My reply is this: does your own country mean so little to you that you're not even willing to stand and fight for it?

Don't get me wrong.  I have nothing against Canada.  It's a clean, well-run and preternaturally friendly country.  Canada deserves our respect and admiration.  But I am an American first, last and always.  Nobody -- not George Bush, not James Dobson, not Karl Rove, not any percentage of the Flying Monkeys in the world -- is going to run me out of my own country.

The last election was tough and heart-rending, and it's natural for people to feel disappointment, anger, even denial.  But it's time to get over it. At its very core, this election was a test of character, one that we cannot afford to fail.  I have been critical of my own government in the past, and I celebrate that, because only a fool is perfectly happy with his own government.   I've been most critical when the government turns its back on the principles upon which this country was founded.  And when I see Cheney, Rove & Co trying to dismantle the checks and balances the framers carefully constructed, it makes me see red.  We shouldn't stand for it.

And we won't.  The tired old cynics and the smirking frat boys who now occupy the highest levels of government will not last long.  They can't -- because to them the flag is just a prop to be used in their ongoing quest to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.  But we know what the flag actually stands for: equality and decency and fair play.  They have the money and at the moment, they have the power.  But that doesn't make them right.  America is not their country.  It's our country.  And it's worth fighting for.