When liberals go youthfully loony they usually adopt Marxism for a while. Then, like a college girlfriend who isn’t suitable for prime time, they come around and tone down the Marxism, at least in public. The traditional conservative waltz on the wild side is Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

Not for all conservatives, only the smart ones, the Randian temptation is alluring because it’s like a comic book universe. All the good guys are stoic ubercapitalists who are cool, clever, and principled. The bad guys? Government. See, isn’t that fun?

The good guys are also so one dimensional you could lick the back of their heads and stick them on a wall. They talk like robots, are quite rapey, and have absolutely no sense of humor.

Rand made her stance in her writing. Several of her books are quite interesting. Two, Anthem and The Fountainhead, are excellent and brilliantly make the case for individual freedom. The big one, Atlas Shrugged, also makes the case. But it does it in hundreds of pages of mind-numbing tedium. It would be a better book at a third of its length. But to callow true-believing adolescents like yours truly, it was an ideological Bible. Though, one which a sensible person grew out of by 25 years of age. What does this have to do with the Canadian truckers? Glad you asked.

The plot of Atlas revolves around a guy named John Galt who organizes a capitalist revolt against a socialist government. He convinces all kinds of capitalists, entrepreneurs, producers, and others of quality that they are suckers for taking part in a society that is abusing them. So, they go on strike. Not a strike of labor, a strike of management. Get it? Of course, soon the society begins to fall apart, as the droids left to run it are mindless buffoons not fit to tie their own shoes without government help. Which brings us to Canada.

How is what the Canadian truckers are doing so different from Atlas? The truckers know that without the transportation of goods that society comes to a stop. No stuff at groceries, stores, etc. They also face ridiculous mandates in regards to COVID. So, like Galt’s strikers, they stopped playing a self-defeating game. They called the bluff of the Trudeau government and went on strike.

And just as in the book, the government responded with fear and threats couched in a Crazy for Cocoa Puffs tone. The usual suspects in the press, on both sides of the border, are apoplectic. The Mayor of Ottawa declared a state of emergency. Ken doll PM Trudeau was removed to a secure location. Why? Because some citizens decided not to go to work and engaged in democratic non-violent protests. Ah, when fiction becomes reality.