CANADIAN REPRESSION OF FREE SPEECH COMES TO THE UNITED STATES

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THE FIFTY-STATE CAMPUS

by Mark Steyn

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Anyone wondering what my battle to restore the right to free speech in Canada has to do with America should read Michael Barone on "The Coming Obama Thugocracy".

WGN's Milt Rosenberg, NR's Stanley Kurtz and others have already been on the receiving end of the thugocracy. On the air with Milt the other night, I quoted Bob Hope and Bing Crosby:

He gets his shirts straight from Paris
Cigarettes from the Nile
He talks like a highbrow
But he plays Chicago style...

That's Obama: highbrow enough for Christopher Buckley, Euro-bespoke (not sure where he gets his smokes these days - he's a bit coy on that), but an old-fashioned Chicago bruiser who'll order in anyone from Missouri sheriffs to the federal Justice Department if you run a TV ad he finds unhelpful.

An Obama-Pelosi Washington with 60 Senate seats would reintroduce the (Un)Fairness Doctrine, regulate the Internet, and wouldn't be above oomphing up Canadian-style "human rights" commissions to police speech - especially if he gets to appoint three Supreme Court justices in short order.

I was especially struck by this passage from Michael:

Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment.

Rush will wind up broadcasting from the Turks and Caicos Islands. But only until President Obama has a quiet word with Her Majesty's Government.

10/11 11:53 AM THE NATIONAL REVIEW'S CORNER