Story Archive

Resistance is Futile

For two years, Nick Troller’s license plate has read “ASIMIL8” — a Star Trek reference to the “Borg” race who tries to subjugate humanity. To make sure people get the reference, Troller even has a Borg plate frame. But Manitoba, Canada’s, Public Insurance Company, which issues plates for the Crown, has demanded he surrender the plate immediately: they claim “two people” called to complain that the word “assimilate” is “offensive” to indigenous people. “We’ve become way too sensitive,” Troller says. “You can’t say anything anymore to anybody.” Meanwhile, Lorne Grabher of Nova Scotia, Canada, has had his personalized plate, “GRABHER”, for 20 years. But once U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was heard declaring he likes to “grab” women’s private parts, Grabher’s plate was recalled after a single complaint from a woman. With help from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, he is suing the provincial government, charging infringement on his freedom of expression. “Canadians are becoming increasingly less tolerant of free expression,” says JCCF spokesman John Carpay. “You have more and more people who believe that they have a legal right to go through life without seeing or without hearing things they find to be offensive.” The problem, he says, is “if we have a right to free speech, then we do not have a right to be free from offence. You can’t have both.” (RC/CTV) ...Free speech is specifically about speech you don’t like: we don’t need a free speech law about speech you agree with.