Tyranny creep: Canada and elsewhere
Commenter John Tyler asks:
There never is a shortage of jack-booted enforcers to impose a government’s will upon the citizenry.
This time Canada is the venue.So, ladies and gents, what is about the Canadian personality or culture that enables a Trudeau (or a Putin, Bidet , Maduro, Castro, Hitler, Stalin, et. al.) to impose draconian measures to assert total control; eh?
I’m not sure whether John Tyler actually thinks there is any special characteristic of “the Canadian personality or culture” that predisposes it to this, or whether he’s being sarcastic and echoing things that have been said about Germans (or other ethnic groups or cultures) during and after World War II. But I’ll tackle the question.
As previously discussed, there may be some things about Canadians that have enabled what’s been occurring there lately: their reputation for politeness, their history of not having had a revolution against the British, and the influx of American Tories escaping from our own revolution several centuries ago. But although perhaps that gives Canada a slight edge in the race to the tyrannical bottom, I don’t think it matters nearly as much as the nature of tyranny itself in our modern internet age.
Tyranny sometimes announces itself with a bang, but more often it’s a whimper. Something that most people don’t even notice can be a turning point.
For example, Canada has hate speech laws. These are always a step towards tyranny, and a particularly “soft” one that most people may not recognize as such. After all, what decent person can be against hating hatred? (Note the ironic contradiction there). But a person can certainly dislike the sentiment expressed by someone while defending that person’s right to say it without fear of being charged with a crime. In fact, that used to be a mainstream idea taught to all children in the form of, “I may not agree with you or like what you’re saying, but I defend your right to say it.”
The left used to champion that thought when they were the ones whose rights it defended, but once the left got in the driver’s seat it was flipped to: “hate speech is violence.” The left is patient, and has been working for most of my lifetime and even earlier in Western countries in order to finally reach a tipping point in various powerful institutions in those countries. The most important of those institutions has always been education, because once leftist doctrines and teachings have replaced the old-fashioned sort based on natural rights and liberty, the ground has been prepared for the tyrannical takeover. That takeover needn’t be obviously harsh. It can be accomplished through a series of subtler steps over time – and then the sudden shift to more hardball tactics such as what we’re seeing now in Canada’s state of emergency.
Do the people of Canada realize what’s happening? Some must, and some of those approve of it. After all, order has been restored. Those pesky white supremacist [sic] truckers who wanted to disrupt the wonderful Canadian social order have been put in their place. And for some of them, “their place” is prison without bail, as well as a frozen bank account. The terrible terrible crime of which they’re guilty? “Counselling to commit mischief.”
I submit that any country or province or state that has criminalized “counselling to commit mischief” is already lost, whether the citizens of that place realize it or not.
It’s a failing to which all humans, in any country, are susceptible. Yes, some are more susceptible than others, but all are vulnerable because of human traits we share. That’s why liberty and its value must be guarded and nurtured and taught and demonstrated to every generation.
As the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov said (in this passage he is addressing Christ, who has returned to earth):
Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?…In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them–so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a solid majority of American Democrats (65%) approve of Trudeau’s actions. My guess is that most of them haven’t really thought too deeply about the grander ramifications. It’s just the old “team sports” attitude, my side is the good guys and your side is the bad guys (Trudeau’s the “good guy” and the truckers are the bad guys). This is maybe not quite at the “banality of evil” level yet, but there’s certainly a disturbing willingness to enable tyranny, or at least look the other way.
This is why I noted the government medicine in Canada. I gave the dates as the 80s and someone corrected me to the 60s but I don’t think that is right. I knew a bunch of Canadian doctors who emigrated. It was the 80s. Maybe Saskatchewan was earlier.
Anyway, when the government is providing your healthcare, you are reluctant to be critical. LBJ knew this about the Civil Rights Act. He told aides, “We’ll have the N******s voting Democrat for 50 years” and he was right. A larger and larger share of people’s welfare depends on government. Who cares if the debt is building ? It will never be repaid. Buying votes is an old tradition, especially with Democrats.
It may be possible to hold off the collapse for another decade if the Repubs win this fall but they are not to be trusted either. After two more years of Democrat rule, Trump might still be the only one people trust. I wish he would stop complaining about 2020 even if he is correct.
If COVID came about in, say, 1997 it would have been a brief minor story and not much else.
The prevalence of instant media from around the world combined with the ability to work from home for a huge amount of western populations and of course to conduct ‘school’ from home led to many, many people becoming even more soft and malleable and OK with tyranny and if you were already open to this kind of thing like apparently Canada, Australia and New Zealand were among others then it will be more tyrannical there.
