A View From Canada: American Democrats Should Worry Us All

Over the last 100 years America’s progressive elites have made their home in the Democratic Party. Progressive leaders like Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, along with legions of supporters in academia, journalism, public service, education, entertainment and the arts have been moving that country’s vital centre further and further away from its early origins in classical liberalism, constitutional government and moral custom.

From time to time the international left’s will to dominance has been slowed down by the appearance of countervailing conservative intellectual movements and larger-than-life figures like John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Donald J. Trump; but as the free world prepares to enter the third decade of the 21st century; the USA, once Canada’s strongest and most reliable ally in defence of liberty, may be on the way to becoming a shadow of its former self.

Suicide of the West

In his recent book, Suicide of the West:How the Rebirth of Tribalism. Populism and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy, Senior National Review Editor, Jonah Goldberg pointed out that the development of constitutional democracy and the “Miracle” of democratic capitalism had an enormously positive effect on the West which eventually spread throughout the world. “The results” he said, “were inescapable: nearly everywhere on the planet men and women lived longer, ate better, enjoyed more leisure, and had access to resources and delights that previously had been reserved for the very rich and powerful, or more commonly, had been utterly unknown.” Along similar lines, British historian, Andrew Roberts, in A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900, has argued that the “Miracle” described by Goldberg had important beginnings in Anglo-Saxon England.

Over the last half century, however, the allegedly “privileged history” of Anglo-Saxons has become the subject of fierce criticism by post modern historical revisionists who view the past behaviour of our English-speaking forefathers as inherently evil, entirely self-serving and oppressively patriarchal.

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