India, Jan. 22 -- If the commentariat had its way, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's "Havel's Greengrocer" inspired speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos would be put on the same pedestal as Winston Churchill's "We will fight them on the beaches" speech delivered in the British parliament in 1940. The outpouring of sentiment is not without reason. Western liberalism is perhaps facing its biggest existential threat since fascism threatened it during the Second World War. Carney's refusal to continue "living with a lie" is at least a declaration of an intent that the Western world sans the US will not surrender to Trump's threats which entail nothing but complete liquidation of sovereignty.

Intent or articulation, no matter how g...