“counseling mischief” No bail.
In America you get bail for attempting to murder a political opponent.
Richard Aubrey:
Not if you’re on the right, you sure don’t.
But yes, if you fit the correct profile, no problem with bail – and fairly low bail at that – for attempted assassination.
At a time like this, we see how right Reagan was.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
The Marxist academics have sabotaged the freedom ethic from within our schools. Freedom is slowly dying because there hasn’t been enough recognition and follow through on Reagan’s truth. We have not been good stewards of education for our children. We have allowed the termites of Marxist belief to destroy the basic foundations of freedom.
Is it too late? Never give up hope. Never stop trying to stem the tide.
Confiscating trucks, freezing bank accounts. Jail for “mischief.”
Next they will limit healthcare (why not?).
They are creating people who have nothing to lose. Those people are the most dangerous.
When they get to critical mass, it will get more interesting.
Excellent post.
Regarding, “Do the people of Canada realize what’s happening?”…Mark Steyn (among others) has been railing about this for at least ten years; “this” being the squelching of so-called “hate” speech under the aegis of “decency”, “morality” and “legality”, while manipulating the courts to hog-tie and impoverish via lawsuits the speakers of such speech.
It’s a prime example of how supposedly “decent” laws targeting “hate speech” can be used—are used—as a weapon by the authorities (in any context or institution), or actually anyone at all, to thwart any speech or idea they might deem or define as “undesirable” or “evil” or “racist” thus stamping out those “offensive” words and concepts while canceling or incarcerating, hobbling or impoverishing—i.e., punishing—those who dare speak it.
And so it’s no wonder that “free speech” has been redefined (by those consummate Orwellian “redefiners”) as a Conservative (Deplorable? Fascist? Trumpian? Truck-Driver-ish) trope…with all that entails.
As has “freedom”.
Neo;
Yes, I was being sarcastic.
Neo- I was just musing on how to engage you about growing up so liberal in ideology… how you could have accepted the soft, without consequence thinking, even as a young adult. I grew up moderately poor… lower-middle class probably, with parents who didn’t finish high school but wanted more from us and believed we could achieve more in this country because it was exceptional. I had always thought my disapproval of “my” ‘60’s generation was based on growing up closer to my consequences … every dollar spent or day wasted might not be earned back, when we had no backstop. If we fell for “happy talk” on our streets, we might get taken for everything we have. Now, in either a middle or upper middle-class (I just don’t know how to count it) retirement, I see other explanations. I wonder if our country and its culture can survive outside of the Judeo-Christian beliefs of a majority… the beliefs our country was formed around and built on. I’m not talking about the faith or the religion, but the unique set of values of the religion, in line with your post and Dostoevsky’s quote. There may be an “elect” who simply and intuitively buy into those values as the ones that work in a society, and also understand how humans cannot live up to them on their own… without support of traditions, even “rules” of behavior. And even then we fail. All of us. And then we go on trying to get back to the path or we give it up. The elect try for those values. The others are satisfied with “their earthly bread.”
I not only oppose “hate speech” laws, I oppose “hate crime” laws. Crimes are crimes. Prosecute the crimes, and consider motives at sentencing.
We have, in a sense, “hate speech” laws here already, not on the books, but being enforced by social media outlets, banks, and credit agencies.
In addition to the underlying element of an indoctrinated public into Marxist precepts, the other major factor is the very significant infiltration into Canada’s Liberal Party of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum’s agents.
Schwab bragged about that infiltration and when the subject was brought up in Parliament, the sound system was suddenly declared acting up (a lie) and the speaker called upon another member, who miraculously had no such difficulty… blocking further inquiry.
Trudeau was one of the very first graduates of Schwab’s “Young Leaders” Program and the loathsome Freeland sits on the World Economic Forum’s board…
Global Elite playing the “useful idiots” for fools.
And regarding freedom of speech, the usual suspects in the US are salivating with Pavlovian fervor as they contemplate just how their country might possibly achieve what was done so seamlessly by Trudeau in Canada.
‘Harvard Law Prof Says Tucker Carlson Guilty Of “Treason” For Criticizing Biden Over Russia’—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/harvard-law-prof-says-tucker-carlson-guilty-treason-criticizing-biden-over-russia
One would like to say that “it’s only Lawrence Tribe gone off the rails again”… Nonetheless this morally bankrupt paragon of legal and analytical perversion—even David French has excoriated him—may well have pinpointed what the Left in the US (including the current usurper in the White House) would like to implement and may even be planning: use the hostilities in Ukraine (or any of the other myriad crises that this administration has orchestrated) as an excuse to declare a National Emergency, in which case anyone deemed an “Enemy of the People”(TM) will be pursued—and treated—accordingly.
