The free world has been increasingly beset by leaders who don’t much value freedom.
Much of the establishment media response to Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that she would resign as PM of New Zealand has been fawning.
She’s been called an “icon to many,” and even a “global liberal icon.”
Time Magazine said Ardern “led with her humanity.”
All of this is interesting, because it demonstrates the extent to which image continues to overpower substance.
Ardern certainly presented herself as a friendly and kindly person, and often had a high-energy upbeat demeanor.
She also regularly spoke in collective terms, calling New Zealand “our team of five million”.
Yet, she also governed in a very authoritarian manner, and imposed some of the world’s harshest restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As noted by the New York Times, New Zealanders faced significant restrictions on their rights and freedoms, and Ardern used divisive political tactics:
“In early 2020, she helped coax the country — “our team of five million,” she said — to go along with shuttered international borders and a lockdown so severe that even retrieving a lost cricket ball from a neighbor’s yard was banned.
When new, more transmissible variants made that impossible, Ms. Ardern’s team pivoted but struggled to get vaccines quickly. Strict vaccination mandates then kept people from activities like work, eating out and getting haircuts.
Dr. Simon Thornley, an epidemiologist at the University of Auckland and a frequent and controversial critic of the government’s Covid response, said many New Zealanders were surprised by what they saw as her willingness to pit the vaccinated against the unvaccinated.
“The disillusionment around the vaccine mandates was important,” Dr. Thornley said. “The creation of a two-class society and that predictions didn’t come out as they were meant to be, or as they were forecast to be in terms of elimination — that was a turning point.””
What’s fascinating about this is that Ardern was once incredibly popular in the country.
Yet, it’s when she seemed politically unassailable that the authoritarian attitude increasingly emerged, causing many to take a second look and not be too impressed with what they saw.
Like we saw with Justin Trudeau in Canada, wannabe authoritarians will wait for their moment and then strike at our rights and freedoms the moment they feel the public is scared, angry, or distracted enough for them to get away with it.
Wrecking the strength of the Western world
Individual freedom and limited government power is what provides the foundation of the economic, cultural, and military strength of the Western world.
It’s what makes the Western world a beacon of light for people in less free countries.
It’s what helps incentivize the creativity and innovation that leads to economic power, which then leads to military power.
And it’s what reminds the world that human beings don’t need an all-powerful leader at the top to control us.
Unfortunately, leaders like Ardern and Trudeau put all of that at risk.
They play the role of the happy-go-lucky leader, but behind the scenes they are undermining everything that makes the Western world strong.
By centralizing power and dividing our population against itself, they unwittingly (or wittingly perhaps) do the bidding of countries that are already fully authoritarian.
Hiding an authoritarian agenda behind a smile doesn’t change that agenda, and it doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
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