The Latest on the Totalitarian State of Canada

BUCK: They’re certainly having problems up north in Canada. Clay, this was really upsetting the story up on the Daily Mail. I gotta say, Daily Mail is a British-owned and British-run website that happened to do a lot of great news gathering about what’s going on here in America, in this case in Canada, but this was really troubling stuff. “‘Just watch that horse video. That is awesome.’

“Ottawa cops’ gloating texts after peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters were TRAMPLED by police horse — including grandmother on mobility scooter — and beaten up by officer. — Police forces in Canada are coming under scrutiny for their excessive violence with peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters in Ottawa.” That’s all from the headline here.

Trudeau really did call in the men with truncheons to break what was a peaceful protest, and what’s troubling is not only the way that they seized bank accounts of people and were engaged in what are clearly tyrannical practices, Clay, which you talked about. Democrats support this in this country.

They see what goes on in Canada and a majority of them — strong majority, I think about 65, 70% — say, “That is great, do that.” And in Canada the parliament just voted to support this declaration of emergency — not the conservatives went against it, but they did get a majority. What…? I just want to ask, what is wrong with these people?

CLAY: Well, and this is where I always come back to, ultimately you have to stand on principle and precedent. Because sooner or later whatever political beliefs you have, you are likely to be in a minority position. Like the Republicans are right now. They don’t have the White House, don’t have the Senate, don’t have the House.

Whatever you cheer for the majority to do, the minority at some point is going to be back in control, and they might well follow the precedent that you put in place of stifling your ability to share your opinions. And I think it’s important to note here, this was not a mostly peaceful protest in Canada. This was an entirely peaceful protest!

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: These people were not in any way threatening, behaving violently, any kind of danger at all. And Trudeau had two options, Buck. He could do… Let’s be honest what the Democratic governors are doing right now. They are claiming, they are claiming that covid numbers are down enough because of their mask mandates and because of their vaccine mandates that they no longer need to enforce them as rigorously as they have been.

That’s a lie, because you can look at the Republican states that never implemented these policies, and they also have had covid cases plummet. But at least they’re recognizing that they need to remove these restrictions, even though it’s occurring far more slowly than it should be. That’s not what Trudeau did. He could have easily said to these protesters…

First of all, he could have met with them like he met with the BLM protesters when he kneeled, he could have come out and said, “You know what? You’re right. Over time we are going to dial back all these covid restrictions ’cause all they were asking for was normalcy.” Instead, through jackbooted thuggery he decided to rain down the full power of the state on peaceful protesters.

You may be cheering for it now if you’re a Democrat because you disagree with these Canadian truckers. But at some point in time, the proverbial shoe will be on the other foot and the precedent that is being set of, “We can use power to curtail anybody who disagrees with us” is not one that anybody in a democratic society, in my opinion, should be endorsing.

BUCK: Clay, I’m hoping that as people see what awaits them if they speak out against a supposedly liberal… I think that’s the exactly incorrect term, but a supposedly liberal government with Justin Trudeau. Behind every smiling announce his or her pronouns, “we all need to come together and talking about social justice” lib is somebody who the moment you say, “Hold on a second. I have rights. There’s a constitution.

“There is something that the state does not give me but actually God has granted to me,” they say, “Shut up, peasant, or we’ll send our men with batons and guns after you.” I know it can feel a little bit like, “Wait a second, but that’s so…” No. People who believe that the government, that the state can fix all problems and should fix all problems also believe the state should effectively be all powerful.

And the moment that you… Really, it’s the state in place of God for them, and the moment you rattle that belief, as happened in Canada, the fact that we have… Think about this, Clay. If there was a… We have to point this out to people, and you did an excellent job of this last week, as soon as the protests were being broken up on Friday. Imagine we are in the summer of 2020 and you have BLM protests, which were —

CLAY: Far more violent.

BUCK: — often used as a platform for actual riots, violence against police officers, but just put that aside for a second. Imagine that there were peaceful protests, too, as a component of that movement. But that’s a whole other conversation. Imagine that someone in BLM was trampled by a police horse. Imagine a grandmother at a BLM protest was on a mobility scooter, was trampled by police horses on video at a BLM rally.

And there’s video of cops gloating and laughing about it. We would be told that the country was in a national racist crisis. There would be more riots, of course, from BLM than there even were, and yet with this one you see even Democrats in this country — they’ve done polling on it — watching and saying, “Yeah, that seems about right. Forget about free speech. Forget about redress of grievances to the government.” It’s not it’s Canada, folks, but it’s a mirror image of what’s going on here in so many ways.

CLAY: No doubt. And also imagine that the expansion to shut down the protests had not just included the display of force that was brought to bear by Justin Trudeau, but also that they shut down bank accounts, that they shut down the ability of Americans to donate to BLM — and that they did that under the guise of trying to protect people from” terrorism.” It would have been a five-alarm fire all over this country with people arguing that this was a tremendous step towards authoritarianism.

It happened in Canada, and the Democratic Party in this country — Democrats — cheered. That precedent is an awful one. And as Mitch McConnell said when they changed the filibuster rules, “You have to be careful about precedents because sooner or later they are gonna circle back around and bite you in the ass,” and I’m paraphrasing. He didn’t say that. But that’s the incredible danger of the precedent that’s being set right now in Canada.