Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Exploiting the Vacuum in U.S. Leadership

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Barely a year into the Democrats’ experiment of installing the hapless Joe Biden as president, crises inevitably unfold. Nobody believes that Biden can put out the fires that are being lit around the world.

Foreign leaders may perceive the next three years as an opportunity to get away with mischief that would never occur under the strong leadership of President Trump. “Politics abhors a vacuum” is the cliche that accurately describes how bad things happen when there is a void in leadership as there is now.

In our large northern neighbor of Canada, a 21st-century version of martial law was just imposed by a petty tyrant who should have resolved the trucker convoy dispute without placing the entire nation under house arrest. The western provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the eastern city of Quebec all oppose Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s never-before invocation of the draconian Emergencies Act to deal with peaceful protesters having legitimate grievances.

This dictatorial Canadian law authorizes the government to seize bank accounts and compel individuals and private companies to crack down against peaceful protesters. The long-term damage wrought by this infringement on civil liberties in our most important neighbor is immeasurable and could spill over into our own country.

Perhaps Biden is so quiet about the emerging dictatorship in Canada because his advisers would like to see him do likewise here. After all, Biden himself ordered private employers to impose his vaccine mandate, until the Supreme Court stopped Biden in a 6-3 vote.

In 1959 Americans were understandably alarmed when a Communist seized power in Cuba and installed a brutal dictatorship on the island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Canada is even closer, across a border that is the longest in the world, and a progressive takeover there could cause great damage to our country.

With his unprecedented invocation of Canada’s Emergencies Act, Trudeau asserts the power to control domestic travel, command services deemed essential, control the distribution of goods, and impose hefty fines on his own citizens. Like the inhumane retaliation against January 6th protesters by House Democrats, which included imprisonment in solitary confinement without trial, Canada’s Liberals seem bent on doing likewise to peaceful truckers.

The widespread, heartfelt public support of the truckers is obvious from the volunteer help they have received, and from the outpouring of donations. The retaliation by internet trolls who publicly disclose small donors’ identities is shocking, and such invasions of privacy and harassment should be prosecuted.

At the pricey Super Bowl, celebrities brazenly violated the mask mandate on national television, yet punishment of them is not even suggested by Democrats.

Instead the regime picks on working truckers, many of whom brought their entire families in their coaches while enduring the frigid February temperatures up north.

In a recent Maru poll, only 16% of Canadians say they would vote again for Trudeau, while Biden’s average net approval/disapproval rating has fallen to -11% across all major polls. Yet as in the United States, the Canadian media has protected Trudeau and failed to report fully on the events.

For example, it was the New York Post that reported last week how cameras caught an Antifa-affiliated Canadian hitting and injuring four peaceful protesters with his Jeep before speeding off in an attempt to escape. He then ran several stoplights and resisted arrest before finally being captured by Winnipeg police, yet the major media continue to falsely portray the truckers as criminals.

Instead of helping defuse the tyranny in our next-door neighbor and most important trading partner, Biden is focusing his diminished mental capacity on a complex situation halfway around the world between Russia and Ukraine, involving a territorial dispute of little significance to America. Biden cannot possibly understand or navigate that conflict, and Ukrainian leaders themselves have criticized Biden’s unhelpful rhetoric.

The terrifying calls by the Biden Administration for all Americans to leave the large country of Ukraine is odd when many Americans live peacefully in Russia. There does not seem to be any reason to expect that Russians would mistreat Americans in Ukraine, in contrast with Biden’s botched evacuation of Afghanistan to allow the anti-American Taliban to seize control.

Liberals are intensely anti-Russia for reasons having nothing to do with Ukraine, such as Putin’s conservative social policies.

At Trump’s Arizona rally last month, he observed that none of these crises would be happening if he were still in the White House. Trudeau was one of the foreign leaders who tried to ridicule Trump, when instead Trudeau should have tried to learn from him.

It was the Ukrainian-born member of the Deep State, Alexander Vindman, who sparked the first impeachment of Trump, and who recently sued Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and other Trump supporters. Yet apparently Ukraine fared far better under Trump than under Biden.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

No comments:

Post a Comment