A rchive Date
[ 02-04-2017 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/2017/04/01/beginning-of-end-of-free-speech
Beginning of end of free speech
By Gordon Chong
Posted: Saturday, April 01, 2017 07:52 PM EDT
A recent Margaret Wente column “Why campuses are ditching free speech” transported me back to my student days at Jarvis Collegiate in the late ’50s.
My classmates reflected the diverse backgrounds of an evolving post-war Toronto before “diversity” and “inclusion” became buzzwords. They were from my Church/Wellesley neighbourhood, Cabbagetown and Rosedale. The locals had names like Balsa, Chestnut, Chin, Chu, Eng, Holloway, Lumb, Seto, Sturgess and Wright.
The Cabbagetown/Riverdale crowd had names like Ashikawa, Hayashi, Kamitakahara, Michaluk, Simpson, Stavroff and Tsuji.
The Rosedale cohort was interesting. There were two groups - one was the old Toronto Establishment offspring (Band, Campbell, McGee and Orviss with an odd Chin and Matsui) who intermingled, although sometimes awkwardly.
The other group was the “intellectual” offspring of the emerging class of leftish professors who came armed with freshly-minted Marxist ideas. They condescendingly lectured us about the evils of capitalism while vilifying the privileged class which oppressed the unenlightened masses like us and our unsophisticated immigrant parents.
They had an irritating smugness, but we ignored them and focused on our priorities - sports, girls, weekend jobs and schoolwork.
We had a well-rounded high school experience despite these know-it-alls; however, their attitudes were reflected in the attitudes of some teachers who had lower expectations of us.
Motivated rather than discouraged, some of my classmates became teachers - one went back to Jarvis and successfully connected with disadvantaged students because of his own lived experience. Another became a devoted teacher at (now Nelson Mandela) Park Public School in Regent Park.
Many became accountants, dentists, engineers, lawyers, physicians - the early Canadian version of Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables,” unexpectedly succeeded and reshaped almost every sector, redefining “Canadianism” in the process.
While unrecognized by the bulk of preoccupied busy students, that period was the dawn of the decline of unfettered free speech and emergence of the Marxist mob.
The ’60s was a time for the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protesters in the U.S. While the movement itself was idealistic, it was also the breeding ground for Marxists sowing the seeds of revolution, with the thinly-disguised goal of oppressing the oppressors as justified by Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist intellectual.
The revolution produced today’s fragile youth who get so traumatized by “triggers” that they need counselling and protection from words and intellectual diversity.
We have too many rabble-rousing, petulant, self-centered, overindulged brats who storm meetings and stifle free speech, leaving a trail of incredulous, justifiably traumatized faculty and administrations searching for answers and needing therapy themselves - except for the few like Professor Jordan “real pronouns only” Peterson.
The pusillanimous pandering must end.
These intellectual thugs should face severe consequences - expulsion for repeat offenders - for their behaviour! Canada has been a beacon and magnet, for the world’s dispossessed and, unfortunately, for some who hate our success, who want to exterminate us, which now includes home-grown radicalized Muslim extremists nurtured by Islamic extremism, some of it also home-grown.
“Dis-establishmentarianism” is no longer simply a difficult Spelling Bee word, but a reality that threatens, not just free speech, but our very existence.
While we have ethnocultural visual diversity - all the colours of the rainbow represented (a useful prop for photo ops), we do not have rational freedom of expression - intellectual diversity. The anti-disestablishmentarians need to reclaim and nurture free speech within our institutions.
Civilized free speech - diversity of opinion - is precious. Free speech - free from political pandering - is actually priceless!
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