Canada's Totalitarianism

 

Canada is gaining an international reputation for all the wrong things. Elon Musk has chipped in on Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms Bill,” that “This sounds insane if accurate! Community notes, please check.”

Specifically, according to a tweet he reposted, it “will give police the power to retroactively search the Internet for ‘hate speech‘ violations, and arrest offenders, even if the offense occurred before the law existed.”

Is this true?

Apparently so. Community notes responded: it applies if “a person communicates or causes to be communicated hate speech so long as the hate speech remains public, and the person can remove or block access to it.”

So by the letter of the law, you are liable to prosecution, and penalties up to life in prison, if you have not taken down anything you might have written or tweeted in the past, that violates the new law. Including tweets or posts you might not remember.

This is especially problematic, because you can never be sure what violates the present law. Life in prison, for example, is the punishment for “promoting genocide.” But the definition of genocide has become elastic. Almost everyone is currently accused by someone of promoting genocide in one way or another. One can also be punished for anything “if it is motivated by hatred based on protected characteristics.” But who can define “hatred”?

And, speaking of human equality, why are only some characteristics protected, and not others? Definitionally, this is not “equal protection before the law.”

Since these protections are arbitrary, one must keep abreast at all times with what the current law says, and be alert for changes.

The safest thing, of course—the only safe thing; is to just keep your mouth shut on any topic that might be even vaguely political or controversial. This seems to be the intent of the legislation—shut up and do what you’re told.

So who gets to define “hatred”? Or “detestation,” or “vilification,” or ”genocide,”  or the like? That task apparently falls not to a court of law but to the “Digital Safety Commission.” Which means the accused will have no due process. No rules of evidence, no right to confront your accuser or cross-examine, no right to trial by jury of your peers, none of the traditions of our legal system, fought and died for by our forefathers over the years. You are judged by government bureaucrats. If the government identifies an enemy, nothing stops them from throwing him or her in prison for life. “Name the man, and I will find the crime.”

No actual crime need even be alleged. A person can, according to the bill, be placed under house arrest and cut off from all communication devices, if a judge decides he or she is likely to say something hateful in future.

No problem, the government reassures us. No need to worry. Any such judgement would have to be approved by the Attorney-General, and “these provisions would only be invoked in the most extreme cases.” In other words, just trust the government never to actually use the tools they are demanding.

An article in The Independent, a centre-left outlet, apparently doing its best to downplay the threat, quotes the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as saying “Generally speaking, laws don't have a retroactive effect... in Canada … it should not have a retroactive effect; that would be a bad interpretation of that provision, which [we] would stand against.”

In other words, we have to wait and see. The law certainly can be read to say this. The Civil Liberties Association must stand against this interpretation.

The Independent article even includes a veiled threat against anyone raising the alarm over this. Noting that Elon Musk has done so, it then cites a lawsuit against him for defamation, on the grounds of a similar prior post on X asking for information from “community notes” on a similar claim.

So even asking questions is risky. Especially if you’re not rich and powerful like Elon Musk.

Canada is worst, but similar attempts for force silence on the citizenry are rampant across the developed world. Something is clearly going on here.

Right now the Scots, the Irish, and the Dutch seem most determined to resist. And the polls in Canada have turned decisively against Trudeau.

But the way things seem to be going, does that even matter? Governments seem to be showing a growing disregard for their own people and the popular will. What do they know? Given that they are prepared to shut down open debate, will they even again allow a fair election?

Either/Or

 

Teaching a Chinese student the common logical fallacies, we came to this example:

 

He became confused. “Isn’t that ‘scare tactic’? I don’t see it as an option.”

Which tells you something of the difference between Chinese and American culture. He assumed that supporting the president was indeed synonymous with being a patriotic Chinese, and that if you did not support the president, you were in serious trouble.

And now we must note that Justin Trudeau thinks the same way as the Chinese authorities. Those who do not support him are unCanadian and unacceptable. He accuses them of being under foreign influence, Russian, American, or Nazi; and they deserve to have serious trouble visited on them. They bank accounts seized, their licenses cancelled, held in prison without trial. 

Controlled Speech

 

You must all henceforth refer to me in the plural, and as the Queen of Portugal

Disturbingly, I recently had to fill out a form that had a field for my preferred pronouns”—and it was a required field. One more in an ever-growing list of restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Now nobody is allowed to hold the self-evidently true position that pronouns are an element of English grammar, not subject to personal choice. Any more than you can just decide to require others to stop using the terminal “s” on verbs in the simple present, third person singular. And everyone else must fall in line.

