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.