5 Feet of Fury

Kathy Shaidle's blog. Est. 2000

The Ann Coulter riot: Mark Steyn has an additional piece up tonight. Hint: he’s pissed.

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Mark Steyn rightly notes that “having all the cleverest lines” — as we do — is not enough:

Our side has all the good lines. The others are either nakedly Orwellian, carrying placards hailing “Free speech!” even as they threaten violence to silence their opponents, or so pathologically lacking in self-awareness that in the interests of creating “a safe, positive space” they join an ugly mob to crush any dissenters.
The University of Ottawa, an institution mired in stultifying conformity and intellectual homogeneity, has just received a $2.5 million grant to study diversity.
Last night’s head cheerleader for the 21st century equivalent of book burning turns out to be an employee of the Canadian Library Association.

But you could point out the ironies forever, and the other side wouldn’t care. Because they don’t want to win the debate, they want to win, period. And that’s a big difference. (…)

Between them, the media, the law and the education system are actively shriveling Canada’s liberties. It doesn’t lead anywhere good: Ghost of a Flea’s title – “Fascist Canada” – is no exaggeration. If you say, “Oh, c’mon, if you’re not a troublemaker like Coulter or Levant or Guy Earle or Douglas McCue, Canada’s very pleasant”, well, so were large parts of Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.

But they were not free, and few pre-Trudeau Canadians would have entertained trading ancient liberties for soft totalitarianism euphemized as “diversity”.

He adds something I’ve been bitching about for some time:

 The saddest aspect of this sad day is the number of people who’ve sent e-mails denouncing the Ottawa bullies but ending with the words “If you print this, please don’t mention my name.”

Don’t you realize that that’s part of the problem?

***
Indeed.

As I’ve been saying, more people have to risk their jobs and their security and their goddamn dental plans.

It’s time to choose between your children’s crooked teeth and your children’s crooked minds.

I’m sick, frankly, of others hiding behind people like me and Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.

Someone who should know better said to me once, “But Kathy, it’s easy for you to say all this…”

The same person knows for a fact that my readers have helped raise five figures for my legal fund; that if a potential client googles “Kathy Shaidle,” they’re treated to all kinds of slime about me, including my until-recently libelous Wikipedia entry.

Today a good friend called to make sure I had a shotgun.

They can’t fire us all. They can’t arrest us all. They can’t kill us all.

Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor — or nothing.

PS: if you are in college, drop out. You think I’m kidding.