“We’d rather censor speech than allow feelings to be hurt. We live in fear that a few obscure bigots will incite an orgy of violence and send an entire civil society crashing to its knees.
(…)
“Are anti-Semites a threat to public safety? Here in North America, the answer is surely no, so long as they don’t go round firebombing synagogues. Are anti-homosexuals? No again, so long as they’re not physically engaged in gay-bashing. So long as equality before the law is the law of the land, we don’t need hate-speech laws to protect people. And no matter how words hurt, there’s a difference between words and blows.”
(via)
Which is what I’ve been saying for years.
Attempts to engage the Average Canadian in the fight for free speech is a waste of effort. The Average Canadian has either considered the issue and sided with the wimps, or he hasn’t considered the issue at all and by default has sided with the idiots.
The Average Canadian cares only about lottery tickets, mortgage rates, plasma tvs, donuts and peewee hockey. Don’t waste your time trying to engage or convert them.
