Freedom – Some Considerations

The “Nobody is going to tell me what to do” syndrome. This drives the raucous demonstrations that destabilize our country and threaten our democracy. Most Canadians accept directives to battle the Covid 19 disease and happily get vaccinated to a degree beyond most western nations. This is a tribute to our commitment to the collective solution of issues like the availability of health care and buttresses our support for our universal system.

A different American belief system underlies right wing and Trumpian extremism and has been imported by the Trucker movement which gets a lot of oxygen and money from US right wing groups, media and individuals, including Trump and his son themselves. This is the belief that the demands of individual liberty exceed that of the state as a whole. This is not a Canadian value and has been dredged up from their aged Constitution. Anyone in Canada who believes that their individual liberty trumps (no pun intended) that of the interests of body politic as a whole has confused the Canadian with the American experiment.

We have been asleep while these American, highly individualistic extreme beliefs have seeped into our political discourse and have even found a home in the pro-trucker statements of major Conservative leaders. The President of the Angus Reid Institute, Shachi Kurl, put it well: “Those who were caught off guard by the intensity, passion and determination of the protesters have clearly not been paying attention to the creeping extremism in this country’s political discourse, fertilized in recent years by American political rhetoric, misinformation online and a sense of alienation among a significant segment of the population.” Just to show how serious this infiltration of US belief is, a recent Abacus poll showed that the truckers enjoyed the support of almost one third of tired and Covid-frustrated Canadians.  A long term concern indeed.