Maintaining the right

The United States of America literally scares me to death.

In spite of my often tongue-incheek comments about America and

Americans, deep down I have a real respect and affection for my cousins — uncles, aunts and assorted forebears and relatives — who live south of that lovely line that currently separates me from them.

If I were an American I think I’d be doubly scared. I don’t know what

“doubly scared to death” would mean. Is it possible to be “doubly dead”?

Actually, if you live in the dear old States, I think it is.

Consider what it means to be a police officer anywhere in “the Land of

the Free.” Someone puts in a call for help because of a physical assault on an old lady that is taking place before his very eyes. So you and your partner are dispatched to the scene to enforce “the rule of law” upon the situation.

But guess what? As you climb out of your police car, a sniper with a

rifle opens up from a secondstorey window and suddenly your partner lies dying in the street. You call for backup and within minutes another car full of officers draws up. Gunfire erupts from the window and all of you return fire.

Within a relatively short time three or four officers are dead and several others, including you, are badly hurt.

Through the haze of your pain you hear someone say that two assassins

are dead in the apartment from which they were shooting, but it seems a third has made his escape. You realize that the 911 call was only a ruse to draw you and your fellow officers into a deadly trap.

When that incident is characterized by Obama and several others as an

attack upon “all of us,” that’s exactly what they mean. Not just upon the police, or the city or the county concerned, but upon every single person who lives in a nation that is governed by the rule of law.

We, through our elected representatives, determine the laws under which we live. We depend upon our police, who are responsible to us, to enforce those laws in a reasonable and acceptable manner and so ensure order. If they cannot carry out that mandate because of threats of violence and actual death, we can no longer depend upon the rule of law to keep us safe. That’s when we descend from order into chaos.

Authorities and leaders in the U.S. have every right to be concerned. In

Obama’s words, “This madness has to stop!” There can be no justification for attacks upon what is essentially the rule of law. Above all in a democratic state, order must be maintained. Police must be supported and protected.

We in Canada are geographically, and in many ways culturally,

snuggled up to those United States. Can the perceived threat to law and order to the south also spread to us in this country?

The short answer is yes. In this age of immediate reporting of events and immediate response to those events, the potential is always there.

Canada also had a “West” but it never turned “wild” like the American

West. We too had our Indian “problems,” but their Indians at one point came up across the border looking for sanctuary from us. We, too, have had our revolutions, but the major one ended on the Plains of Abraham. Many years later, we had another that ended with the execution of Louis Riel.

If not in every violent event in our history that turned out to be

relatively minor in the North America context, the difference was largely in our police force. The Northwest Mounted Police were almost universally respected and trusted. The RCMP enjoy that same reputation, especially internationally. In recent years that force has suffered its own criminal accusations and been roundly criticized.

Some of these criticisms may be justified. But to echo Obama, there can

be no justification for violence against those same people who are there to protect us in Springdale, Ottawa, Vancouver and all points in between. That includes our municipal, provincial and federal forces. There is also the ever-present danger of eroding a proud force of women and men through the cavalier pursuit of criticisms based on the agendas of others.

None of this is to say that American police forces are less capable or have less compassion than our own police of whom we are so proud. But as is the United States, we have to be conscious of the need to appreciate and protect those who protect us. I believe in this great country of Canada, we have a strong history of doing just that.

I trust that Americans will be as aware as I know we Canadians are.

That way we can appreciate and protect each other.

“Above all in a democratic state, order must be maintained. Police must be supported and protected.”