Bumper sticker wars

The Ottawa Citizen 2006.10.16 by Don Sawyer (edited for brevity)

Bumper sticker wars: A U.S. tradition that polarizes debate and reduces complex issues to simplistic slogans has made its way to Canada
When I was returning from the United States a few weeks ago, I boarded a connecting flight in Las Vegas and noticed a big red decal on the side of the plane: "We Support our Troops in the Middle East." Even after being in the U.S. for two weeks, I was taken aback by this crass mix of patriotism and hucksterism. I was also taken back -- to the '60s and the Vietnam War.
As that conflict dragged on, the level of discourse deteriorated badly. While thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese were dying, debate at home was largely limited to what could fit on a bumper sticker. Besides the always popular appeal to mindless jingoism, "Support Our Troops in Vietnam," the Republican Pontiac bumper could sport "America: Love it Or Leave It," "Jane Fonda: America's Traitor Bitch," or (my favourite for unabashed commitment to ignorance) "America: My Country, Right or Wrong."
And then the bumper stickers stopped. I was in Canada. The stresses of living in a country locked in an immoral and disastrous war began to melt away like "the morning frost under the rising sun." The few bumper stickers I did see advocated support for the newly created Vancouver Canucks or suggested that the driver ahead of me stopped for animals, hallucinations or leprechauns.
Now fast-forward to 2006. Americans are again embroiled in a war of arrogance and deception and fighting their ideological battles on their bumpers. The victims have changed, but not much else. For the more Neanderthal, there is "These Colours Don't Run!" and (with a NRA emblem) "When In Doubt, Empty the Magazine." For old-school hawks there's "Get Behind our Troops or Get in Front of 'em!" and "If You can Read This Thank a Teacher; If You Can Read It in English, Thank a Vet." And, as an example (I think) of Republican humour, how about "Fat People Are Harder to Kidnap"?
As always the left is cleverer -- and more trenchant. Two of my current favourites are "Be Nice to America or We'll Bring Democracy to Your Country," and "I Love my Country, but I Think we Should Start Seeing Other People." Then there's "Regime Change Starts at Home" and "We're Making Enemies Faster than We Can Kill Them."
This new spate of bumper stickers that polarizes and reduces complex issues to slogans is no longer confined south of the border. As Canada edges into a deepening war in Afghanistan and the casualties mount, we are beginning to see the same appeals to patriotism and stupidity pop up in Canadian papers and on Albertan bumper stickers. Meaningless slogans such as "Canada Doesn't Cut and Run" are showing up in the media from Halifax to Toronto to Winnipeg.
Canadian chief of defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier tells us we are in Afghanistan because we have a responsibility "as the rich and luxurious caring nation that we are to help other places around the world where the populations don't have any of those benefits or advantages or rights." This despite the fact that the situation in a hundred other countries, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, is as bad or worse.
Writing in the London Review of Books, Anatol Lieven remarks, "Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point of an American rifle no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to Christianity at the point of a Spanish harquebus." And now we can, sadly, insert "Canadian" for American.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety -- Ben Franklin."

PS. This is symptomatic of a larger phenomenon that I and a highly knowledgeable friend of mine have oft discussed: the reluctant but passive and certain erosion of a true Canadian identity.