This is sometimes claimed to be simply a matter of being polite, or of considering the feeling of the person referred to. But the pronouns required are always in the third person. The person spoken of is normatively not present; otherwise you would address them directly. So this cannot apply. The point is purely power and control.

There are too many other multiplying examples of enforced speech used to control thought: all the invented “phobia” terms, used to preemptively imply that anyone who raises an objection to homosexuality, Islam, transvestitism, or whatever, is irrational, if not insane. The terms “native,” “aboriginal” or “indigenous” applied to North American Indians and other cultures: no people on Earth is aboriginal or indigenous, so far as we can tell. And all of use are native to the land where we were born. “First Nations,” similarly, requires us to pretend that some band of a couple of thousand people is a “nation.” It violates the dictionary and the anthropological definition. The proper term for what we are referring to here is actually “primitive”; or “tribal,” or “Stone Age.”

A similar case of mind control is the use of the word “gender” beyond the field of grammar and not as a mere synonym for sex. There is no such thing as gender distinct from these two uses; the word is invented and enforced to force us all to think or pretend there is. Similarly, we are forced to call men women and women men, on command.

And that is the key element of all these restrictions: the thing we are forced to say and to aver is always something obviously false. The truth does not need to be imposed; only lies do.

Which is one reason why we must recover freedom of speech.

Getting Scarier in Canada

 

.. and more brilliant messaging from Pierre Poilievre.

As Others See Us

 

Canadians Don't Have Freedom of Speech?

 

This video from the National Post is wrong.

First, it misrepresents the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It admits that the Charter cites the right to freedom of expression, but then says it can be abrogated on any reasonable grounds. That is not what the charter says. It says this and other rights are “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” 

This is necessary to allow for laws against slander, for example, or fraud. 

Such limits must be “demonstrably justified”: a legal appeal may be made, and the courts can deny it.

The right to freedom of speech has not been honoured by our legislatures or in the Canadian courts. That is a scandal.

The provinces and the feds can also invoke the “notwithstanding” clause, as our narrator points out, but this is not as straightforward as he implies. When that clause is used, the law can remain in force for no more than five years. This seems a reasonable exception to cover emergency situations or judicial overreach. It has rarely been invoked.

Our narrator neglects to mention that freedom of speech is also separately guaranteed in the Canadian Bill of Rights, 1960; although this applies only to the federal government. Freedom of speech is recognized in and required by common law.

Canadians are also separately guaranteed freedom of expression under article 19 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Canada is a signatory. It is therefore also a treaty right and a right in international law. 

But above and beyond any of that, human rights are not given by government, nor can they be withheld. They are given by God and by being human. If any government infringes a human right, regardless what their constitution says, that government is acting illlicitly.

It is scandalous that a prominent Canadian newspaper would promote the fiction that Canadians do not have freedom of speech. It suggests how corrupt our elite has become. Including all branches of the legacy media.

Paper Freedoms

 

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

My Filipina wife agrees that one big problem with living in Canada is the lack of freedom of speech. She notes that one could speak more freely in Saudi Arabia. I have heard the same from Polish friends—that you could speak more freely in the old Communist East Bloc than you can in Canada. 

It is not just that saying the wrong thing can get you two years in prison. A slight misstep can cost you your job, your career, your family.

In Canada, you need to think very carefully before you say anything, and you are still liable to get into trouble. Because the goalposts keep moving.

It is ironic that freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Canadian constitution. But a constitution is only a piece of paper, if it is not honoured by the government and the courts.

We are doing this liberal democracy thing wrong.

Laying Out the Cards Face-Up

 

July 14, 1789

Leftists have traditionally thought of themselves as occupying the moral high ground—they were on the side of the little guy against the established power structures. That is more or less what “left-wing” meant when the term was coined, in reference to the French National Assembly.

I know that well enough. Born on Bastille Day, I always in youth thought of myself as a leftist. Never the Marxist left; but in those days there was a liberal left. I was on the side of human equality and everyone getting a fair shake; I was in principle suspicious of any established power. Toryism was in established power then in Ontario—for an unbroken thirty years. Duplessisism had until recently long been in power in Quebec. 

If it were still true a few decades ago, or possibly true, that the left was for the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful right, it is obviously not true today. As we have increasingly seen, most of the visible rich capitalists are somewhere on the left: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jimmy Dorsey. The professions and the bureaucrats who control the levers of power are on the left. The institutions are on the left: the schools, the media, the universities, the “mainline” Protestant churches. The big corporations are on the left.

