Freedom Convoys
3pm Sunday. Ottawa, the Ambassador bridge. Truckers are getting pulled out of their cars and arrested one by one… meanwhile, in Paris, French police kicked, tackled, and tear gassed hundreds of protesters, including children, leaving a few in critical condition. Macron is calling in tanks to protect Paris.
More freedom convoys are forming in France, Australia, New Zealand, US and Italy, and people fill up the streets cheering them on. The powers quickly replaced their dismissive “fringe movement” label with the alarming “insurrection against democracy” one. Biden’s “bleak and dangerous winter” is becoming the winter of our discontent as government abuses are piling up. It is also becoming apparent how various governments and global bureaucracies move in lockstep, creating a global assault of tyranny against liberty.
Workers of the world are uniting but, ironically, our socialists in power are not thrilled to see their communist nirvana in action. In fact, they are fighting hard to suppress the Freedom Convoy movement. Ayn Rand’s hero John Galt was a trucker. The US Libertarian Party that used to worship objectivism and whose motto is still “the control of the controllers” is dead silent on the truckers’ protest. Yet, truckers are trying exactly that: to control the controllers.
Many of us are watching the truckers – some in solidarity and awe, some in perennial fear of any social turbulence. As more scientific evidence is exposed, many have started questioning the wisdom of the government’s Covid response and realizing the tremendous toll inflicted on our health and livelihoods. It is not accidental that “narratives (…) undermining public trust in the government institutions” are now a “terrorist threat” according to the Department of Justice. The establishment is fighting back to keep the unprecedented emergency powers they bestowed upon themselves while our vigilance was suppressed by the fear of Covid. Any government has one and only tool: force. Your health is the last thing on their minds. In fact, it always was.
Now that our federal government has finally run out of other people’s money, the lower income class is starting to feel the full brunt of the double digit inflation unleashed by the Covid rescue packages (add housing and energy to the 7.5% official inflation statistics and you get 13%). Think pre-war Germany, pre-communist Argentina and now, regretfully, the USA. Will this be a pre-communism USA? This is the pressing question facing us now. It is on us to prove that America remains an exceptional country because of the will and moral courage of free men and women. Now is the time to get scared of what your life without liberty will be like. Now is the time for action. Not tomorrow, today.
Whatever political discontent was unleashed by the restrictions fatigue, it will be further fueled by the economic devastation caused by runaway inflation. Inflation is effectively a tax on the poor and the lower middle class. These classes will soon be put in a position where they will have nothing to lose but the chains of their poverty. Marx might have been wrong in his solution, but dead accurate on the origins of social unrest. The economic crisis to follow will be pervasive and, if the newly proposed federal budget passes, will last well into the next two years. Talk about “the bottoms who don’t want and the tops who cannot live in the old way” (Marx). The fight has long ceased to be about health – it is about governmental control of every aspect of your life under the guise of “safety and common good,” a mantra as old as communism itself.
Most immigrants have been here before. Many of us are determined not to end up there again. My dad was born in a Gulag and I, for one, prefer not to die in one. That is why I am taking this stand.
What can you do to engage in effective and peaceful resistance? Openly support the freedom fighters, donate, connect with like minded groups, unite. If you or your loved ones become a victim of any governmental or private abuse, file a police report. If a school is forcing a mask on your child, creating health or psychological issues, create a record. Our judicial system is still functioning. Show up for peaceful protests, support principled candidates who have courage and energy to fight, and…. take off your goddamn mask and mail it to Newsom – he keeps forgetting his. Reagan was wrong: freedom is not one generation away from extinction. If decent people do nothing now, the extinction of freedom is but a couple of years away.
Maria Rutenburg
