A campaign of character assassination

Re: Beyak’s use of public funds, ethics questioned — Jan. 10

All is not well when it concerns freedom of speech in our society. The politically correct among us act with impunity when and wherever their views are questioned. The problem is they don’t deal with the issue at hand. Rather, they respond with a feeding frenzy of outrage and attack the person who dared to question their opinion.

Thus the freedom to think, speak and write thoughtfully, but at variance with the politically correct opinion on a subject, becomes prohibited, freedom of speech is not welcome, to say the least, and a basic democratic right is threatened. We saw how this played out recently at Wilfrid Laurier University, when the politically correct tried to stifle freedom of speech in teaching the use of gender neutral language. Thankfully, freedom of speech prevailed in this instance.

Now Senator Lynn Beyak has come under attack for what she wrote about residential schools. She is being publicly ridiculed and bullied by those who disagree with her, but typically, there has been no reasoned reply to prove her assertion wrong. She has broken no law that I know of, that would warrant calling for her ouster from the Senate, or for an investigation of her ethics or honesty. What we have is a campaign of character assassination and a curtailing of freedom of speech.

You and I may not agree with what Senator Beyak wrote, or we may not agree with each other about the difficult history of the residential schools, but that’s OK in a democratic society. At least, that’s what I thought. Ed Grootenboer Waterloo