Is this the end of Western Liberal Democracy?
“Scratch a liberal, and you’ll find a fascist.” ~ Tucker Carlson, TV host and political commentator.
The universal applicability of Carlson’s statement can be a matter of debate. The idea, however, applies perfectly to Justin Pierre James Trudeau. Trudeau is the second-term Prime Minister of Canada. He is also the son of the illustrious Pierre Trudeau, a former Prime Minister himself (1968-1979, 1980-1984).
The junior Trudeau announced earlier today that he would invoke an unprecedented never-used Emergencies Act. According to the Act, an emergency is a situation that seriously “endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportion or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority a province to deal with it.”
The Act is a refurbished version of the World War era War Measures Actwhich gave broad powers to the government “during war, invasion or insurrection.” The Canadian government used these powers to suspend the civil liberties of people in Canada who were considered “enemy aliens.” PM Pierre Trudeau used the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970.
The current invocation of the Act came in response to a massive yet extraordinarily peaceful uprising against his government’s unscientific and draconian Covid vaccine mandates and other restrictions. The Trudeau government has forced its citizens to take Covid vaccines and imposed severe restrictions against unvaccinated ones.
The Covid vaccines were touted as 100% safe and effective. While the vaccines are still considered effective in stopping severe illness, hospitalizations, and deaths, their efficacy has diminished significantly - down to about six months. Vaccines do not stop reinfection among vaccinated and those vaccinated can still spread the virus to others..
Though short-term adverse effects from vaccines are still considered rare and long-term effects primarily unknown, many have increasingly questioned the safety of the vaccines. Rare heart inflammation among young boys and irregular menstrual cycles are some of the well-known side effects of the mRNA vaccines.
Many scientists and public health experts now firmly believe that knowing what we know, vaccine mandates have no scientific or ethical legitimacy. In their WSJ op-ed piece, Dr. Martin Kuldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya argue that “The idea that everybody needs to be vaccinated is as scientifically baseless as the idea that nobody does.” According to Vinay Prasad MD, MPH, “Vax confers personal health benefits to avoid severe disease. But the value of societal transmission is rapidly evaporating. Thus, all mandates are unjustifiable.”
Many Canadians who remain unvaccinated due to personal choice, natural immunity, or medical/religious reasons are increasingly forced out of society. Unvaccinated Canadians are stripped of their jobs. They are not able to board a plane or train in Canada. They are forced to live as pariahs.
The working-class resentment has been building up against the mandates for months. The recent protest began as a convoy of trucks heading towards Ottawa. It has become a massive uprising that has gridlocked major Canadian cities and has chocked the crossings along the American border in about two weeks.
In response, the Trudeau government has also cut off the finances of the protesting groups. “This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades,” said the Canadian Finance Minister.
So far, there has been a muted response from liberal media and the world. Much of the Western world is engaged in a similar curtailment of civil liberties in the garb of Covid mitigation. The governments of Austria, Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand, etc., have similar draconian Covid mitigation policies, and the people have had enough of it. Similar convoys are forming the backbone of a popular uprising throughout these countries.
The Western democracy ranking institutions, willing to criticize countries like India for their alleged human rights violations at the drop of a hat, have remained silent in the wake of atrocious lockdowns and mask-vaccine mandates. Many of the Western countries resemble medical apartheid states.
The Canadian response to the protests also signals a complete collapse of the Western liberal democratic model as we know. The ever eager to spread the wings of freedom and democracy in other countries, the beacons of the liberal democracy could not sustain the weight of a peaceful popular uprising and turning themselves into despotic police states.
Closer home in the US, the situation isn’t much different. The Biden administration is openly using the various arms of the government to spyand then potentially punish its political opponents and critics. In a DOJ memo, Attorney General Merrick Garland had compared parents protesting at school board meetings to domestic terrorism. The AG also pledged more law enforcement resources to protect school boards. The government is also using its influence to force media and the Big Tech to censor and silence any opposing views.
The Covid19 pandemic has laid bare the inherent antagonism of our modern (Western) society. The Canadian government’s despotic response to the truckers’ convoy has exposed the limitations of the Western liberal democracy.
However, the protesting truckers have vowed to “hold the line” against the Trudeau government.