Western leaders keep peddling this particularly undemocratic value

Western leaders keep peddling this particularly undemocratic value

By: Rachel Marsden

PARIS — “The G7 countries are united on tackling our greatest global challenges,” tweeted Secretary of State Antony Blinken last weekend. Look, can we stop trying to make unity happen?

How did this push for unity and solidarity ever become a defining quest for Western leaders who apparently want us all to live in a giant echo chamber run by them?

US President Joe Biden set the tone in his Inaugural Address, when he reiterated the word “unity”, or some synonym of it, 19 times — more than any other prior president, as The Economist reported. Biden likely figured that bringing the country together, particularly in the wake of the post-Trump, pre-inaugural unrest of Jan. 6, 2021, was important. “For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos,” Biden said.

We’ve since been told that Biden has made good progress on American unity — by tackling the big topics that divided Americans, like “improving mental health, supporting veterans, beating the opioid epidemic and fighting cancer.”

One can hardly wait for Biden’s post-presidency autobiography for him to explain how he brought a divided America together to agree that cancer was an enemy worth fighting, or that mental health was a worthy cause, or that opioid abuse was an issue. You know, the big topics over which Americans are fighting. To quote Biden himself, “Come on, man.”

The fact that Biden had to resort to shadowboxing with such totally non-divisive topics to score any unity points is a tacit admission that it isn’t something that can easily be shoved down citizens’ throats, particularly by members of the highly divisive establishment. And since they don’t like real debate, on tough issues it ends up being their way or the highway. That’s when they pull out the heavy rhetorical artillery against their opponents, including vilification and suppression of dissent, which are turning into the new unfortunate pillars of modern-day Western democracy.

It’s not like they’re doing themselves any real favors, though. The ultimate result of quashing disunity on the most divisive issues is the reinforcement of an echo-chamber that further isolates decision makers from their electorate and from the kind of criticism that could save them (and us) from being blindsided by the eventual disastrous consequences of their unchecked hubris.

Here in Europe, “unity” is one of unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s favorite buzzwords. On everything from Ukraine to the current migrant crisis of African asylum seekers landing on Italy’s Lampedusa island by the thousands, she’s always tossing out the term, talking about how “united” European Union member states are. The more ideological diversity and dissent that exist on any given issue, the more we’re bombarded with the term.

It’s simply not reasonable, though, for citizens of 27 different EU member states to all be aligned with policies concocted by a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels — the EU “straitjacket” to which the late former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher referred.

Much like the EU of today, the straitjacket is also designed to force compliance — by physically “uniting” your limbs with your torso.

The EU is so “united” with EU policy on Ukraine, that Poland and three other countries shut their borders to a potential glut of Ukrainian grain that risks lowering the price of farmers’ supply — and right before an October national election in Poland. While some of these nations have since backed down, Warsaw remains steadfast, comparing Ukraine to a drowning victim who risks dragging down those trying to help it. “The Commission, at one point, reserves its rights, if necessary, to launch an infringement procedure against those countries that have introduced unilateral bans," a European Commission spokesperson said in response, according to Euronews.

Sounds like true unity in the same way that some people yell at their partner before a dinner party about the need to keep up affectionate appearances.

When migrants from Africa arrived en masse to Italy earlier this month, France shut its border with the country and Germany declined to take any newcomers. The EU has responded by stepping up the pressure on countries to accept a new migration pact that would include the redistribution of migrants from EU countries of arrival.

Before, it was just EU “black sheep”, Hungary, that opposed such measures. Now, it’s also teachers’ pets, like the Netherlands, Germany, and France, that are pushing back against EU efforts to impose solidarity. The result? More of what they denounce: an increasingly radical electorate that just wants to see the whole system burn.

In democracies, unity shouldn’t be sought but rather actively avoided. The clash of ideas is what used to make Western civilization great and its persistence depends on protecting dissent at all costs. And unless our leaders are trying to turn their countries into North Korea by fostering conformity, then they need to stop insisting on it at the cost of democratic opposition and learn instead to take a punch without making it seem like it’s the end of the world.