Pubdate: Mon, 13 Feb 2006
Source: Western Standard (Canada)
Copyright: 2006 Western Standard
Contact:  http://www.westernstandard.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3448
Author: Pierre Lemieux
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc)

THE THREE WITCHES

This is a tale of three different men. Bruce Montague is a labourer, 
a Christian and a family man who has strong and simple moral 
principles, lives in deep rural Ontario and hates blue cheese. Marc 
Emery is a political activist, pushy salesman, boulevardier-to-be, 
and former grey-market entrepreneur who lives in Vancouver. Conrad 
Black is a millionaire establishment figure, businessman, author and 
peer of England, who lives in plush houses and who, perhaps, eats (or 
used to eat) Roquefort every day.

The current plight of these three men is also very different. 
Montague is a civil resister with the Canadian Unregistered Firearm 
Owners Association whose criminal trial is planned for this year. A 
seller of marijuana seeds, Emery has been arrested at the request of 
the U.S. government, which is seeking his extradition. Black has been 
criminally indicted by the U.S. government for "wire fraud," "mail 
fraud," "racketeering" and such derived "crimes," plus obstruction of 
such justice. Montague and Emery admit civil disobedience, while 
Black adamantly denies that he broke any law.

Yet there are crucial similarities. The three men are attacked for 
crimes that did not exist a few decades or even a few years ago, 
before the state defined them as crimes. All three defended some 
aspects of our traditional liberties: Bruce Montague has fought the 
wicked gun controls directed against peaceful citizens; Marc Emery 
has campaigned for the right of adults to consume what they want; and 
Conrad Black, despite his association with liberticidal establishment 
figures, has given a voice to libertarians in the newspapers he 
bought or created.

The state is going after these men with its full force and enormous 
resources. They are all liable to spend several years in jail-decades 
in jail for the two who are prosecuted by the U.S. government. Their 
travel is restricted by court order; two of the men (Montague and 
Emery) even had to hand in their passports. Black and Montague have 
had property seized or frozen before judgment. Black and Montague 
have been explicitly forbidden to have guns (as was Emery, but under 
a previous minor conviction), probably because guns are the ultimate 
symbol of the free man. Associates or friends of Black and Emery, and 
Montague's wife, have also been prosecuted. This is the state in all its glory.

Disclosure: I know personally two of the three persecuted men, and 
consider them friends. I met Conrad at George Jonas's birthday party 
in Toronto last summer, and again just the day before his indictment, 
at the Freedom Club, a Montreal salon hosted by Bob Bexon and me. I 
met Bruce at a conference I chaired in Montreal last summer. Marc 
Emery, I have been in direct contact with only for the purpose of this column.

There was a time in this fair land when Leviathan did not run loose. 
Victimless acts were not crimes or, at least, were not viciously 
hunted. Pot was legal until the 1920s, and then its criminalization 
was not really enforced until the 1960s. Anybody could buy, keep and, 
in many cases, carry all sorts of guns until the last two thirds of 
the 20th century. And a straight businessman could rest assured that 
state minions would not try to destroy him. Following the Americans, 
Canadians have entered the epoch of witch hunts.

Who would have thought that racketeering and money laundering laws 
would be used against individuals like Bruce Montague and Conrad 
Black? Who would have thought that the criminalization of marijuana 
would allow the U.S. government to hunt a Canadian on Canadian soil? 
Answer: anybody who has observed, during the 20th century, the growth 
of the soft tyranny forecasted by Alexis de Tocqueville. Who will be 
the next victims?

A free society is based on a coalition of people who accept that 
others do peaceful things they don't like, provided that, in return, 
the others let them do what they like. If everybody insists on doing 
what he likes and prohibiting what he doesn't, we are headed towards 
civil war at best, hard tyranny at the worst. The three men, and 
what's left of our liberties, may well stand or fall together.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom