“It is alarming that our own President has not spoken out against Justin Trudeau’s militaristic power grab, or against his violence against peaceful protesters using their lawfully protected freedoms of speech and assembly. It is even more alarming that the Biden administration is seeking to extend our own state of emergency.”
Naomi Wolf, on her substack newletter, in a post called “The Fall of Canada, The Danger in the US.”
You should read it all. Wolf is troubled by the continuation of the “state of emergency” in the U.S. regarding the pandemic, which she weaves into her protest about the dangers of martial law and the risks when democratic nations start justifying dictatorial powers.
I ran across her piece as I was preparing to write a post titled, “Stop Making Me Defend Justin Trudeau.” The trucker protest may involve free speech, the right to protest and the right to assemble; I guess it is peaceful, or was until Trudeau called in the cops. However, no protest is lawful if it involves breaking laws, and using huge trucks to block highways and commuter access to where they need to go is not legal anywhere. Geraldo Rivera and Sean Hannity got into an angry tiff last week, which Hannity telling Geraldo that his criticism of the trucker protest was an affront to liberty and human rights, and Rivera responding that innocent people and businesses were being harmed by the protest, and it needed to end. For one of the first times in my life, I’m with Geraldo.I was also in favor of the various cities paralyzed by the George Floyd riots and takeovers of Federal building expelling the demonstrators by force, once there were no other options. This is called “consistency,” a concept the hypocrites in the media and on the Left that called President Trump a “fascist” for wanting to call in the National Guard in those situations have never heard of as they cheer on Trudeau. Wolf’s piece also reminded me that Biden has used the opportunity created by Trump’s initial state of emergency declared when his health “experts” were telling him it would only be necessary for a few weeks to keep the emergency in place. Wolf writes,
The COVID-19 State of Emergency in the US was declared almost two years ago, at the start of the pandemic; now that the virus is “endemic”, against all science and reason the State of Emergency has been extended.
This situation – that the United States is operating under emergency powers – is the biggest underreported story of the century to date. Emergency law means that President Biden has powers he does not have under non-emergency law; specifically, the COVID-19 emergency powers acts, extended eight times already, give HHS powers that it did not have before….
And the current declaration by President Biden, as of this past week, that the Emergency Act must be extended, is about an Act that is open-ended in duration.
What this declaration does, going around Congress, is to continue to allocate billions of dollars to HHS, which billions in effect flow to constituencies to create a massive economic incentive for stakeholders to keep the drama of the pandemic, including forcible masking, pressure for vaccine passports, the possibility of closing businesses again, and all the misery of the past two years, ongoing forever.
But Donald Trump is the dangerous autocrat who threatens democracy.
Ethics Alarms 
My question: Why didn’t Trudeau meet with and talk to representatives of the truckers, perhaps in return for their unblocking the streets of Ottawa, or prior to their doing so?
Because they are literal fascists and one can’t be seen negotiating with fascists.
That is an especially cogent question considering that the truckers that were blocking the bridges and the border crossings, relented when local authorities asked them to do so.
The trucker protest violated(blocking the international bridge=actively disrupting economic activity, honking horns = disturbing the peace) the one fundamental inseverable absolute in Canada: the responsibility the individual has to society. The only publicly acceptable anything is to maintain the peace.
Will most Canadians satisfy with Tiananmen Trudea trampling first nations elderly in wheel chairs? Yes, to preserve the peace and to receive comfort from obedience and being able to lay responsibility on the government and the victim. It’s the victim’s fault, she was not obeying. Obedience will be rewarded with more opportunity to obey.
In the U.S. our fundamental foundation is the inalienable right of the individual.
On the one hand, I agree that blocking traffic is bad form for protesting. On the other hand, blocking traffic has been normalized for protesting.
There cannot be multiple standards for what is acceptable based off of political affiliation or whether or not you agree with the the cause being protested. There ARE multiple standards. That is wrong.
I can agree that the truckers shouldn’t be blocking traffic in principle, but in practice I don’t really care if they do. I’ll still support them, because a different standard has already been set and approved of by the people now complaining. Trudeau cheers when BLM or some climate group blocks off traffic. He clutches his pearls when anyone complains that BLM or other lefty causes are blocking traffic. He is a disingenuous bastard pretending to care that traffic is blocked in this case, and everyone knows it.
I stopped being in the mood to listen to pearl clutching a long time ago. The left are tyrants who want the freedom to violently attack anyone and everyone who doesn’t kiss their ass 24/7. I’m sick of it. The Canadian protestors were not and are not hurting anyone. They are dancing to journey songs and bouncing in bouncy castles. Yeah, the dance party is in the middle of the street. So what. They didn’t take a skateboard to anyone’s windshield. They aren’t surrounding cars, pulling out the drivers and beating them to death. They are being happy. The left hates happy people.
The left is dancing back and forth malevolently over the line demarcating descent into pure evil. I certainly don’t support that. So by default my support goes to the happy bouncy castle people.
