I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
“Free speech has to be for everyone”
February 12, 2008
The truth is, we are a nation of cowerers and wimps. We’d rather censor speech than allow feelings to be hurt. We live in fear that a few obscure bigots will incite an orgy of violence and send an entire civil society crashing to its knees.
Why are we wasting time and money dragging disgraced native leader David Ahenakew through the courts? Back in 2002, he likened Jews to a “disease” and was immediately ostracized from polite society.
That should have been enough. Instead, he was tried and convicted in the courts on a charge of willfully promoting hatred. The verdict was overturned because it wasn’t clear whether he was being willful, simply deranged or drunk. So now, we’re going to try him all over again.
Are anti-Semites a threat to public safety? Here in North America, the answer is surely no, so long as they don’t go round firebombing synagogues. Are anti-homosexuals? No again, so long as they’re not physically engaged in gay-bashing. So long as equality before the law is the law of the land, we don’t need hate-speech laws to protect people. And no matter how words hurt, there’s a difference between words and blows.
This distinction appears to have been lost on Alberta’s Human Rights Commission [HRC], which recently ruled against a conservative Christian who’d written a letter to the Red Deer Advocate in which he called gays “immoral.” The commission ruled that his letter was “likely to expose homosexuals to hatred and/or contempt,” and even linked it to the beating of a gay teenager, acknowledging the link was “circumstantial.”
Which is what I’ve been saying for years.
Attempts to engage the Average Canadian in the fight for free speech is a waste of effort. The Average Canadian has either considered the issue and sided with the wimps, or he hasn’t considered the issue at all and by default has sided with the idiots.
The Average Canadian cares only about lottery tickets, mortgage rates, plasma tvs, donuts and peewee hockey. Don’t waste your time trying to engage or convert them.
The only hopeless causes I waste my breath on are the lapsed Catholics in my immediate and extended family, because I still think those are battles worth fighting. If my fellow Canadians are too complacent to notice that their freedom of expression is evaporating all around them, that’s not my concern — I will rage against in on their behalf, with no expectation that they’ll ever grow a clue as to what all the fuss was even about in the first place. Sometimes, that’s just the role one is called to play.
Yes, it would be easier if more people actually tried to address the issue, but it’s important enough that, even if the ones who have spoken out already are all that will speak out, nobody championing the inalienable right of every Canadian to freedom of expression can afford to fall silent until the issue is resolved.
And it will be resolved in one of two ways: either we Canadians will have freedom of expression, or we won’t. It will either be given back, or revoked entirely.