If all or most of the established power structures are on the left, how is it tenable to claim that leftism is on the side of the little guy against the established power structures? Little guys broke into the US Capitol Building on January 6th, and the powerful left did not take it well. They clearly saw such ordinary folk as the enemy, and an unspeakably dangerous enemy. They roundly condemn “populism.”

Granted that the left favours subsidies and direct payments to the poor; more so than the right. But the very rich can afford such payments. Chump change. They can afford, in effect, to buy themselves a good public image with a little of their excess cash. They are not giving private charity here, but demanding that others carry much of the load. Higher taxes pinch harder on the only moderately well-off, and ensure they gather no excess capital to invest.

And such welfare, as opposed, say, to better education, or fewer regulations on starting a business or hiring people, works to keep the poor permanently poor, teaching dependency and punishing initiative. Preserving and deepening the divide between classes.

Then, passing beyond this issue of who is for the rich or for the poor, the powerful or the powerless, on every other issue the left seems to take a position no moral man could go along with. At some point, this has to outweigh their support for the poor in the mind of any decent person, even if this initial claim were true.

A few decades ago, it was possible to be opposed to abortion and be on the left. But more recently leftist parties have declared pro-life, anti-abortion positions heretical and cause for expulsion from the movement. Their choice. Abortion is as grave a moral and civilizational crisis as the Holocaust, or more so—the death toll is greater. 

Abortion advocates will object that it is not the same, that an unborn foetus is not a human being. That is the same claim the Nazis made to justify killing Jews. We do not conclude that this made the murders acceptable; we conclude this made them worse. Is conception an arbitrary point at which to say human life begins? One must designate such a point; and what other point is less arbitrary than this one? Conception is clearly less arbitrary than birth. It is obvious nonsense to say that a baby is not human one minute before the head emerges.

The next biggest fault of the left is the wholesale attempt, for decades, to end freedom of speech. This is a mark of guilt—because they know they are wrong on abortion. And this illustrates one reason why we need freedom of speech: because words are powerful, and can keep the powerful from doing wrong in secret. But as we are increasingly seeing, suppressing speech also makes democratic government and civil peace impossible. If matters cannot be discussed, matters must be imposed, by whomever holds the power to do so.

Next to that, and prior to that, is sexual libertinage and the uncoupling of coupling from baby-making. This has come to be systematically celebrated on the left, and having children condemned. Wrapped up in this is feminism, the idea of which, from which all else flows, is that nobody should waste time raising children. This is decadence and self-indulgence in its classic form. This is a perfect recipe for civilizational suicide. Besides the cruelty to the next generation, and the callous attitude to sex partners, this has led inevitably to the greater horror of abortion.

You want to argue that sexual libertinage is freedom? That it is a case of expanding human rights? It is not, and only recently have the two become confused. Freedom classically means freedom to do what you think is right, freedom of conscience. Someone who habitually indulges a vice is not free in any sense, but enslaved by it—think of an alcoholic. We should not want the state to intervene, but we certainly ought not to celebrate it.

And this naturally segues us to the attack on religion. Although there used to be a viable religious left, and the mainstream Protestant denominations are increasingly leftist, this has been at the cost of draining any moral codes out of them. Although Islam has so far been given a pass, otherwise, the left has grown openly hostile to any religion that implies a moral code. Intelligent Muslims must know they are on borrowed time; indeed, it was only a decade or so ago that the left was painting Islam as the greatest enemy, accusing it of repressing women, refusing them fashion choices, and mutilating their genitals. They can and inevitably will flip back to this stance just as quickly, once their immediate tactical objectives are achieved. 

The left hates ethical monotheism because it preaches against sexual libertinage and abortion. So the pressing desire to restrict, scapegoat, and discourage religion. This is profoundly harmful to mankind; people need religion, and despair without it. It is also most of the glue that holds society together.

Were all that not enough, the left is increasingly and openly racist. It sees everything in tribal terms: nobody is an individual, everyone exists and thinks only as a member of some “community” or tribe. These tribes are and must remain utterly apart; although they may form coalitions for temporary advantage, there can ultimately be no communion or common cause or even shared reality among them. They are in an eternal and inevitable struggle for power. 

This is the core of fascism and of Nazism. And the left is thundering in a handcart down this old track, once abandoned, even though we know where it leads.

Is there any social evil the left has not yet embraced? If so, they will no doubt find it, and do so.

At this point, if anyone claims they support the left because they want to help the poor, I think we have to assume duplicity. 

