Its early February 2022, and I'm standing at the West end of Wellington street in front of Parliament. There is a small burn barrel set up back behind me, and some little kids stand around it, warming up. Three of my daughters are with me and my wife. We are in a small circle, but are surrounded by thousands of people..There are Quebeckers everywhere and, man, they know how to protest and party. A DJ is pumping out the tunes. Two old senior ladies have just come by and offered us homemade donuts off a tray. Don't mind if I do. The music is thumping; all around us people are pumping their fists in the air and singing at the top of their lungs. Young kids, hip teenagers, yuppie young couples, older folks, black and white and all shades in between, families everywhere. Hundreds of smartphones are capturing this moment that, from the looks on people's faces, most of us cannot believe is happening..Somewhere in the mix the DJ shouts, “Trudeau, you are just no fun!” and the crowd goes wild..And as I'm hopping up and down with my family and the most eclectic group of Canadians I've ever seen, I think two things: This is the most fun I've ever had on The Hill—that is, without the NCC and the CBC's tight Canada Day program, telling us all what to do, who to like, and what to listen to because its multi-cultural or cynical and virtuous; and then I think again: This is too much fun; we're going to pay for this..A week later we all did..William Blake, who spoke with angels in his backyard when he wasn't having apocalyptic visions and composing tiger tiger burning bright or Jerusalem coined the terms “the prolific and the devourer” to illustrate the dynamics of the French Revolution. The prolific speaks of the upsurging creative, explosive energy that was breaking out over France. The devourer, on the other hand, represented monarchy, tradition and repression. Arguably, you needed both for balance and stability..The tension between the forces of revolution and those of stasis is alive and well in Canada as we collectively discuss a path forward out of the present social crisis. In a Hub article a couple weeks back, editor Sean Speer discussed the end of Jason Kenney as Alberta's premier. I've always liked Kenney, especially for his dogged work ethic and straight talk. Speer's article, however, focused not so much on what Kenney didn't do, policy-wise, that left him out in the cold, but on the apparent minority of conservatives who see everything as “oppositional” these days. They feel threatened and are ready for a fight. Change, argues Speer, should happen incrementally..Edmund Burke, another figure of the French Revolution era would call it “Evolution not revolution”. Burke was a monarchist and argued that revolutions typically create a vacuum of power into which a dictator typically steps, rendering the society worse off than before. And this was years before Napoleon..Truth be told, though, the words incrementalism and gradualism have most often been used by those who are unharmed by the status quo, if not profiting by it. Reading Speer's article, I am left to wonder: Has his job been at stake during COVID-19? Have his children been kicked off sport's teams? Has he had to grovel on hands and knees to his employer explaining at length the intricacies of his personal faith in the hopes of being granted “the religious exemption” from on high?.In Speer's camp is Howard Anglin, former deputy Chief of Staff to Stephen Harper. In his thought provoking and thorough National Post feature called “Disobedience: the Emergencies Act and the long erosion of the rule of law in Canada”, he wrote, “If there is to be any hope of avoiding further social fracture, it is long past time that Canada got serious about the consistent enforcement of laws.” Anglin goes through a series of events where the law was not acted upon, and where it appeared police acted (or chose not to act) out of political motives. Society needs predictable and impartial laws and law enforcement..Unfortunately, Anglin's argument plays into the NDP/Liberal red herring that what happened with the convoy was a breakdown of the rule of law, rather than a refusal of the government to hear the grievances of its people. And as many in the comments noted, what about Trudeau's rejection of the rule of law?.Speer and Anglin recognize the dangers of revolution that Burke had in mind. I get that. Its not Trump that I worry about at all; its who comes after Trump, and unless Poilievre is a team player, is willing to pursue bi-partisan dialogue wherever good ideas exist, has got solid plans on how to rebuild stability and trust in our institutions and, more importantly, in each other, and unless he truly wants to let Canadians make their own decisions about their own lives—well, like the old-school institutionalist Jean Charest, I'd be concerned, too. The saviour song goes a little off-key when one considers the law of unintended consequences and...well, human nature..But what does a people do when the revolutionaries are on the throne?.All the old categories, the reference points, our common stories, even our language is all blown to hell. My twenty year old students sit at their desks immersed in a soup of not knowing. The old bearded immigrant men, the frumpy old women with wrinkled and sun blotched hands who built this country are completely irrelevant to these blue-haired hipsters. We have toppled Sir John A, Champlain and all their ilk, we have burnt their churches, because even history is political, not objective, and always in flux. Everything is power and resentment of authority. Victim against oppressor. And anyone who makes a claim at being right, and truly right, not just momentarily and pragmatically right, but permanently right, is wrong..For our revolutionary leadership class, the very self is a product of societal discourse, and doesn't exist without it—we are not born with God-given rights and freedoms; they are granted by the state, and can, as a health minister early on the pandemic reminded us, be taken away if we don't behave..All of the underpinnings that informed the very laws and institutional frameworks that Anglin and Speer would have us rest our laurels on are gone..Our grandparents used to say don't tear down a fence until you know why it was put there in the first place. Ok, I'll say it: the cows are running wild..I think the truth and order and incrementalism guys are talking, at bottom, about a feeling...a sentimental golden age notion about the State and our institutions. For those of us walking around in a disorientated daze, having thought that we were protected from the mob and societal groupthink and that our Prime Minister would never so scapegoat us... all that trust is gone..Yes, their cautions are vital. But increasingly I find no solace in their solutions..Any hope for a real “build back better” lies elsewhere. For me, it lies in the memory of that Saturday in February when I and my family were having more fun than we'd had in two years, enjoying the company of Canadians from everywhere, now choosing to look each other in the eye, smile, hug, and share some food. It was the kind of goodwill and unstated simple understanding that those of the NCC, the CRTC, and the NDP/Liberal establishment have completely lost touch.
