I’m not really a protester, but I support the right to protest. I just tend not to show up at those events. I’m glad others do. I don’t like crowds. I supported the protests of small business owners during COVID-19. I supported the George Floyd protests.
I do not support the violence, looting and rioting within protests. I condemned the violence at former President Donald Trump’s inauguration. I condemned the violence during the George Floyd protests.
Too many people deploy situational ethics. When rioters stormed the Wisconsin State Capitol to stop the legislature in 2011, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the people who smashed the windows and stormed the building. Now she wants the people who did the same in the U.S. Capitol to go to prison. I wanted them all in jail.
When rioters burned down various cities in America, many of the talking heads in the press defended them. Now they’re assailing the truckers of Canada for impeding the flow of traffic and commerce.
I think the truckers have every right to protest, but I don’t see a difference between them blocking everything and the climate alarmists super-gluing themselves to the highway in Europe to stop the flow of traffic. I support all of their rights to protest. I do not support them obstructing others. I’m not a situational ethicist.
Instead of creating traffic jams, the truckers should stop driving and protest through their unwillingness to participate in commerce. Show how needed they are. Take themselves out of the flow of commerce and watch the flow of goods cease.
That said, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party was only supported by one-third of the public in the 2021 federal election in Canada. The Conservative Party actually got more votes. But because Canada has six parties represented in Parliament, the Liberal Party was able to build a coalition to keep power.
The parties ratified Trudeau’s vaccine mandate during the course of COVID-19 restrictions, and Trudeau has the emotional stability of a toddler, unable to ever admit he is wrong or change course. Canadians get the prime minister they didn’t vote for. Again, only a third of Canadians voted for his party, and he remains prime minister because of a coalition that might be fraying over his heavy-handed refusal to admit COVID-19 has changed and he can, too. Now, Trudeau is threatening to take the protesters’ children and even their pets. He is freezing not just their bank accounts, but those of donors who support the truckers. More than one donor has been publicly harassed and the government has done nothing to protect those people.
This all makes me proud to be an American.
It makes me proud our Founding Fathers were smart enough not to create a central government with police and health care powers that could overwhelm the states. It makes me proud of our constitutional system with checks and balances. It makes me proud we have a 10th Amendment, a First Amendment and a Second Amendment. It makes me proud we are not a multiparty coalition style parliamentary system.
The Canadian system is a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy. The people have the rights given to them by their Parliament, and their prime minister intends to take a great many away.
It would not be possible in the United States.
So much policy in the United States, from health care policy to gun control, is viewed through the lens of what other nations do. But other nations do not have the horizontal and vertical federalism of the United States based on a Constitution in which limited enumerated powers — not including the police, health care and education powers — are ceded to a federal government. Other nations do not have a Second Amendment that conveys an individual right to gun ownership to citizens.
The American vaccine mandate for businesses got stopped by the United States Supreme Court. There is no court in Canada that can stop the prime minister.
Thank God I am an American. Our nation is not perfect. But it sure is better than every other nation, including Canada.
