The Canadian Truckers Remind Me How Glad I Am To Be American

I’m not really a protestor, but I support the right to protest. I just tend not to show up at those events. I’m glad others do. I don’t like crowds.

I supported the protests of small business owners during COVID. I supported the George Floyd protests.

I do not support the violence, looting, and rioting within protests. I condemned the violence at the Trump inauguration. I condemned the violence during the George Floyd protests.

Too many people deploy situational ethics. When rioters stormed the Wisconsin State Capitol to stop the legislature, Nancy Pelosi defended the people who smashed the windows and stormed the building. Now she wants the people who did the same in the US Capitol to go to prison. I wanted them all to.

When rioters burned down various cities in America, many of the talking heads in the press defended them. Now they’re assailing the truckers of Canada for impeding the flow of traffic and commerce.

I think the truckers have every right to protest, but I don’t see a difference in them blocking everything and the climate alarmists supergluing themselves to the highway in Europe to stop the flow of traffic. I support all of their rights to protest. I do not support them obstructing others. I’m not a situational ethicist.

Instead of creating traffic jams, the truckers should stop driving and show through their unwillingness to participate in commerce. Show how needed they are.

That said, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party was only supported by one-third of the public in the 2021 federal election in Canada. The Conservative party actually got more votes. But because Canada has six parties represented in Parliament, the Liberal Party was able to build a coalition to keep power.

The parties ratified Trudeau’s mandate during the course of COVID restrictions and Trudeau has the emotional stability of a toddler unable to ever admit he is wrong or change course.

Canadians get the Prime Minister they didn’t vote for. Again, only a third of Canadians voted for his party and he remains Prime Minister because of a coalition that might be fraying over his heavy handed refusal to admit COVID has changed and he can too.

This all makes me proud to be an American.

It makes me proud our Founding Fathers were smart enough not to create a central government with police and healthcare powers that could overwhelm the states. It makes me proud of our constitutional system with checks and balances. It makes me proud we have a tenth amendment, a first amendment, and a second amendment. It makes me proud we are not a multi-party coalition style parliamentary system.

The Canadian system is a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy. The people have the rights given them by their Parliament and their Prime Minister intends to take a great many away.

It would not be possible in the United States.

So much policy in the United States, from health care policy to gun control, is viewed through the lens of what other nations do. But other nations do not have the horizontal and vertical federalism of the United States based on a constitution in which limited enumerated powers — not including the police, healthcare, and education powers — are ceded to a federal government. Other nations do not have a second amendment that conveys an individual right to gun ownership to citizens.

The American vaccine mandate for businesses got stopped by the United States Supreme Court. There is no court in Canada that can stop the Prime Minister.

Thank God I am an American. Our nation is not perfect. But it sure as hell is better than every other nation including Canada.