I've come to believe these events are a waste of time for me.
(Unless I'm invited to speak, which I was not, in which case I can sell some books and get away from my office for a day or two...)
Basically, a bunch of people will get up and relate information I already know, and have written about myself.
And these people all tend to be lawyers and professors and other bigshots.
In an era when our neighbors to the south are organizing grassroots Tea Parties, too many people in the free speech movement are still enthralled by degrees and celebrities and suits and talk talk talk.
(I guess because ordinary people might show up with unfortunate signs and say something "inappropriate" and actually demand that we all DO something risky or rude.)... (Kathy's emphasis.)That's why free speech has a much better shot at surviving in the U.S. than it does here--because, unlike Canadians, Americans aren't afraid to be risky and rude and inappropriate. And that's a function both of culture and history. Americans can draw upon a history that includes a Boston Tea Party and a Revolution and a First Amendment. What do we Canadians have? "Peace, order and good government," Wile E. Trudeau's legacy of multiculturalism, and our "ABCs"--agencies, boards and commissions (including all those delightful "human rights" commissions). Given that, how likely is it that "grassroots" Canadians will ever be able to summon up the gumption, the liberating "rudeness," of Americans?
Not bloody likely, I'd say.
2 comments:
You & Kathy would be right.
Although it could change.
Like your new digs(O:}
While the United States is being mismanaged to the point of self destruction, Canada is running along rather smoothly under a Conservative government which actually shows occasional signs of Conservatism.
The United States is in economic turmoil while Canada has lowered its Corporate tax rate to 17 points less than the US, a move that reinvented Ireland into an economic powerhouse.
Canada is ideally poised to benefit from the severe mismanagement in the United States and, with all the natural resources we are willing to remove from the ground, the odds for long term properity look very good.
Many Americans who embody their conservative traditions are giving up in disgust with whats happening to their country and, should they choose to do so, where better to seek out new opportunities than in Canada?
Their arrival will reinforce the concept of free speech, among other freedoms, that we've long admired. As well, they will be unlikely to making plans for the beheading of pur Prime Minister, or blowing up our Parliament Buildings, or otherwise planning on destroying our values and traditions.
The draft dodgers we've encouraged in the past, in order to demonstrate our moral superiority, will have to move over for those Americans who share the same conservative values as most Canadians, with freedom of speech being chief among them.
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