Finding the courage to be disliked

Notes from a gathering of the "cultural counter-revolution."

“We need nastier commentary.”
“Less patrician criticism.”
“If there are consequences to be faced, so be it.”
“I’d always considered myself a classical liberal. I feel entirely abandoned by the New Left.”

These are common laments shared by writers and readers in my line of work. In this instance, I’m hearing them in person.

And in this instance, I’m surrounded by honest-to-goodness Canadian culture warriors: famous names and faces who have come out on the other side of cancellation, who continue to fight the good fight against censorious boards and the worst of ideological academia, and who have been able to proudly take a licking from “big daddy government” and keep on ticking.

In the shadow of Vancouver’s North Shore mountains, amidst the pro-drug, pro-crime, post-national squalor of YVR’s CBD, writers, activists, journalists, professors, legal scholars, ‘the trades’ (who hold far more talent, and should be proud of working real jobs), and curious UBC students alike had been gathered by the MLI, and their fellow Canadians who give a damn, to remind themselves to not give up in the fight.

I’ve shared my frustrations with “doomer” conservatism before. Popular influencers will point to Another Bad Liberal Graph — unmoored from its x and y axes, hurtling upwards toward the heavens at a 100-degree angle — tell you, “Canada is finished,” then turn in another column or ask for a subscription.

These folks in attendance weren’t those folks. The fact that some of them, whose work and names you’d be familiar with — and who have frequently appeared in the National Post or True North — had been so pilloried, their lives so impacted by the weaknesses endemic to Canadian institutional character, and that they’re still seeking to build counter-consensus, community, and to live in victory, not victimhood, was a sight to behold.

And if they were looking for lessons on the battles to come, they could do no better than learning from the likes of Chris Rufo.