Here, commentator Mark Steyn explains the difficulties for traditional intellectual freedom in the Western world:
To be honest, I didn’t really think much about “freedom of speech” until I found myself the subject of three “hate speech” complaints in Canada in 2007. I mean I was philosophically in favor of it, and I’d been consistently opposed to the Dominion’s ghastly “human rights” commissions and their equivalents elsewhere my entire adult life, and from time to time when an especially choice example of politically correct enforcement came up I’d whack it around for a column or two.
There is an enemy occupation, but there is still a free world. Years ago (2009), UD News staff formed part of a confab of bloggers and hacks in a provincial legislature in an unknown country, who watched in wonder, as Steyn ripped a piece off the local deadwood, who were trying to create their private, publicly funded, utopia off other people’s lives. Then the hacks/bloggers went out and continued to chew up pieces of the deadwood who attempt to prevent citizens from saying what they think, in the interests of Greater Utopia.
UD News staff sacrificed the option of fun with Steyn and raced back to their trusty public librarymobile and blogged about it here. To prevent anyone falling asleep, we did not mention that Steyn is, as it happens, a compatriot, and could blog in the same trailer.