The new woke term is “equity”. It is a term which sounds like “equality” but is the exact opposite in meaning. Equality is about equal rights, equal opportunity, equal protection under the law which will most likely produce unequal results because everyone has different abilities, different intelligence, different needs, different work ethic, while equity is about producing equal results, which requires unequal rights, unequal opportunity, unequal protection under the law because everyone has different abilities, different intelligence, different needs, different work ethic.
The people who believe in “equity” also believe that the ‘ends justify the means’ because that is the only way to achieve equity. They believe that as long as the outcome is equitable, then it is right and just to do whatever it takes to get there, even if that means stripping certain people of their basic rights. While those who believe in “equality” believe that the ‘means justify the ends’; they believe that if everyone gets equal rights, equal protections, equal opportunities, then the unequal outcomes which will result are right and just.
In 2020, the left used 5 months of rioting, big tech’s censorship of political speech, and the changing of the democratic process in order to sway the election to get the results they believed were best for the country even though everything they were doing was compromising the very foundation of America. Today, they are illegally opening of the border to illegal aliens, drug smugglers, MS-13 gang members, and criminals to produce the 2022 election results they want even though it is destroying our country.
That is their entire mindset - get the desired outcome regardless of what they have to do to get there. They do not care about discriminating against people based on race as long as it produces the diversity they want. They do not care that their plan to achieve equity in prison sentencing, results in letting guilty people go free, innocent people being sent to jail, and making the country a more dangerous place. They do not care that an abortion takes the life of an unborn baby because the result is no unwanted pregnancy. None of these injustices matter to them.
But their sole focus on the ends, on the results is counterproductive to their desired goal of “equity” because whether it’s in sports, business, sales, the arts, in human interaction, when people focus solely on the results, the results are rarely achieved, but when people focus on the process, doing things the right way, that gives you the best chance at success. This is what is meant when athletes talk about “focusing on the process”, or “taking it one game at a time”, or “just go back to the fundamentals”. The batter or the golfer is trained to keep his head and eyes down on the ball through contact, and not pull his head and eyes off the ball to see the results of the hit. If he keeps his head down, he will have a better chance of striking the ball cleanly, than if he pulls his head off to see the results. And the emphasis on “equity” is training society to pull their heads off the ball to see the results and they will completely miss what they are swinging at. So, the laser focus on equity by the left, is taking their eyes off of the process, the necessary steps that are required to give everybody equality.
In 2013, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau showed that he believes that the ends do justify the means when he was asked what country outside of Canada, he admires the most. He replied, “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and saying ‘We need to go greenest fastest, we need to start, you know, investing in solar.' There is a flexibility that I know [former Conservative Prime Minister] Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, that I find quite interesting.” Trudeau readily admitted that he aspires to become a dictator. I’m sure he believes he would be a benevolent dictator, but there is no such thing.
He didn’t talk about human rights, civil rights, or fidelity to their Constitution. He didn’t consider the slave labor and concentration camps, or the crushing of basic human rights committed by the Chinese government on a daily basis. Trudeau believed that if becoming a dictatorship, crushing the citizens’ civil rights, and committing human atrocities is the most efficient way to turn around the country’s economy, then it is justified. Many people in the 1930’s justified Hitler for the same reasons.
And in 2022, Trudeau is acting true to his authoritarian beliefs, as he initiated the “emergencies act” to deal with the Freedom Convoy in his country. Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday said, “We are broadening the scope of Canada’s anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules, so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use… the illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act.”
If the best way to end these peaceful protests is to crush them with “anti-terrorist” laws, then he will do it regardless of how authoritarian it is. He will argue that the protests are hurting the economy, but that is coming from someone who shut down the nation’s economy completely for over a year. Ironically, in March 2020, as his misguided Covid policies were destroying Canada’s economy, Trudeau praised the truck drivers for their tireless work to keep the country running. He tweeted, "While many of us are working from home, there are others who aren’t able to do that - like the truck drivers who are working day and night to make sure our shelves are stocked. So when you can, please #ThankATrucker for everything they’re doing and help them however you can." In Trudeau’s eyes, the truckers went from working day and night to save the country to destroying the country.
But the truckers are doing now what they were doing a year and a half ago, sacrificing themselves to save the country from Justin Trudeau’s authoritarian rule, and Trudeau is also doing what he was doing a year and a half ago, implementing authoritarian rule over Canada. The only thing that has changed is that the truckers are no longer willing to support Trudeau’s authoritarianism. And because of it, Trudeau has turned heroes into villains, truckers into terrorists. And those are the shifting sands you tread upon when you embrace the philosophy that the ends justify the means, you become a principle-less authoritarian.
Is the trucker convoy inconvenient? Yes. Has it hurt the Canadian economy? Yes. But so did the Covid lockdowns for over a year. What is more important, fighting against a virus or fighting for basic human rights? If you can lock down a country and hurt its economy to protect its citizens against an insidious virus, then you can do the same thing to protect the citizens from creeping authoritarianism. So, does the truckers' ends justify their means? Does getting their basic civil rights back justify their means of shutting down Canada’s economy? That is the fine line that must be walked. The means must justify the means. So, truckers protest must remain civil, it must be peaceful. It can never turn into violence, or a riot because that will never be justified as we saw on January 6, and throughout the summer of 2020.
But Trudeau is willing to use these “anti-terrorist” powers to shut down peaceful protests while a year and a half ago, he was cheering on the violent BLM protests. He recently said, “I have attended rallies and protests in the past, when I agreed with the goals, when I supported the people expressing their concerns, and their issues. Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that, but I have also chosen not to go anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence against fellow citizens.” He openly admitted he prefers the BLM protests which caused billions of dollars of damage, injured thousands of cops, burned hundreds of buildings to the ground and killed 30 people, over the Freedom Convoy on the claim that the Freedom Convoy which has not burned one building, caused any damage or injured one person, is hateful and violent.
This is the position you will be forced to take when you put the ends in front of the means. You side with violent protests over peaceful ones. Why? Because he “agreed with the goals” of the violent protests. The amazing part of his rhetoric is not that he can spout complete lies and hypocrisy with a straight face, it’s not that there are millions of people who nod along and agree with his lies and hypocrisy, it’s that the media whose job it is to call out politicians’ lies and hypocrisy, support and defend him.
The hallmark of a free society is how much the government will protect the people’s right to protest, assemble, and to speak even if the people are representing a minority opinion, even if they are expressing an unpopular point of view. But Justin Trudeau just admitted that he will not support the right of people to protest, assemble, and to speak if he disagrees with them, but at the same time, will support violence if he agrees with the goals of the people committing it.
As you will see, the elites do not only have a distain for the middle and working classes, they also have no regard for individual human and civil rights, because when the totalitarians take over, the elites will be on top of the food chain. They will have gained more power, and only the middle and working classes, those the elites tell us they are fighting for, the people they claim they are taking total power to help, will be the ones they will crush, because it is always the most marginalized who are crushed the most under authoritarian rule.
There are no benevolent dictators. God is the only benevolent dictator specifically because he does not dictate, he gives his people free will to determine the course of their own lives. And no human is God, especially not Justin Trudeau. God does not take away our free will to eliminate evil in the world because in doing so he would strip us of our humanity, and that is what people like Justin Trudeau are doing when they take away people’s freedom and rights, they steal their humanity. That is what Trudeau and his ilk have been doing to us for the last 2 years, and that is what these truckers in Canada are protesting against, the unrelenting attack on their humanity.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.