The Canadian Truckers Are the True Inheritors of the American Founding

The Canadian Truckers Are the True Inheritors of the American Founding
Trucks and protesters block downtown streets near the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa on Feb. 15, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Roger L. Simon
2/16/2022
Updated:
2/16/2022
Commentary

The COVID era we have been living through has been yet another reminder that, basically, there are two kinds of individuals in the world—those who are more comfortable obeying authority no matter its dictates and those who prefer to think for themselves.

Obviously, it’s not quite that simple—there are degrees and it’s a sliding scale, as with so many things.

Many people veer only slightly one way or the other. Still, others make decisions only to enhance their power and can flip-flop with ease. (These are the public officials we see suddenly changing their views on COVID because the public is no longer being so obedient.)

But, at base, most people fit somewhere in these two large categories.

We could call them the communists and the freedom lovers.

Some of the former group squawk at that appellation, not considering themselves Marxists and regarding that as a smear, but that subset would be more upset at a name that is yet more accurate to describe them—conformists.

Nobody likes to be called that. A significant number of these people thought of themselves as non-conformist rebels in their youth, yet have become the most abject conformists as they age (cf. Neil Young). They are ready and eager to sign on to such things as government-approved shots without questioning or examining “the science.”

These very people tend to believe the science, even, actually especially, when their knowledge of science is scant. They also “conform” to various forms of the conventional left-wing politics we see that are often masks for greed or personal advancement.

Others, a larger subset, are simply conformists by personality, either afraid to go against authority or simply emotionally predisposed to obey. They are, therefore—although most don’t realize it—also predisposed to be loyal future members of authoritarian societies, prepared to ignore the many behavioral strictures, near-complete lack of privacy, and even the atrocities that may be committed.

The Canadian truckers are the opposite. They are freedom lovers by dint of personality and character, by their very souls, if you will, and therefore the natural inheritors of the American founding, although few may have read either the U.S. Constitution or the Federalist Papers.

Their nemesis, Justin Trudeau, is practically the paradigm of that quasi-Marxist conformist so common now in the upper reaches of Western politics in North America and Europe. They are, as some have written, what happens when those who used to attack The Man become The Man. They are people whose authenticity disappeared long ago, if it was ever there.

They naturally would hate the truckers, do anything possible to stop them, because the truckers are authentic people and in no way fake. In a sense, they unmask the Trudeaus of the world as phonies by comparison. Nothing like that should be allowed to happen. Arrest them! ... And they do.

The proximate cause of the truckers’ protest is lifting the vaccine mandates. Worthwhile as that is, what they are really fighting for, what many of us see in them, is something more transcendent, even more crucial—the fight for the freedom of the individual against tyrannical government.

They embody the goals of the Founding Fathers to a remarkable degree, speaking out for their rights in peaceful protest.

There is no greater cause than that in these times when tyrannical governments and über-government globalists, enabled by the terrifying capabilities of modern technology, conspire to eliminate freedom from our lives and dominate us to a degree never before possible in human history.

Standing beside these leaders, as always with autocrats, are all the conformists of the world of various stripes, of whom there are, alas, many.

The brave Canadian truckers aren’t necessarily the last stand, but they are the greatest stand so far, capturing the public imagination. We can hope they are the beginning of something even bigger.

This struggle between these two sides—the conformists and the freedom lovers—has been going on in different forms from time immemorial, yet you have the sense the battle is heading to a crunch point, if not a conclusion. Some would call this moment religious in nature and they may be right.

Authoritarian governments, led by communist China, are taking progressively more global control at the same time as democratic governments, including the USA, are becoming more authoritarian.

Although there has always been internal conflict, in our lifetimes, America, for the most part, represented freedom lovers. That role isn’t as clear now. The Democratic Party has become almost entirely a party of conformists led by authoritarians. The Republicans have a number of such people within their ranks as well.

What do we do about it? We fight for our freedoms—what else? And maybe we borrow a phrase from the left: “By any means necessary.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, columnist for The Epoch Times. His latest book “American Refugees” can be ordered on Amazon. “Roger Simon is among the many refugees fleeing blue state neoliberalism, and he’s written the best account of our generation’s greatest migration.”—Tucker Carlson.
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