CKNW Editorial
for September 20, 2000

A lady called on the open line yesterday saying that she supported the Vancouver City Police when they advised Vancouver citizens not to come downtown on New Years Eve unless they had a good excuse. As far as this lady was concerned if the police were preventing anticipated trouble she didn't mind giving up the "tiny bit", as she put it, of her civil rights.

I shudder when I hear this because first it betrays a basic misunderstanding of what freedom is all about and secondly she is by no means alone. Freedom is a very dangerous commodity by definition and it comes with a very high price tag. Freedom of assembly and speech bring to our society the risks of people being hurt ... of excesses by minorities. We will have broken bones sometimes and many badly hurt feelings. We certainly will have many uncomfortable politicians.

Freedom was not designed by the state but by the people. And it has legions of martyrs. In the 16^th century those who demanded freedom of religion were burnt at the stake though all they stood for was the right to disagree with the state’s favoured religion. As Queen Mary restored Catholicism to Britain heretics from the lowest to Archbishops Ridley and Latimer gave their lives for what has become the separation of church and state.

My caller would no doubt have urges her neighbors to swallow their dignity and accept the state sponsored religion in the name of law and order.

The fight for freedom often had as its cause a trivial triggering mechanism such as the Stamp Tax for the 13 colonies. It wasn't the Stamp Tax, of course, but the right not to be governed except by consent that caused the shots that were heard around the world at Lexington and Concord. My caller would no doubt have said look here, it's only a small amount of money to pay for British protection of our hearths and homes ... let's pay it and get on with life ... and she would have missed the point then as now. The fight for freedom often means long periods where freedom is even further impaired as happened in France in 1789 and later in Russia in 1917. But the flame never flickered out - not even Napoleon Bonaparte or Joseph Stalin could do that.

My caller would surely have said to Rosa Parks, why not take the back seat in the bus, Rosa. What difference does it make? You get to your destination just as quickly and, after all, it keeps peace with the white folks. Surely the surrendering of the tiny civil liberty of sitting where you please, dining where you please, drinking out of the water fountain of your choice and staying in any hotel or motel that has a spare room ... not to mention the vote ... is worth it to keep peace with white folks.

The big mistake my caller makes is assuming that as long as the denial of a civil liberty is not great and there is some possibility that some physical harm can be avoided then the authorities are justified in their actions. She and her ilk don't understand that if we don't stand up for our freedoms at the first line of defence we run the serious risk of losing more and more defences. And we should never think that it can't happen here. In fact, I would urge my caller to read a book by that name, Sinclair Lewis' book … it’s called It Can't Happen Here" - written just before World War II with Nazi Germany in mind.

People who defend liberty are often unattractive people to the gentry. Tom Paine was an itinerant tailor of no formal education, an anaethema to the establishment , yet he helped father the first two great revolutions, the American and the French, and is routinely accepted as one of the fathers of modern freedoms. When he wrote "these are the times that try men's souls", in Common Sense, and sold out edition after edition of that revolutionary tract, the establishment of that day trembled. That we can say similar words today and not feel threatened is because of the likes of Thomas Paine – an unpopular rabble rouser.

We forget these things at our peril. I have no doubt that many listening today think there goes Rafe, ranting about freedom of speech and stuff. They see student protesters as just troublemakers that should be silenced. But is it just a rant? Have not most of us seen in our lifetime a Prime Minister put the entire country under martial law because of a kidnapping and murder in Quebec? Have we not seen a Prime Minister and a senior cabinet minister consider the mental comfort of dictators more important than the right of young people to protest on behalf of free speech and democracy?

It is a very difficult line, sometimes. Of course we ask the police to protect us and it is their job to anticipate trouble. But we must always err on the side of freedom and consequent inconvenience to the public. We permit it and indeed learn how to handle it with strikes and lockouts. In some jurisdictions where freedom reigns, such as the United Kingdom, protest marches often tie up much of the city and it is not unusual for violence to happen.

Our inconvenience is the premium we pay for freedom. The placing that inconvenience and the violence it sometimes spawns ahead of the right to free speech and assembly is the first step down the road to a police state. If we are prepared to make tiny little exceptions to our rights here, we will soon make them there as well.

Don't say it can't happen here ... for everywhere that it's happened that’s what was said.