God bless Americans

By GERRY WARNER
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Feb. 3, 2005
Why are Canadians so gutless?
Now hold it a minute before you start lobbing rotten eggs in my direction. I can explain. Really!What got me going on this was an article in the National Post this week about a group of American activists, who are so incensed over a property rights decision by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice that they are attempting to take over the judge's summer property and erecting a small inn on it called the "Lost Liberty Hotel." Not only that, they are going to put a cafe in the hotel called the "Just Deserts."
Now that's what I call chutzpah. The Kind of chutzpah we seldom see in Canada.
What rallied the group behind the audacious scheme was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that extended the powers of local governments to seize houses and land for development projects. These kind of powers to expropriate have always existed in both the U.S. and Canada under the legal umbrella of "eminent domain." But when the New Hampshire town of Weare tried to use these powers to seize around a dozen homes to clear the land for a hotel and health club complex, California resident Logan Darrow Clements and a group of activists saw red so to speak.
Using the legal power of eminent domain, they're going after one of the judges that made the controversial decision, Justice David Souter, or more particularly, they're going after the 200 year-old farmhouse he owns with the intention of turning it into a hotel. Clements calls it "home schooling."
"What the Justice did was unjust," he said in an interview from Los Angeles. "He destroyed everyone's property rights when he and four of his colleagues voted in the majority . . ." No doubt, we'll soon be getting updates on this incredible case on Jay Leno or Fox News. Americans, God bless them!
But this bizarre case got me to thinking. Would anything like this ever happen in Canada? Not on your life! Sad to say, the libertarian instincts that seem to be bred in the bone in our neighbors to the south seldom make it to the surface in Canada. How many Canadians could even name a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada little alone the Chief Justice? In the U.S., the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is a household name and confirmation hearings to elect judges to the Supreme Court are headline stories for weeks as they are at the current moment with the confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito.
But the crucial point here is the Americans -- God bless them -- have confirmation hearings to elect judges to the bench. The process is open and transparent while in Canada it's all done behind closed doors in a wink, wink, nudge, nudge fashion that would do any old boy's network proud. Talk to almost any Canadian lawyer about the differences between our two legal systems and you'll get the same response -- the American system is too political. What codswollop! Yes, the American system is political. But it's politics right out in the open where everyone can see it while in Canada the political warhorses and hacks appointed to the bench occurs out of sight of the hoi polloi. And not a single Canadian complains. Why should we? We know how to defer to our betters.
And its not just in politics and law where the milquetoast Canadian character is evident. Take hockey, yes hockey. Certainly we don't hesitate for a second to chop down anyone that gets in our way on the ice as Bobbie Clark did to the star Soviet player prior to the final game of the celebrated 1972 Canada Cup series. One chop to the ankle and Valeri Kharlamov was out of the game and yippee we won. But where was the same aggressiveness when it came to hockey Czar Allan Eagleson, who ruled and abused Canadian hockey players for years, and not a peep out of them until a sports writer in a small town Massachusetts newspaper, of all places, did an investigative series that resulted in charges and Eagelson going to jail and Canadian hockey taking a turn for the better.
And my own field of journalism is no better where my former boss Conrad Black stood like a colossus for years, living a luxurious life style that would have shamed a Saudi Prince while millions disappeared from the pockets of his shareholders. And he'd still be doing it if it hadn't been for an American investment company that blew the whistle resulting in an investigation by a special committee of Hollinger International which termed Black's empire a "corporate kleptocracy."
It's a funny thing about the Canadian character. In war, our record of bravery is the envy of the world. In hockey we're often labeled as brutal, but when it comes to the rarefied worlds of law, politics and business we fold like an accordian.
And in these areas, as much as I hate to say it, we could learn something from the Americans.
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