Doug Martin:
If you read my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series, I think I explain it in some detail.
But I will add that there were many moderate Democrats in office back then, who believed in and defended liberty.
I’d argue that there is perhaps (note the tentative proposition here) a “special characteristic of ‘the Canadian personality or culture'” but I’d suggest it is a holdover or artefact of belonging to the Commonwealth. Note that no other Commonwealth nation to my knowledge is saying “peep” about young Fidelito.
Compare vax rates in Oz & the UK & the paucity of pushback…the extended rolling lockdowns & restrictions…the heavy-handed enforcement…
I noted yesterday that Neo’s observation of “order as preferred to liberty” is a very Commonwealth mindset. “Just do what you’re told” is a prevaling response when one questions Government overreach.
That is NOT to suggest that Commonwealth countries don’t enjoy large doses of freedom…but that there exists a preference for the ordered whole rather than the freed one. And many will surrender much to appease a few. I know that sounds contradictory…trust me it isn’t.
Neo – I will read it. I’ve always wondered why I stood apart from my generation; maybe there are some answers there. I’ve followed your blog for probably 15 years, near when you started, and recommended you to young women colleagues in my profession at the time. They ALWAYS came back to inquire why I recommended your blog. I thought you spoke to them, back then. I didn’t delve into your more personal topics but enjoyed your takes on my interests. Keep it up please.
Canadians are by nature and tradition subjects, not citizens. This is a vivid expression of that reality.
Right now, everywhere in the world, the authoritarians are winning. And I don’t see anyone with the balls to stop them.
Honestly, I am not feeling hopeful right now…
I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to buy a gun and learn to use it. Plus put some food and water away and think about home defense.
I don’t know what to expect this year.
I remain optimistic that the political tide has turned against the tyranny creeps, but, being tyranny creeps, who knows what they may unleash.
@Kate at 4:30-
I think I agree with you re hate crimes- crime is crime, and yet…
If I have a pile of scrap lumber at the end of my driveway, waiting to be hauled away, and a group of rowdy teenagers think it a fun thing to set it on fire, that’s at most a misdemeanor, and should be punished with community service or a fine.
Now, consider the same volume of wood, configured into the shape of a cross, and instead of it being on my property, it’s on the lawn of the black family who just moved into the neighborhood.
The second example does far more damage to society, not to mention the property owner, for the same action.
You say it’s proper to consider motive at sentencing (I totally agree), but is that not criminalizing thought? The same action, such as pushing an old lady down, may be criminal if my intent is to steal her purse, but laudable if I’m getting her out of the path of an oncoming bus. I’m not sure where to draw the line without criminalizing the thought behind the action.
@ West TX Intermediate Crude:
The burning of a cross on the lawn of the black family is probably covered by the criminal code as terroristic threats, or something like that.
I think judges usually consider the personal characteristics of the convict and possible motivations at sentencing. Kids being kids with a pile of wood vs. kids or adults trying to intimidate people might be sentenced differently. I don’t think separate hate crime laws, i.e., thought crime penalties, are necessary or wise.
But TX, criminalizing the thought is exactly the point. The “hate crime” concept is that the crime is greater because of the damage done. In theft cases,the severity is determined (rightly or no) by the value of the item taken… more or less. The same determination is attempted in assault crimes using the race of the participants. How do you make sense of that? And to further muddy that water, it only applies in certain directions. Is it less of a crime to just walk up to someone at the bus stop and hit them with a baseball bat than is when a white person walks up to a black person and hits them with that bat? In practice, of it is the black person with the bat, the crime is not adjudged a “hate” crime. The hate crime concept creates more problems than it could ever resolve.
Persons who commit crimes of any sort seldom consider the punishment possible since they assume they will get away with it.
West TX Intermediate Crude:
The burning of wood at the end of a driveway is not the same act as the burning of a cross by the KKK. For example, here’s a statue about burning crosses.
With “hate crimes” you have the exact same crime and the same act treated differently depending on whether it’s motivated by “hate” or not.
I’m pleased to see Neo not jump on the stupid trope about the Canadians not being individualists because they didn’t stand up and get themselves ventilated by Brown Bess on Lexington Common. The whole idea is just retarded. Even those of you present who can claim Mayflower descent or Revolutionary War descent have those genes so utterly diluted that it’s meaningless. In fact the only folk around here with undiluted genes who can look back to Ancestor this or that and claim some meaningful continuity are.. well you know who you are ;P
Of course there is some Oral Tradition and much made of this American Exceptionalism at various times by various sides of politics to make various points. Mostly just Hot Air. It’s not 1945.
