ideaCity08

I was the first speaker this morning; I followed an amazing acrobatic and dance performance by Seven Fingers. They were as technically proficient as anything that Cirque du Soleil does, but with an edge. They were great -- which meant that I had a terribly difficult act to follow!

Luckily, Moses Znaimer spoke in between, to introduce me. I had only spoken to Moses once before on the phone, briefly, and met him only last night. I really didn't know what he'd say -- I was slightly surprised to receive his invitation a few months ago, given the rambunctiousness of my politics.

Moses hit it out of the park. I couldn't believe how passionate his own introduction of my talk was -- ripping into censorship, including the self-censorship of Canada's news media. I didn't write it down exactly, but I think his toughest line was:

That was a dramatic flourish; but his introduction, which I'm going to try to get in print, was one of the most heartfelt defences of freedom of speech and expression I've ever heard. Needless to say, I bounded up on the stage full of adrenaline.

Every speaker at ideaCity has 20 minutes to make his or her case, and I did my best to cram in 800+ days of fighting against Canada's human rights commissions into that short period of time.

Moses had introduced me as a conservative pundit, and indeed I am. But I emphasized for this downtown Toronto audience of 500 of Canada's top opinion leaders that the root of the word "liberal" is the latin word for freedom; and that freedom of speech is not the province of this end of the political spectrum or that. It should be sacrosanct to anyone who believes in the concept of a spectrum of ideas at all. The message resonated well, which is what you'd expect at a conference called ideaCity. They understand that even bad ideas have value; and even offensive ideas can bring truth. In fact, as I pointed out, all progress, especially all liberal progress, has come about precisely through offensive speech, speech that offended some pre-existing order.

I said that we need the good traditions of liberalism now, more than ever, because old civil rights fights, fights that we thought we had won long ago and would stay won -- like the equality of the sexes -- are now under attack. Where are liberals, who traditionally called for the separation of church and state, now that we need to have a separation of mosque and state? In the week where Aqsa Parvez's father was charged with murder for killing her for an "honour killing", where Imam Ali Hindy proudly boasts of solemnizing polygamous marriages, where are the feminists?

They're tongue tied by political correctness, I argued.

I pointed out that we shouldn't let bigots like the Canadian Islamic Congress's Mohamed Elmasry off the hook simply because they're visible minorities, or speak with an accent, or come from a different country. That's the "soft bigotry of low expectations", and it's actually an insult.

In other words, I went full tilt.

And the 500 folks who paid $3,000 each to attend Canada's most sophisticated ideas conference... loved it.

I received the first standing ovation of the conference (other than for the entertainment acts).

I exited stage right, and bumped into Margaret Atwood, who shook my hand and told me that I spoke with great passion.

I didn't quite know what to expect at ideaCity. I'm surely more conservative than 95% of them, and my style is more of a trouble-maker than a scholar. But I managed to find common ground: a love for ideas, and the freedom necessary to explore them, fearlessly.

I have an enduring gratitude for Moses Znaimer for taking a risk by inviting me. And I have new hope that Canadians of all stripes deeply value our heritage of freedom.

What a great day.