Time Immortal

As I say in this week, freedom of speech only for inoffensive speech is no freedom at all. A nation free only to prance along to Barney the Dinosaur pabulum is living under a soft beguiling totalitarianism, even if it doesn’t yet know it. Take Dean Steacey, the Canadian HRC’s lead “anti-hate” investigator, and his delusion that “freedom of speech” is an “American concept“. Golly, we’d all hate it if the ghastly Yanks had invented it. But isn’t Canada a signatory to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Including Article 19?

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

No Americans need be involved, folks. Why, the UN Declaration of Human Rights is so Canadian, it’s on the back of Canada’s $50 bill - and, if the HRC doesn’t believe me, it can check the next time its doling out another cash settlement to Richard Warman. Mr Steacey and the HRCs are, in fact, abusers of the “human rights” laid out in the UN Declaration, so the only reason for me to string along with their game is to play my part in ending their regime.

More than what Steyn did or did not say, the issue in this matter is that the very process by which certain parties are now attempting to nail Steyn to the wall is — in and of itself — a fundamental violation of human rights. I will say it again, and more clearly: the Canadian Human Rights Commission is itself a violation of the rights of Canadians.

The astute reader will know that I am no fan of the Charter or the Universal Declaration, prefering British Common Law to either/both. But Canada has its Charter and is supposed to be governed by the stipulations thereof, and Canada is a signatory to the Universal Declaration. But as much as a non-fan of both of those documents as I am, I can recognize that enshrined in both is the inalienable human right to freely articulate opinions — yes, even hateful ones.

Some commentators here have asserted that Mark Steyn has his facts wrong, and that the Osgoode Hall law students have it right. My personal view tends toward the opposite of that one. But even the issue of who is actually right is unimportant. What is important is that this star chamber called the HRC is even allowed to operate in Canada, in flagrant violation of what Canadians have declared to be their rights and freedoms, and the universal rights of all human beings. Mark Steyn’s article in Maclean’s magazine might be the battleground, but the actual war is about something much more critical.

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