Are you proud of your country? Pride is a tricky thing — one of the the worst sins, we’re told, often preceding a fall. But people seem to need it, particularly in times of doubt or crisis. A perfectly adjusted organism would have no need of the stuff.

Am I proud of Canada? Can one be really be proud of such a huge abstraction, as opposed to a child who works hard on a test at school, or a spouse who faces an abiding fear, and prevails over it?

Last year, I had a twinge of national pride, when then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien opted out of the Iraq war (albeit after keeping the country in suspense for months over his intentions.) I thought: “Finally, clarity. Canada stands for something, in this case, international process. We won’t be bullied.” I had a similar moment last spring when an Ontario court decided that gay people should have the same rights as straight people in Canada. A country that is amongst the very first of nations to recognize the full citizenship of a sometimes unpopular minority: now that’s something to be proud of.

At the end of the year, Time magazine asked Americans (once again) to be proud of their country’s soldiers in Iraq, three male examples of whom stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the magazine’s annual cover dedicated to Person of the Year. These kids — handsome, serious, determined — were posed in full combat gear and carried lethal machine guns. They had been instructed to look straight into the camera, just in case anyone doubted their intentions, and were thus emblematic of an army of innocents now sitting in a Middle Eastern desert being shot at, targets in Bush’s ill-conceived occupation.

I’m not American and I’m not proud of these kids, but every time one or half-a-dozen of them die, which is practically every day now, it’s occasion for terrible sorrow. Brought up on TV and America-The-Beautiful cant, I doubt that very few of them know much about the country they’re occupying (its language, for one thing), and the vicious guerilla war now raining down on their heads probably came as a surprise, since the invasion was supposed to be over quickly with minimum casualties.

They’ve been duped, not the least by a vast propaganda apparatus, of which media-giants Time Warner and CNN are among the leading operatives. And by politicians, of course, who once again are using the common soldier, without whom no war would be possible, to promote an ill-thought-through agenda. When Bush first assumed the presidency three nightmarish years ago, my first thought was: “The body count starts now.” It continues.

In Canada, we had our own Person of the Year tributes too. Maclean’s magazine, for one, profiled several Canadians, first amongst whom was Stephen Lewis, also busy in foreign parts with an important agenda.

His particular quest? Lewis has dedicated the past few years fighting the AIDS crisis in Africa. As the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, he’s been tireless in promoting the UN agenda of “preventing the epidemic’s further spread, reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission, providing care and treatment to all, delivering scientific breakthroughs, and protecting the vulnerable, especially orphans.” Indefatigable, compassionate, articulate: someone to be proud of, indeed.

For its part, The Globe and Mail selected the Ontario judges as the best bringers of positive change to the country last year, and published a photograph of three very genuine-looking people. Likewise, Maclean’s off-the-cuff snap of Lewis on its cover was “real” in a way Time‘s soldier-icons weren’t.

Those idealized, square-jawed, gun-toting athlete-gods selling the old lie that war is an heroic and noble activity are reminiscent of nothing less than fascist- and socialist-realist statuary, of the kind I saw years ago guarding the shrines of State communism in Red Square, or adorning Nazi buildings in archival photographs.

The Canadian heroes, conversely, “selling” disease relief and human rights, make a welcome contrast to Time‘s warriors. And I suppose that’s reason for a kind of pride.