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Trudeau’s War on Truckers Will Backfire … Badly
Freedom lovers around the world have cheered on the Canadian truckers who convoyed into the nation’s capital to oppose vaccine mandates. After arrival, they hung around Ottawa, proving a nuisance to nervous politicians and wealthy residents.
Unlike leftist protests in the summer of 2020, truckers haven’t smashed windows, burned down businesses, or assaulted cops and bystanders. Instead, they’ve held cookouts, helped feed the homeless, and fostered a happy party atmosphere.
Their demands are limited and simple. They want the Liberal Canadian government to end the vaccine mandate on truckers, a common-sense request for essential workers spending 99 percent of their workdays alone in a cab. PM Justin Trudeau and his bureaucracy could have ended this long before the convoy reached Ottawa by agreeing to their sensible position.
Instead, the Liberal Party and major Canadian media declared war, accusing the truckers of racism, fascism — even transphobia. Trudeau fled the city in terror and remains in hiding. This bizarre overreaction transformed a minor protest into a so-called “occupation” of the nation’s capital. As I write, Ottawa police are stealing fuel from the truckers and columnists are advising a military response.
Far worse, Canada has demonstrated that citizens disagreeing with their government is no longer allowed and will be suppressed with force.
When a government decides to treat peaceful protests as violent insurrections, it is forbidding dissenters from lawfully petitioning their government. Once that traditional democratic tool is banned, citizens have no peaceful, legal option left. What Trudeau, et al., haven’t yet realized is that citizens do have several other options to redress their grievances. Options that are far uglier and more damaging than smiling truckers honking horns.
Protests, like elections, are a useful pressure valve for a discontented public. Truckers can have their say and vote against Liberal MPs. If they lose, hey, at least they registered their disapproval. The activists can try convincing neighbors to promote their interests the next time around.
But when peaceful protests are banned … then what? Canadians, considering themselves free citizens (perhaps mistakenly), will still challenge their leaders. Some will turn to national strikes, destroying North America’s already tottering supply chain. A few others will turn to less savory methods of protest.
After decades of relative peace, Canada’s leaders have become ignorant of basic political realities and human nature. Peaceful protest is a boon to any governmental structure as helps it maintain public confidence, which allows the entire system to remain in power.
Once public confidence is lost, the government writ large is not long for this world.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Politics
What is maddening about this situation is that it can end easily if pretty boy Trudeau just ends the mandates. If he did, the reason for the protests would evaporate. Of course, he won’t. It is astonishing to see how all the government forces, politicians and police alike look on this as something that must be defeated. There is not a reason in the world to think so, but that is their whole attitude.
As a sidebar, it is frustrating as well to see how little attention is being paid to it down here. The MSM have mostly ignored it, though ABC did run a shot report this evening, a first. Especially disappointing is to see conservative source studiously ignoring it. I think NR has run just two pieces since it started. It makes one wonder at the sincerity of all their posturing about freedom and liberty and governmental overreach .
I hope they prevail. It is time.
They seem determined to prove that our worst suspicions about their goals and motives are correct.
Time for a reminder:
Fox News now has Sara Carter on the ground at an , so its pass the popcorn time.