Deafening Silence: the Death of Free Speech in Canada

June 12, 2008
By David Warren

The pen is reputed to be mightier than the sword -- and probably is, over the longer stretches of history. Over the shorter stretches, the sword is definitive; or, as that great Leftist sage, Mao Tse-Tung, expressed it: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." With its monopoly on power, the State is equipped to suppress the truth. And yet the truth will not die, no matter how many people are punished for expressing it. They may die -- or be imprisoned, fined, compelled to publicly recant, or otherwise silenced and humiliated -- but the truth will survive.

Yes, this is a statement of my Catholic faith. But it is also a candid reflection on all of the history I have read: that political power passes away, that truths about God and man resurface, that human freedom is never fully extinguished. Much of the history we know may itself be false, owing to the disappearance of evidence over time; and justice in this world may not be availing. Yet in broad outline, a time always comes when we may review the past, freed from the shackles of the past. The chains of history always rust away.

This is a point worth recalling, as we head into a period in Canada when, owing to malice from an ideological camp, to cowardice on the part of our elected representatives, and to indifference on the part of the people, free speech and freedom of the press will disappear in Canada. Those who deviate from the officially-sanctioned lies of "political correctness" will emigrate, perhaps mostly to USA, or experience that peculiar form of internal exile -- of enforced silence -- that good men have shared in many times and places. the rest image

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