Canadian Culture

and barbarity:

If a mob disrupted a pro-choice speaker at a Canadian university, chances are the protesters would be removed. If a mob disrupted a pro-life speaker at a Canadian university, chances are the speech would be cancelled.

One kind of speech is free in Canada; another kind isn’t. Speech broadly characterized as “left-wing” a.k.a. “progressive” — e.g., pro-choice, anti-Israeli, anti-capitalist  — is protected even at its extreme. Speech broadly characterized as “right-wing” a.k.a. “reactionary” — pro-life, pro-Western, pro-Israel — isn’t protected, even when it’s moderate.

That “left-wing” speech is protected more rigorously than “right-wing” speech is hardly in dispute. David Frum noted it recently by contrasting York University’s warm reception of suspended U.K. parliamentarian George Galloway with its cool reception of the scholar Dr. Daniel Pipes. From pro-life university students arrested (Carleton) to Israeli speakers de-invited (Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu), examples abound. University of Ottawa provost François Houle became a bit of a joke for lecturing Ann Coulter, the outspoken American commentator, about visitors needing to conform to the superior civility of law-abiding Canadians, just before a mob prevented Coulter from speaking, while the Ottawa police looked on.

A Japanese university president might have committed hara-kiri after an incident of this sort, but Canada’s university presidents are made of sterner stuff...