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ever just roll right over them, obliterate them. So there's those twoextremes, and in the middle there's the people who are untouched by itand the wheels of time just roll right past them, and that's what itwas I was getting at with 'Between The Wheels', the fact that thesepeople are neither hurt nor helped by it, but it just rolled right bythem and they where in a very central position.JL: You know the United States and Canada have had this great love affairforever, you know, the longest border in the whole world and all thatstuff, a r e you made nervous today living next to the U.S. than you weresay, four years ago?NP : Oh no , not a t all . I'm a bit of a partisan in the Un i ted Statesreally, I genui ne l y love America more than just in a tourist sense , orin a superficial sense, but I love everything about America, t he good,the bad, everything it is. I find myself const antl y defending it whenwe're in Europe, I argue myself hoarse with those narrow mindedprovinci al Eu r opeans who have some TV i dea of Ameri ca. France , Germany ·and Britain I spend a lot of time arguing wi t h people , and in Canadatoo . It's a l ove / hate relationship. In Canada there ' s a t remendousattitude about Ameri ca, and these peopl e have never seen any part ofAmerica except perhaps Buffalo, New York or Niaga r a Falls , New York andthat ' s their whole percept ion of America, beside s what they see on TV.With that ignorance though , and it i s expect able, I mean you can'texpect everyone to have seen e verything a nd know all about it, but att he same t ime don ' t pass j udgement on it. Spare me ! Around the UnitedSt ates I have me t a lot of America n people who I love, I r espect thecountry, I respe c t the people . I f I ever have to be in trouble anywhereI hope it's in t he mid-west ern United States , be caus e there I feel likepeople would he lp me, and not f ee l like they were doing me big favour .J L: That's ni ce .NP : Yeah, I have a real love for this country, and I l ike I s aid not aa blinkered love by any means. I have no pr obl ems taki ng the defectsof course , but I know t hat a lot of those a r e his tori ca l i mpe r ati ves,and the position that America occupies in the world today is notalt ogether by choice. I mean it ' s not people's f aults that it becamet he mos t successful country and the richest country and the mostpowerful countr y, it just happened because people worked and peoplewere into it and they did it. So you can't fault them for being themost powerful and having that incredible responsibility, I mean it'seasy to pOint fingers at figures in government and blame the governmentfor a list of things, and of course there's a tremendous amount of'Reaganitis' about, but really it is a bit facile to do that. Anyonewho thinks about it a little and learns a little more about theirhistory and their country and why things are the way they are, knowsthat America didn't go out and buy a bunch of nuclear bombs so they canbe the big guys on the block, it was s trictly an historical imperativetha t they had to do, there was no chOice, and there is no choice.I think the problems between Russia and America are again not the bigkid on the block. There's a whole bunch of people over there who wantus to live their way, and I think there's a whole lot of people herewho don't want to. I think that Oscar Wilde has a great quote that saysthat: 'selfishness does not lie in living as one wishes to live, it liesin expecting others to live as one wishes to live'; and that's theessence of it. I think the American mentality does come down to that -'hey let me do it my way' - And that's basically it, we would not begiven a choice and consequently the defence is very real, . i~'S nottrying to outdo the neighbour and see who can have the sh1n1estCadillac, I don't see it as that kind of status or anything, it ' sstrictly defensive. As easy as it is to point fingers at P70ple whowant wars, I see that as an irresolvable,deeply philosoph1cal division, rn...