I say this as a Canadian Conservative, with a whole lot of sympathy for the truckers and their protest:
Someone might want to remind the people carrying out civil disobedience, that the point of civil disobedience is, in part, to incite arrest. To force the state to arrest you, to do it in front of cameras, to force the reconciliation of laws and morals. To ask the questions “Is this just?” or “Does this make sense?” or “How the actual hell did we get to this point?”. This is why I’m not out there: I have too much to lose still. It is a height of entitlement to assume that you can break the law, disrupt lives and livelihoods, for weeks on end, and face no consequences other than what you’ve already burdened yourself with. Melt, snowflake.
We’re in Canada, where the average number of highway miles per capita is literally twice that of America. Where there is only one highway that connects Manitoba to Ontario, only four over the Rockies. There is only a single highway into Fort McMurray, Alberta, where the majority of our oil is. Our road networks have always been especially vulnerable because our populations are so spread out, and it’s a bitch to lay asphalt in cold weather. Which means that protestors often target our roads. This is a Canadianism that I don’t think Americans properly understand. It is common to have demonstrators, most commonly native protestors, to block highways or large intersections to try to get attention to their pet cause.
I. Loathe. These. Protests. There’s nothing worse than being stuck on a bridge in the middle of Winnipeg for hours because the MMIW protestors have blocked off Portage and Main. The difference between the truckers and the MMIW blockades and the trucker blockades are two things and two things only:
1) The politics of the people involved. And
2) The size, length, and impact of the blockade.
I think that the reason that these blockades were allowed to get to the point they did was because our government was concerned that if the answer to a road closure was to immediately call in the RCMP to break the protest up, then they would be expected to do that the next time a native protest did the same. And there *is* a pretty strong question on the optics: Is this worth it? Are the continuation of mandates and restrictions that are either obsolete or ineffective worth the PR of jailing protestors? But most native roadblocks are either short term or placed in a way that doesn’t make nearly the mess that these roadblocks did, at some point, and I think day two might have been that point, it became the job of leadership to do something.
Is it Trudeau’s mess? Partly. Mostly. He could have actually met with the protestors, like he’s liable to do for native roadblockers. But Trudeau doesn’t control the police. The lack of action of the Ontario Provincial Police was a problem in and of itself, and I think that Trudeau was getting frustrated by the inaction of Premier Ford, which led to him looking at the Emergencies Act. But the timing on the announcement and usage of the act is…. bizarre.
First problem is that the protests had basically fizzled out by the time Trudeau made his announcement. Whether because of the announcements of mandates coming down all over the nation, a lack of funding, or the shitty, snowy weather we’ve been having, by the time Trudeau actually got around to invoking the act, the border crossings to the US were clear. You wouldn’t know that listening to Gretchen Whittmer, who is still mewling like a small woodland creature halfway through a woodchipper, but it’s true.
Second problem is that the police always had the power to make arrests and tow trucks. If at any time Trudeau wanted to deal with the blockades physically (which again: I am in favor of), he could have collaborated with Ford. That never happened, but Ford mobilized the OPP days before the Emergency Act was authorized. There were still cars around, but they were moving.
Third problem is that doing this is actually kind of counterproductive and there’s fallout. It squeaked by the House of Commons 185-151 with a little help from the NDP. Now what? The Liberals bought themselves 30 days in which to act to deal with some civil disobedience that was already moving out, invoking the act had a built in trigger to empower both an ethics inquiry and a general inquiry, but of which will come out smack dab in the middle of campaign season.
My take on this: Justin Trudeau is not used to the protest signs having his name on them. He is out of his comfort zone, spinning, and making all kinds of unforced errors.
I think Justin Trudeau may have fatally wounded himself politically and might be living on borrowed time before being asked to resign.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy…
I think in the end, the best complaint available is the double-standards being applied. When protests are ostensibly in favor of a left-liberal position, they are protected speech no matter how much lawlessness is involved. That same protest involving the same level of lawlessness is considered worthy of an emergency act invocation if the protest is not favored by left-liberals.
I get your point about the trucks blocking traffic Jack, and I don’t disagree. I have always believed that interfering in lawful commerce is illegal (and tortious as well) and should be prosecuted both criminally and by civil action when it happens. The First Amendment, and whatever the Canadian equivalent is (however weakly codified) does not protect actions that interfere with lawful commerce or disturb the peace to the point of mischief.
Regardless, it becomes difficult to see the forest for the trees when you are a disfavored group. You feel put upon by the government without taking the time to recognize that no matter how trenchant and necessary your protest seems to you, putting everybody else in difficulty is not lawful, and therefore your protest isn’t lawful. Assemble peacefully, protest away, but don’t block people from enjoying the freedom you are supposedly supporting. Don’t keep them up at night honking horns and yelling slogans, that’s just pure criminal nuisance.
Somewhere, somewhen, we decided to look the other way for groups like Occupy (whatever) and put up with “sit ins” and “die ins” and what-not (remember those, older folks?), but not so much when people are protesting government edicts popular with the ruling class.
It’s time to reclaim the law, and force protests to conform with it, no matter who’s protesting what.
“It’s time to reclaim the law, and force protests to conform with it, no matter who’s protesting what.”
Ethics Quote Of The Day!
Thanks!
Could this be a Comment Of The Day, perhaps?
Happy birthday to President Washington, the American Cincinnatus! Your legacy and perhaps your most important precedent….