The rest today apart from some hard men who have the good sense to lie low and keep mouths shut living in a techno-panopticon is just blah blah, BS, and bravado. Plenty of folks are a rugged individualist in their own Walter Mitty Worlds until ridden down by a horse or smacked over the head with a baton.
The Canadians are perhaps a bit more supine due to universal health care and more of a social security apparatus than that in the USA. These do seem to make a population more supine and bovine after a generation or two.
But really what it comes down to is creeping surveillance and inability to survive and function in a modern society without carrying around a smartphone which tracks everything one says and does and everywhere one goes and who one meets up with in Meat Space. As sure as Gutenberg caused the Thirty Years War, The Internet of Everything implies Tyranny. The only question is Who will be the Tyrant? And remember that there was originally nothing bad about the word Tyrant — Tyrants in the Greek city states were generally preferable to oligarchies and given the absolute eventual after a VERY brief flowering cluster$%^& of Athenian Democracy… well… you get the picture.
Uncle Ted saw further than anyone. I cannot (literally) say that I approve of his methods. But he was correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
Once you understand that technology drives social arrangements and that someone or some people WILL use it to tyrannise the rest of us… the path is clear. Who Whom. Always. Always always always.
“Canadians are by nature and tradition subjects, not citizens.” Erasmus
Bingo. Outstanding, succinct observation.
“Even those of you present who can claim Mayflower descent or Revolutionary War descent have those genes so utterly diluted that it’s meaningless.” Zaphod
Twaddle and poppycock.
Allegiance to reasoned principles has nothing to do with genes. Thomas Sowell vs Adam Schiff demonstrates the utter irrelevance of genetic ancestry.
“inability to survive and function in a modern society without carrying around a smartphone which tracks everything one says and does and everywhere one goes and who one meets up with in Meat Space.”
Despite most youngster’s certainty, it is entirely possible to survive and function successfully in a modern society without a smartphone.
Succeeding waves of immigrants coming here have adopted the American vision of freedom and opportunity, and become just as American as those of us with New England colonial ancestry. The same is happening with more and more black Americans who are tired of the Democrat vision of their subservience, and to Hispanics, either American-born or immigrants.
@ West Tx > “They are creating people who have nothing to lose. Those people are the most dangerous.”
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/james_baldwin_131771
Interesting that after a tome by Z that covers 3000 years he ends citing Lenin: “Who, Whom.”
Not too clever, O Sage of the East.
Xi and Vlad are the future! Z has seen it and lives it!
“The only question is Who will be the Tyrant?”
Indeed, though perhaps another way to phrase this might be, “Who watches the watchers?”
In theory, the watchers COULD possess enough of a conscience OR respect for the law, OR love of virtue….OR FEAR of sin?—to prevent them from taking a stab at THE RING even should they believe that they have a good chance at grabbing it. Let’s call such an ethic, “Power wielded with responsibility for the good of the country and its citizens”. Or maybe the “socio-political superego”?—i.e., the ONLY thing preventing a politician (or anyone else for that matter) from becoming a psychopath…or acting out his, or her, fantasies of total power, ultimate control.
That is, in theory the watchers would have enough of a conscience to “watch” themselves; to keep themselves in check (even if the Founders, knowing the—dangerous—lack of reality, or naivete, of such a view, built the system of “checks and balances” into the Constitution to try to prevent any “fallen” watcher from straying…or straying too far).
Alas it was the radical-masquerading-as-relative-moderate POTUS44 who was able to burst through this “brake” on the will to absolute power as he trampled underfoot his opponents and—because of his ambitions—tried to blast apart that prodigious defense against government overreach, the Constitution.
…As he issued Executive Order after Executive Order as though he were signing autographs for huge line-ups of his enthusiastic fans….or as though he somehow believed that his DESTINY was to “transform” the country.
Fundamentally.
One recalls the well-worn interview with Maxine Waters as she relates with doe-eyed admiration how the Great Man had created a database on EVERYONE, a database he was planning to use. As though this was a miraculous achievement of Biblical proportions… How wonderful…
…Indeed, which he was planning to use and did use—to deep-six POTUS45 from the very beginning, nip Trump’s presidency in the bud, hog-tie the “usurper”‘s administration from the get go, drive him and his “evil minions” out of the WH.
One can now clearly see how Trump’s election SO DISRUPTED the Democratic grand plan to achieve total control of the country, why Trump HAD TO BE destroyed…and when that proved impossible WHY HE HAD TO BE PREVENTED from winning re-election:
Trump and Trump alone stood between the Democratic Party and THE RING.
