Midwest-raised WAC? is quite patriotic–as American as apple pie, baseball, moral pretension and land grabs. And even though patriotism has limitations as a system of thought, since early 2003 (U.S. making noises about invading Iraq, and finally does that) I have “defended America” at dinner parties, meetings, hotel lobbies and restaurants in London, Aldeburgh, Paris, Kandel, Mainz, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Dusseldorf, Berlin and Barcelona. Until late 2003, my rule for ground travel was this: rented cars in UK, Germany and Austria; trains everywhere else. That had always made sense. But trains, no matter where I went in 2003, became a problem. In April 2003, a half dozen chain-smoking French boarding school students once cross-examined me on a train from Paris to London, causing me to start smoking again. In the late summer of 2003, an inebriated