On June 1, 2020, Rex Murphy wrote in The National Post that Canada was not systemically racist, indeed that when compared to a host of other nations world-wide, it is decidedly welcoming and compassionate. It is a truth I could defend with a myriad of historical/factual references to anyone wishing to debate it. This is not to say there are no racists lurking within the ranks of the White majority. Moral/intellectual frailty is a sad fact of human nature. But Vanmala Subramaniam, a Tamil woman employed by the Post, took exception to Murphy’s article, conscripting approximately 60 of her fellow staff members to sign a statement denouncing the fact that the paper had even chosen to publish it. In a subsequent rebuttal she began by pointing out that as a 73 year old White man, Murphy was in no way entitled to weigh in on racial issues. It is the Identity based tactic used relentlessly by various “oppressed” minorities with the tacit assent of their “intellectual” mentors, the disingenuous assertion that, yes, they believe in “free speech,” except for those who don’t share their skin color, gender or sexual orientation [i.e., those who don’t see the world exactly as they do]. It is absurd.
Barely a week goes by without some example of the rights of a “conservative” being cancelled or questioned through the invocation of the mindless principle of “hate speech,” no matter the rationality of his/her beliefs. Last fall Hamilton’s Mohawk College was assailed by a horde of protestors trying to disrupt the speaking engagements of two “conservatives,” Dave Rubin and Maxime Bernier, slated to speak on the same night. On Sept. 26, three days before the event, the Spectator published an article by Evan Balgord, executive director of Canada’s Anti-Hate Network, suggesting that the college should never have made its premises available to the two men. It is the sort of irrational reception almost invariably granted speakers such as Warren Farrell, Anne Coulter, Jordan Peterson, etc., should they try and bring their messages to the halls of academia. Yet in their eagerness to support the fiction of a surging, intolerant Right, a faction whose presence I see nowhere in our mainstream culture, those on the Left actually, absurdly argue that they too are often the victims of unconscionable, biased censorship.
In a N.Y. Times opinion piece of April 28, 2018, entitled “Offending from the Left,” Michelle Goldberg argues that “Contrary to a great deal of hype,” threats to Free Speech within Academia “don’t come only, or even primarily, from the left.” Yet the array of truly hateful declarations by “progressives” which she invokes to prove her point, in fact proves the very opposite.
Arab-American professor Randa Jarrar of California State University denounced Barbara Bush as a racist shortly after her death, stating that she couldn’t wait for “the rest of her family to fall to their demise.” Her comment provoked “national outrage.” In 2017 Kenneth Storey was fired from the University of Tampa for tweeting that hurricane Harvey was “instant karma” for those Texans who had voted Republican, the implication being that it was perfectly just to have one’s life destroyed if one didn’t share his political views. Other examples of “progressive” academics who suffered repercussions as a result of statements they made public: Eric Williams of Trinity College, Connecticut, who argued that people of color ought not to save the lives of White people in imminent danger; Lars Maischak of Fresno State who called for the lynching of Donald Trump; Tommy Curry of Texas A&M who discussed the “morality” of killing White people. Clearly Goldberg must have combed her files in search of Leftist academics who had been reprimanded or worse simply for expressing orthodox “liberal” opinions. And this collection of hate-filled rants is the best she could come up with? Are the views of Maxime Bernier, Dave Rubin, Kelly Leitch, Jordan Peterson , Candace Owens, Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, etc., etc., “provocative” in the same way as any of the above. Do any of them call for or take delight in the literal annihilation of their political opponents? The fact which only one utterly consumed by bias would deny is that “conservatives” in the public eye are habitually excoriated or worse for expressing even the most rationally defensible of positions while “progressives,” poor babies, are only sanctioned for expressing views that truly vibrate with hatred. Goldberg’s article ironically proves this very point.