This is a brief departure from Northern Colorado politics, so bear with me.
I haven't read "1984" since high school, but I was reminded of it recently when I watched the brilliant movie "The Lives of Others" which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year. (William F. Buckley Jr's reaction: “I think that is the best movie I ever saw.”)
"The Lives of Others" is set in the East Germany of the 1980's and it is a chilling portrayal of how intrusive and controlling the state was in the everyday lives - and thoughts - of the East German citizens.
That was behind the Iron Curtain.
Follow the link. It's the most depressing thing I've seen in a long time. Free speech is dead in Canada. Watch the videos of the thought crime interrogations of the Alberta "human rights commission." Here's the brief background:
In February of 2006, the Western Standard magazine, of which I was publisher, reprinted the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. We were immediately hit with two "human rights complaints". These are a strange species of lawsuit, inimicable to Western liberal traditions of rule of law and freedom of speech. A real court would have thrown these complaints out as baseless, but Alberta's human rights commission has proceeded. Friday was the day of my interrogation. I videotaped it.
This isn't an isolated case.
Perhaps more well-known is the case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine. The background is here.
Chilling indeed.