Which brings us up to the present. Having lost four precious years, the Democrats under “POTUS46” know they have to quickly make up for lost time to fulfil their ambition, to achieve their “project”. They also know they may not get another chance, which is precisely what puts the entire country in such grave danger.
It is a fool’s game to try to divine, analyze, project, second guess any of “Biden”‘s policies, for good or for bad, mistaken or feckless, smart or stupid, wise or foolish…shoulda, coulda, woulda…since none of those policies are relevant to such analysis; since EVERYTHING “Biden” does, and will do, is geared toward achieving total power.
Geared toward grabbing THE RING.
And it is by constantly confounding, confusing, demoralizing, harassing and threatening “his” ENEMY that “Biden” expects to ultimately vanquish those who stand in his way.
Analyze that….
Some tried to warn us…Edward Snowden for example, even though he clearly knew that by doing so, his life would change forever, as he incurred the wrath of a threatened POTUS44 and his regime of “terrible intensity”. But we (or most of us) bought the charge that he was a spy who betrayed his country—I know I did.
Indeed it may well be time to view Edward Snowden in a completely different, far more positive light.)
Barry Meislin,
Good summary of the Dems over the past 6 years and I agree regarding Snowden. Trump should have pardoned him.
I’ve heard it said that while the US founding principles are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, Canada’s are “peace, order, and good government.”
“….peace, order, and good government”….
And “Tyranny creep”, with the emphasis on “creep”.
No, actually; make that “THUG”:
“Trucker Beaten By Canadian Police Says ‘They Broke My Body A Little Bit But Not My Spirit’”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2022/02/23/trucker-beaten-by-canadian-police-says-they-broke-my-body-a-little-bit-but-not-my-spirit/
}}} In fact, that used to be a mainstream idea taught to all children in the form of, “I may not agree with you or like what you’re saying, but I defend your right to say it.”
“Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
“Sniff! Sniff! You’re being **mean** to me!! WAHHHHHHHHHH!!”
Anyone have kids in elementary school? Anyone know if there is any attention at all paid to Aesop’s Fables?
}}} “We’ll have the N******s voting Democrat for 50 years”
I believe his quote was either 200 but yes. The Left claims he never said it, but evidence suggests otherwise.
Most notably, the quote comes from a book written by someone who was around Johnson a lot. LBJ held zero respect for black people and their feelings about being called “N*****” or “boy”, and so it would not be the least uncharacteristic of him.
According to Snopes (their excuse):
LBJ’s comment about black people voting Democrat was supposedly uttered to two unnamed governors traveling with the president on Air Force One, but we only have one source — MacMillan, who claimed he overheard the exchange — and no corroboration from anyone else.
The important thing is that no governors have denied he made the statement, even well after he passed away.
1 — I’m pretty sure they’ve narrowed down the “two governors” to a few options, due to the need to be alone with two dem governors, during the general time when this was being pushed.
2 — Those possible governors both passed away never having DENIED he said it in their presence, either. Given that one would think this the best thing to do if it were true — while confirming it would be “speaking ill of the dead” — it is particularly odd that they did not deny it, if he didn’t say it. The implication is clear: He said it, no question or doubt.
@ OBH > “Anyone have kids in elementary school? Anyone know if there is any attention at all paid to Aesop’s Fables?”
My kids are all out, but I’ve watched some tv with the grandkids, and there was a segment on one of the shows that did short videos of the fables.
Don’t know how many watched, or understood the stories.
However, it is absolutely certain that no one in DC pays any attention to them at all.
And I’ve concluded from reading history that no one in Greece did either.
The fables are great, but about as effective on elite behavior as most of the pundits on the Right telling them What They Should Do about each successive crisis.
There were a lot of hits on DDG for “fables for children” so maybe they are more popular than I thought. However, will the kids actually remember them and apply them in life? Adults don’t seem to.
However, there was this – which my kids have seen, because we subverted their educational development by playing Rocky & Bullwinkle videos for them.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299237/
“…it is absolutely certain that no one in DC pays any attention to [Aesop’s Fables] at all…”
Unfortunately True; though if they do read A’s Fables at all, it’s not so much as cautionary tales as a “How To” guide—in a similar way to “1984”.
Actually, in DC it’s pretty much “Pinocchio” all the way down.
Though at one point, one could say there was a certain enthusiasm for “Alsop’s Fables”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alsop
…OTOH, it seems that most of DC—when they get bored with Pinocchio—is just a series of—ILLUSTRATED—Brothers Grimm nightmares.