The Canadan example

Over at Kos, Georgia10 concludes that yesterday's election means America is becoming a progressive country:

. . . the governing ideology of conservatism is slipping out of favor with the American people. The decisive Democratic victory was a rejection of the conservativism peddled by this Republican Party
. . . When you can't get an abortion ban passed in freakin' South Dakota, America isn't trending conservative. When you can't get a gay marriage ban passed in Arizona, America isn't trending conservative. When opposition to gay marriage bans was more than 40% in 5 of the 8 bans that passed, America isn't trending conservative. When a majority of Americans choose Democrats to represent them, America isn't trending conservative.
America has changed a lot since the days of Reagan. It's changed even more since the GOP's Contract with America. Simply put, what Americans want is incompatible with what the GOP stands for today. America's appetite for the rapid, selfish conservatism of the last 12 years is waning, and the progressive ideology is becoming more attractive to more and more of its citizens.

Now, I'm not sure she is correct -- after 2004, Tom Delay crowed that America would be a Republican nation for ever, and look how THAT turned out. So I would need to see a few more elections go Democratic before I could agree with Georgia completely.
But that said, I do HOPE that this is true.
And I would like to think that maybe Canada has played a small part in this -- showing America by example how a progressive country does things.
We approved gay marriage, and the churches of the nation didn't collapse.
We talked about legalizing marijuana, and the justice system didn't explode.
Our first, and preferred, option for dealing with problems is always negotiation, not force or bluster -- we don't indulge ourselves in ridiculous talk about 5,000 mile fences and flattening the UN and nuking the Middle East.
We elected a Conservative government, but we still have medicare and we still have government pensions and no one is babbling about drowning government in a bathtub.
We have lots of arguments, and lots of challenges, but most of the time Canadians are confident that we find a way to make things better.
And that's how a progressive country acts, I think.