Liberalism on Notice

G.K. Chesterton described a coincidence as a spiritual pun. Is it significant that Boris Johnson, Great Britain’s new Prime Minister, “got Brexit done,” as he’d promised to do, last Friday; while, on the same day, the U.S. Senate voted against hearing further witnesses in the impeachment trial, thus effectively acquitting President Trump of the fraudulent charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice brought against him by the House? I think so.
Johnson’s election as PM last December 12 was not considered a foregone conclusion, or even necessarily likely, before the fact. No one —not the politicians, not the media, not the public— had any sense of where the election was going until it happened. Across the Atlantic, on the other hand, Trump’s exoneration was pretty much taken for granted by both Republicans and Democrats. That was the difference between the two situations. What was similar to them—almost identical, in fact—is the fundamental reason why Brexit was finally accomplished and Trump prevailed.

It is simply that the deceitful, dishonest, and undemocratic effort by the British establishment in working for three and a half years to nullify a democratic vote by the British public to leave the European Union, and the mirror attempt over roughly the same period of time by the Democratic Party and the American left to negate a presidential election before it occurred and since, are stark displays of how modern liberals in power behave in defeat — viciously, irrationally, undemocratically, and lawlessly. Like most people in the grip of mania, they lose all sense of reality, including the awareness that their behavior is being observed by sane people who take note of it, remember it, and act accordingly when they have the opportunity to do so. Just as Trump’s victory in 2016 was not preceded by evidence of the widespread popular anger underground that produced it, so Johnson’s election three years later—effectively the second referendum, the so-called “People’s Vote,” demanded by Remainers, the Labour Party, and some of the Establishment in the hope that the public had learned its lesson since June 2016 and changed its mind about leaving—was never signaled by observable warning signs of the seismic event to come, owing to the muddled opacity of British politics following David Cameron’s referendum.

As it happens, American and British democrats have indeed learned a lesson during the past three years. It is that liberals in both countries are profoundly illiberal in the certainty of their moral rectitude and intellectual rightness—so illiberal that they will stop at virtually nothing to have their way. It is probable, even now, that we have yet to see far how they are prepared to go the next time their will is thwarted and denied on a matter of importance, and they themselves are, as they see it, disrespected. The left never stops pushing, it never rests, it never gives up, it never forgets. That is the leftists’ greatest advantage. But recently their adversaries have gained an advantage all their own, one that conceivably will prove decisive in the end. The British and American peoples have seen a great light, and they will never forget who the real fascists among us are.