Say what you want about the political left, but they are consistently inconsistent.

When protestors became rioters in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Portland and elsewhere in the United States the political left clamored that the riots were simply the “voices of the unheard.”

As people’s lives and business were burned down, neighborhoods ransacked, law abiding citizens terrorized, the political left smugly insisted that this was the price society paid for the senseless and criminal acts of a Minneapolis police officer.

And it wasn’t just the political left in the United States, either that embrace a policy of consistent inconsistency when it comes to what constitutes support for free assembly versus violent rioting in the streets.

Take the poster child for leftist “woke-ism” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In 2020 as thousands gathered to protest outside Parliament Hall in Ottawa the hipster politician who confuses leadership with vacuous words sauntered into the middle of the assemblage to take a knee in solidarity with the crowd.

The protest which remained peaceful, like many throughout Canada and the world, nonetheless was filled with the justifiable outrage of thousands who were decrying the senseless death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Yet, when Canadian truckers, whose outrage at a government they believe has overstepped its boundaries and undermined their ability to make a living for their families gathered to conduct their own peaceful protest, Trudeau saw their actions as not only hostile, but terroristic.

Forget that there has been no violence in the Canadian trucker’s blockade to dramatize not only their plight but their tremendous contribution to the economy of the country and, for that matter, the United States, and other nations across the globe.

After condemning the truckers who found themselves lacking any voice in a government determined to mandate ownership over their personal and professional lives, Trudeau fled Ottawa as nearly 3,000 truckers arrived to reclaim their voice.

The political left has condemned the trucker’s convoy. USA Today even went so far as to write a story to try to “debunk” the fact that the convoy protest has been largely peaceful in nature insisting that while there was no “widespread” violence, the Canadian authorities were investigating “potential crimes” and that there were reports of property damage.

Funny, I have yet to see any graphic images of riotous terrorists in the street torching buildings, throwing rocks through windows, or chanting slogans about murdering police.

What I have seen are lines of trucks, a lot of horn honking, and traffic being snarled and disrupted as the Canadian truckers have tried to give voice to their protest.

Yet, this honking of horns and disruption of routine life in Canada has now been deemed to be on the same level as an act of terrorism.

So much so that Trudeau has enacted, for the first time ever, the so-called “Emergencies Act.”

Trudeau has invoked ‘martial law’ allowing him to suspend people’s freedom of movement and assembly-using a law that had replaced the War Measures Act- which had only been used in the First and Second World Wars, and in 1970, when Quebec terrorists kidnapped a Deputy Prime Minister and British diplomat.

CNN reports the decision this way:

“The Emergencies Act can provide for the use of the military, but may not necessarily lead to that, and Trudeau said the government is not bringing them in.

But it can temporarily suspend citizens’ rights to free movement or assembly. And the government is taking steps to stop financial support of illegal protests.

The trucker-inspired protests have for weeks disturbed residents in Ottawa’s downtown and recently impeded traffic flow at crossings at the US border.”

CNN goes onto report that “The Canadian law, passed in 1988, states, “For the purposes of this Act, a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature” that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.”

And the Prime Minister has concluded that people he disagrees with, engaged in a peaceful protest, is a national emergency on the same level as one that might be a terrorist attack against Canada.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not advocating for the widespread use of the kind of tactics that the truckers are using in shutting down bridges between nations, limiting the freedom and economic needs of their fellow citizens or supporting any kind of effort, real or imagined, that might involve the use of violence against those who disagree with their protest.

What I am advocating for, however, is the right to engage in peaceful protests without being labeled terrorists.

I am advocating for those peaceful protestors who, in exercising their rights as protestors, may overstep those boundaries by violating laws associated with blocking traffic, noise ordinances and the like be treated like people breaking those types of laws –not like people intending to burn down neighborhoods and threaten the safety and security of their neighbors.

In announcing that he was imposing a law upon peaceful protestors that was intended to protect Canadians from terrorist attacks against their nation, Trudeau said:

“This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting peoples’ jobs and restoring faith in our institutions.”

These are the same kind of words Trudeau, and the political left across the world, have used time and time again during the global pandemic to justify their broad overreach in the use of government to control the lives and movements of their citizens.

What went from commonsense measures that were intended to control a pandemic became measures intended to control people.

And, when the people began to rise up the leftist politicians of the United States and Canada and elsewhere didn’t applaud them for using their voices.

They threatened them with legal action, criminal violations and in the case of Canada effectively calling them terrorists.

Trudeau has it all wrong.

Enacting a law that labels those who protest government overreach as terrorists isn’t going to restore faith in “…our institutions.”

It’s going to destroy whatever faith was left in them because of his actions and those of others across the world who forget that government doesn’t give power to the people.

It’s people who give power to the government.

And it’s the people who have the right to take that power back when they choose to do so.

In Democracies, those rights are cherished. In fascist, totalitarian states, those rights are crushed. It breaks my heart to see path upon which Trudeau and the political left have taken our beloved neighbor to the North.