Latest news with #politicalmovement
National Post
28-05-2025
- General
- National Post
Geoff Russ: The dreary impotence of Canadian republicans. Long live the King
Article content It is not a coincidence that some of our most radical republicans, like William Lyon Mackenzie, have been traitors willing to spill blood in the pursuit of their goal. Article content Thankfully, today's republicans are reduced to the status of being frustrated, challenged lack of inspiration and vigour in their movement is why it continues to fail. It has its vocal advocates, but they are a politically and culturally impotent rabble when taken as a whole. Article content Some among them have even attempted to cite the Bible as a reason for removing the monarch, proclaiming that its text goes against the elevation of any one man. They should read further into that same book and find the words 'Fear God, Honour the King.' Article content If republicans are bewildered by the affinity that Canadians retain for the monarchy, it is because their vision of the country is dull, unremarkable, and grey. A republican Canada is one stripped of elegance and tradition, rendered into a purely managerial and bureaucratic state where obscure public servants occupy the position of head of state. Article content People desire something beyond crass political contests in their leaders. In 2025, this world of ours is incredibly flat, digital, and racked with presentism, where genuine beauty, transcendent majesty, and time-tested refinement are in short supply. Article content There is something deeply uplifting about the Crown, and all of its pageantry and resonance help to swell national pride, which Canada sorely needs. These intangible qualities enliven society and renew or create a sense of wonder for millions, a gift not easily found and impossible to recover if lost. Article content For those that do care about preserving a distinct Canada, the Crown is a point of connection that links us with long-buried generations through rituals and continuity. Critics call it irrational, but so is love, friendship, and the other parts of life that motivate and drive human beings more fiercely than anything material. Article content A Canada with a Crown is the country that it was intended to be in 1867, and fidelity to that is an act of patriotism. This past federal election saw a renewed sense of Canadian nationalism, albeit expressed in strange and lowbrow ways like the worship of ketchup chips and nostalgia for Molson Canadian beer commercials from the 1990s. Article content Nonetheless, it displayed that the Canadian people still have a desire to be distinct. The celebrations and parades marking King Charles III's visit to Canada this week are the healthiest expressions of that seen in years. Article content The monarchy's popularity in Canada tends to grow whenever it makes itself present here, and it ought to do that more often and remind people why it exists. Article content When the late Prince Philip visited Canada in 1969, he perfectly summed up why we still continue to have a sovereign. Article content
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Is Waging War on the Future
It's fitting that a political movement whose slogan is the backward looking 'Make America Great Again' — and whose tribune, Donald Trump, appears to live in an eternal 1990 of his own mind — is waging war on the American future. This war has four theaters of conflict. In the first, Trump is waging war on constitutional government, with a full spectrum attack on the idea of the United States as a nation of laws and not men. He hopes to make it a government of one man: himself, unbound by anything other than his singular will. Should the president win his campaign against self-government, future Americans won't be citizens of a republic as much as subjects of a personalist autocracy. In the second theater of conflict, the MAGA movement is waging war on the nation's economic future, rejecting two generations of integration and interdependency with the rest of the world in favor of American autarky, of effectively closing our borders to goods and people from around the world so that the United States might make itself into an impenetrable fortress — a garrison state with the power to dictate the terms of the global order, especially in its own hemisphere. In this new world, Americans will abandon service sector work in favor of manufacturing and heavy industry. 'This is the new model,' the secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick, said in an interview with CNBC last month, 'where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.' The reality is that this particular campaign — this effort to de-skill the working population of the United States — is more likely to immiserate the country and impoverish its residents than it is to inaugurate a golden age of prosperity. Not content to leave Americans without a meaningful democratic future or one of broad economic prosperity, the White House is also fighting a pitched battle against a sustainable climate future. In the same way that Trump and his allies have rejected the obligation to pass the nation's tradition of self-governance on to the next generation, they have also rejected the obligation to pass a living planet on to those who will inherit the earth. Theirs, instead, is an agenda of unlimited resource extraction, with little regard for the consequences. Upon taking office, the president issued an executive order directing federal agencies to allow drilling in formerly protected areas. This, despite the fact that American energy production is at an all-time high — and the United States is now a net exporter of oil and gas. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
