Time Immortal

Anita Perron sends in a response to this article, which I confess was offered as much in the spirit of “tongue in cheek” as it was in the spirit of seriousness. Let me be clear: I consider racism to be a vile thing indeed. But please…an election sign gets vandalized in Mill Woods and we’re calling out the Edmonton Police Service to give this matter their full and undivided attention? When Edmonton leads the nation in gun-related murders (perpetrated, for the most part, by gangs or people affiliated with the drug trade)?

Priorities, people, priorities.

Ms. Perron writes:

I agree with the police who are tying to find the perpetrators of the vandalism to Gill’s sign. Racism is an ugly snake that pokes its head out sometimes, but the rest of the snake is hidden. If there is racism on the sign, you can bet there is a lot more hidden in Edmonton as well as throughout Canada.

I don’t think it is a teenage prank. I think it is an adult amd probably a Conservative who is trying to scare people off from voting for Ms. Gill because she is not white and male. The whole city should be trying to find out who did this.. not only the police.

I’m willing to believe that Racism exists in many corners of Canada, and to be fair I’m actually also willing to give people the right to express racist sentiments, so long as in their expression they do not cross the line into incitement of violence. I’m a freespeecher, so of course I’d say that.

Note, O Reader, that just because I think racists should be allowed to preach their filth does not mean I agree with them, anymore than I agree with Commies or socialists (who I believe also have every right to talk nonsense in public forums). It just means I think they have a right to say what they want to say…so that the rest of us can either choose to listen to them or (more likely) choose to ignore them, or to demonstrate that we do not agree with them or their bigotry in some manner which a) is legal and b) does not interfere with their right to free speech.

Of course, there are many forms of bigotry, and let us pause in the discussion for just a moment to note the bigotry in which Ms. Perron herself engages. She assumes the perpetrator to be “a Conservative”. Notice the capital ‘C’, O Reader: Ms. Perron assumes that the vandals are registered members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. Because clearly, only a Conservative party member would ever dare to deface a Liberal election sign.

She also expresses her conviction that the motive for the vandalism was because Aman Gill is “not white and male.” In other words, she assumes that the perpetrator was a white, male member of the Progressive Conservative party who acted out of racism and sexism.

Ms. Perron’s bigotry, then, is the assumption that members of the Conservative party are a) sexist and b) racist by definition. I don’t point this out, incidentally, to excuse what was done to Aman Gill’s election sign — my intent is simply to remark on the fact that Ms. Perron is every bit as much a bigot as the men she decries.

The fact of the matter is, there are many female MLAs. There are many MLAs who are members of ethnic minorities. Surprisingly, some of them are even members of the Conservative party! These people include Cindy Ady, Pearl Calahasen (the first Métis woman elected to public office in Alberta), Gary Mar, Hung Pham, Shiraz Shariff, and Janis Tarchuk. There are many female members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, and many members thereof who are from ethnic minorities. It’s a…what’s the word?…diverse group. Yes, it’s probably mostly comprised of whites…but then, that would make it representative of the population of Alberta, wouldn’t it? And yes, it may well comprise more men than women (certainly this is true when one looks at elected MLAs; I don’t have membership data for the party as a whole), but this is not a fault of sexism — it’s just a reflection of the fact that fewer women than men feel moved to enter the realm of politics as a career.

I think, then, that the claim that this vandalism against Ms. Gill was motivated by racism and/or sexism within the Conservative party of Alberta is specious at best, and outright false more likely.

It’s just much more likely that this act of vandalism was indeed a teenage prank — heck, for all we know, the perpetrators weren’t even white (they may not even have been male, but I think that might be assuming too much). This is Mill Woods overall, which in many cases has become a community of (and for) ethnic minorities in Edmonton.

But that’s not the point either. The point is that, while the racism is detestable, in the end it’s just the word “Paki” spray-painted on an election sign. There’s no incitement to violence here, and no permanent damage done. If anything, Ms. Gill will benefit from this incident — she’s certainly not going to hurt for the publicity it has given her, and it might even cause a few voters to shift their support to her out of sympathy or solidarity.