Ernst Zundel

Ernst Zundel

A few years ago, everyone in Canada new Ernst Zundel. He was our leading “neo-Nazi.” He was regularly in and out of prison for denying the Holocaust. 

Zundel’s profession was graphic design. A Jewish friend of mine had some dealings with him, or perhaps some dealings with someone who had some dealings. And he reported something that made us both uneasy. Zundel had turned down a job from someone who asked him to doctor a photo of some factory to hide evidence of pollution. Because it was unethical.

He was a man of principle.

My friend assumed that Hitler must have been a man of principle too. But if so, how can we be sure that our principles are right, and theirs are wrong? Had Hitler won the war, would we look on Churchill as the monster?

I find that conclusion not just morally unacceptable, but logically. You cannot fudge morality; as Kant demonstrated, it is indisputable. It is the one indisputable thing: do unto others, as it is most commonly put.

Hitler had no principles. Hitler and the Nazis were all and only about the urge for power and the law of the jungle. Scholars and historians still argue about just what the Nazi program was; even the Nazis did not know. Were they socialists, as they claimed, “radical moderates,” or were they on the right? William L. Shirer, who was there, observed that Hitler said different things to different audiences. He said whatever he thought they wanted to hear. There was no principle involved but power, and whatever achieved power. The triumph of the will.

Zundel was the polar opposite. And the same has to be true of anyone claiming to be a neo-Nazi today. It is not what anyone wants to hear. They have to be doing it on principle, if perhaps misguided principle, because it only does them harm personally and ensures no one will ever consent to giving them any position of power. A modern neo-Nazi is the opposite of a Nazi.

Accordingly, all our measures against neo-Nazis are misdirected. We are targeting the wrong people. We are only persecuting people of unshakeable principle, the very people least likely to ever become real Nazis. Zundel was no doubt right: he was simply asking questions.

Indeed, the application of the hate laws to his case was obviously illegitimate. The charge was that, by expressing doubt that the Holocaust actually happened, he was fomenting hatred against an identifiable group. Isn’t that the opposite of what he was doing? He was denying an accusation against Germans that could inspire hatred. For comparison, would it really be a hate crime against Christians to deny that the Jews killed Christ? Why is sauce for the goose here poison for the gander?

The real Nazis, if they are real Nazis, are certain to instead call themselves “Antifa.” It is the properly cynical power play. And they will want to prevent people from asking questions.

Friend Xerxes reports approvingly, “In Rwanda, it is now a crime to deny the genocide. It is illegal to deny the Holomodor in Ukraine. Sixteen European countries have laws prohibiting denial of the Holocaust.”

This was the law that sent Zundel to prison in Canada, then in Germany. And there is an obvious problem here. Consider this: it is illegal in France to deny the Armenian genocide. It is illegal in Turkey to say it happened.

We cannot trust governments to legislate truth. Governments are the ones who commit the genocides. Then they try, with such laws, to scapegoat the common people. The only guarantee of truth is free discussion.

Words and Deeds

Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, London

In our discussion last night, my friend Cyrus defended “hate speech” laws. I argued that the only speech that can legitimately be regulated is speech with clear material consequences, on the familiar principle that “my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.” Accordingly, slander, libel, fraud, yelling “fire” in crowded theatres, or incitement to violence should be outlawed—but no more.

Because, among other reasons, any speech that makes a point worth making is guaranteed to upset someone. No free speech, no meaningful discussion, no democracy, no human progress.

He countered that it was in practice difficult to distinguish speech inciting violence from speech that simply expressed an opinion. He offered the examples “blacks do not deserve to live” and “kill all the blacks.” Can we really clearly distinguish the former from the latter?

I do not see any difficulty here.

We have always made this same distinction in common law. It would be fairly unremarkable for someone to say, “Jack Poulson does not deserve to live.” A bit shocking, because it is a severe condemnation, but fairly acceptable in polite company. After all, we have a common phrase, “Jack Poulson is a waste of oxygen.” Same meaning.

But to tell someone to kill Jack Poulson we understand as incitement to action; if the listener follows through, the speaker is, like Charles Manson, guilty of murder.

A dramatic distinction, that we have always understood. No different for groups.

I could name people who I would say do not deserve to live. People whose net contribution has been to make the world a worse instead of a better place. That does not mean I would either murder them, or condone murdering them. Just as, if I said someone did not deserve their wealth, it would not be an endorsement of robbing them.

Tucker Carlson the Witch

Tucker Carlson

Fox host Tucker Carlson is under attack for comments he made on the “Bubba the Love Sponge” radio show some years ago. Advertisers are reportedly pulling out, despite his show’s high ratings.

