A rchive Date
[ 15-09-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/chapman.html
Montreal 'protest' assaulted free speech
By JIM CHAPMAN -- London Free Press
September 15, 2002
It's a story we should heed in a university town like London. Last Monday, a former Israeli prime minister was prevented from addressing students at Concordia University in Montreal. A mob of protesters smashed windows, destroyed property and provoked a confrontation with police in a successful effort to keep Benjamin Netanyahu from being heard.
Much has been made of their political beliefs, but there's an even bigger issue here -- they took it upon themselves to silence someone with whom they disagreed.
It's a particularly disturbing precedent at a university, where many of us believe young people are being taught the virtues of rational thought and intellectual exchange. Are we wrong?
To quote noted English essayist Paul Johnson, "It is a myth that universities are nurseries of reason. They are hothouses for every kind of extremism, irrationality, intolerance and prejudice."
Events such as the Montreal riot make you wonder.
This is not how genuinely mature people deal with differing opinions. The demonstrators behaved like barbarians, tightly wrapped in their own feelings of self-righteousness and intent on shouting down any opposition.
I can't say what the speaker's message might have encompassed and, sadly, neither can the students and others who were waiting to hear him. Would he have delivered words of hate? Would he have repeated some of the hardline pronouncements he's made over his years in politics, many of which I personally find repugnant?
I don't know and neither does anyone else and that's the problem. In this country, we still have the right to make up our own minds about what we hear (for now, anyway). Allowed a platform, the speaker might have said things to unintentionally discredit his beliefs and such miscues could have increased support for his political opponents. In a free society that was his mistake to make, but the protesters put an end to such a possibility.
Many observers, possibly otherwise supportive, now equate the protesters' cause with riotous, undemocratic behaviour, surely not the result they intended. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time we've seen such displays on Canadian campuses.
The passions of youth seem often to overwhelm good judgment and it's always easy to demonize those with whom you disagree. But self-righteousness is no excuse for interfering with the rights of others.
Such actions undermine the rational foundation on which Canadian political and social life is based. And they reduce communication to nothing more than a battle for volume -- whoever makes the most noise and drowns out the other side wins. That may be satisfying if you come out on top today, but it makes you vulnerable to a counterattack tomorrow, fuelled not by any reasonable argument, but by decibels alone. It's no way to behave in a civilized society.
There have been moments even in UWO history when student activists have sought to have their say, and their way, at the expense of others. Political correctness has too often condoned such behaviour, tacitly or otherwise, in the name of whatever self-absorbed ideology is the flavour of the month. We're already hearing apologia for the rioters (and that's exactly what they were) from students at Concordia and elsewhere.
That's a mistake. There is no justification for such disgraceful behaviour.
Let us remember that what was most wrong about what happened concerned neither ideology nor politics. The real victim was free speech in a free society. When any group among us takes it upon itself to break the law to silence another, however justified they may feel in doing so, we all pay the price.
And we're fools if we don't recognize the price is too high.
Jim Chapman is host of CJBK-AM Radio's Talk of the Town. His column appears Sundays.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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