"It's fun to fight the government"

"It's fun to fight the government."

So said Michael Schmidt, speaking at a People's Party of Canada fundraiser dinner my son, Jonah, and I attended on Friday....

And when Schmidt says it's fun to fight government, it's not because he hasn't suffered the full bludgeon of bureaucratic insanity. Literally millions of taxpayers' dollars have been wasted conducting undercover operations, police raids and endless court cases to stop him from selling... Moonshine? Cocaine? Ivermectin? No.... Raw milk.

He's the author of Raw Milk and the Search for Human Kindness: Overcoming Fear and Complacency. The inside flap clarifies that the "book is not primarily about raw milk or the advocacy of it." Rather it's advocating for the freedom for people to buy and sell what they want without the government storming their property.

First they came for the raw milk farmer... then they came for you.

Quite literally, we've now seen government storm birthday parties during stay-at-home orders. We've seen police raids on businesses that refused to turn away customers during lockdown. We've even watched pastors literally dragged off to jail because they conducted a Sunday service.

And why does government get away with this? As the subtitle of Schmidt's book says: "Fear and Complacency." Of course, people don't call it that. They say they are just "minding their own business" or being a "pacifist" or even "spiritually aligned."

With each generation becoming more narcissistic, self-serving and comfort-obsessed, it was uplifting to be in the presence of such a strong, unbroken and confident individual as Michael Schmidt.

As he said during his talk: "We are not here for a comfortable life. We are here to do the right thing."

But also, as he said, even if it's not comfortable, it'll be fun.

Fighting the dragons of totalitarianism is an adventure, because — as Bilbo Baggins discovered in The Hobbit, when a wizard and a band of dwarves asked him to leave his comfortable hobbit hole — adventures aren't easy, but they sure make for a good story.

And I certainly look forward to reading the epic story awaiting me in the pages of Michael Schmidt's Raw Milk and the Search for Human Kindness: Overcoming Fear and Complacency.

—John C. A. Manley

PS Former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier gave a talk after Schmidt, sharing a funny story about how he and Schmidt milked a cow in Toronto's Queen's Park in front of the Ontario Legislative Building. Sadly, my photo with Hillier didn't save properly on the camera's data card. (A lesson to always use two cameras for important moments.)

PPS Jonah and I were up after Hillier, performing a new and extended version of the one-man "Double-Masked, Quadrupled-Vaxxed Roger" skit I enacted for Vaccine Choice Canada last month. I'll be sharing a recording of this ten-minute, two-man play in the near future (subscribe so you don't miss it.)

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