ANOTHER WINNER FROM LAWRENCE MARTIN AT THE GLOBE

I can attest to the attitude of which he speaks even municipally as trying to get anything done, even initiatives that save money, while protecting the environment and better health are often spurrned. Its as if we, the collective we, once relished the new, the bold, and making the barely possible a standard reality. Now we just cling to those great feats, now as old, if not older than most of our parents.

What the hell are we so afraid of?


"Idealists once, we are now just mere American consorts
LAWRENCE MARTIN
America has changed. Stands to reason that the debate in Canada about America should change. But not only has it not changed, it hardly exists.

In a column last week, it was noted how we watch in relative silence as the U.S. experiences its biggest upheaval since the 1960s. The stakes are very high yet we don't seem to care. If the Americans are undermining the system of collective security they fathered, don't worry about it.

If they are rolling back their storied freedoms, fine. If, through their deathly fixation with Iraq, they leave the Afghanistan campaign in a perilous state, let's look on numbly. Let's do the same as they stoke the world's arms race with a rush for yet more stockpiles -- even though their military spending is already five times that of any other country. And if the enormous debts they compile threaten our and other economies, why raise a voice? It didn't used to be this way. One need only recall how we responded to another period of great American turmoil -- the Vietnam/Watergate era.

In the 1960s and the 1970s, the debate on the United States was intense and robust in our Parliament and beyond. We had the gall to challenge the Western military model by substantially cutting our NATO forces in Europe. We welcomed draft dodgers, were the first to recognize China, sought warmer relations with the Soviet Union.

We fought the import of low-brow culture, looked for third options, pushed hard to get the superpowers moving on Cold War solutions.

Some of it may have been wrongheaded and our impact on American thinking probably didn't amount to much. But the world got to know the Canadian conscience was different. We let ourselves know that.

There was some idealism around this place. We didn't kneel at the altar of militarism.
Today, by contrast, it's eyes wide shut. We timorously take it all in. "If there is something we fear more than the damage the Americans are doing," said Abe Rotstein, a leading nationalist voice in the former era, "it is the prospect of our doing something about it." In the 1970s, the activists, their views vindicated on Vietnam, were in the vanguard. In this decade, the activists, their views vindicated on Iraq, not to mention global warming, have no such standing.
Speak out back then and you were cool. Speak out today and some fount of wisdom with a Fox News mentality will come down on you -- to borrow a phrase from Hunter S. Thompson -- "like a million pound sh-thammer." Speak out today and, as silly as it sounds, you'll be accused of Bush-bashing -- as if it isn't warranted. In the last election campaign, Paul Martin's Liberals found out what the atmosphere was like when they underwent a media pounding for taking on the United States on certain questions.

That campaign has had a lingering effect, silencing Liberal voices, who kept Canada out of Iraq, on the big American questions of today. The Conservatives, former supporters of that war, are more inclined to join hands with the administration than pursue what Andrew Caddell, one of our United Nations officials, calls innovative multilateralism.

Among the few who challenge Washington are the NDP's Jack Layton and groups such as the Council of Canadians and the Centre for Policy Alternatives. They stick their necks out, only to get either ignored or berated by conservative media elites who would be more convincing if their track record on such matters as Iraq and the green file wasn't so dismal by comparison. Today our academic community is more conservative than in the Nixon era, our media the same. The boomer generation is retiring, leaving behind youth cohorts with little passion for things political.

There is an attitude of resignation that says we are powerless to affect the American way, so why bother trying.

Instead, better to just sit and watch the Bush brigade do it -- and hope the growing chorus of Americans themselves who oppose the administration can halt the descent.
These legions of Americans won't get much help from us. The new Canada has abandoned the independent strain we had in that era gone by. We were idealists then. We are more like consorts now.

lmartin@globeandmail.com "

Cheers,

P