A Letter To America From A Canadian on The Fourth of July

Dear America: We Know You’re Still in There, and We Want You Back

July 4, 2025

Happy Birthday, America.

Yesterday, I watched the Toronto Blue Jays sweep the New York Yankees at Rogers Centre with one of your own – the legendary U.S. political strategist Steve Schmidt.

Steve was a lifelong Yankees fan until, after a visit to the merch shop, he emerged proudly wearing a baby-blue Blue Jays jersey. As we chatted before the game about politics, family, and baseball, I was reminded of Steve’s deep love for his country. This is a man who served and promoted America faithfully: he advised President George W. Bush, helped Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger win re-election, and fought for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. He’s one of my favorite new friends – an American patriot mourning the loss of the country he loves.

When the pre-game buzz died down and The Star-Spangled Banner began to play, Steve’s demeanor changed completely. He fell silent, removed his cap, and placed his hand over his heart. Everything stopped for him in that moment. I stood there watching this proud American, a person who has given so much to his country, and I understood what I love about America – and always will. It’s Americans. Americans like Steve, who stand on guard for the ideals of America even as those ideals are threatened. As the anthem played, I put my hand over my heart too, for Steve, and for every American like him who refuses to allow Trump’s dark version of America to extinguish the light that still shines within you.

Steve isn’t alone. In 2018, he publicly renounced his membership in the Republican Party – the party he once helped lead – because he could not abide the cruelty of Trump’s border policy of separating families. “The GOP has become a danger to our democracy and values,” he wrote as he left, calling the Trump-era Republican Party “corrupt, indecent, and immoral.” Americans like Steve give me hope. They prove that the real America – the America of integrity, compassion, and courage – is still in there, fighting to reawaken, and Steve, not unlike most Americans, is fighting like hell to get THAT America back from the fascists who stole it.

My patriotism requires me to dissent this July 4th

I know you’re still in there, America. As you celebrate your 249th Independence Day – nearly two and a half centuries since you won freedom from the tyranny of a king – please know that your Canadian friends see you. We see past the angry, fascist bubble that has temporarily encased you. We see the pain in so many of you as you watch a dark cloud descend over your proud nation – the fear, the uncertainty, the disbelief. Our hearts break with you and for you. For now, we Canadians have to go our own way; we’ve had to distance ourselves at times from the chaos in your house. But that hasn’t dimmed our affection. We know the madness of these days is not the real you, and we cannot wait for this nightmare to be over. We know you’re scared. We are, too.

But we are also confident that you, the real America, will find your way back. We’re smart enough and have known you long enough to separate the actions of a fascist, authoritarian, felonious president from the true character of America. Donald Trump does not own America’s soul. He cannot erase your history nor your ideals, no matter how much noise he makes. And make no mistake, we see what is happening. This year, on the eve of your birthday, Trump and his enablers in Congress gave you a gruesome “gift”: an 𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 domestic policy bill that slashes support for the vulnerable and pours money into a police-state apparatus. They rammed through a law that guts about $1 trillion from Medicaid and other health programs and strips $185 billion from anti-hunger programs like SNAP, taking healthcare and food away from your poorest citizens. At the same time, the bill throws nearly $170 billion into ramping up Trump’s brutal immigration enforcement and border crackdown. In effect, Trump’s Congress is eviscerating the safety net of ordinary Americans to erect what one journalist bluntly described as a “permanent immigration police state.” They are diverting your tax dollars from healing and nourishing people toward surveilling, detaining, and deporting them. And then they have the audacity to cheer this as some kind of victory. House Speaker Mike Johnson crowed that they were delivering “one big, beautiful bill” for Trump’s agenda – all just in time for the Fourth of July.

This is not the America we know. This is not your soul. The America we know has led the free world in striving to protect the less fortunate, to expand inclusivity, to extend empathy. The America we admire did not always achieve its highest ideals, but it never stopped reaching for them. You have been a shining city on a hill before. For decades, the United States was the leading power in spreading democracy around the globe – a beacon of freedom that pierced the iron curtains and concrete walls of tyranny – and it remained so under leaders of both parties… until nowlatimes.com. Promoting democracy and human rights abroad was a pillar of American foreign policy for the last 50 years, ensuring more stable, peaceful relationships in the world. When World War II shattered civilization, it was America who stepped up and helped restore a broken world. Under the Marshall Plan, you invested around $13 billion (about $160 billion in today’s money) to rebuild war-torn Europe – aiding friend and former foe alike – so that freedom and prosperity could return. That generosity saved lives and won lasting allies. That is the America we celebrate. The America that understood winning a war wasn’t enough – you also had to win the peace, with courage and with charity.

