Freedom Flyer 16

By Marc Emery
Guest Writer

In reference to Sunday shopping laws, Ontario's Chief Justice William Howland and The London Free Press argue that breaking the law is no way to change a bad law.

I disagree. If you want the law respected, make it respectable.

Canada now has more laws that abrogate legitimate individual choices than it does against actual crime. The government owns or controls all major utilities and alcohol outlets, gives preferential status to so-called minorities and controls property rights through pay-equity laws, rent controls and Sunday shopping laws.

The government controls and forces participation in our state school system and our monolithic state medical system. Incredibly, we have entrusted our minds and our bodies to the same soulless machine that run the post office and Via Rail.

Any law that prohibits peaceful and honest activity based on consent is a bad law. The list of violations of individual freedom is endless and this is because we have democracy.

TYRANNY:

Are we supposed to play by the rules the state has set up which gives every advantage to itself? No way!

Many of us who value individual freedom cannot wait until we are old and grey.

Breaking the law on principle, through non-violent civil disobedience, is the only way to get rid of bad laws any more. Ask those in Poland, East Germany, China, Romania, lithuania or Czechoslovakia if they would be better off pledging blind obedience to the state.

Hitler was elected in a democratic process. Would we condemn those that opposed the elected Nazi regime because Germany was a democracy?

Governments in democracies can get as perverted and reprehensible as dictatorships. At least in a dictatorship, most people know who their enemy is. In a democracy, it is difficult to face the fact our vote-wielding neighbor is likely the enemy.

The illusion persisting in Canada that significant change can be accomplished by voting every four years has not changed anything. Socialism and statism advances each year, as do inevitable increases in taxes, national debt and government dominance.

HONORABLE WAY:

In breaking the law, the individuals in Ontario know you are willing to make a sacrifice for change.

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, H. D. Thoreau, Lech Walesa, Canadians Henri Bourassa and William Lyon Mackenzie and thousands of others broke bad laws impinging on individual freedom. They went to jail, and they were right to do so. Many of these true freedom fighters won - and many died.

JAM THE JAILS:

Since revolution is inevitable in Canada at the rate the state is gathering power, going to jail in thousands now by breaking these bad laws is infinitely more humane than what will eventually come to pass.

A revolution is needed in Canada, one that will render the state impotent. From there individuals can rebuild a nation whose basic values are consent, tolerance, freedom of choice, and an end to coercive state power.

If there are to be role models for this kind of change, I offer myself as one.

I have broken the Sunday shopping law to change it, and will continue to do so, probably for the rest of my life until individual freedom, without compromise, is enshrined in the constitution and judges like William Howland are protecting individual rights over the interests of the state.