Shakedown book tour -- Vancouver update

I had a great day in Vancouver promoting Shakedown, and I'm back at it tomorow morning with appearances on CBC Radio's Early Edition, at 8:10 a.m. PT, and then an interview with Shaw TV's Fanny Kiefer around 9ish. I've heard great things about her show, and I'm looking forward to it -- I understand I'm slated for a full half hour.

Tonight's Fraser Institute event was great. The dinner part was sold out, and the reception was jammed full, too. The crowd was very sympathetic, and we actually all managed to laugh at the absurdities of the human rights commissions, of which B.C.'s is probably the worst in the country. It's a sign of just how denormalized the commissions have become that the chief emotional response they elicit now is not fear, but laughter. They have beclowned themselves; they are ridiculous. No political force can long withstand the blows of derisive laughter.

Here's a pretty friendly review of this evening's event, which appears in the Tuesday edition of Metro, the free daily newspaper that is published in cities across Canada. Some excerpts:

When the right wing gets together, there’s usually enough room left in the phone booth for a marching band, but last night’s Fraser Institute gathering here in Vancouver was sold out.

And the speaker, neo-con Albertan Ezra Levant, is the toast of the Left Coast. The former Western Standard publisher and Reform MP is on a Vancouver tour de triomphe while basking in the glow of  rave reviews for his latest book, Shakedown, including one from Rex Murphy, the man who put the polysyllables in pundit.

What’s going on here? Why is Ezra Levant the flavour of the month? Dare I say because he deserves to be?

...Steyn and Levant, unlike so many cowed into silence, stood up against what Levant calls “Alice in Wonderland commissions where bizarre new human rights are made up on the spot and where regular legal procedures don’t apply.” Shakedown is an account of his persecution at the hands of the Alberta commission, as well as a tour through the highlights of a Canadian quasi-judicial system gone starkers.

...Thanks to unlikely heroes such as Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, I am still free to speak and write the truth as I see it. But it’s a near thing, and Thomas Jefferson’s words still ring true: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

It feels great to read a review like that. It's so encouraging to me that people across the political spectrum can see past my own personal political views, and see the importance of freedom of speech. Free speech is the foundation of all political views. It's so heartening that not just the book, but the battle against HRCs itself, is being met with such support.

And the book? It's holding strong on Amazon's bestseller list.