Our regularly scheduled meeting....

I know, I know, you all wish you could be like me and sit down to reread Lenin's What is to be Done for the past, oh, I don't know, two months? A year? Well, let me tell you, a 100 year old polemic by a crazy fanatical Communist going on about internecine quarrels with obscure Russian political theorists is my idea of a good time but sometimes I do need to take a break to have a meeting with living people who come up for air once in a while. Thus:

It's becoming increasingly difficult to speak freely and openly in pubic in the free and democratic Western world in these past years, and oddly, especially since 9/11.

One might have thought that after such a vicious attack on the modern world the ideologists who perpetrated such an attack would be sought out and dealt with harshly and permanently. Not so. On the contrary, it is people who speak out against the savagery of the ideologies of contemporary fascism who find themselves hounded, threatened, even murdered in the streets of Europe or America and beyond. Nor is this outrageous behaviour restricted to Muslims on a rampage against the world. Far from it. Many of the worst offenders against the right of free speech are our political leaders, such as the Dutch prime minister, for example, and many of our intelligentsia generally, media, university professors, penny-a-pick pundits, and so on. Yes, many of the churches are in on the act of preventing free and open discourse regarding Islam and the nature of our Western Modernities under attack. Muslim jihadis and Left dhimmi fascists. There seems to be no end.

Ah, but there is. Daily there are converts and the courageous who stand up and count themselves as democrats and free men and women who will sit in fear no longer. If you are one such and if you're not working over-time to pay for an impossible defense against a frivolous lawsuit brought against you by Richard Warman, Warren Kinsella et al, you might wish to sit with us as you take a stand for freedom and the preservation of democracy.

We'll be waiting for you at the Vancouver Public Library in the atrium outside Blenz coffee bar from 7-9:00 p.m this Thursday, like every Thursday. Come talk with us while it's still legal, more or less.
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Then it's back to Lenin. Yes, this book does end. I know it does. I cheated and read the ending. (Lenin dies in a fiery car-crash trying to escape with the money-- but there's a bomb in the brief case!)