I’ve spoken about this sort of thing before, with reference to the (Virginia governor Ralph) Northam yearbook controversy. Such witch hunts must stop. Doesn’t anyone see that this is McCarthyism? Worse, in fact, than McCarthyism was. We used to all agree that this was wrong.

Whether or not what Carlson said was somehow erroneous, or upset somebody, he has the right to say it. Not that his comments were themselves egregious, but that does not matter. And in this case it was not even anything said on his show. To try to hound him off the air because of it, therefore, is extreme sharkvaulting blacklisting. Logically, the intent is to prevent him from ever again practicing his profession, anywhere, from making a living--because you disagree with something he said. This is not honourable or decent behavior now any more than it would have been in Hollywood in the 1950s. But it is beyond anything seen in Hollywood in the 1950s. 

Although literally about the Salem witch hunts, Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" was also a thinly-veiled criticism of McCarthyism,

Whatever he said is properly irrelevant, unless it involved slander or calls for violence. But the accusations against him are ludicrously trivial in comparison to any McCarthy or the House Committee on Un-American Activities ever levelled. The charge in those days was belonging to or supporting a political organization, the Communist Party, that sought in principle the violent overthrow of the US government; at a time when Communism was a clear and present geopolitical danger. All Carlson is accused of is opinions that are unfashionable in some circles, although demonstrably acceptable in others--as witness the gratifying ratings enjoyed by Mr. Love Sponge.

If the harpies and inquisitors keep getting away with this, nobody is safe. What is permissible to say in these same witchfinder circles changes so quickly and unpredictably year to year and even month by month that anyone could be professionally destroyed at any time for something they said several years ago. Who could have predicted just a few years ago, for example, that it would soon become a “hate crime” to oppose gay marriage? Yet people have lost their jobs over that one. 

Senator Joseph McCarthy

Freedom of speech is an inalienable right. It is also essential for a democracy to function; because it is essential to make it possible to discuss the issues. Which is precisely what Carlson was doing, and precisely what the blacklist bullies seek to prevent. It must never matter what Carlson said, or whether either you or I agree with it. It should not matter even had he said it on his own show yesterday. If you don’t want to hear it, you don’t watch.

But the attack on Carlson does matter, and must concern us all. Our basic freedoms are under assault, as is the very fabric of our society.

Some will insist this is not a free speech issue, because government is not involved. That is so in terms of the US Constitution. But in terms of the Lockean theory on which it is founded, the very purpose of having a government is to protect our rights and freedoms from each other. Granted that here it is not government that is infringing on freedom of speech, but a mostly faceless mob. Government exists to protect us from such things, just as, and for the same reason, we expect it to protect us from lynch mobs. 

Families and friends of victims of the 1950s Hollywood blacklist protesting.

The puzzle is how to do this here. Sponsors have their own freedom of speech, and therefore a perfect right not to sponsor some program with which they disagree. Consumers have the perfect right not to buy a product, and so to boycott. Networks have the right to cancel a program if it is no longer profitable. And on the whole, government in a democracy is not a reliable protection against mob rule; essentially, the same mob elects them. Relying on government to help here may be asking the fox to mind the henhouse.

Voluntary action may do the trick: organize to boycott in turn any business that pulls their ads. Make a point of buying from those who do not. 

Matthew Hopkins, intrepid witchfinder general; the Media Matters of his day.

Sadly, in the meantime, however, even if this works, a good many lives may be destroyed.

Another possibility, it seems to me, would be a law making it illegal to advocate either “deplatforming,” discrimination in employment, or boycotting on grounds of speech, given that the speech itself is legal. Unfortunately, this too would be an infringement on freedom of speech; but one that can perhaps be justified by genuine public need. In the words of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this restriction, like those against slander or fraud, could be “demonstrably justified.”

Problems with Returning to Canada

Here's a Canadian YouTuber in Taiwan giving his reasons for staying in Asia. Along with the positives, there is one big negative about Canada. I share his concern.

It is the lack of free speech.

On this most fundamental question, Canada seems to have become one of the least free countries in the world. It was always bad, and this surely had something to do with my own departure, long ago now. But it has gotten far worse.

Canadian Museum of Free Speech

Joseph Howe

In case you have not noticed it, an intense battle has been raging in Canada over the right to free speech. As you are probably not aware, this has been a key struggle throughout Canadian history. We are a nation built, perhaps like none other, on the issue of free speech and the fight for it.

