LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

U

Search

Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

M

Menu

!

Menu

Your Source for Free Speech, Talk Radio, Podcasts, and News.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

For decades now, most mainstream media and many in government, academic institutions, corporations, and other information sources across the western world have been ignoring, “canceling” and smearing conservative points of view. This has been happening on many topics—international affairs, elections, the environment, COVID, freedom, and family values, being just a few examples. 

This has resulted in public policy often entirely at odds with both reality and what conservatives, and at times many others, want their countries to be. Poll after poll reveals that huge fractions of the American population, for example, now feel that the United States is entirely on the wrong track. The survey released early in January by Gallup showed that only 17% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. It has been over 18 years, January 2004, since the last time Gallup showed that most Americans were happy with the direction of the country. 

The result is easy to forecast. With hundreds of millions of people now thoroughly alienated and, at times, furious, with the cancel culture that has taken over most of our information sources and public policy formulation, protests like the Freedom Convoy 2022 demonstration in Ottawa, Canada will undoubtedly become more and more common. But the next protests may not be so peaceful. Even Canada’s truckers are, after all, Canadian. 

There are, of course, many examples of censorship against conservative, or even non-partisan but politically-incorrect, points of view that our readers could cite and we encourage them to share their stories in the comment section after this article. Just last week, I (the junior author of this article) made the following comment after an article on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC, which receives over $1 billion from the Canadian government) website:

“The injection passports obviously make no sense since the Ontario stats for the past month have shown that the per capita rate of infection of the vaxxed is greater than the unvaxxed. If you don’t believe me, look it up.”

In the short time, this was allowed to remain on the CBC site, 14 people gave “upvotes” to my comment. One responded with different statistics from another source, saying, “Why make things up? Don’t think people will check?” I responded with the web link to the official Government of Ontario website that showed data that supported my remark. My response was immediately deleted by the CBC moderator, making it appear that I had no facts to support my statement. This led to another commenter sarcastically saying, “When he said, ‘If you don’t believe me, look it up’ he didn’t really mean to look it up.” I tried several more times to post my response, eventually writing a very short comment in the hopes that the moderator would allow it on the site:

“Here is the website for people to check: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data. It supports my statement.”

But the CBC moderator quickly deleted this too. The reason seems obvious. Had the moderator allowed my comments to be posted on their site, readers would have seen the following at the website I referred to, which indeed supports my statement:

 

In frustration, I eventually posted that I would share screen captures of the deletions with other media to show the censorship being engaged in by the broadcaster. A little later, all my comments in the thread, including the first, were deleted and I received the following message when I tried to comment again:

 

When this sort of thing happens millions of times on countless legacy media and other internet platforms, as well as at schools, colleges, and universities, in government public meetings, inside many corporations and churches, and indeed in practically all major information sources in society, people are left annoyed, even angry. So, not surprisingly, when opportunities arise that give alienated citizens a chance to vent their frustrations against the powerful, they will turn out in droves, exactly as has occurred in the Freedom Convoy 2022. 

What started merely as a protest by truckers against the government’s severe injection mandates, quickly exploded into a general protest against government over-reach and mandates across the whole of society. By holding people, especially conservatives, down for so long and often robbing them of their constitutionally-protected right of free speech and imposing unsubstantiated lockdowns on everyone, our society became a tinder box ready to ignite.

So, what has government and most media done in response to this outbreak of public expression of discontent? They engaged in more—much more—of exactly what caused the problem in the first place: heavy-handed government crackdowns and extreme media distortion, bias, and censorship.

Let’s look at the most recent sequence of events.

As the convoys started towards Ottawa from the far reaches of Canada in the second half of January, mainstream media and government did their best to ignore the growing storm. But, as tens of thousands of people turned out to show their support for the truckers in city after city, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lashed out:

“The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa or who are holding unacceptable views that they’re expressing do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other…”

Mainstream media then had no choice but to start paying to cover the story. But their disdain towards, and bias against, the convoy was clear. Some even began to imply support for Trudeau’s previous statements about people who have refused COVID-19 injections. In an interview on September 16, 2021, that aired on the French-language program La semaine des 4 Julie, the Canadian Prime Minister said:

“But there are also people who are fiercely against vaccination. Who don’t believe in the science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists. It’s a small group that muscles in. And we have to make a choice, in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people?”   

And so it went, until, according to Ottawa Police, on January 29 “three thousand plus trucks, not counting all the other vehicles [and] 10,000 – 15,000 protestors,” arrived in Ottawa, clogging the downtown core. At first, Ottawa Police played it cool, explaining to reporters out for blood that no one had been killed or even injured and that the protest, while noisy, was well behaved. Releasing videos hourly from Ottawa’s streets, fearless Rebel News reporters showed happy, friendly men, women, and children dancing in the street, waving Canadian flags and hoisting signs for freedom of choice, while condemning Trudeau for his prejudice. 

But this did not serve the government’s desired narrative, of course. So, most media and politicians fanned the flames, wringing their hands over what was in fact a few isolated minor incidents even by Canadians’ genteel standards. Some politicians even fabricated stories of violence to frighten Ottawans. The situation was getting out of control, the public was told. There is an insurrection in Canada’s capital city! Residents fear for their lives! The Prime Minister has been moved to a secret location for his protection! 

Except for Trudeau going into hiding, none of this was even remotely true, however. Shellie Correia, a visitor to Ottawa from West Lincoln country, Ontario, summed up the situation well:

“We spent 4 days of wandering through the trucks, up and down the streets, in the midst of large chanting and singing groups of people from all walks of life and had not one negative experience. I witnessed all the many races, religions, ages, and backgrounds coming together in a way that was inspiring and heartwarming! I cannot fathom what people who criticize this group of individuals are thinking. Nothing before has brought people together this way. They are truly unified, joyfully, in their fight for freedom. For the first time in a long while, I felt hope for our future, and pride in my country.”

