If you are still in the habit of tuning into any of the major news channels on television, you might not be aware of the major revolution happening just north of the American border in Canada. The awakening happening in our northern neighbors’ home and native land is nothing short of a miracle. For the last two plus years, The Maple Curtain was closing quickly and any semblance of a free way of life was fading faster than a Neil Young listener on Spotify.
But recently, hundreds of thousands of semi-trucks, tractors, heavy equipment, and people descended into Ottawa, the national capitol, multiple border crossings, and other major Canadian cities to snarl traffic and make life a living hell for the ruling class. The workers of the world united to tell the paper pushing “tune-outs” called politicians that enough was enough.
For many Canadians, the game was no longer disguised, and they realized that a Charter of Rights means something or it doesn’t. The narrative that the government was looking out for them is breaking, and the wave of realization that there are far more people who are tired of compliance has been on demonstration. The trucks have parked on the streets, occupying the cities and honking their horns for 10 hours a day. The protests have been nothing but peaceful and unifying—a quick perusal of Instagram or chats on Telegram can show you that the state sponsored media narrative of hate and vitriol is as phony as the “answers” and “help” the ruling class spewed for the last two years during their foray into a perpetual two week curve flattening.
The Canadian revolution is of particular interest to my family and me. My wife is Canadian and I spent three years during college in the magnificent province of Alberta where I fell in love with the geography and the people. We have been of the impression that we were not going to see our friends or family again based upon the current trajectory of regulations and edicts handed down by the Canadian government. Our personal medical decisions as a family were not going to allow us to visit the people we love, attend their biggest events, celebrate their accomplishments or say goodbye when they pass on.
One size fits all medicine is fine for crabby, old, fame hungry doctors that benefit financially from their policies like Dr. Fauci, but those choices break the heart of a person who won’t be able to see their mother again because they won’t be coerced into making a government imposed medical decision. Over the last two years, Canada was racing towards totalitarian power under the watchful eye of a spoiled brat Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. His policies were the only way forward for anyone in Canada. He made his decisions and then marched his minions out to implement them. In one of the least populated places on earth, with the second largest mass of any country, the people Mr. Trudeau believes he rules over were ordered by force to live as if they all inhabited a Beijing apartment complex.
For those non-Canadians reading this, there is something significant to understand about the ethos of a Canadian. They are genuinely sorry for everything. They are kind, non-confrontational and gentle in spirit. They have a general tendency towards compliance and have, for the most part, been less suspicious of their elected governments than an American citizen might be. While they might disagree about party, policy, or needs, there’s a general acquiescence to the ideal that the government has the best interests in mind for the citizen.
As the pandemic regulations ratcheted up, the citizenry believed that they were stepping up, holding fast to the idea that they were doing the best thing for their country. They complied with every mandate and rule that was passed down, and I think earnestly believed that their government was out to help them through a worldwide crisis that needed a massive governmental response.
The trouble came when the government never let up. Whatever regulatory bar was set last week, it was moved and changed to a higher bar in the next week. The state sponsored media parroted the narrative and made it sound as if the medical and social policies were working. The people continued to dutifully comply over and over again—and the government saw their opening to control their population. The differentiation between provinces, parties, and thoughts were evaporated, and short of a very few number of ideological people, the country bowed their knees to the tyranny of Trudeau.
If there is any observation to be made about governments in general over the COVID-19 experiment, it is that the relinquishment of everyday rights by citizens turned to blood in the water for the ruling class sharks. Every opportunity where they could harden their grip, they did. They found a way to use any tool, even the hopeful advancements that did come from true scientific exploration, to clamp down on the people. They loved the power that came with it—it was the first time in any of their careers as politicians that they didn’t have to play along with the fantasy of being democracies. They could rule as they wanted and make the serfs behave as they wished. Never had it been easier to be in government. There were no voices pushing back. This was an exceptionally true maxim in Canada. The people went along to get along, and all they got was a facsimile of an old Soviet-style life. The few Canadian voices that spoke out were arrested, hounded, and hassled until they relented, lost their jobs, or went to jail.
