Tonight was a sad night to be a Canadian.
This was the evening that free speech was banned because a few hundred student thugs who attend Ottawa University forgot what a university is about. They would not allow the rest of the public - numbering between 1500-2000 people - to listen to her speech tonight. As I walked past the long line-up, which stretched to the streets, I got the sense that a small majority of the crowd were sympathetic to Ms. Coulter’s appearance. But there were “concerns”, you see, for “public safety”.
Ottawa police had more than nine squad cars at the scene, at the university’s Marion Hall. But the event was cancelled about 8:15 p.m. — before Coulter had a chance to speak. Reports suggested the building was evacuated after someone pulled a fire alarm. “It’s a public safety issue,” said Sgt. Dan Beauchamp. It was preceded by a Canadian University official warning a popular conservative political commentator that her speech should be muzzled, lest it should transgress our “hate speech laws”. (Source)
It’s one of those things the media doesn’t trumpet too much. After all, the University of Ottawa is a place of tolerance and academic freedom – except of course if you happen to be a conservative.
Then, you become a second class citizen in your own country where your right to be heard is drowned in screams and chants of “racism” and “homophobia”. It doesn’t matter that this is a public institution, supported in part, by conservative tax dollars. That doesn’t mean much these days, of course. Conservatives are good enough for being milked for money, but not good enough to have some of that public real estate for one lousy night to exercise a basic human right. Think of it as taxation without representation.
Now, think for a moment what the University of Ottawa, at the instigation of its Vice-President Academic and Provost, is really saying. They are saying that a whole segment of the population is not only not welcome at a publicly funded university, not only will they not be able to express themselves in an open public forum, but even their own safety cannot be guaranteed. In other words, the University of Ottawa has become nothing more than a Left Wing Violent Ghetto which brooks no dissent or criticism of its views. It’s a place where University officials send veiled threats of prosecution, and hundreds of militant, brain-washed kids joyously celebrate their victory of not permitting themselves - or the other hundreds of Canadian citizens and students who lined up for over an hour - to be offended.
Not content for being unoffended themselves, they want to ensure that no one else feels offended – or challenged - either. Like a bunch of spoiled and dangerous brats, they will graduate from University believing that someone should be silenced and perhaps go to jail if such a transgressor meets their twisted and demented form of “hate speech”. Not having their views challenged in the university environment – the place where it should be challenged and refined – they consign themselves to an eternity in the entitlement ghetto of the politically correct where only one view (the one they have been spoon-fed) is permitted or tolerated.
This is the “new tolerance” that Canadian Universities are churning out. It has never occurred to these people that free speech is so foundational to a democracy and a civil society that its loss will inevitably lead to civil strife and violence. Because if you cannot speak freely without threats of imprisonment from the prevailing political orthodoxy (and from a University no less), then you steal people’s hope which debate and dialogue inherently always foster. And when you steal people’s hope, society becomes a very dangerous place indeed. Those are the fascist seeds that the University of Ottawa and many Universities in Canada are planting…and which, one day, will be responsible for the bitter fruit it will reap.
I was seated beside one of Ann’s business colleagues. He told me that, to his knowledge, she has never had a speaking event cancelled before tonight. How so predictable that a Canadian university would now boast of that disgrace.
Still, even with the speech crime cancellation, I was able to get a few good pictures and short video clips of both the private reception which was hosted in Ms. Coulter’s honour, and the small crowd which was able to filter into the auditorium amidst the screaming, salivating, fist-pounding mob which pressed in on the doors. I’ve posted some of the pictures and video clips below, along with a short description of each.
Video of Ann Coulter on filing her Human Rights Complaint against the University of Ottawa and François….
If you cannot see the video below, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJml0TvKcos