American Progressives: You Really Ought to Get Out More

American progressives seem so worked up these days. OK, they have been worked up for years now. But more so now, ever since their chosen information gatekeepers depicted chaotic scenes of violent protesters trying to prevent ICE agents from doing their job. Which face it, is essentially to implement a policy which a decisive number of Americans voted for in November of last year, when Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral college. It is all unconstitutional they say, and worse than that, fascist. The kind of stuff the Nazis were infamous for.

Well, if they think that arrests and deportations are evidence of Nazism on full display, they ought to check out what has been happening in Europe. Even governments and nations which have been regarded as social democratic and progressive have had to adopt the same approach.

You see, democratically elected governments can on occasion face emergencies. Progressive governments too. Progressive and non-progressive Presidents and Prime Ministers have had to resort to extreme measures to address extreme circumstances. Lincoln did. FDR did. Eisenhower. Clinton, the list is long. Constitutions can be wonderful things, but even the most democratically constructed of them make provision for "emergency" powers. That is why it crucial to define what constitutes a genuine emergency, (Hint:The Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in 2022 was demonstrably not a genuine emergency)

Historically it seems that when the Presidents who effect extreme or extra-parliamentary actions are not of one's liking, one is apt to call them "Kings." Even though some of their predecessors across the aisle did the same thing. For a Canadian like me, when partisan Americans make these claims, it is an occasion for laughter. I mean, if you think that a President like Trump is a King, you should try being ruled by a Prime Minister. Especially a Prime Minister like the one who resigned last winter.

Get this. The person a Prime Minister selects as a cabinet minister, or Senator, or Supreme Court judge, are not vetted or subject to adverse questioning. The appointee does not appear before cameras at a Congressional hearing or its equivalent. He or she is not grilled or exposed to pointed questions. Once appointed, the appointee is home free. As is the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister can hire and fire cabinet ministers on whim, and he can select or deselect parliamentary committee members. His sheep in the caucus are dependent on him for patronage. And his party whip ensures that they will not cast an independent vote and remain in the party. Since independents are very rarely re-elected, expulsion from the caucus is most often an electoral death sentence.

A Prime Minister can get away with damn most everything. He can invoke emergency measures that in Canada recently included seizing the bank accounts and assets of peaceful protesters, including their relatives! He can even hold them without trial for more than 700 days! To call former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a King would be an insult to Kings, He was not a Constitutional Monarch but an anti-constitutional monarch. By comparison, an American President is relatively hamstrung. Checks and balances? What's that? I don't speak American so help me out here.

Most Canadians don't like our system of government. They rightly think that it is a closed system ruled by five top-down dictatorships - the political parties in the House of Commons. the party leaders being dictators. Canadians are not libertarians, but a good chunk of them are not enamored with tyranny either. Me thinks that if we had a Second Amendment we'd prove it.

Funny thing though. Canadian progressives were quite OK with Trudeau's kind of tyranny. They didn't care about my rights or the rights of the truckers. But suddenly, after seeing the battle between ICE and their obstructers, they found Jesus. They care about the constitutional rights of people down south. They joined the blue chorus and affected shock and horror when they beheld embattled ICE agents clashing with protesters. Go figure. I guess they love due process so long it thwarts a "right wing" agenda. I would be tempted to say that Leftists have double standards, except as Canadian blogger "Eyeore" (cf. Vlad Tepes) pointed out, Leftists actually have only one standard: power. Getting it and keeping it.

Well I have a suggestion for progressives north and south. If you are alarmed by arrests and deportations in Chicago or Portland or anywhere in the states, look around the world. Look at European democracies. Look at European democracies which have been judged more progressive than any American progressive jurisdiction. Look at how dramatically their immigration policies have changed recently. Look at how drastic they are. More drastic than what they believe to be happening in America, as filtered by progressive mainstream media.

More than that, I would encourage progressive Americans to examine the reasons WHY these "welcoming" progressive European democracies have chosen this "fascist" course. Is it that their actions are "extreme," or rather, is that the circumstances that prompted those actions extreme? Extreme circumstances call for extreme responses.

The fact is, even center-left governments have come to realize that their nation's social safety net - its healthcare, its social housing, its welfare benefits, its now overwhelmed law enforcement-detail - is being crushed by the demands made upon it by the ongoing massive influx of migrants. Most of whom, one might add, are culturally antagonistic to the prevailing values of the host country. It is not a matter of constitutionality, but national survival.

I appreciate that telling progressives to go and get an education is a tough assignment. It is like telling somebody to run out of a sauna and jump into an icy snowbank. Only a Finn could survive it. So to assist them in this project, I have transformed the computer generated transcript of a highly informative video about this subject into a more readable form:

Video: 10 European Countries Kicking out Immigrants and Aliens in 2025

Read, it dear Leftist. Then tell me how "fascist" the Trump deportation process is.