{"id":80885,"date":"2022-02-11T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-11T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=80885"},"modified":"2022-02-11T07:56:47","modified_gmt":"2022-02-11T13:56:47","slug":"we-are-apparently-the-new-revolutionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=80885","title":{"rendered":"We Are, Apparently, The New Revolutionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Say what you will about the practice of blocking streets – the left sowed the wind, they are reaping a whirlwind – but Big Left sure isn’t happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the great fault lines in American – really Western – politics is with the concept of “Freedom”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term means different things to different people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To “the right”, broadly, it means freedom from government interference in one’s life. Coming from societies where the individual had worth only as a subject of a monarch, and whose human rights were (and, in most cases, are) still considered privileges bestowed by more or less benevolent sovereign (at best!), it’s understandable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as Western Civilization has gotten farther and farther from having to scrabble for the right to be secure in one’s home and to not be considered chattel for trade or barter by whatever gangster had managed to seize a sword from a watery bint, the concept of freedom has, at least among people we broadly call “the left”, rotted into the notion of “freedom from material want” and, increasingly, “freedom from social want”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us to this op-ed in the Glob and Mail <\/em>by one Gary Mason<\/a> . It’s been the subject of absolutely cataclysmic, scathing mockery in the Western right for habitually garbling the meaning of “freedom” that most of us understand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And mangle it, he does (emphasis added):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freedom, of course, has not always been a concept usurped for selfish, malicious purposes. It\u2019s been a rallying cry behind great triumphs such as the end of slavery and the civil rights movement. But others have believed freedom is about protecting property rights, even if that has to occur at the diminishment of democracy<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Those who are paying attention note that freedom to enjoy one’s property rights is <\/em>freedom<\/strong>; without property rights, and the system of legal and social guarantees that make property rights possible, there is no prosperity; without prosperity, freedom is academic. Ponder great thoughts, or farm for your subsistence; pick one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he’s also right that it “diminishes democracy”; “Democracy” with a capital “D” is three people deciding who gets to keep the bag of cash they just found, by 2:1 margin, with the “1” out of luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mason seems, beyond that, to think that to the protesters in Canada, and by extension the US, think “freedom” is a synonym for Trump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite the opposite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ll explain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

13 years ago, the Tea Party sprang from an earlier wave of public discontent, over the creeping nationalization of healthcare. The Tea Party minded its manners, cleaned up after itself, was friendly and utterly inclusive and had a place for everyone – whether educated, articulate and polished, or not – at the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the establishment on both sides slandered it back into the shadows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that energy remained. And as society got more authoritarian – in Canada even moreso than in Obama’s US – it realized that the other side had made the rules; it was time to make them live by them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump saw this, and capitalized on it. Pierre Poilievre, whom Big Left is currently trying to slander back into the underworld, is capitalizing on it. Ron DeSantis could easily capitalize on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mock your opponents into submission? Trump did it better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You want to block traffic? Hold our beer while we get our trucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy is there. The leaders that see it will change, but the energy never goes away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about the practice of blocking streets – the left sowed the wind, they are reaping a whirlwind – but Big Left sure isn’t happy. One of the great fault lines in American – really Western – politics is with the concept of “Freedom”. The term means different things to different people. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80887,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80885\/revisions\/80887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}