Time Immortal

A sobering reflection that one almost has to excerpt in its entirety so as to avoid missing any good point thereof:

It’s [about] real, ordinary Canada as opposed to those who want to reshape this nation in their own image. It’s about people who can say the word “patriotism” without blushing as opposed to those who blush when their grants are cut.

It’s about those who read books because they enjoy them as opposed to those who read books because they think other people don’t read them.

It’s about you who would fight to keep this great nation together as opposed to those such as novelist Margaret Atwood who told electors to vote for Quebec separatists just to stop Stephen Harper from cutting a fraction of the arts funding budget.

It’s about people who bemoan the lack of public childcare as opposed to those who know we already had the best childcare and it’s called parenting.

It’s about those who feel Canada as a home and a heart as opposed to those who think of Canada as a concept and a social experiment. About those who view taxation as a necessary evil to be used to help the most unfortunate as opposed to those who want to use taxes to change the very nature of Canadian society.

It’s about those who see Americans as friendly cousins as opposed to those who see our neighbours as ugly sisters. About those who believe that Canada is public broadcasting, state education and the Charter of Human Rights as opposed to those who see it as pioneers, personal initiative, sacrifice and courage.

About those who want a clean environment for the sake of their children as opposed to those who want a clean environment because they prefer the planet to its inhabitants. About people who were raised in loving families and in turn raise their own well-adjusted kids as opposed to those who think family a place of evil and oppression and would rather watch a subtitled documentary than take their son to a hockey game.

About people who believe in their God and are proud of the fact as opposed to people who buy books about atheism, pretend to read them and are proud of the fact. About people who are religious and have fun-filled lives as opposed to people who detest Religion and have fun abusing those who are religious.

About moms and dads rather than caregivers and nannies, about real communities as opposed to artificial communes, about having a thick skin and a sense of humour as opposed to being constantly oversensitive and complaining about and demanding an apology for any remark that offends your politically correct sensibilities.

About common sense and common decency as opposed to senseless extremism and indecent behaviour. About shedding a quiet tear when a brave fallen soldier returns home as opposed to attending ugly demonstrations and noisily demanding that all Canadian soldiers come home.

About a Canada based firmly on our traditions and values as opposed to a Canada destroyed and then rebuilt on notions that are entirely foreign to our way of life.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Patent stupidity from the HRC:

Hatred is a feeling, and feelings, until recently, couldn’t be crimes.

“Vicious” comments are punishable by fines now, my fellow Canadians — blog accordingly, or else.

“Discrimination” is merely the act of observing that some things, ideas or people are different than others, and until the 70s was known as “common sense“.

John David Beck is probably a big jerk. Regardless, he should refuse to pay this imaginary, arbitrary fine, impossed by a kangaroo “court”, and we should all protest this latest decision by our unelected, unaccountable, self-appointed Thought Police.

Beck’s ‘crime’ was using the Internet to publish material offensive to Jews, minorities, and the disabled. The name of the website was bcwhitepride.com. Is John David Beck a nice guy? No, very likely not. Is what he was saying very nice? No, absolutely not…in fact, it wouldn’t be hard at all to say that what he was publishing was, indeed, hateful and immoral.

But was it a crime, what he did?

The Canadian Human Rights Commission evidently feels so; they would not have fined him otherwise.

But what Beck did was no crime. Ugly as all sin, yes, but not a crime. Indeed, he was exercising a right that Canada purportedly ensures for him both in its Charter and through its commitment to international human rights agreements — that of the freedom of expression.

PENCanada — a Canadian non-profit organization that lobbies on behalf of writers, internationally, who have been forcibly silenced or imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression — defines freedom of expression thusly:

What do we mean by “freedom of expression?” Many definitions are out there. However, although the wording varies, the substance is the same. In its essence, freedom of expression is the right to say freely what you please, as well as the related right to hear what others have stated. This includes the freedom to create and distribute written works, movies, pictures, songs, dances and all other forms of expressive communication.

And on their list of obstacles to freedom of expression, the fourth item (after assault, threats, and murder) is:

Censorship (State or otherwise imposed)

Canadians lobby — and in many cases risk their freedom or their lives — on behalf of writers world-wide who have been denied what even the UN recognizes as a basic human right. Will these same Canadians now lobby on behalf of their fellow countrymen, who are being subjected to what amounts to state censorship?

Now, it’s easy to lobby for the release of writers who have been arguing, themselves, for noble causes, such as writers who have been imprisoned for criticizing the Chinese government and its brutality. It’s measurably harder to lobby for the freedom from censorship of writers who have very distasteful things to say. But there’s the rub: a human right — which freedom of expression most certainly is — is only a right, and only worth defending, if it is defended in every instance it is trampled upon, and in every instance where a human being is denied that right. Defending only those people who have something nice to say is meaningless, and actually destroys the concept of freedom of expression; what we are free to express, in that paradigm, is only that which is palatable to a majority of members of society.

There’s one further implication. Yeah, they only went after a racist website; so what? Well, a lot of people confuse criticism of Islam with racism, and I do a lot of criticism of Islam on this site (well, on some days I do). Does that make me a racist? Perhaps not objectively, but in the eyes of some people it certainly does. And a ruling like this tells me that someone could only too easily send government goons to my door…or to the door of any Canadian blogger who publishes something offensive to someone else (i.e. most conservative bloggers, who are called ‘racist’ by way of greeting by many on ).

Relatedly:

Update: Welcome, nohippo readers. Thanks, Winelreid, for the link!