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Two quite unrelated items came to my attention this week, but they illustrate a couple of things about how America is perceived abroad.

Our health care is popular, apparently. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is coming down from Canada to the U.S. to have heart surgery. Over at the Hot Air blog, Ed Morrissey noted that Mr. Williams vehemently defended the care available from Canada’s national health care system back in 2008. Meanwhile, Williams is under some heat back home for crossing the border to get care. His deputy told reporters that he didn’t have the option of having such surgery done in his own province, but it remains unclear why he had to leave the country altogether for his surgery.

Another unanswered question: Where will Canadians go for treatment if America nationalizes health care?

Let's move our attention to Egypt, where American hair styles are not so popular – at least among women at Cairo University. Mark Steyn notes that women graduating from Cairo University now wear the hijab (head scarf) far more often than in decades past.

So now look at these two pictures:  First, the Cairo University class of 1978, with every woman bare-headed; second, the Cairo University class of 2004, hijabed to the hilt.

Whenever I give a speech on Islam, some or other complacenik always says, "Oh, but they haven't had time to Westernize. Just you wait and see. Give it another 20 years, and the siren song of Westernization will work its magic." This argument isn't merely speculative, it's already been proved wrong by what's happened over the last 20 years. Compare the Cairo University class of 1959 with those of the 21st century, and then see if you can recite your inevitablist theories of social evolution with a straight face. The idea that social progress is like the wheel or the internal combustion engine — once invented, it can never be uninvented — is one of the laziest assumptions of the Western Left.

Personally, I doubt that these women are all choosing this expression of religiosity of their own volition. What does this trend in "moderate" Egypt mean for future Mideast-U.S. relations?