Hamas and Hezbollah supporters return to Calgary’s Jewish neighbourhood - Ezra Levant

Some statistics: there were about 150 Hamas supporters this time, and very few women and children. Almost all men now. There were about 20 counter-demonstrators, some with modest placards — and a small Israeli flag.

Again — as last time — the police told the pro-Israel counter-protesters that they risked being arrested for “inciting public disorder” if their tiny Jewish flag caused a conflagration. Did you get that? If the peaceful display of a Star of David “incited” the Hamas supporters to act violently, it would be the Israel supporters who would be charged. I wonder how much longer — months? years? — until police are telling people that wearing “provocative” Christian crosses is cause for arrest, too.

This is the logical extension of those idiotic “zero tolerance” policies one sees smeared all over the US educational system - where a student defending himself from a physical attack is punished identically with his attacker, both of them for the crime of “fighting.”

First, the policy is immoral, in that it rewards the initiation of force. Second, it breeds more, not less, violence. Third, it places the entire onus of wielding or controlling force on the state - a recipe for runaway authoritarianism. Fourth, it rewards the escalation of violence.

Canada ought to be learning that, but obviously, as this situation indicates, it is not. I doubt it will learn, either, because a society or a culture can literally commit suicide. In fact, all of them do. The only question is when the self-immolation occurs. I suspect that much of western culture, terminally infected with the disease of statism, is probably too far gone to rescue. Britain is gone. Much of Europe is gone, or going. Canada is going. America is threatened.

I suspect we are facing an era of global statism. Technology is giving governments too much power and control on the ground over the individual. Statism, by the way, is the polite term. In my house, we have another word for it: Tyranny.

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