizens, agriculture, giveaways of our oil, gas and water and our belief in full employment and health as a greater good.

I tremble for Chrysler workers in Canada. If Cerberus doesn’t care for American workers, it will care less for Canadians.

McQuaig’s point is that Canada, under Harper, is making a fool of itself and wasting precious time, money and tools to toady to the most hateful flank of the American right. What I most admire about her book is that she writes this with such cool intelligence and intellectual honesty, even pointing out facts that don’t support her side. She is a model for Canadian journalists.

Personal bias declared: On the back of her book is a quote from me praising McQuaig’s It’s the Crude, Dude in The Globe and Mail. Yes, I liked her last book too.

This week

Actually, I’ll be on holiday as you read this. My reading list for this week has been an avalanche of Frenchness: The Rough Guide to France, Irène Némirovsky’s novel David Golder, two of Zola’s Rougon-Macquart novels, L’Assommoir about drunks and Au Bonheur des Dames, about Paris department stores and The Eyewitness Guide to French Cheeses. Then there’s two crucial books, the informative Eating and Drinking in Paris, and the indispensable Paris Eating & Drinking. Be prepared, I say Scoutishly.