timeimmortal

Opponents of true freedom of expression in Canada sometimes use the excuse that there are certain forms of speech which are universally unacceptable and must be censored/restricted/punished by law. The freespeecher response to that is that evil withers in the light of the day: give even hateful opinions their moment in the Sun, and average Canadians will make their own decisions about who is speaking the truth and who is talking a line of bull. The haters will be ignored, pushed to the sidelines, and marginalized.

Who is right, then?

Well, the proof is, as they say, in the pudding:

Here’s a fascinating statistic: In Kansas, the number of same-sex couples willing to identify themselves as such in the American census has risen rapidly. In 2000, it was 3,973. In 2005, it was 6,663.

Now, some readers may not share my enthusiasm for this statistic. The number of self-declared same-sex couples in Kansas? For Canadians, the relevance of this data may not be immediately apparent.

…

Why Kansas? Why gay couples? Because the fiercest, loudest, most energetic anti-gay bigot on the planet lives in Kansas. His name is Fred Phelps.

…

Fred Phelps is on a holy crusade against homosexuality and the main weapon in that war is the picket. “God hates fags” is Phelps’s signature sign, but they have many others. All drip with hate.

…that makes Kansas a natural experiment in the effects of hate speech.

Has Phelps generated support? Did he poison the climate? Are gays worse off now than before he launched his campaign?

The answer to all these questions is no. Kansas is rock-ribbed conservative country but Kansans despise Fred Phelps. He has virtually no support. He has no converts to show for all his effort and today, as always, his congregation almost exclusively consists of his extended family. Phelps happily acknowledged this to me. “Blessed are you when all men shall revile you and say all manner of evil falsely,” he said with a smile.

That’s not to say Phelps’s hate hasn’t had any effect. It certainly has.

The people of Topeka rallied. They organized. They raised awareness. Bigotry toward gays was exposed and talked about for the first time and even conservative Christian churches stepped up to denounce it. Fourteen years after Phelps started his crusade, a lesbian activist personally targeted by Phelps was appointed to fill a vacant seat on Topeka city council.

…

“If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity to exchange error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit - the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” — J.S. Mill

Underpinning the anti-free-speech rhetoric is the assumption, by the Warren Kinsellas and Richard Warmans out there, that they, the enlightened few are the sole guardians of proper thought and reasonable speech in Canada — all the rest of us rubes have no idea what’s good for us, and need our perpetual nanny (the state and its censorship commissions) to constantly help us discern between what is and is not proper to say. Ordinary, individual Canadians are not to be trusted with the role of forming their own opinions.

Most Canadians view neo-Nazis and bigots like Phelps as minor and rather pathetic figures, Kinsella sees them everywhere, threatening the good consciousness of our happy land. If something is bad, goes the liberal theory of society and human nature, then ban it. The central conceit of modern liberalism is that the average person is incapable of governing their own affairs…The Human Rights Tribunals are the culmination of the liberal conceit. If you can’t be trusted to save for your retirement, or educate your children, how can the average citizen be expected to think for themselves?

Canadians do not need their “betters” to think for them, nor do we need the government to operate human rights commissions in order to keep us from having the harsh words of bad men and women reach our virgin ears. We’re made of sterner stuff than that. We can — and must — think for ourselves, choosing to ignore the hateful bigots in our midst…but always giving them the right to speak, so that we can know their hateful bile for what it is and reject it as such. Or, better still, we can follow the example of Kansas, and turn our actions, creatively, toward those things which not only reject the viewpoints of the bigots, but fly openly in their face.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: SDA)

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

~ by Kenneth on February 18, 2008.