Meanwhile (and again, I cannot stress enough that this is Mill Woods, a.k.a. Mill Hood), I’m sure that were the police to go not five blocks in any direction from where this vandalism occurred, they’d find a drug pusher or a pimp. Okay, I’ll be charitable — ten blocks. Point is, there’s a lot of “hard” crime that EPS could be dealing with; compared to any example thereof, this sole act of vandalism is a non-starter.

The “whole city” shouldn’t be trying to find out who did this. The “whole city” should be trying to banish every drug pusher and pimp from within the Greater Edmonton Area, clamouring for the incarceration (and, if possible, deportation) of those men and women whose chosen trade has turned this city into a country-wide leader in the category of violent death.

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!

Blazing Cat Fur sends in the following link:

http://www.warrenkinsella.com/index.php?entry=entry080207- 155248

The above is a link to an entry rather amusingly entitled “Bring It”. It’s primarily a pre-emptive response to an editorial by Jon Kay in today’s National Post.

Mr. Kinsella posits an interesting question:

This post is what has moved Jon to write about me and my views. The Wicked Witches of the West and East - plus their Muslim-loathing Winged Monkeys, and the Freespeech Martyrs Brigade, [Ezra Levant] and [Mark Steyn] - have also devoted lots and lots of space to it, in some cases sneering that I am a pedophile, that I made it all up, that I am a Nazi, and so on. Immodestly, all of this suggests to me that the things I have been writing on this web site about racism, anti-Semitism and human rights have perhaps had an impact. If I wasn’t having an impact, a friend said to me this morning, why would they bother?

While I’m not sure that I’d go so far as to suggest that Warren is “one toke over the line” — I don’t know whether Mr. Kinsella is currently a user of marijuana — I think there’s some validity to the statement that Neo ends his post with: “Or maybe Warren… you just need to take a couple weeks in Cancun… snag some rays… loll around on the beach? ‘Cos you’re sounding a little stressed out here, bro.“

Personally, my own reason for “bothering” to write about the post Mr. Kinsella links to in the excerpt above is that when I first read it, I was rather dumbfounded. Was I honestly reading an argument in favour of Censorship, an argument in favour of Dr. Keith Martin being told to shut up, to get in line, and to withdraw Bill M-446, that used as its key argument a blurry cell-phone picture of bathroom graffiti? Was that what I was seeing? Were the people opposed to the removal of Section 13 from the Canadian Human Rights Act so bereft of convincing and persuasive arguments that they were reduced to to taking pictures of pre-adolescent scrawlings in public bathroom stalls in order to find “proof” of widespread Naziism that must be stamped out through a rigorous censorship office?

Who wouldn’t comment after seeing something like that? I took Mr. Kinsella’s post as a sign that us freespeechers were scoring some major rhetorical victories. Who’d have thought that really, I was just in despair over how we were losing this fight?

Over at Free Mark Steyn, Binky the Web Elf has been busy concocting all manner of excellent pieces of merchandise. If, O Reader, you are in support of the freespeecher cause, you might just want to show Binky some of your gratitude by buying a shirt or two; after all, he has done tremendous work in aggregating all the Mark Steyn/Ezra Levant/HRC-related news in the blogosphere, and then in his spare time.

There is, for example, the “Freespeecher” t-shirt:

Or the slightly more tongue-in-cheek “Scissors beat Paper” t-shirt:

You’re still here, O Reader? The above, and a few other designs as well, are all available via CafePress.

And if, for some reason, you feel like supporting yours truly, you can also check out the Time Immortal Store (also via CafePress), wherein you will find:

…our “Fight Backdoor Sharia” t-shirt:

…with matching mug:

And if you’ve ever been accused of being a Jew or a Zionist stooge for your stance on issues (or because you actually support the right of the state of Israel to exist), don’t miss our ‘Was?’ button:

This ain’t no Che dealership!

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Apparently, “freespeecher” has become the new leftist perjorative with which us conservative types are to be described.

That’s okay…it puts me in good company, at least. And I’m not just talking Kathy Shaidle and Mark Steyn — I’m talking the guy who, with his two shopping bags, briefly stopped the tanks at Tiananmen Square.

Perhaps it is fitting that his image adorns the new logo I’m sporting on the sidebar.

You can get the image in two different sizes (large or sidebar), from Kathy.