If private donors were available, much good might be done by creating a Canadian Museum and Hall of Fame of Free Speech. It could issue annual medals to those who have made a significant contribution.

This could not, however, be a government entity. That would automatically compromise the mission.

Among those currently defending the freedom of speech in genuinely heroic terms, who could use the validation of a commendation or medal from such an institution:

Ezra Levant

Ezra Levant—for his resistance to the Human Rights tribunals.

Jordan Peterson—for his resistance to Bill C-16 and compelled speech.

Lindsay Shepherd—for her resistance to a panel trying to discipline her for showing a video in her class at WLU.

Mark Steyn—Levant's co-defendant.

As you can see, the challenges to free speech are coming thick and fast.

And some of the heroes of Canada's past:

Joseph Willcocks—prosecuted for the crime of printing an opposition newspaper in Upper Canada in the early nineteenth century.

Robert Gourlay—unjustly and illegally deported for sedition in 1817 for questioning the issuance of provincial land grants.

William Lyon Mackenzie—had his office burned down in 1825 and his printing press thrown into Lake Ontario by a partisan mob for putting out an opposition newspaper.

Francis Collins—imprisoned for seditious libel in 1828 for publishing an opposition newspaper.

Joseph Howe—for his fight against the charge of seditious libel in 1835. He beat the charge by convincing the jury to ignore the judge's instruction to convict. Howe later had to fight a duel on the issue.

John Diefenbaker—author and great advocate of the Canadian Bill of Rights.

Sadly, Pierre Trudeau cannot be added for his work on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Although it includes freedom of speech, Trudeau also passed the “Hate Laws” in direct contradiction.

Politics and the English Language: The State of Play

The Emperor's New Clothes.

It is starting to look as though the long, ugly reign of political correctness may be finally coming to an inglorious end. Theoretically, it should have ended long ago, for long ago everyone started denying they were for political correctness. Yet there continued nevertheless to be a list of things you could not say, and indeed a still-growing list. Even in the last couple of weeks, there have been stories of university administrations urging the use of new sex-neutral pronouns like “ze” and “xyr.” We have been hearing more and more about “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions,” have we not? Only within the past few days, I have seen separate sources deriding the terms “niggardly” and “Eskimo” as racially pejorative, although neither is.

Yet, here are three signs that things may have just passed the tipping point:

1. Polling immediately after Ben Carson's “controversial” objection to a Muslim president showed his support rise sharply instead of falling. This was supposed to end his campaign.

2. The University of Chicago has, in cooperation with FIRE, issued a new call for the right to free speech on campus. This is a dissent from campus “speech codes,” coming from a highly respected institution.

3. A NYT report (yes, NYT, usually reliably to the left) says school boards across the US are moving away from “zero tolerance” policies.

When it happens, it should happen quickly. The whole thing has been held together by fear and repression. Nobody dared to buck these speech demands alone, because alone they risked being crushed. But let the secret get out that most folks are really secretly against them, and all heck can break loose. If one person gets away without without serious repercussions, others will be prepared to try it. There can very soon be such a large torrent that social justice warriors will have no hope of exacting a punishment for anyone.

Perhaps Donald Trump burst the bubble. He had enough money, he could afford to take the hit. He did, too—he lost a lot of business for his comments on illegal immigrants from Mexico. But he kept on regardless, refused to retract, the incident popped him into first place in the polls, and the social justice warriors haven't even tried to punish him for any comments since. They begin to understand it would only help him.

So now the jig is very nearly up. It will take a while for everyone to realize that the game has changed, but probably not all that long. Jeb Bush sure didn't get it, when he demanded Trump publicly apologize to his wife for pointing out that she was Mexican.

Being slow on the uptake on this seems currently to be hurting the NDP's poll numbers in Canada. They thought supporting the right to wear a niqab during a Canadian citizenship ceremony was an easy pander. Turns out the general electorate, not just in Quebec but across Canada, are overwhelmingly opposed, and see this as a key issue. It would seem to be purely symbolic, but that's the nature of politically correct tyrrany. It is as if Canadians are angry, not so much about the specific issue, but about PC-ism in general.

I can recall similar flips in the past: Oliver Stone's “JFK” unintentionally managed to almost instantly transform elaborate conspiracy theories from the supposedly smart and chic way to look at the world to a laughingstock.

It's Getting Pretty Bad in Canada

 University of Victoria censors Catholic Students' Association.

So much for freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press or freedom of speech. Not to mention simple morality.

After all, it's not permitted to do so.