The Persecution of Ezra Levant and the Clash For Civilization

This is a video of noted Canadian conservative journalist Ezra Levant getting a Danish Free Press Society award for Free Speech.  He spent three years being "investigated" by the Alberta "Human Rights" Commission for having been one of the only Canadian journalists to dare to print the 'Mohammed Cartoons' when that controversy arose.   The people who made the complaints against him have included a radical Muslim cleric who once stated that the murder of any Jew above the age of 13 was an acceptable target for jihad.  Yet somehow, Levant publishing cartoons is the real peril to Canadian social fabric.

I hadn't been intending to a political post today; but when I saw this I couldn't not post it.  For full disclosure: I went to school with Levant, we were only a couple of years apart and attended at the same time, so I've known about him for a very long time now (he was a controversial conservative loudmouth even then).  And really, you can kind of tell we both got the same education.   He's quite a lot more conservative than me, I'm pretty sure he had me down in the "liberal douchebag" camp (and to be fair I was more liberal when I was younger than I am now), but we absolutely share in every respect our value for free speech.  Plus, even if you don't decide to view the whole 35 minute speech (a very good speech, though Levant always was long-winded), catch the last 5 or so, and tell me this isn't the same rhetorical training as the Pundit?

The issue for Levant is more important; same fight, but on a bigger scale now that he's a national figure in Canada.  And as he rightly pointed out, its a fight the West can't afford to lose; what I'd add is that it is NOT a fight between the West and "the rest", it is not that Muslim extremists or any other groups have tricked us into surrendering our free speech; it is a fight between the West (that is to say, western civilization) and significant numbers of people in it who have chosen to abandon western values (usually by having been manipulated by small groups of cynical self-hating westerners that want to tear down our own civilization to replace it by some fantasyland of their own devising with varying degrees of brutality and autocracy).  This isn't a "clash of civilizations", its a clash FOR civilization; happening entirely within.

As for Levant, as we speak he's fighting in court again, this time for daring to cover a case of the persecution of another writer on free speech charges at a falsely-called "human rights" tribunal.  That's Canada for you.

RPGPundit

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