Wynn, I heartily agree.
Don Hoyda
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 30, 2022, at 9:03 AM, DSP.EA.Large.Messages@xxxxxxxxx
<dsp.ea.large.messages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Wynn Payne <wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: September 30, 2022 9:01 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Fwd: Conrad Black: The changing democratic tide
I think Conrad Black is speaking the truth.
Wynn
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: NP Comment <npplatformed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 5:05 AM
Subject: Conrad Black: The changing democratic tide
To: <wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>
Commentary from the National Post's Conrad Black
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Remo Casilli/Reuters
There is now a clearly discernible international movement away from the
fiscal indulgence of the faddish left and the collective self-blame of the
majority across much of the democratic world. Following the overwhelming and
almost bloodless victory of democratic free enterprise over international
Marxism in the Cold War, there was a commendable absence of gloating in the
West, but rather
a gradually more absurd and complacent experimentation with an idealized
political fantasy land. This has now finally proved to be a policy
divertissement that our western democracies cannot afford. The hysteria about
climate change, which was heavily reinforced by the spontaneous adherence to
that cause of the debunked international left assaulting capitalism in
disguise from a new angle in the name of defending the planet, has clearly
overtaxed the electorates of western countries. Everybody is opposed to
environmental pollution, but sane people are not prepared to endure severe
reductions in their standards of living in order to finance a marginal
reduction in carbon emissions, in pursuit of an environmental target whose
utility remains a matter of considerable speculation, even if it were
attainable.
Solar and wind energy have largely proven uneconomical and still require a
base load of conventional generation to maintain the power grid when the sun
is not shining and the wind is not blowing. Electric cars are costly and
would require vast new charging infrastructure, not to mention a much more
robust electrical grid, in order to replace existing gas vehicles. Societies
such as Canada and the United States that have ample traditional energy
sources will be able to retreat quickly from our political over-commitment to
the will-o'-the-wisp of renewable energy. But countries such as Germany,
which shut down much of its nuclear and coal generating capacity to clamp its
national lips around the gas pipe from Russia, is now, as former U.S.
President Donald Trump and many others warned, paying for its energy
vassalage to the Kremlin.
As the great architects of modern democracy envisioned, the people are
themselves democracy’s guardians, as in Abraham Lincoln's invocation of
“government of the people, by the people and for the people,” and Winston
Churchill's constant watchword (even in electoral defeat), “Trust the
people.” In Britain, in Sweden, this week in Italy and in November in the
United States, the people speak. They will not turn their pockets inside out
for an elusive ecological objective and they will not continue to be insulted
and even assaulted by grievance-seekers whose disaffection they do not
believe is justified. In general, despite our imperfections, western
democracy is the best and most successful government system the world has
known and is one of the reasons why countless millions of people from other
countries wish to relocate to democratic ones. The legacy of colonialism for
the major European powers, and of slavery for the United States, are baneful,
but the British, and probably the French, left their colonial territories in
a far more developed condition than when they found them. And no people in
the history of the world has been so successful in raising up a previously
subjugated minority to a status of complete equality than has the United
States with African-Americans.
The post-Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher era was one in which the
political leadership of both the United States and the United Kingdom, and a
number of their allies, thoroughly self-satisfied for understandable reasons,
became comparatively receptive, as those who do not feel threatened often do,
to vocal and then violent minorities bandying about group slanders and even
blood libels against the majority and its forebears who created the society
to which the aggrieved minorities came (voluntarily or otherwise). This is a
cycle that repeats itself from time to time, and eventually the majority
comes to resent the mismanagement of the lofty elites who do not suffer the
immediate consequences of their own governmental errors. The elites, and
especially the media and the academic and entertainment communities,
disparage ”populism,” and try to defend their incumbency by abusing their
quasi-monopoly of the media to denounce objectors as ingrates and extremists.
This is why we have had Hillary Clinton comparing a Trump rally where the
ex-president's followers raised an arm with an extended index finger, in the
sports celebration of being Number 1, with Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, and
otherwise distinguished filmmaker Ken Burns saying that the governor of
Florida shipping around 50 illegal migrants who agreed to go to Martha's
Vineyard reminded him of the rise of Nazism. Intelligent people say stupid
things and elites tend to favour democracy that consists of the people
shutting up and doing what they are told.
This is also why much of the western media is now asserting that the prime
minister-elect of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, is a semi-fascist. She is an
unambiguous democrat, has been democratically elected, believes in
Christianity, family and patriotism, and as one of her political rivals,
former prime minister Matteo Renzi, unequivocally stated, "The idea that now
there is a risk of fascism in Italy is absolutely fake news." Benito
Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator from 1922 to 1943, was a socialist and an
ostentatious atheist who popularized fascism by adopting the Roman fasces as
a symbol of authority and marching on Rome to seize power. The charge of
fascism is almost always made in contemporary political discourse by idiots
who have no idea of what it is, and apply it to people who have no fascist
tendencies whatsoever. This is the confusion of frightened people who have
abused the privileged positions they no longer deserve to occupy (if they
ever did).
Canada has relatively few problems with illegal immigration, as we are far
from any country except the United States, from which almost no one ever
flees. We do not have a revolutionary tradition and we historically respond
to the same inspirations as other sophisticated democracies, but very mildly.
In the tempestuous year of 1848, which saw the overthrow of the Orleans
monarchy of France and drove the “Coachman of Europe,” the Habsburg Austrian
Empire's Chancellor Klemens von Metternich, from office and witnessed
upheavals in many other parts of Europe, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte
LaFontaine peacefully achieved responsible and democratic government in all
domestic matters for what are now Quebec and Ontario. When Britain elevated
Thatcher and the U.S. elected Reagan, Canada elected Brian Mulroney, an
effective but less radical leader. As immigration-related violence is
commonplace across Europe and millions of unauthorized people flood across
the southern border of the United States, Canada continues its mawkish and
ineffectual official obsession with lamentations of the mistreatment of its
Native peoples. We don’t normally accuse each other of being fascists, but
the elevation of authentic but moderate conservative Pierre Poilievre as
leader of the Opposition has been accompanied by preposterous allegations of
his harshness. This is our equivalent of replacing Boris Johnson with Liz
Truss, electing Meloni or sending U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi packing in
November. Democracy usually works, and the people who govern have to be
changed sometimes.
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