(This column originally appeared in the Toronto Sun)
Many are calling 2016 the worst year in recent memory.
Aside from the death of several celebrities and cultural icons, 2016 was also a year plagued with escalating global conflicts and deadly Islamist terrorist attacks.
While Islamists boasted about infiltrating the flow of refugee coming into Europe, Western leaders naively insisted that the violent attacks had nothing to do with the refugees and nothing to do with Islam.
Wars across the Middle East expanded and Syria became a proxy war for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Russia to flex their might as would-be global superpowers.
Lots went wrong in 2016. But the year wasn’t all bad. 2016 was also the year that average people sent an undeniable message to elites.
It started with Brexit. Everyday people in the UK rejected the Eurocrat elites in Brussels, despite the best wishes of the elites in London.
The people of Great Britain had never been given a say about the growing EU bureaucracy, and were never consulted in the decision to throw open their borders to mass, unchecked migration from war zones and hotbeds of Islamist terrorism.
Following this trend, the American electorate surprised the world by electing Donald Trump. Americans rejected the corrupt, establishment candidate, despite her having the endorsement of elites from Washington, New York, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley.
Hillary Clinton was so stunned by the results that she couldn’t compose herself enough to deliver a concession speech on election night.
Americans instead opted for a man so profoundly hated by establishment elites that many still refuse to accept that Donald J. Trump was actually elected President.
Trump himself embodies a repudiation of corrupt US politics and a biased mainstream media; his victory highlighted the increasing hostile divide between coastal elites and hardworking Americans.
Electing Trump was the ultimate act of rebellion. It was a moral victory for the American public, despite all of Trump’s flaws.
No matter how Trump or Brexit work out…(READ MORE)
