[Dallas Morning News] On the Fourth of July, the day we celebrate America’s liberty and independence, it’s worth contemplating how much more free America is than most other nations in the West.
Why? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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Mr. Steyn and Maclean’s, the top-selling Canadian magazine, have faced human rights charges in British Columbia. Their alleged offense? Maclean’s published a Steyn essay critical of Islam, which prompted Muslim activists to file formal charges accusing the writer and the magazine of violating Canada’s hate-speech laws.
Last Friday, the national Human Rights Commission dismissed the charges, but they’re still pending in front of a provincial panel. The victory is less than what it appears. For one thing, defending against the charges cost the magazine hundreds of thousands of dollars. For another, it is frightening to think that a human rights panel has the right to decide what can and cannot be published in a free country.
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[Colorado Springs Gazette] In Canada and in much of the rest of the world, certain opinions – of people who claim the Holocaust never happened, pastors who say homosexuality is a sin, Brigitte Bardot saying Muslims are undermining French culture, for example – may not be expressed at all. In Canada strictures against “hate speech,” which arguably could stir up hate against a particular group, have morphed into an entitlement of activist grievance-mongers who seek to forbid speech and writing that they claim to find offensive. The practical result of this is to muzzle opinions some would rather not hear.
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[Fort Collins Now] Do you want your government to protect your feelings? Here are Canada’s “Human Rights Commissions” which sit in judgment over “allowable” speech.
Down With Everybody 
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Unlike the USA, Canadian mainstream media are untouched by concepts of “research” or “investigative journalism” and have been this way for over 25 years.
Canada preceded the USA down the road of every post-modern educational trend in the book. The result is generations of Canadians who can barely read and write in English (up to 75% of freshmen enrolled at Univ. of Toronto require “remedial English instruction” in order to be able to handle the curriculum, which has itself been watered down incredibly over the years).
Canadian historian Granatstein’s book WHO KILLED CANADIAN HISTORY? goes a long way in explaining/exploring the ramifications of these pedagogical trends and compromises over the decades.
Canada is SO SCREWED it isn’t even funny. Surely Canada’s population is the best example of intellectual castration that I can name. I am SO GLAD I had the foresight to get all my education at American universities. Yeah, I get a lot of weird looks during job interviews, but I GET THE JOB NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN.
And like other Canadians with foresight, I became a citizen of another country in order to have a “bail out” option for myself and my kids. And I know dozens of people who have done exactly the same thing for the same reasons. Isn’t that hilarious? “Preparing to live life as a Canadian with SOME measure of freedom and security” means asquiring citizenship in another country…
But that’s Canada for you!
AHY: Get a life…
DWE: Sorry we cut off the rest of the rant you wrote, but anyone who uses “get a life” as an opening needs to be further angered by having his comment edited down to nothing. Fume away, Lifer-boy.