GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau believes he’s the chosen one

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A good way to understand what drives Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a book written almost three decades ago by the great American conservative thinker Thomas Sowell titled, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

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Obviously, Sowell wasn’t writing about Trudeau — but he was writing about the contemporary liberal mindset of politicians like Trudeau.

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In a Canadian context, this is not a new observation.

The first time I wrote about it was in a 2015 column, “Trudeau, the anointed one,” a month after he won the election that brought him to power.

National Post columnist John Ivison made the same observation in his 2019 book, Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister.

As Sowell writes, “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 the world. It is a vision of differential rectitude” or righteousness.

“What a vision may offer, and what the prevailing vision of our time emphatically does offer, is a special status of grace for those who believe in it. Those who accept this are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane.

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“Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin … the benighted are to be made ‘aware,’ to have their ‘consciousness raised,’ and the wistful hope is held out that they will ‘grow.’ Should the benighted prove recalcitrant, however, then their ‘mean-spiritedness’ must be fought and the ‘real reasons’ behind their arguments and actions exposed.”

Describes Trudeau to a tee, doesn’t it?

In an extract from Stephen Maher’s upcoming book on Trudeau, The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau, published in the Walrus, Trudeau made it clear that what drives him politically — and what motivates him to want to lead the Liberals into the next election — is that he believes Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is “not merely in error, but in sin.”

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“He’s been around this place a long time,” Trudeau said.

“I have never seen the drive to service. What is the call to build the country? I’ve seen a tremendous, cut-throat competitor, someone who’s willing to do whatever it takes to win, to score points, to make the goal. And there’ve been politicians in all parties who do that, but that’s never been what drives me. I just see it as such a fundamental choice in what kind of country we are, who we are as Canadians … And that is what the next election is going to be … As a competitor, as a leader, as someone committed to this country, being there for that conversation with Canadians touches me at the core of what I feel my purpose is in stepping forward into politics.”

This is “Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the flood”) thinking, originally attributed to Louis XV of France in the 18th century.

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Trudeau’s breathtaking lack of self-awareness in these comments — his apparent unawareness that he constantly divides Canadians against each other in pursuit of votes, whether the issue is the pandemic, the carbon tax, the future of Canada’s oil and gas sector, immigration, gun control, law and order or drug decriminalization — would normally suggest he can’t be serious.

That he can’t possibly sincerely believe he is somehow above the no-holds-barred partisan politics he accuses Poilievre of practising.

But as Sowell explains about those seized with the vision of the anointed, “These are not merely debating tactics. People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority.”

Indeed, it is the vision of the anointed that emboldens Trudeau to accuse others of racism when he can’t remember how many times he donned blackface; to accuse opponents of unethical conduct when he has repeatedly violated the federal conflict of interest act, to accuse Canadians opposed to his carbon tax of being uncaring about the planet, despite his own massive carbon footprint.

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As Sowell observes, “one reason for the preservation and insulation” of the vision of the anointed “is that it has become inextricably intertwined with the egos of those who believe in it.

“In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common heard, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also in lost jobs, social disintegration and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.”

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