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
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From: NP Comment < <mailto:npplatformed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
npplatformed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 5:05 AM
Subject: Conrad Black: The changing democratic tide
To: < <mailto:wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx> wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>
Commentary from the National Post's Conrad Black
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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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