Time Immortal

John David Beck — the man recently fined $6,000 by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for operating a racist website (bcwhitepride.com) — offers another response to the article I wrote which makes mention of him:

You had speculated that I was probably a jerk. That answer is entirely subjective. I honestly believe that I’m a nice guy. Most people who know me think I’m a nice guy. There have been times in my life were I have been a jerk, but couldn’t that be said for just about anyone?

The question on whether I’m a good or bad person is as subjective as the question of whether or not the views expressed on the BC White Pride web-site were valid commentary or just racist rants. I believe it was valid commentary, other might believe it was just racist propaganda. Again, it is all just a matter of opinion. For the government to use (or misuse) tax payers money to determine for everyone else what subjective opinions can and cannot be expressed is undemocratic to say the least, if not downright evil!

Actually, the speculation that Mr. Beck was probably a jerk was not mine, but Kathy Shaidle’s opinion. In one sense, it was a subjective judgement call, yes — after all, neither Kathy Shaidle nor I have any personal knowledge of Mr. Beck’s character, nor have we ever met him personally. At least I have not, and I doubt that Kathy has either.

And in fact, I’m willing to believe that Mr. Beck is, as he asserts, a nice enough fellow to the people who know him and whom he acknowledges as friends, family, and close contacts and acquaintances. That’s all well and good.

But in a more objective sense, let’s consider just what Mr. Beck is (in)famous for: the operation of, or at least a substantial number of contributions to, a racist website, a website devoted, at least in part, to denigrating the disabled and non-Caucasians. While certainly that is a form of expression that we must permit to see the light of day, if in fact we believe Canada to be a free country, there is nothing particularly “nice” about that sort of thing, nor is it the work of “nice” people to engage in such talk.

Chesterton once wrote that love “means loving the unloveable, or it is no virtue at all”, and a ‘white pride’ website that openly casts aspersions on people with disabilities, or on people with different colours of skin, certainly fails in that virtue. It also fails more generally — even if we allow that Chesterton’s maxim does not apply when one substitutes the concept of “being nice” for the concept of “love”, being nice to people still at minimum involves being nice not only to those who are nice to us, but to those who have done nothing to us — nice or otherwise.

So unless every disabled and non-white person in Canada has personally and deliberately affronted Mr. Beck, it is not the work of a ‘nice’ person that he is openly disparaging to the disabled and the non-white. I am reminded of the news stories that inevitably accompany each school and mall shooting, in which neighbours and family members wring their hands over the death of the mass-murderer and despair that he was “such a nice boy”. Perhaps he was…until that moment. But nice boys don’t shoot up their schools, or shopping malls. And nice guys don’t write racist tripe. That is the prerogative of arseholes.

Still, on the issue of the government using taxpayers’ money to fund a commission that seeks to censor and regulate the opinions of Canadians, Mr. Beck is spot on. And that is the important thing to keep in mind here. The issue is not about Mr. Beck — it is much larger than that. It is about Canada, Canadians, and the fundamental freedoms we purportedly enjoy as citizens of the Great White North. And if that Great White North is the beauty she’s supposed to be (pace Bob and Doug), she needs to get rid of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and indeed of all HRCs operating within her borders.