Early in January, Mr. Trudeau mandated that all Canadian truck drivers, who happen to spend all day alone in their rigs coughing on no one but their steering wheel, be vaccinated or quarantine for two weeks at the international border when they crossed. All U.S. drivers had to be vaccinated or they couldn’t enter the country at all. The Canadian/U.S. border is one of the busiest international borders for trade in the entire world. This was an Ambassador Bridge too far and the truck drivers finally had enough of it all. This maligned and impugned group of hard working individuals were being told that their “essential” work and efforts over the pandemic were not as valuable as they had been led to believe. If they didn’t comply with the next government squeeze, they would become the second class citizens they already intrinsically felt that they were. In totalitarianism, your past accomplishments are irrelevant; compliance with the state is the only true measurement. (See Leon Trotsky for a validation of this truism.) For the truck drivers, this was the last straw. They organized over their CB radios, away from the watch of Big Tech’s KGB tactics, and found a way to show their countrymen that some things are actually worth standing up for.
Mr. Trudeau had picked on the wrong people. This group, that the elitists viewed as intolerable, undereducated blue collars, just happened to have really large vehicles at their disposal. They brought these behemoths to the narrow streets of the uber-cool cities, parked them, laid on the horns, and the battle Royale was on. Conveniently for himself, the Prime Minister tested positive for COVID and ran away to his luxury hideaway, far from the dirty truckers he’d clamped down on. Like a fierce hockey goon from yesteryear, the truckers threw off the gloves and have continued figuratively punching the ruling class where it hurts.
The movement grows and the revolution cannot be put back in the bottle.
The COVID game is over and the resolve of humanity, endowed with their inalienable rights, is marching forward in greater numbers than ever imagined, to take back the space they gave up in good faith to the rulers. There won’t be guillotines this time, but the consequences politically will be the same. The modern Antionettes are done—they can take their cake and go home. Humanity will learn to live with this crazy disease; as it has with all the others that have ever impacted it. Governments over-played what good grace they had been given by their people and the future will be reserved for Liberty again.
There’s a lesson to absorb from the Canadian truckers. True, as the memes have told us, one person standing up can lead to people realizing that they aren’t alone—but this lesson is braver than that. Natural rights are in us all. No one, especially not governments, gift those rights to us. They are given exclusively to the soul by the creator. They are inherent, inalienable, and inseparable from the human spirit. People and governments can put them to bed for a moment, ignore and castigate them, even malign them and call them outdated, but their dormancy cannot last forever. People will feel the stirring inside of them that something isn’t right. Rights are not like the ever expanding pool of economics. Rights are like a pie. If someone takes a piece from me, that piece is gone until I win them back.
The truckers realized something that can only come from the lifestyle they live. Moments are precious. Family is precious. Freedom is precious. Truckers work hard for a small reward but they recognize their value to the world we have built. They know that they both as people and an industry are necessary. Without them, the plush, nerf-ball-life the rest of us live would be impossible. They believe that their contributions are more than the worth they see in a paycheck or in the condescension they feel at their local restaurant. They are the salt of the earth. They preserved the remnant of liberty just long enough for the rest of us to realize that the saltiness of our lives was fading. They helped us all recognize that if life has nothing in it that makes it worth living, it doesn’t deserve the hallowed monicker of “life”.
When the government came in to take that last ember of flavor away, the truckers guarded it with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred horns. I never in a thousand years would have predicted that the end of this fiasco would come from Canada. This compliant, over-apologetic people has reignited the world; reoriented it to liberty and given millions of people hope that the right to speak, assemble, and confront a corrupt government is still intrinsic and inseparable from the essence and soul of humanity. They reminded us that our right, if not our duty is to throw off despotism wherever it usurps the individual. There may be harder days ahead for the truckers. Governments don’t back off easily when their power is threatened. The truckers resolve is on display and as they have said, “The honking will continue until the freedom improves!”
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