We are blessed to live in Canada, as is anyone fortunate enough to live in the wider western world. An inheritance of liberty, the rule of law, wealth and stability that’s unmatched in all of history is to be cherished and protected. And yet, in country after country, there have been movements to dismantle all that makes the West worth defending. It’s a project being advanced not by our enemies, external or domestic, but by the very governments tasked with stewarding this great inheritance.
This project aims at destroying the West from within. By rejecting our history, re-framing success as exploitative, privileging racial and gender identity above all else and dismissing evidence and facts for a destructive ideological agenda, nearly every institution in countries like Canada has been captured: elected governments, the bureaucracy, the courts, the police, the universities, private businesses and large portions of the media.
Welcome to The Western Surrender
This is a new series from NP Comment. Over the next two weeks, we will focus on how these trends have evolved in the five Anglosphere countries: the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. We will count them down from the least captured to the most — or, put another way, ranking them based on wokeness.
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The Question for the West
The question for the West now is what kind of society do we want to live in. Is it one that protects the liberty and dignity of all, or one where there are racial hierarchies, some based on an objective history of being wronged, others less so? Do we want to live in a prosperous society where wealth generation is encouraged and nurtured as a way to lift everyone up, or a society whose commitment to a particular idea of equality ensures that no one is rich, but all are impoverished?
Findings Across the Anglosphere
Our essayists, writing from the five countries, found that “wokeness” has been a significant trend across the Anglosphere, but it has not affected each country equally. Some have been resistant, others less so. The key to warding off institutional capture is the existence of strong countervailing forces in the form of robust political and cultural opposition.
It’s true that after a decade in which these ideas have dominated, the wider public has grown tired of DEI training, land acknowledgements, language policing, the twisting of laws for racial purposes, two-tiered justice systems and threats to free speech. That is an encouraging development. But it is also true that much of these cultural, legal and political changes have been so deeply embedded in our institutions that it could take years, or decades, to return to something approximating the relative normalcy of 10-15 years ago.
Join the Investigation
We hope you’ll join us as we investigate The Western Surrender. Next up on Tuesday morning: The U.S. unleashed wokeness on a world incapable of handling it.
Carson Jerema is National Post’s managing editor, comment.
