We didn't worry when we learned that Citizens Bank was owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland and Brooks Brothers by a British company. And while it seemed somehow un-American, it was no shock to find out that the Good Humor Man works for Dutch owners. Even the thought that America's roads, bridges, land and groundwater are being bought up by foreign investors was bearable. But the news that a Belgian company, InBev, was preparing to wage a hostile takeover of the Bud plant in Merrimack was too much. Don't national security laws prevent that? Are no congressional hearings being held?

Many New Hampshire men claim to have been weaned on Budweiser, and who are we to challenge their claim?

Anheuser-Busch, which was founded in St. Louis in 1852, opened its New Hampshire brewery in 1971. Like all Anheuser-Busch facilities, it is a generous corporate citizen and a major destination for visitors who come to sample the company's wares, marvel at its 2,000-pound Clydesdale draft horses, and attend barbecue contests and other events. About 500 people work there, making a product that, in the words of that armchair philosopher Homer Simpson, "is proof that God wants man to be happy."

Anheuser-Busch is the world's third-largest brewing company. InBev, which makes Becks and Stella Artois among other brews, is No. 2. Combined, they would produce fully one-quarter of the world's beer. InBev's profits in the European market are down, so it's been looking elsewhere for sales. All brewers are going through a dry spell because bad weather and a switch to other crops by the farmers who provide much of the world's supply of barley and hops have combined to drastically raise the price of beer's raw ingredients.

The Budweiser brand is perhaps the world's strongest, and its fans are loyal. They have been beseeching the company to stand firm against the invaders.

"Do not sell to these Belgian carpetbaggers. It's American . . . It's ours, not theirs," one blogger wrote to Anheuser-Busch President August Busch IV.

We'd like to say, "We'll drink to that," but in a global economy of ever-consolidating businesses, we may have to face the fact that the maker of "the king of beers" could soon be owned by people from a little country that still has a king.