The Statue of Liberty has long stood as a global symbol of freedom and democracy. Over the decades, Emma Lazarus’s poem at its base – “Give me your tired, your poor… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door” – came to symbolize America’s embrace of immigrants, a message of hope and acceptance that greeted millions who passed through Ellis Island. Your nation has been a sanctuary and a new beginning for people fleeing poverty, war, and oppression. This tradition of welcoming “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is part of America’s very soul. It stands in stark contrast to what is happening now. Under Trump, that golden door has been slammed shut and padlocked. The current regime trades asylum for suffering, confining desperate migrants in detention camps and fast-tracking their deportation to danger. We’re watching with horror as your government forcibly separates children from parents at the border and imprisons them in what even U.S. allies have called “internment camps for children.” In 2018, the United Nations condemned Trump’s family-separation policy as illegal and inhumane. Steve Schmidt himself said of that policy: “It is connected by the same evil that once fueled slavery and the persecution of indigenous peoples – immoral and must be repudiated.”

We are watching from the front row as American neighbors – and even Canadian citizens – are being swept up in this dragnet. Masked agents snatch people off the streets with no warning, effectively kidnapping them under the banner of law enforcement. Today, roughly 55 Canadians are detained by U.S. immigration authorities, and our foreign ministry is scrambling to make sure they’re treated fairly. Shockingly, one of our fellow Canadians, a 49-year-old permanent resident, just died in ICE custody last month. A Canadian Member of Parliament has warned that people are at risk of being “deported to some El Salvadoran concentration camp” under Trump’s hardline policies. Concentration camp. That is the phrase he used – and it isn’t hyperbole. The images and reports we’ve seen – families in chain-link pens, children under foil blankets on concrete floors, migrants being shipped to for-profit prisons in the swamps – bear an awful resemblance to the darkest chapters of the 20th century. This is not the America we know. This is not the America that stood as a beacon of human rights, of humanity. This is not the America that rebuilt Europe, or established the Peace Corps, or helped eradicate disease, or championed civil rights. This is a perversion. It’s as if the American Dream has been twisted into a waking nightmare.

But I refuse to believe the nightmare is your destiny. Canada refuses to believe it. We know the real soul of America is merely sleeping, not dead. We know, as surely as we know ourselves, that the foundational goodness of your nation endures – in your people, in your towns, in brave voices small and large. We see thousands of Americans rising up in protest, marching in the streets for justice and decency. We see principled judges and civil servants quietly doing their duty, keeping the flame of the rule of law alive. We see journalists refusing to stop asking hard questions. We see neighbors helping neighbors, churches sheltering the refugee, communities rejecting hate, and flying the flag not as an idol of a regime but as a symbol of the values behind it. We know that Trump’s America is not the real America. As an Oxfam advocacy group aptly noted, the cruelty of the current administration – the discriminatory bans, the family separations, the assaults on the poor and marginalized – are “destroying American values, punishing families, and costing lives”oxfamamerica.org. Yet those dark policies are a mere shadow cast over a great light. The shadow will pass. The light remains.

So on this Fourth of July, we, your friends to the north, send you this heartfelt message: We want you back. We want our America back – the America that inspired the world and inspired us in Canada, too. We have been conditioned over more than a century to admire you. We grew up on your music and movies, your ideals and ideas. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with you in history’s toughest battles, and we have prospered together in peace. That hasn’t changed. In fact, we love you more than ever, precisely because we now see how much you are hurting. It’s agonizing to watch the country we love being abused by a wannabe tyrant – to watch your wealth stolen to line autocrats’ pockets, your kindness weaponized into cruelty, your freedoms eroded, and your proud history rewritten with lies. But we’re still here, and we still believe in you. We see you. We see through the darkness and recognize the good that still beats in your heart. We know you’re still in there, America. And we know you will wake up.

Until then, we will stand on guard and stand by your side in spirit. Tonight, when I hear your anthem float across the ballpark (The Angels are in town;) or on TV, I will stand, remove my cap, and place my hand over my heart. Not in blind loyalty to what America’s government is doing – but in solidarity with what America truly is. I will do it for Steve and every American like him who refuses to give up on the nation they love. I will do it out of respect for the real American ideals that we know will triumph in the end: liberty, equality, justice, and mercy.

Happy Independence Day, America. Wake up soon – the world needs you back.

Sincerely,
A Canadian ❤️