In response to the murder of young school children in Ireland by an Algerian migrant, the Irish people engaged in what CNN may have called "a mostly peaceful protest" to express fury at the lax immigration policies at the root of this and other recent violence terrorizing their small island nation.
However, instead of addressing their citizens' legitimate concerns, the Irish government branded them "far right" malcontents and sought to silence them and their complaints through new draconian speech laws.
In support of the new laws, one Irish politician declared that "freedoms" must be restricted for the "common good."
This common good apparently defined to include mass immigration, rather than avoidance of Irish school children being brutally murdered.
It is fair to say, and Elon Musk did as much, that the current leaders of Ireland appear to hate their own people.
The Irish are hardly alone in this regard with disdain by the ruling class for those they govern running rife in Western societies lately.
While certainly not unusual for the ruling class to believe that they know what is best for the commoners — those they consider too ignorant to think for themselves — what is unusual is such complete disregard for their interests.
This is especially so in democracies where the "will of the people" is expected to be reasonably carried out by those elected to govern them, at least theoretically.
But even absolute monarchs were sympathetic to their subjects' grievances, seeing their wellbeing as their sacred responsibility, or at least fearing if they did not, they may lose their heads.
By contrast, today's ruling classes deem the opinions of the majority of their citizens illegitimate and feel little real connection to their own countries, traditions or national cultures, or interest in their preservation.
As a result, the long-standing social contract that has formed the basis for Western societies is being broken.
This implicit social contract, as articulated by Western philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sets forth the basic rights, responsibilities, and mutual obligations of citizens and their government, and serves to bind the nation together.
This includes consenting to the curtailment of certain individual freedoms to governmental authority in exchange for protection of other freedoms along with overall maintenance of the nation and the social order.
In short, to echo the Irish politician, freedoms are restricted for the common good.
What has changed, however, as illustrated in Ireland, is the definition of the common good, and which, and especially whose, freedoms must be restricted to achieve it.
Historically, the common good was defined in terms of the national community and existing citizenry, as the state, and by extension the social contract, was intended for their benefit.
But the common good is no longer being viewed in national terms, but instead through a globalist lens, as the old social contract has been usurped by a new one, drafted in places like the U.N. and the World Economic Forum.
And unlike the former, this new contract is not between governments and their citizens, but between global elites who are divorced from any nation or place.
As such, globalist causes like mass immigration, multiculturalism, woke identity politics, and climate change are now of far greater importance than the preservation of Western cultures, traditions, or even, in the case of Ireland, the safety of a nation's children who are seen as worthy sacrifices upon the altar of progress.
In fact, the new social contract scarcely recognizes nations or their sovereignty at all, relegating them to mere economic zones and markets to be standardized according to global economic laws.
And while the freedoms of the so-called "citizens of the world" are greatly enhanced, those tied to nations are consequently diminished.
Indeed, even the sine qua non of the previous social contract, the "consent of the governed" has been overridden, with the consent once belonging exclusively to the people now conferred upon supranational institutions.
This is a fact to which the Irish can fully attest, as they have certainly not consented to their society being radically changed or terrorized as it has by mass immigration, and yet that is exactly what has happened.
Indeed, as we have seen, to even voice opposition is to now risk significant punishments.
But many around the world are waking up and beginning to reject the new social contract being shoved down their throats, and whose terms they have never agreed to.
To that end, the Dutch recently decided they had enough, as they have seen their high trust and peaceful society destroyed by open borders and multiculturalism, along with their prized welfare state, and elected a new "far right" government to do something about it.
It is high time that other Western citizens as well declare a breach of their own social contracts, and demand that their governments again put their interests and national common good first.
And if not, get a new one that will.
Lee Steinhauer is a strategic policy and political consultant known for his book "The Art of The New Cold War: America vs. China. What America Must Do to Win." Lee is a frequent guest on Fox, Fox Business, Newsmax, and a published policy and opinion writer for numerous media publications. Read Lee Steinhauer's Reports — More Here.
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