How did it all come to this?

When did we become a society of complainers, a society of victims, a society where no is always the answer? Outrage is the new norm. Little can move forward.

We are stuck in permanent neutral.

People hold on to their entitlements dearly. Students take to the streets almost daily, again. I am certain most of them have no idea what exactly they are fighting for. It's almost as if government programs and social handouts are an open bar.

No one seems to understand that making tough choices today means a fighting chance to succeed tomorrow, when these young revolutionaries will have their own mortgages and children to feed. And it is so hard to figure out what they want.

If they want to see true austerity they should look elsewhere -- not here.

It is so facile to say: make the corporations pay, make the banks pay, make anyone pay. Anyone else that is.

What they don't understand is that it is so easy for money to pull up and leave, and when that happens, we all become poorer.

Free speech only goes so far with so many of these protestors; if you disagree with groupthink you are ostracized, bullied and sometimes denied an education. So much outrage…

So much outrage as Montreal police stand by while firefighters ransack city hall in defiance of a law that which takes away some so-called acquired rights while still delivering pension plans that anyone in the private sector would envy.

Yes, even the people who are sworn to lead us and uphold the law sometimes can’t resist the temptation to troll for votes with civil disobedience.

Anarchists protest police brutality every year by brutalizing police and destroying property.

Cops plaster their cars and dress like clowns to try to make a similar point.

City workers and civil servants demand more. They protest for better pensions, and more money.

Such outrage.

There is a feeling of total intransigence in Quebec these days.

Gas exploration in Quebec: forget it. Don't even bother with the studies to find out the real impact. There is too much outrage.

Want to build a shipping terminal on the St. Lawrence River that would create jobs? No, you can't.

Want to give an inch to the English-speaking community to help it survive? Not here. It would threaten French and endanger social peace. More outrage.

Don't like a local merchant trying to make a living by selling shoes made in Israel? Such outrage… Bring out the placards.

A multibillion-dollar new bridge should be paid for the people who use it with tolls? No, that's outrageous! Let somebody else pay.

Don't like the Plan Nord, the Northern development plan for Quebec designed to create jobs? Bring your masks and show your outrage.

There are demonstrations for everything, every cause, every right. Marches for this, marches against that. So many harmed parties all the time.

Don't get me wrong, protest is welcome in a free and democratic society, but here outrage has become the default position for every real and imagined grievance.

And the world watches Quebec. Nightly demonstrations, with police in body armour, firing tear gas.

It's little wonder that Quebec struggles and will continue to. We are near the bottom of the wealth scale in all of North America.

But in outrage, we're number one.