The Premier of Ontario has declared what he calls a “state of emergency” to justify the Canadian government’s removal of the truckers and their trucks from Ottawa.
Others, however, could view his statement to more closely resemble a Declaration of War.
You decide. I urge you to watch the video of the Premier’s statement for yourself.
According to the Premier, each trucker they arrest will face up to one year in prison, have to pay fines up to $100,000 and may likely forfeit their trucks to the Crown!
The Premier’s position is that the truckers protesting Canada’s mandate requiring truckers to be vaccinated have no “right” to block the roads of Ontario.
He does not, however, satisfactorily address the truckers’ other “rights,” like their right to protest wrongful and immoral actions of their government or even to make their own healthcare decisions.
Moreover, the Premier completely overlooks the reality that the Canadian government could alleviate the “emergency” in the blink of an eye, if it were willing to remove its tyrannical mandate dictating that all truck drivers shall either receive a vaccine shot or forfeit their “right” to make a living.
In essence, it appears the government of Canada has chosen to declare war on its own people instead of restoring to its citizens their “unalienable” rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Civil wars -- i.e. revolutions – have been started for far lesser reasons.
And for what?
What are Trudeau and his minions thinking? Why are they willing to unleash possibly lethal force to enforce a diktat on unwilling people that, by all reports is, at best, an ineffective medical experiment. As such, their mandate should more likely be found not only immoral, but unlawful. On this point, Trudeau’s government need go no further than a consideration of the moral, ethical and legal predicates underlying the Nuremburg Code that, in reference to medical experimentation on humans -- like the Covid vaccinations -- provides, in pertinent part: The voluntary consent of the human subject -- i.e. each individual trucker -- is absolutely essential. (emphasis added)
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By contrast, however, what people like Trudeau are telling the people of Canada is: If you don’t let our government make your health decisions, we’re willing to shoot you.
How is that for the good of public health?
That said, please pray for our Canadian brothers and sisters. Tragically -- based on the Premier's statement -- it seems highly foreseeable that at least some Canadians are about to suffer harshly for trying to protect their rights... which appears to be what always happens whenever a totalitarian regime is allowed to seize and retain control of any nation.
Of course, the gaping question this leaves for the world to reflect upon yet again is how should the people of any nation be able to define what it is to properly “protest” against the evils of such a regime in defense of one’s unalienable rights?
Specifically, are protests to be constrained only to such actions that the regime exclusively decides are both “lawful” and “peaceful?”
Some would say, it must be both. Otherwise, they say, some Canadians could quickly find themselves being accused of things like treason, insurrection and/or sedition by a “regime” such as Trudeau’s. But, the problem with this is that many laws such a regime may consider “lawful” may not necessarily always be “moral,” which makes a citizen’s opposition even to those laws that are immoral to be unlawful -- i.e. to violate even a law considered immoral is still, technically, unlawful.
For example, consider our cherished Declaration of Independence here in America. In large part, it was written for the exact purpose of protesting King George’s immoral laws and procedures. However, under the King’s laws on the books in 1776, that Declaration presented the King with nothing less than clear evidence of a criminal conspiracy to commit crimes against the Crown – which, of course, made the proclamations of our founding fathers “unlawful.” At a minimum, this requires one to conclude that our founding fathers at some point must have decided that trying to remain “lawful” in the course of protesting an evil regime is most assuredly not always possible. That is, if those protesting the laws issued by the Crown ever hope to succeed.
Logic and reason also present similar problems with respect to the concept of protestors only having recourse to “peaceful” means when attempting to resist the evil of a tyrannical regime.
If tyrannies throughout history have proven anything, it is that sometimes to achieve success, actions must be taken by those on the side of “good” that necessarily must often fall far short of what may be considered “peaceful.” For instance, consider World War II. To successfully protest the evils of Hitler’s Nazi regime required actions to be taken by U.S. forces that were about as “peaceful” as those that were taken by George Washington to successfully protest the evils practices of the British Crown. Clearly, neither of these stands taken by Americans to “protest” the evil of their day were remotely even “mostly peaceful.” Yet, both are undeniable instances where violence was absolutely necessary and appropriate to defeat the evils presented at those moments in our nation’s history.
Which, of course, then leaves us with the question of whether the rights of the Canadian truckers that are presently at stake are of such fundamental importance that the merits of the protest warrant an escalation to acts of resistance that are either or both unlawful or unpeaceful?
No doubt, most of us would sincerely hope to conclude they are not yet at that place. And, in fact, anyone with any sanity would most certainly want to cling to the hope as long as possible that they never will be drawn to such a place where bloodshed results almost invariably.
Nor is this analysis of the Ontario Premier’s state of emergency a call for such a civil war – or, if you prefer, revolution -- to transpire in Canada!
But, with that said, it is equally important to note, that’s not to say by this discourse that such a civil war in Canada’s immediate future is not possible.
The truth is somewhere in between – consequent to the Ontario Premier’s declaration this week, some form of civil war in Canada seems far more likely to happen – and now even more foreseeable -- in the days to come than appeared to be the case even the day before the Premier of Ontario issued his government’s threat to the truckers. And, for all concerned, that trend is not a good thing.
Clifford C. Nichols is an attorney, the author of A Barrister’s TalesandThe Declaration of Liberty (2021 A.D.) and a contributing editor atThe Declaration Report. A former research associate at The Heritage Foundation, he is a graduate of UCLA and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
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