"Growing up a couple hundred miles from the U.S. border in Canada?s smaller province, I?ve always had a sense that we in Canada have a unique vantage point on the United States of America. From here, we can see that America is a large beast, but we are too close to see the whole thing. Sleeping with an elephant, we sometimes say.

I grew up with a feeling that America was the center of the world. There were people in the rest of the world, but that was just the backdrop to America. Maybe someday, the whole world would come to be like America.

More recently in my life, I?ve become aware that while America lumbers on, still the center of it?s own universe, the rest of the world isn?t paying attention anymore. America is becoming irrelevant." from Acts of Volition