While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on a mission to save Canada from the policies of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, his problem is that, according to the polls, far more Canadians want to be saved from Trudeau and his government.
It’s not that Trudeau isn’t sincere in his view that he must rescue Canada from Poilievre and company.
As Thomas Sowell observed in The Vision of the Anointed — Self Congratulation as the Basis for Social Policy — written about the logical fallacies of social progressivism in the U.S. in the 1990s but easily applied to Trudeau and the Liberals today, “people are never more sincere than when they assume their moral superiority.”
Trudeau clearly believes he is morally superior to Poilievre, and that the Liberals are morally superior to Conservatives, on every major issue from using the power of the state to redistribute income, to climate change, to the criminal justice system and more.
This automatic assumption by the Trudeau Liberals of their moral superiority is a long-standing feature of their “progressive” philosophy, which assumes their views and policies are more humane, practical and effective than those of their Conservative opponents.
This helps Liberals cope with the logical pretzels they routinely turn themselves into because of such views.
For example, when they spend years in government denouncing as racist anyone who questions the wisdom of high-intake immigration policies — in a slowing economy that puts added strain on housing affordability and our overburdened health-care system — and then do a sudden about face and lower immigration targets as examples of their allegedly enlightened and forward-looking thinking.
As National Post columnist Chris Selley described it on “X” — “what we saw today was the purest essence of the identity of the Liberal party. Call a policy racist Friday. Adopt it Monday.”
The Trudeau Liberals also have an argument in favour of everything, no matter which side of an issue they happen to land on.
On Aug, 11, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, in defending high immigration targets, said Canada “absolutely” can’t build more houses without more immigrants in the face of a national housing shortage.
But last week, in defending the federal immigration cuts along with Trudeau, Miller said they will reduce the need for new housing by 670,000 units in 2027.
It’s the same mentality at work when the Trudeau Liberals argue their carbon tax is the most efficient and economical way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, compared to more expensive government regulations and public subsidies.
In fact, the Trudeau government is relying on two-thirds of Canada’s future emission cuts coming not from their carbon tax, but from less efficient regulations, public subsidies and more than 100 other government programs for which $200 billion has already been earmarked.
While inflation and interest rates were rising in recent years, the Trudeau Liberals blamed it on global forces over which they had no control.
Today, with inflation and interest rates on the decline, the Liberals declare their plan is working, taking credit for what they previously said they had no control over.
As Sowell explained in The Vision of the Anointed three decades ago, “One reason for the preservation and insulation of a vision is that it has become inextricably intertwined with the egos of those who believe it … the vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world and its functioning in a causal sense, but is also a vision of themselves and of their moral role in that world.
“It is a vision of differential rectitude … Problems exist because others are not as wise or as virtuous as the anointed.”