Ezra Levant linked to Byron Tau, a blogger who declined a trip to the secondary crime scene when he criticized Richard Warman and then refused to be silenced.
What I found was a disturbing pattern — an illiberal crusade on the part of minorities to shut out unpleasant ideas using Canadian law. I wrote this up in the aforementioned op-ed, and waited. I purposely didn’t feature lawyer and activist Richard Warman very prominently — knowing that others have had trouble with him.
… Few Americans even know this is going on. Canada is not an autocratic country by any means — but at the same time, its got a long way to go to be the truly liberal oasis that it often proclaims itself to be. Tolerance breeds tolerance, responsibility breeds responsibility and censorship breeds seething discontent. Canada has state-imposed censorship with it comes to such things. Its time for anti-liberal shenanigans like this to end.
Although I normally self-identify as a conservative, in point of fact I’m a classical liberal. These days that means conservative minus the social con restrictions. (I’m much in favor of Christianity, morality and clean living but to me those things are achieved by preaching the gospel and leading people to Christ, or at minimum, voluntary societal standards. Not government fiat.) I enjoy the phrase “illiberal shenanigans” because it takes us back to when liberalism had more to do with freedom than socialism.
It’s interesting that Tau wasn’t looking for trouble. It came to him thanks to Warman’s Google-fu.
Levant notes
Warman, like the rest of the CHRC, believes in his own righteousness so deeply that he excuses his own misconduct. He’s not admitting that his lucrative hobby of filing complaints is disreputable — he’s still pursuing them with gusto (or, more accurately, the CHRC is, with our tax dollars). So if Warman lacks any hesitation or second thoughts, why is he threatening Tau, and listing those two items as “defamatory”?
Well, because that’s what Warman does: he bullies people. Sometimes it works, like in the case of the Toronto Public Library. Sometimes it doesn’t, such as when he tried to bully me. I’ve never met Byron Tau, but I’m so proud that he has refused to be bullied by Canada’s most litigious man.
Such bullying years ago would have been roundly denounced by liberals; now it’s almost obligatory from those who consider themselves society’s saviors. And that is how they see themselves; as Levant said, they believe in their own righteousness. They can’t see what they’ve become; thin-skinned and intolerant is the least of it. Here in America it’s not manifesting itself in the form of Human Rights Commissions yet but it’s not at all inconceivable that it will someday, given the speech codes on many college campuses.
