Trudeau, the anointed one
Justin Trudeau and his cabinet during their swearing-in ceremony last week, I was struck by how perfectly they fit into what the great American conservative thinker Thomas Sowell describes as The Vision of the Anointed in his book of the same name.
Sowell’s work is an examination of the views, attitudes and prevailing vision of today’s liberal elites in American society.
But it also fits Canada to a T.
Listen to Sowell’s description of the liberal elite and decide for yourself it it describes Trudeau and his incoming Liberal team.
“The contemporary anointed and those who follow them make much of their ‘compassion’ for the less fortunate, their ‘concern’ for the environment, and their being ‘anti-war’ ... as if these were characteristics that distinguish them from people with opposite views on public policy.
The very idea that ... an opponent of the prevailing vision ... has just as much compassion for the poor and the disadvantaged, that he is just as much appalled by pollution, or as horrified by the sufferings and slaughter imposed by war on millions of innocent men, women and children -- such an idea would be a very discordant note in the vision of the anointed. If such an idea were fully accepted, this would mean that opposing arguments on social policy were arguments about methods, probabilities and empirical evidence -- with compassion, caring, and the like being common features on both sides ... ’’
As Sowell continues, “the vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world and its functioning in a causal sense, but is also a vision of themselves and of their moral role in the world. It is a vision of differential rectitude” or righteousness.
While Trudeau during his victory speech on election night told his cheering supporters Conservative voters were not their enemies but their neighbours, that’s not how liberal (Liberal) elites typically regard those who disagree with them.
Think of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, a key Trudeau ally, and how she deals with parents who, for example, oppose her new sex-ed curriculum, primarily by calling them homophobic.
As Sowell describes this attitude in an American context, that again applies perfectly in Canada:
“Those who accept this (vision of the anointed) are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane. Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin ... the benighted are to be made ‘aware,’ to have their ‘consciousness raised,’ and the wistful hope is held out that they will ‘grow.’ Should the benighted prove recalcitrant, however, then their ‘mean-spiritedness’ must be fought and the ‘real reasons’ behind their arguments and actions exposed.”
Sowell notes that for the liberal elite, “these are not mere debating tactics. People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority.”
Indeed, Trudeau was no doubt sincere when he told a throng of cheering supporters the day after winning last month’s election:
“Many of you have worried that Canada has lost its compassionate and constructive voice in the world over the past 10 years. Well, I have a simple message for you: on behalf of 35 million Canadians, we’re back.”
Trudeau makes it sound as if Canada was taken over by a military junta for the past decade, rather than a democratically elected Conservative government, illustrating the need of the anointed to portray their political opponents and their supporters as not simply wrong, but sinful.
Finally, decide for yourself if the anointed’s attitude to anyone who does not share their vision of imminent, apocalyptic, man-made climate change -- even though the Liberals did nothing on this issue the last time there were in power from 1993 to 2006 -- fits Sowell’s description of how the anointed act in all of their moral crusades.
First, he notes, assertions are made of “a great danger to the whole society ... to which the masses ... are oblivous.”
Next come warnings of “an urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe ... a need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.”
Finally, Sowell writes, there is a “disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible or motivated by unworthy principles.”
That’s the vision of the anointed, folks. Better get used to it.
Trudeau, the anointed one
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