When did personal freedom become privilege and entitlement?

Have our children completely lost their understanding of history?

The American Republic was founded on simple principles.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. - That whenever any Form of Government becomes to destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”

Western democracies did not all derive from the American Republic but evolved from autocratic monarchies through revolutions to the Constitutional monarchies known as Parliamentary Democracies which persist in France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, among others. The will of the people saw Louis XIV of France lose his head, and kings, Kaisers and Tsars yield power often losing their lives in the process. The will of the people to overcome the oppression of autocrats motivated the revolutions and new forms of government emerged.

In some cases, one autocratic regime was replaced with another, the outcome of the Russian revolution being the clearest example. But few American citizens, British subjects, Canadians or Australians dispute the concept that government serves the people and that people do not serve the government. Laws emerged from the wishes of the people who elected representatives to serve in the halls of Congress, Parliament, Legislatures and the U.S. Presidency to enact laws to give flesh and bones to the founding concepts of both the United States under its Constitution and the former members of the British Commonwealth who adopted their own Constitutions long after these nations were formed.

It has oft been said that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, a phrase originally attributed to historian Lord Acton in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton about how history should record abuses by rulers including Popes. There is no doubt that corruption has entered the halls of power in Washington and in Ottawa. Elected representatives in both houses of Congress often been alleged to have profited by “front-running” their own legislative actions but the academic literature is unclear about the evidence. Certainly the exceptional investment performance of Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul points to either that possibility or incredible good fortune. A proposed bill to prevent public market investments by sitting members of Congress was stifled by Pelosi in recent months.

In Ottawa, the evidence surfaced in the SNC scandal and the WE Charity scandal suggested at a minimum some level of possible corruption in Canadian parliament. There will always be some level of distrust in government when government officials earn millions of dollars from activities where there is an appearance of conflict of interest even where the people involved have acted in ways that are beyond reproach.

Recent polls in Canada show a declining percentage of Canadians trust their government - 43% in the most recent poll, down from 53% a year earlier. A lack of trust in government and its institutions may underly the more dangerous trend that is emerging - I call it the era of “entitlement and privilege” which seems to be replacing a history of Canadians valuing individual freedom and personal responsibility. What was once a “benefit” is now seen as a “human right” - Abortion rights, aboriginal rights, LGBTQ+ rights, housing rights, religious rights, anti-discrimination rights, pension rights, vacation rights, workplace safety rights, equality rights, health care rights, and the list goes on. Canada has enshrined many of these “rights” in its Constitution and Human Rights Code.

But we are endangering our children by creating a system where they grow into adults believing they are not responsible for the choices they make or the outcomes of those choices and can rely on the plethora of “rights” they are told they have to live comfortable lives in Canada. Why work if you have a right to a “universal basic income”, the latest of the left wing proposals to be considered a “human right”.

Historians consider 1685-1815 as the “Age of Enlightenment” populated by great thinkers like Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton and John Locke who set the stage for advances in mathematics and science leading to the industrial revolution and for the emergence of philosophies that gave rise to democracy, contributed by philosophers like Francois-Marie de Cloet (writing under the pen name “Voltaire”), Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson.

I fear the period from 1985 to 2015 will be recorded as the “Age of Entitlement” as our education system became corrupted with leftist ideology and our children were indoctrinated into the belief that everything they needed in life would be provided by the state as an “entitlement” and they had no responsibility to contribute to society, just the right to benefit from the work of others.

I gag at how often Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh give speeches in which they claim to be “fighting to protect human rights” but their speeches are devoid of any content on personal responsibility. Lose your job? You have a right to severance and a right to employment insurance. Can’t get a job? You have a right to welfare. Break the law? You have a right to a lawyer, a fair trial and a chance at rehabilitation if convicted and sent to jail. Don’t earn enough? You have a right to form a union and then a right to strike for higher wages and benefits. Injure yourself through reckless conduct? You have a right to health care. Homeless? You have a right to food and shelter.

These are rights we all value as Canadians and should be proud we live in a country which in which the citizens have such rights. But we should also demand of our country that citizens also have responsibilities that balance these rights.

When our political leaders claim they are “fighting to uphold our rights” I ask - fighting with whom? Canada has a Constitution and a Charter of Rights. Politicians don’t have to fight with anyone to enforce these fundamental laws.

When they claim to be “fighting for our rights” what they really mean is planning to enact more laws that constrain our behaviour, effectively taking away rights rather than adding any. The laws Trudeau has enacted (or plans to enact) take away our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to protest, freedom to build mines, pipelines or LNG terminals, freedom to own firearms, freedom to trade between Provinces, and freedom to use whatever pronouns we wish to when addressing another person. We are moving from freedom to manage our lives to mandated behaviour enforced by the state - travel mandates, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, mandated use of certain pronouns, and prohibitions restricting former rights such as the right to use a handgun for sport shooting after passing safety examinations and securing a purchase and acquisition license for a restricted firearm. Canadians right to peaceful protest was decimated when Trudeau invoked the former War Measures Act (renamed the Emergency Act) to put down a peaceful protest by truckers protesting vaccine mandates. Rather than a constitutional right, peaceful protest was redefined to be a “national emergency” because the protest inconvenienced a few thousand citizens of the nation’s capital while protesting the inconvenience Liberal mandates imposed on millions of Canadians. It is now a “national emergency” to put the Prime Minister in a snit.

We have reached a breaking point when not only the Prime Minister but also his enablers in main stream media label peaceful protesters as mysogynists, racists, fascists, Nazis, extremists and people just “taking up space”. The one “right” Canadians should expect is to be treated by government officials with respect, even if violating a law during civil disobedience.

We want our children to grow into adults who conduct themselves with dignity, respect for others and self-respect. If our political leaders cannot, how can we expect this of our children?

Dignity and self-respect are not “rights” but outcomes that derive from effort leading to achievement. Failure is an important part of striving for without it achievement would is meaningless. Trophies for participation, “grade creep” in our schools, “safe spaces” and “trigger points” in our universities are all destructive to self-esteem and harm our children rather than prepare them to become productive adults capable of success in a competitive world.

Our Liberal government has become “destructive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is our duty to alter it.