De Tocqueville Was Right
Scott Johnson quotes Alexis De Tocqueville with regards to what Ezra Levent is up against in Canada. Scott is right to point out that what we see happening in Canada was, indeed, predicted by De Tocqueville and I think it’s important to publish the quote here as well.
Above these [citizens] an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?
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Subjection in small affairs manifests itself every day and makes itself felt without distinction by all citizens. It does not make them desperate, but it constantly thwarts them and brings them to renounce the use of their wills. Thus little by little, it extinguishes their spirits and enervates their souls….
Mark Steyn, who’s also in legal trouble in Canada because some fundamentalist Muslims didn’t like what he wrote, adds (while, surprisingly, positively quoting Glenn Greenwald): “Unless you believe in freedom of speech for those you find loathesome, you don’t believe in freedom of speech at all.”
Quite right. This isn’t about whether or not one agrees with Levant, or whether or not one believes that the cartoons were dead-on, this is about the freedom of speech and this about protecting and preserving that for which our ancestors - this goes for everyone living in the West - fought and died.
The officer of the thought-police who interrogated Ezra, Shirlene McGovern, is putting her ancestors - and those of all of us - to shame. There are not a lot of things I can truly get angry about, but this is certainly one of those few cases.
De Tocqueville was right: we’re now seeing a government who treats us as if it’s our parent and as if we’re children. The nanny-state has most certainly arrived (both in Canada and in Europe, in America the situation is less grave at this moment). We’re reduced from citizens to kids. Are we willing to put up with that?
I know I’m not. And especially not because I don’t have any respect for people like Shirlene McGovernor: she is, indeed, a thug and she’s, indeed, working for a thug-organization or commission.
Meanwhile, Jules Crittenden believes that Canada “needs liberating.” I don’t think so: I think that if there are more Canadians like Ezra Levant, people who are not afraid to speak out, Canada can do without a foreign occupation.
