Free speech under assault

Mark Steyn on the relevance to Americans of Canada's anti-free speech kangaroo court:

Why is this relevant to Americans? Because the superficial fluffily benign language of multiculturalism that comes so naturally to our rulers provides a lot of cover for the shriveling of free speech [...]

As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful — particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers, and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.

The Europe of 2020 will have considerably less freedom of expression than today. American exceptionalism is going to have to be exceptionally exceptional to hold out against that trend.

To that end, the "hate crime" movement to elevate some crimes over other identical crimes based on thought-crime and the efforts by the current administration to criminalize dissent against the president should give us all pause.