“OK, now I am really, really angry.
“At one point my local was the British Ex-Servicemen’s Club out on Kingsway. Cheap beer, decent pool table, a bunch of old guys who had, foolishly enough, fought for King and Country and rather liked popping in for an evening’s couple of pints and a cigarette or seventy. They came from a culture which, well, smoked cigarettes.
“Unfortunately they were white and British. Which does not cut it any more.
(…)
“‘Essential for immigrants from hookah smoking cultures’ … right, well, England was a cigarette and pipe smoking culture. Working class Canada was a cigarette smoking culture. A bunch of Greek guys I know who own restaurants in Vancouver come from cigarette smoking cultures. Punk rockers are a cigarette smoking culture But, hey, they are not Muslims and are unlikely to, in the midst of their depression, blow something up.
(…)
“…we are granting to noisy newcomers the rights which we have taken away from men who fought for Canada or England. And that should worry all of us a lot.”
Mark Steyn adds:
“The state, in other words, is prepared to treat Muslims as free-born adults who can weigh the ‘cultural value’ (ie, the pleasures) of smoking against the health risks. But not the rest of us.”
