There’s an old joke about how you tell the difference between a crate of American lobsters and a crate of Canadian ones.

Every time a Canadian crustacean reaches the top of the crate on his way to freedom, the other lobsters pull him back down

Two stories bring that thought to mind: University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson and Marie Henein. Henein, the criminal defence lawyer whose intellect and hard work helped get her client Jian Ghomeshi acquitted of sexual assault, is to speak at Bishop’s University in Quebec in February. The event is to be livestreamed to several other universities, including St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, N.S. A student at that university claims Henein’s speech will be a “disservice to students who are victims of sexual violence,” and the executive director of a local women’s resource centre said sexual abuse victims could be “traumatized,” by what Henein has to say.

Talk about sticks and stones. If there are people who feel they may be traumatized listening to what will likely be a brilliant dissertation by one of this country’s pre-eminent legal minds, they should stay away.

No one’s forcing them to attend. If they wish to remain captive of their own narrow-minded prejudices, that’s their right. But they shouldn’t impose their wishes on other students who may want to have a well-rounded education.

If you’re so insecure in your views and if your viewpoint is so fragile that it cannot withstand the scrutiny of vigorous debate, then you may want to re-think your position.

This insistence that everyone has to conform to a politically-correct viewpoint or be vilified has frightening implications for free speech.

Why do they want to silence Henein? For being everything we always want women to be — brilliant, outspoken, successful.

And for doing her job, other less bright and less successful women seek to punish her.

The complaint entrenches the notion that women should be mediocre in everything they do. If they’re too good, they get slapped down.

University professors have the ancient right of tenure to encourage free and wide-ranging debate without fear of losing their jobs through reprisals.

Yet that’s what those who disagree with Peterson would like to do.

Peterson is raising valid concerns about new legislation that will enshrine as hate law not just what we can’t say, but what we must say.

That, too, has frightening implications. This Brave New World these high-handed dilettantes are carving is trampling the cornerstones of democracy. How can using an incorrect gender be construed as, “hate?” That’s what is awaiting us around the corner.

And no one dare argue for fear of being labelled a hate-monger.

Today, a handful of vocal left-wing agitators is dictating what the rest of us say.

Tomorrow they’ll tell us what we can think.

That’s not just frightening. That’s terrifying.