The Ottawa-based junior author of this article and his family found the same—friendly, well-behaved people fighting for freedom. The ~70-year-old woman in the information booth at the entrance to the secondary protest site told us that, while she is not a trucker, she lived in Ottawa and simply wanted to help out. Organizers there were even offering free food to anyone, especially the homeless. While there is no question that, for residents living near the primary downtown demonstration site, the noise would have been often upsetting, there would have been no reason for anyone to have feared the protestors. In fact, the same may be said for the associated protests across Canada. Aside from the protestors who were intentionally rammed by a van at the Winnipeg protest site, we are not aware of any serious threat of harm to anyone. On February 4, the Toronto Sun, one of the few media outlets to properly cover the positive aspects of the protest, reported:

“Despite reports to the contrary, preliminary police data shows street crime has actually fallen since the Freedom Convoy blockade began at Parliament in Ottawa, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. There were only three reports of street crime in that district since the protest began: For mischief, robbery, and auto theft… The truckers’ blockade covers 10 square blocks in the Centretown district…

“In the week before the protest, the same district saw 31 police calls for robbery, assault, drug trafficking, public drunkenness, stolen vehicles, store break-ins, and other crimes.”

“There have been no riots, injuries, or deaths, Police Chief Peter Sloly said Wednesday at the Municipal Police Services Board. We are arresting, charging, and investigating bad actors. So far, the charges against truckers are routine traffic violations or breaches of a local noise bylaw for horn honking.”

If only the citizens of Seattle and Portland had faced such trivial risks in 2020’s “Summer of Love.”

But the die had been cast. According to the authorities and most of their media supporters, an insurrection was taking place that had to be put down no matter what. So, on February 6, City of Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency due to the “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents posed by the ongoing demonstrations…” 

Police followed up quickly, sending dozens of heavily-armed officers to confiscate fuel from the demonstrators, saying that anyone trying to bring “material support” to protesters would be arrested.

Even that was not met with violence by the rally participants. 

Screenshot from CBC Video showing police confiscating fuel from protestors. Watch the video here.

At his February 7th press conference, Ottawa’s police chief said:

“We went after the funding. Our efforts combined with the City’s efforts eliminated the Go Fund Me. $10-million are no longer accessible to the demonstrators. There are other funding avenues that we continue to aggressively go after through intelligence information, coordination with financial institutions, and all three levels of government. We will be relentless in pursuing the funding that has enabled this demonstration to continue to this point. We’re going after the fuel. We’re going after any vehicle conveyance, including horseback, people carrying jerry-cans. We are arresting and seizing and we are interdicting fuel going into the demonstrations.” 

Fortunately, there are some honest media representatives who see all this in a different light.

“It is the Trudeau government and its bought-off media that are in a ‘State of Emergency,’” said Judi McLeod, senior journalist/editor for Canada Free Press, an exceptional media outlet in Canada. “They think that the Trucker protest is in Ottawa when in reality it has—thanks to the grit and courage of Freedom Convoy 2022—already gone worldwide.” 

Indeed, it has. Besides similar freedom rallies internationally, including a major American truckers’ convoy planning to arrive in Washington D.C. at the beginning of March, donations to Freedom Convoy 2022 still continue to pour in from all over the world. For example, on the Give Send Go website, a group that calls itself the “#1 Free Christian Crowdfunding Site,” as of this writing, about $6 million U.S. dollars has been collected for the convoy since February 4. On the first day of the new campaign, it netted $2 million. Readers can watch the donations come in, thousands of dollars every minute, at https://givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022. 

Freedom Convoy 2022 protestors are not asking the Prime Minister to kneel at their protests as he did in 2020 at a Black Lives Matter demonstration on Parliament Hill. Like countless people across the world, from every race and creed, they merely want government coercion to end and that all injection mandates and other COVID-related restrictions be lifted without delay. 

And, if politicians and their media allies really want to understand who is responsible for the thousands of protestors in Canada’s capital, they need only look in the mirror. For it is their years of disrespect for the opinions of millions of honest, hard-working citizens that caused this pot to boil over. 

To discuss the protests in Canada and elsewhere, our guest on The Other Side of the Story at 11 am and 8 pm ET this Saturday and Sunday will be Nancy Thorner, winner of the Raymond S. True Leadership Award, from the Republican Assembly of Lake County, Illinois. 

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

Join our community: Your insights matter. Contribute to the diversity of thoughts and ideas.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
2 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Tom Harris
2 years ago

The government and most mainstream media tell us that Freedom Convoy 2022 is ant-vax, racist, misogynists and suggest it somehow promotes violence. Yet, this is right out of 1984 since:

1 – the main organizers are doubly vaxxed
2 – the originator is a Metis person
3 – the originator is a female
4 – the only violence I am aware of has been against the protestors

In other words, reality appears to be the exact opposite of what mainstream media especially are charging against them. This distortion is very common in Canada. I take it it is the same in the US?

Hope to hear what people think on both sides of the border.

Tom Harris
https://www.icsc-climate.com/

Brennan
Brennan
Reply to  Tom Harris
2 years ago

Great article Tom. I haven’t seen Canadians this united since 911. And it’s working… mandates are dropping like flies on a hot summer night. Except federally and in Ontario, unfortunately. But I suspect the overwhelming support of the truckers (and the science) will push them do what’s right. Now. Not in months or even weeks.

Sitewide Newsfeed

More Stories
.pp-sub-widget {display:none;} .walk-through-history {display:none;} .powerpress_links {display:none;} .powerpress_embed_box {display:none;}
Share via
Copy link