Former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff has written a scathing autopsy laying out the catastrophic mistakes made by the so-called “adults in the room” leading liberalism.
At a time when left-wing politics is facing a series of defeats across the Western world, starting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's announcement of his presidential victory. Imminent resignationAfter Vice President Kamala Harris' defeat to President-elect Donald Trump, many party elites are wondering where their movements have lost the plot. Ignatieff was once a major figure in Canadian Liberal politics, serving as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Opposition in his time, but he has since headed a university affiliated with major Liberal donor George Soros. On Tuesday, he published an article titled: “I Was Born a Liberal. The 'Adults in the Room' Still Have a Lot to Learn,” and said: “To rebuild liberalism, we will need to reclaim what the word used means.”
The author notes how radical it is Canada has changed In his time in terms of diversity, and how the same diversity, ““Once an ideology, it soon became a coercive program to monitor speech and behavior in the name of dignity and respect” used against white, working-class citizens.
“Certified whites of my generation welcomed the revolution because we could invite recruits of color into our ranks without ever feeling like our elite status was being challenged. We did not seem to notice that non-elite whites were threatened, or even betrayed, by the new multiracial order.” “In the face of what we thought was white racism and sexism, when fear prevailed, we began deploying rules of speech and behavior to enforce diversity as a new cultural norm.”
Former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff said the Liberals have become limited by their ideology. (Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
Trump says US support for Canada 'meaningless', suggests Canadians want to 'become the 51st state'
As a result, the former Canadian politician summarized, “liberalism, for which freedom should have been its defining value, invented a diversity and inclusion industry whose guiding principle may have been justice but whose means of enforcement included coercion, public shame and exclusion.”
The backlash to this, he said, is that liberals themselves begin to be constrained by their ideology.
“Worst of all is that we censored ourselves, willingly turned off our bull detectors and harbored inner doubts that might have made us confront our mistakes,” he said. “We have abandoned the self-evident truth that arguments are right or wrong, regardless of the race or origins of the person making them. “We have begun to promote arguments as valid based on the gender, race, class, origins, or backstory (oppression, discrimination, history of domestic violence) of the person making them.”
But beyond the cultural backlash, Ignatieff said there are beginning to be political consequences of abandoning large swaths of the population.
“By failing to heed the displacement fears created by the liberal revolution, we ended up creating a vital political opening for every stream of extremist opinion lining up to speak on behalf of everyone the liberals have stopped listening to,” he said. “By the 2020s, most liberals were retreating, at first nervously, and then increasingly rapidly, from our politics of virtue signaling. First, we made everyone bored with our virtue signaling, and then we got bored with ourselves.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January. (AP/Adrian Wilde/The Canadian Press)
Trudeau on edge as ally, Finance Minister suddenly resigns over Trump's tariff threats
“The old political parties – Liberal in Canada, Democratic in the United States, Social Democratic in Europe – that presided over the liberal revolution now saw their white working-class base heading for the exits, and their multicultural support splintering into autonomous groups each vying for their own He added: “I began to make a new and strange cognitive claim: You can only understand me if you are like me.”
He noted that many of these issues came back to the fore when he was ousted from politics in 2011.
“On election night, our party suffered the worst defeat in our history, and I lost my seat in Parliament – a judgment that, after all these years, I see as a judgment not only on me, but also on liberalism that allowed itself to be so.” “It takes over her self-esteem,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Written in defeat Long editorialHe was a helpful teacher.
“Defeat has taught me that we cannot abandon our values when the tides of politics turn against us. The irredeemable vitality of liberalism comes from the fact that it tells us what we desperately want to be, provided we are willing to fight for it.” “Never give in to the fleeting fashions of despair,” he wrote.
