Elsewhere in the NR caliphate, Mark Hemingway reviews Shakedown, the new book by Ezra Levant, my comrade in the battle to restore free speech to Canada. Mark’s line as an American reporter is that, no matter how nutty the things you hear about the Dominion’s “human rights” commissions are, when you actually investigate them and lift up the rock they turn out to be even nuttier. Oddly enough, this is pretty much what the New York Times man covering last year’s Maclean’s/Steyn show trial in British Columbia said to folks up there, and it may be the only point of agreement between NR and the Times.
Mark ends with the unlikely rallying cry of “We are all Canadians now.” I doubt he focus-grouped it beforehand but it may be true in a very broad sense: as I wrote in NR the other week, every malign Canuck idea — socialized health care, multiculturalism — eventually heads south of the border whereas every American idea — starting with the First and Second Amendments — gets turned back at the 49th parallel.