Political leaders of the so-called liberal Western regimes are engaging in authoritarian tactics to quell legitimate dissent. But leftists who riot and burn get a free pass.

Original Article: "Rise of the Effete Authoritarians"

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.

If you were to stroll through any typical upper-middle-income American neighborhood in 2021, the odds are very high that you’d observe at least one yard sign exuberantly proclaiming something like this: “In this house, we believe that science is real, love is love, no human is illegal … ” and other banal tautologies.