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There's an interesting division emerging on the right over the actions of two foreign countries: Do the (very) recent actions of Canada or of Russia represent the greater threat?

Make no mistake, both are horrible. But the threats they represent are very different, and the locus of concerns reveals two very different understandings of America in 2022.

Russia's actions in Ukraine represent a threat to the international order. They bring us back to an era in which international borders are no longer sacred. Europe in particular believed that it had ushered in an era of peace when it locked in a perpetual map at the end of WWII. Russia’s actions imperil that European self-conception.

Granted, what Russia is doing in Eastern Ukraine is not that different from the way the U.S. got Texas, but that's precisely the point. Russia's actions are throwbacks to an earlier era of international warfare. That's scary.

To many of us, the end of Pax Americana is indeed frightening. But the question is whether it still exists in meaningful form and Biden is squandering an opportunity to preserve it, or it has already died, and Putin is merely acting within the world as it exists today. From what I can see, the American-led “golden age” that began at the end of WWII—and moved into high gear at the end of the Cold War—is over. Bush damaged it through incompetent management, Obama withdrew, Trump tried to reinvigorate it in streamlined form, and Biden confirmed the withdrawal.

Biden’s America has already surrendered to the Taliban and to Mexican cartels. Putin isn’t responsible for ending that golden age. He’s simply savvy enough to know that it’s over, and to avail himself of the new reality.

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Meanwhile, the formerly free country of Canada has simply suspended the civil rights of citizens who have the temerity to disagree with government policy. Few on the right find such actions acceptable, but it doesn't much engage them. Last night, I heard Paul Manafort address a lage crowd of Trump supporters. He covered four topics: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the merits of Trump's Presidency, the Democrats' political woes, and how he was railroaded. While he was speaking, the Canadian House voted to ratify the suppression. Yet Manafort never mentioned Canada. Not once.

For those still living in the “liberal international order” and Pax Americana, Canada remains a strongly free country that has made a misstep. It will self-correct shortly with no long-term damage (other than to the citizens whose lives it destroys). But many of us have already acknowledged and internalized that there’s no longer a liberal international order within which to live. It’s history. We can lament its passing, but pretending that we still live in an historical era we find preferable to the current one is just role play.

What we see about Russia and Ukraine is that there are only two practical possibilities. Either Putin will do whatever he damn pleases while the U.S. stands by, or Putin will do whatever he damn pleases while Biden and his grossly incompetent administration make things worse. Given those choices, standing aside is clearly the lesser evil.

What might have infuriated us—as patriotic, peace-loving, freedom-loving Americans—a decade ago now triggers the Serenity Prayer at a national level: “God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.” The U.S., under current leadership, cannot change Russia’s seizure of eastern Ukraine.

Canada, on the other hand, is more than our neighbor. It’s the foreign country universally recognized as having the most in common with the U.S. Its actions are merely the most recent ratcheting downwards of the Anglosphere. That’s a tragedy that has not yet played itself out fully. We might still be able to change it—though again, it appears that our current leadership is on the wrong side of that struggle.

In all of human history, the Anglo-American tradition stands out for the primacy it gives to civil liberties and individual rights. Yet today, New Zealand is a closed state, Australia arrests citizens found too far from home without a valid reason—and promotes its new interment camps. Canada is now forcing its citizens to choose between financial functioning and the right to dissent. The UK is doing a bit better, but has hardly covered itself in glory.

The U.S. itself has experienced a shocking decline in civil liberties under the guise of a seemingly never ending (and just reupped) “Covid Emergency:” Even as countries around the world are conceding that the emergency has long been over, President Biden just extended it for another year. Pretextual emergencies exist solely to justify government crackdowns on the citizenry. Over the past two years, American liberty has existed as a government grant rather than as a matter of right. Some jurisdictions, like FL or TX, have remained relatively free. Others, like NYC or CA, have suspended liberty and instituted discrimination in the name of “the common good.”

To those of us who recognize that the American republic fell in March 2020, and that the U.S. today operates as neither a free society nor a constitutional republic, events in Canada are terrifying. They seem a harbinger of things to come here.

Yes, Putin's actions in Ukraine force America to admit that its hegemonic role is dead--and along with it the liberal international order. Canada's actions should force America to admit that its own freedoms hang by a very tenuous, rapidly fraying thread.

The right is thus split over a critical question: Do you know what time it is? It's too late to worry about a global order that has already eroded. Today's threats are all far closer to home.

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For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com

To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).

American Restoration by Bruce D. Abramson

On Russia and Canada