We did it! We did it! We did it!!!
We held a free speech demonstration on International Draw Mohammed Day on Parliament Hill, and we live to tell the tale!!!
There was only one minor injury: when taking out my permit, I got a paper cut…
Otherwise, everything went wonderfully and peacefully and we proved that in Canada, we CAN exercise freedom of speed!
That Sharia blasphemy laws do not prevent us from publicly displaying images of Mohammed!!!
Thank you, everyone who came and also all of you who helped behind the scenes to make this happen!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
May 24, 2016 at 17:12
I’m happy the protest turned out well. Congrats! I think more people should voice their opinions.
May 24, 2016 at 18:20
Thank you!
May 30, 2016 at 15:35
Xanthippa I love what you are doing and write a column for WND.com on art related to religion, conservative values, etc. For instance I covered Bosch Fawstin’s ‘Pigman’ comic a year or two before he won Pamela Geller’s art contest. Would you please contact me? You may use the email I am registering with. Thank you and all the best in what you are doing!
May 26, 2016 at 11:37
Xanthippa:
You keep saying that free speech is our most important right.
This isn’t true.
Our most important rights are life and liberty.
Property, privacy, arms, and speech necessary because life and liberty are impossible or vacuous without them.
These six inalienable individual rights are interdependent to a certain degree, and therefore difficult to rank in order of importance. The best we can do is to rank them in pairs, as follows:
1. The rights to life and liberty.
2. The rights to bear arms and own property.
3. The rights to privacy and free speech.
The whole reason our rights to privacy and free speech are now attacked with impunity is because we have allowed the state to systematically violate our rights to bear arms and own property.
May 27, 2016 at 16:11
Oh, I wasn’t aware it was a contest.
May 27, 2016 at 20:34
juggernaut:
Contest? No, I wouldn’t frame it in such terms either.
The six inalienable rights are mutually supporting. They form a construct that is only stable if they are all intact. Allowing any of them to be eroded will inevitably result in the abrogation of all of them.
So, in one sense, we can say they are equally important. But they do differ in the immediacy of the consequences if you are deprived of them.
Similarly, air, water and food are all equally important for life, but differ in the immediacy of the consequences if you are deprived of them.
This is the basis upon which they can ranked in order of importance.
I bring it up because the claim that freedom of speech is the most important right puts the cart before the horse. The violation of some of the other rights has much more immediate consequences.
It’s easy to see, for example, that no amount of speech will induce the Canadian government to respect our right to bear arms, but widespread possession of arms would motivate the government to take our speech seriously.
May 28, 2016 at 14:21
CodeSlinger,
I think you have just supported what I was saying: the freedom of speech is THE most fundamental freedom because without it, there are no non-violent ways to defend our other rights!
May 28, 2016 at 18:31
Xanthippa:
But without the right to own and carry arms, we have no way at all to defend ourselves or our rights against the deep state.
And without life and liberty, the whole discussion becomes moot.
My ranking above reflects these considerations.
Yours does not.
You seem to have fallen into the trap of equating no non-violent way with no way at all.
The idea, that violence is never an option, is not rectitude; it is cowardice.
As it is, the deep state faces no consequences for ignoring our speech.
So that’s exactly what it does.
May 29, 2016 at 01:38
CodeSlinger,
of course my consideration does include ‘all of the above’.
Speech achieves this without actual violence.
Carrying arms is the threat behind the words…
But, the words do come first.
Look to the past. Even when our ancestors had no arms, just farm tools, they found that when their speech was ignored, they had the option to resort to violence, using whatever tools were on hand.
The sane is, of course, true today.
Speech is the most peaceful way of protecting our rights. That is why I consider it the most important/preferred one.
Once speech is denied us, we can – and must – resort to more drastic means….but that is not the primary option.
Freedom of speech IS.
Which is WHY it is THE most important of our freedoms – and why, once it is denied us, we ARE OBLIGATED to take up arms to defend the rest of our innate rights and freedoms!!!
In other words, violence IS an option – but speech is much, much more preferable. Which is why it is at the top of the pyramid of our freedoms.
June 7, 2016 at 16:30
Xanthippa:
Firstly, without the enforceable (!) right to life, all other rights are inconsequential.
Can we at least agree on that?
Secondly, I do agree that freedom of speech is very unimportant – for all the reasons you outline. But it is not a panacea.
What I disagree with is the claim that it is the MOST important.
Let’s pretend for the sake of argument that Canadians still had an unimpaired right to keep and bear arms. If you had to choose between enforcing your right to free speech and your right to keep and bear arms, which would you enforce?
Thirdly, free speech is not necessarily accurate, true, or unbiased speech. The right to free speech is not the same as a free market of ideas.
Indeed, cultural Marxists achieved most of their successes by co-opting the media and the schools and then exercising their right to free speech.
Finally, recall Theodore Roosevelt’s admonition to “talk softly but carry a big stick.”
That stick was only reason he could talk softly with reasonable assurance of being taken seriously.
The people of the Western countries have given up their sticks.
Which is precisely why our speech is ignored whenever it is not outright stifled.
June 3, 2016 at 07:26
Hey, Xanthippa, why no calls for free speech when Ezra Levant sues a Tweeter for defamation? Odd, that.
June 3, 2016 at 10:02
I agree with you that that is not a good thing. Had I been aware of it, I would certainly have raised it.
June 3, 2016 at 12:10
Fair enough. Just happened.