The Kicker
New York—a city without a country
By Paul McLeary Thu 23 Aug 2007 01:01 PMI’ve been enjoying the musings of Steve Shippert—who chimes in on the National Review’s The Tank blog from time to time—for a while now, and have finally decided to share some of his received wisdom with some of those who might not know about him. Yesterday, while writing about a Canadian soldier from Quebec killed in Afghanistan, he takes it upon himself to redefine national borders, while employing a great conservative cliché.
Noting that Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan is not popular among Canadians, Shippert writes that “Perhaps ‘support is low for the Canadian mission’ in Quebec, but it is not extinct. And Quebec is not Canada, similar to how so many media outlets forget New York City is not America.”
Weak sense of humor aside—New York is the great liberal satan to the healthy, happy “heartland” values shared by the rest of the nation, and therefore isn’t the “real” America—Shippert might want to reconsider his views. He can start by calling up a couple New York City natives who just graduated from the West Point military academy to ask them how they feel about his little bon mot, or maybe contact the almost fifty families of the soldiers, sailors and marines from New York City who have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan—a roll call which consists of nine from the Bronx, eight from Queens, nineteen from Brooklyn, one from Staten Island and eleven from Manhattan.
CJR
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Fri 24 Aug 2007 12:31 AMI love this site, first of all.... great job. Second, I'm not sure you can say New York is fully American simply based on the number of military dead accumulated in the Iraq War. I certainly don't feel the need to justify New York as being part of America. It's a silly idea, and almost no one agrees with it.