Look north.

Kathy Shaidle—herself, of course, potentially a victim of Canada's repressive attitude toward freedom of speech—recounts some of the leadup to the upcoming tar-and-feathering of Mark Steyn and Maclean's in Canada:

So, “when the British Columbia ‘Human Rights’ Tribunal finds us guilty,” writes Steyn, “they are statutorily obligated to issue a cease-and-desist order that will have the effect of preventing Maclean’s running any writing on Islam by me or anybody of a similar bent — even though the plaintiffs have not challenged the accuracy of a single fact or statistic or quotation.”

He continued:

So four weeks from now I’ll be banished from the Canadian media. … But a year or two down the line, many other subscribers to Maclean’s and the Chronicle-Herald and eventually the Globe and the Toronto Star will be wondering why there are whole areas of debate that no longer seem to get much of an airing in the public prints. In 1989, Muslims who objected to Salman Rushdie burned his novel in the streets of England. Two decades on, they’ve figured out that it’s more efficient to use the “human rights” commissions to burn the offending texts metaphorically, discreetly, offstage … and (ultimately) preemptively.

In many respects, the June 2 Tribunal’s guilty verdict will represent the ultimate triumph of those “progressive” “Trudeaupian” ideals that have been infecting the nation’s institutions for generations.

“At one point,” remarked Steyn after that televised “debate,” “I looked across at the Sock Puppet Three [the "aggrieved" Muslims who lodged the official complaint] and thought: It’s not about who wins the argument. They’re the future of this country, and that’s that.”

Via Insty.

Hey—I've done my part. I bought America Alone in hardcover, and my radical chic T-shirt arrived a few days ago.

Son of a bitch, I'll miss free speech in Canada. And I've never even been there. And self-defense is illegal in England. What has happened to the Anglosphere?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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