The right-wing protest movement doesn’t get it
In view of certain disturbing events like the attempted coup in Washington and the biker protest in Ottawa, an examination of why the right-wing has succumbed to anti-intellectualism is in order.
Both events lack even the modicum of sophistication. Revolution is a long process of organization, planning and philosophical thinking. A coup or a protest is spur of the moment, counterproductive and childish if not preceded by careful strategy.
The Washington fiasco was of course the brainchild of Donald Trump, perhaps the least insightful man to ever win the presidency. Without the guidance of anything approaching political ideology, his four-year term was characterized by blatant expediency with no goal in mind except self-acclamation.
The Ottawa trucker protest was, if one can imagine, even more idiotic.
To believe that individual rights are being violated in a pandemic emergency in order to protect the common good is to convert reason into mere rationalization. Rights are like a two-headed coin, composed of freedom and duty. Surely it is self-evident that wearing a mask not only protects the wearer but also one’s neighbours from a spreading disease?
Surely history has shown that it is in everyone’s interest to protect others’ rights because you may be targeted next? Refusing to wear a mask is equivalent to depriving another of his life. Of course, the concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few grasp it fully — even after 200 years.
The right-winger has always been characterized as being more emotional than logical. Lacking any coherent theory they attempt to defend democracy by calls to faith and tradition.
In America, religion is a private matter which must not enter the political debate; to defend the American system not because it is right, but because their ancestors chose it, ignores the fundamental principles of liberty. To rest one’s case on the status quo is to concede reason to one’s enemies. One of the most disturbing aspects I witnessed from Washington was a young man screaming the name of Donald Trump over and over as if invoking some supernatural force granting the nation a dictatorship. Not even a member of the Nazi youth in 1933 could be imagined debasing himself in such an irrational frenzy.
Conservatives fail to see that rights have to be interpreted within the social contract. A right pertains only to freedom of action; rights impose no obligation except to abstain from violating your neighbour’s rights.
When president Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, his critics were genuinely alarmed. To compare this temporary breach of the Constitution to a decree about wearing a mask during a pandemic cannot be taken seriously. Contrary to public opinion there is no such thing as the “right to shop.” A private business (like a supermarket) has every right to bar from its premises anyone who does not comply with its permission. Rights can be violated only by force, but a permission is not a right.
America generally has always been anti-intellectual and now the chickens have come home to roost. Broadly speaking, the fringes of right and left can only be neutralized if people can agree to two principles: Physical force must never be tolerated in public or private affairs and emotions are no substitute for reasoned argument. These two steps can begin the healing process.