RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/593983-free-speech-becomes-roadkill-in-the-crackdown-on-canadian-truckers

Canada appears to be facing its greatest threat since Benedict Arnold came close to seizing Ottawa in 1775. The source of this “insurrection” and “attack on democracy,” however, is not a foreign government but Canadians who have descended on their own capital to protest continuing COVID-19 mandates.

The protest has been peaceful — and highly successful in cutting off key highways. But the most alarming development has not come from the convoy but from the commentary about it, including calls for mass arrests and even vigilantism. The Ottawa Police Services Board chairman has called it a “nationwide insurrection,” adding, “Our city is under siege.”

CNN analyst and Harvard professor Juliette Kayyem was apoplectic at the thought of truckers shutting down roads and interfering with trade. She tweeted out a call to “slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks.” CNN correspondent Paula Newton said this act of civil disobedience was nothing less than a “threat to democracy. An insurrection, sedition.”

Blocking streets, occupying buildings and shutting down bridges have long been tactics of protesters. Yet what constitutes a protest or an insurrection often seems to depend on the cause involved. When rioters caused billions of dollars in damages, burned police stations and occupied sections of American cities in the summer of 2020, for example, few in the media declared them to be terrorists or a threat to democracy. But CNN’s Kayyem once called conservative protesters occupying a state capital to be “domestic terrorists.” GoFundMe, which previously helped fund arrested Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters, froze more than $10 million raised for Canadian truckers to prevent it from being used to support them.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18226/christians-persecuted-worldwide

“When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they tried to appear moderate—but there’s no sign that Christianity will be anything other than a death sentence.” — World Watch List-2022.

“The persecution of Christians in India has intensified, as Hindu extremists aim to cleanse the country of their presence and influence. The extremists disregard Indian Christians and other religious minorities as true Indians, and think the country should be purified of non-Hindus…..” — World Watch List-2022.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has offered a new weapon to persecutors. In some areas, Christians have been deliberately overlooked in the local distribution of government aid and have even been accused of spreading the virus.” — World Watch List-2022.

In Qatar, “Violence against Christians rose sharply ….” — World Watch List-2022.

In Bangladesh (#29), local authorities told Muslim converts to Christianity who, like their Muslim counterparts, sought governmental aid, “to return to Islam or receive nothing.”

In the Central African Republic, which was “hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic … Christians were denied government aid and told to convert to Islam if they wanted to eat.”

Another notable trend concerns the growing number of internally or externally displaced people — 84 million: “a significant number [of whom] are Christians fleeing religious persecution.”

[A]t least a quarter, though arguably much more, of all hate crimes registered in Europe in 2020 were anti-Christian — representing a 70% increase compared to 2019.

[I]t is telling that the European nations suffering the most also happen to have Europe’s largest Muslim populations — namely, Germany (where anti-Christian hate crimes have more than doubled since 2019) and France (where two churches are reportedly attacked every single day, some, as in the Muslim world, with human feces).

In short, the persecution of Christians, which was already horrific, has increased by nearly 70% over the last five years, with no signs of abating.

How long will it be before this seemingly irreversible trend metastasizes into those nations currently celebrated for their religious freedom?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18208/free-speech-britain

“It isn’t hate to speak the truth.” — J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, Twitter, June 6, 2020.
“An entire generation are puzzled by the idea that anyone has the right to say things they don’t agree with…for most people, true free speech has ceased to exist…. On some issues, such as the transgender controversy, it is virtually impossible to say anything without attracting the attention of the Thought Police.” — Peter Hitchens, author and journalist, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021.
“Among millions, the idea that you can defend someone’s right to say something you disagree with is now puzzling. They have no idea why anyone would do that. For them, the debate is over, they have won, and those who oppose them are stupid and wrong.” — Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021.
“They also view my doubts about the theory of man-made global warming as ‘denial’ of a fact which they regard as proven. To them, this is little short of sabotage of efforts to combat this peril.” — Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021.
“All of them believed that they owned the truth, that they were profoundly good and that those who got in their way were therefore evil as well as wrong.” — Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021.

Freedom of speech is doing extremely poorly in the UK, according to a recent YouGov poll. When Britons were asked what should be the priority, 43% said protecting people from offensive or hateful speech should be the priority, while only 38% said the focus should be on protecting free speech. Generally, men and conservative voters were more concerned about protecting free speech, while women, younger people and Labour voters were more concerned about blocking offensive or hateful speech.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/12/oligarchys-response-to-the-freedom-convoy-bodes-ill-for-them/

As I write, Canadian police, many dressed in military garb and supported by armored vehicles and snipers(!), are moving in to enforce several court orders and demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and others that the “Freedom Convoy” of Canadian truckers stop blocking the Ambassador Bridge, the major artery between the United States and Canada, and disperse. Some of the protestors are leaving while many others are standing their ground. 

Will the heavy hand of the state succeed in crushing the protest? In the short term, perhaps. 

On Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson presented a montage of Canadian and American officials berating the truckers and threatening all sorts of dire retribution should they fail to obey their masters. Carlson was right: the hysterical squeaking of Justin Trudeau, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the other political mannequins was pathetic—a sign of impotence, not strength. 

But impotence comes in long-term and short-term varieties. Long-term, I think Carlson is right. Officialdom’s response to the Freedom Convey is a desperate effort to put the genie of liberty back in the bottle. Ultimately, it will not work. But on the way to that failure there will be plenty of opportunities for the coercive power of the state to manifest itself. 

As General Mark “White Rage” Milley, the anti-Trump chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it when commenting on the January 6, 2021 protest in Washington, D.C., “We’re the guys with the guns.” Well, some of them, anyway. Joe Biden was trespassing on the same territory when he said that if you want to take on the government, you’ll need “some nukes and F15s.” 

I do not think that is true. In fact, I would say we are rapidly approaching a situation that the columnist Matt Taibbi evoked when he suggested that Justin Trudeau’s response to the Freedom Convey might be his “Ceaușescu moment.” After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the oxygen of legitimacy rapidly went out of Communist dictatorships throughout Eastern Europe. Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu was one of the unlucky tyrants. He went from delivering a speech to an angry populace to facing, along with his wife Elena, a firing squad four days later on Christmas Day.