Miss Marprelate liveblogged yesterday’s event.
I did not attend. As I explained to one of the the organizers when he told me about it (when we were both at a similar event in DC), I’ve come to believe these events are a waste of time for me.
(Unless I’m invited to speak, which I was not, in which case I can sell some books and get away from my office for a day or two…)
Basically, a bunch of people will get up and relate information I already know, and have written about myself.
And these people all tend to be lawyers and professors and other bigshots.
In an era when our neighbors to the south are organizing grassroots Tea Parties, too many people in the free speech movement are still enthralled by degrees and celebrities and suits and talk talk talk.
(I guess because ordinary people might show up with unfortunate signs and say something “inappropriate” and actually demand that we all DO something risky or rude.)
The only plan of action that’s proposed at the end of the conference is to try to have an even bigger one some place else next year.
I don’t give a crap whether or not Section 13 gets overturned or not. Bad laws are meant to be violated. Not just violated, but beaten beyond recognition and left for dead in a culvert.
Mainstream people, Establishment people, aren’t prepared to go that far. They seem to want the State’s permission to exercise their rights. They still think voting and elections and parties matter.
Events like the one in Ottawa don’t change the Culture, or empower individuals to defy political correctness in their own ordinary lives, which should be the main project.
These events tend to do the exact opposite: they prop up a corrupt System for yet another day by granting it legitimacy.
This year, say “Merry Christmas” where you work, even if the employee manual says you aren’t “allowed” to. You’ll be doing more to restore free speech to Canada than anyone at any conference.
UPDATE:
Scaramouche was at the DC confab with me. Today, she responds to my post:
That’s why free speech has a much better shot at surviving in the U.S. than it does here–because, unlike Canadians, Americans aren’t afraid to be risky and rude and inappropriate. And that’s a function both of culture and history. American can draw upon a history that includes a Boston Tea Party and a Revolution and a First Amendment. What do we Canadians have? “Peace, order and good government,” Wile E. Trudeau’s legacy of multiculturalism, and our “ABCs”–agencies, boards and commissions (including all those delightful “human rights” commissions). Given that, how likely is it that “grassroots” Canadian will ever be able to summon up the gumption, the liberating “rudeness,” of Americans?
Not bloody likely, I’d say.
