By Gregory Gordon/Mises Institute

Here in the West, particularly in countries such as the United States and Canada, we have experienced radical political and cultural changes over the past several years, and the pace of these changes seems to have accelerated since 2020. In the minds of many, there is an almost palpable feeling that a switch has been thrown and that the relationship between citizens and the state has been permanently altered.

Perhaps the most salient revelation in the wake of these changes is a highly diminished pretense of state legitimacy in Western liberal “democracies.” In the Platonic ideal, this legitimacy flows from the citizens’ belief that their democratic government—ostensibly comprising peers and fellow citizens—effectively and uniformly administers justice and serves the needs of all citizens. These critical needs include protecting the individual citizens and their property from foreign adversaries and domestic criminals. In this ideal, citizens would rest assured that “their” government (which, as Barack Obama would say, is “all of us”) would never turn its destructive wrath upon its own constituents.

It is now the spring of 2023, several years after populist groundswells such as Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. Despite what elites and erstwhile “true believers” may claim, fewer and fewer people believe that we are still striving in unison toward the idealized vision of a liberal Western democracy. Mostly peaceful, otherwise-law-abiding citizens are being targeted for relatively minor offenses and political transgressions, while radical leftist agitators and drug-addled street criminals who terrorize cities are quickly forgiven and, in some cases, characterized as victims of an unjust, bigoted society. Some call this situation anarcho-tyranny.

Nations that were once liberal paragons of “democratic” values such as tolerance, pluralism, free speech, freedom for political dissenters, and religious liberty are now mostly led by effete, tone-deaf cosmopolitans or malevolent geriatrics, who are cracking down on those they consider to be backward, superstitious, and racist troglodytes. (The “Q-Anon Shaman” guy could not have been a more perfect culmination of left-liberal stereotypes, even if he were plucked right out of central casting.)

It is a strange time in these Western democracies, though, because the effete ruling class are still learning how to brandish their iron fists. Crackdowns are increasing not only in frequency but also in intensity. Things are not progressing in a linear way; the tyranny is ramping up in awkward fits and spurts.

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