The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Everything Is Fine
Hillsdale College research fellow and Claremont Institute senior fellow Michael Anton says, tongue planted firmly in cheek, that “everything is fine.” He proceeds to illustrate with a ton of sarcasm why everything is not fine, but he also provides a glimmer of hope for the future.
However things might look to a certain apocalyptic caste of mind, Canada did not recently take major steps toward tyranny. The measures enacted under the rubric of the Emergencies Act of 1988 — including censorship, bank freezes, asset seizures, arrests for unspecified crimes, pre-trial detention, denial of bail for peaceful protesters — these things might appear tyrannical to a paranoid. But remember the honking! And the blocked streets. The inconvenience. The lost revenue as businesses weren’t able to operate at peak efficiency. As all good conservatives know, GDP is the one true metric of human flourishing and societal health. …
Above all, Trudeau cancelled the emergency! The system worked! The powers were invoked, used to resolve the crisis, and then rescinded — exactly as it’s supposed to happen. That is, except for those powers the government has quietly made permanent. But no one should worry about that. It’s necessary to prevent any future crisis from getting out of control.
Besides, it’s not as if any precedent was set.
What lesson for us here?
It’s very sad that a bunch of Americans who call themselves “conservatives” and believe themselves to be patriotic have spun themselves up to worry that the American government — in conjunction with those whom these paranoids insist are its corporate allies, or even masters — are gearing up to do here what Trudeau just did in Canada. Which, again, was totally justified and not that bad.
It’s also not the least bit out of line with what we conservatives cherish as “Anglo-American” liberties. For what could more express the spirit of the Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, the Declaration and Constitution, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms than arrests without charge, pre-trial detention, denial of bail, asset seizures, beating peaceful protestors in the streets, trampling them with horses and laughing about it?
Anton recites a whole bunch of other shenanigans perpetrated by the Left before reaching his darkly humorous conclusion.
So cheer up, conservatives. Everything is fine.
Except in Ukraine. That’s a mess that must be sorted out with American power. Or American resolve. Or maybe more tough talk. It’s hard to know what to do, exactly. What’s perfectly clear, though, is that Trump’s Russophilia and bromance with Putin got us into this mess no less than Biden’s fecklessness, bravado and empty threats. Our values are on the line in Ukraine and we need to be tough. Munich, etc.
But everything else is fine. America’s best days are yet to come. Those of you well-versed in conservative lore may recognize that little pearl as one of Ronald Reagan’s finest. Here’s another one, even more profound. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” That speech was given in 1964, one generation away from 1994, the year Newt won back Congress with the Contract with America, one of the great conservative triumphs in human history. And one generation from 1994 is—today.
Freedom will always be one generation away from extinction — which means it will never go extinct. To understand that, to be optimistic in the face of all the doomsayers, not to let mere events get you down or overly excited — that’s the essence of true conservatism.