Time Immortal

Apparently, Lady Black was hauled before it back in 1978. Then, as is the case now with the likes of Mark Steyn and , there was no good reason for it.

The Manitoba and the Ontario human rights commissions had complained about an article I had written for on the “British disease.” The U.K. was lurching from crisis to crisis with strikes that left bodies unburied and bread unbaked. I had used the word “Huns” to explain British apathy as in “the Huns are no longer at the gate.” The word was clearly used in a historical context, but to no avail. In the bowels of Manitoba, a lobby group of professional grievance collectors found solace for my wounding word in Canada’s up-to-date human rights legislation. I was, wie schrecklich, slagging off all German Canadians. After a bout of correspondence I saw both HRCs off but not before they had tried to get me censored, possibly fired, and all behind my back. Fortunately, then-editor of Maclean’s Peter C. Newman felt I ought to be made aware of their complaints.

Cut to 2008 with Maclean’s being asked to respond to complaints issued by various HRCs about an excerpt it published from the book America Alone by columnist Mark Steyn. It makes me nostalgic. The magazine’s plight occurs on the 30th anniversary of my similar encounter with the same Thought Police (the gemstone is pearls). The charges against me then were as empty as the ones now brought against Maclean’s, though as Steyn pointed out last week, the poison is not in the truth or falsehood of the complaint but the notion that it is the business of government to judge it.

In the balmy days of the seventies, human rights commissioners and their allies who monitored one’s “errant” views were mainly ultra-liberals, people with whom you could, more or less, have a reasoned discussion. Indeed, I cranked out my 1980 book Confessions as a response to Rabbi Gunther Plaut’s questions at that luncheon about my opposition to the very existence of HRCs. Many of those old-time liberals are having spots of amnesia now about their early support for the HRCs, but never mind. One was reasonably safe in their hands then, even though you knew as surely as night follows day that the safety was temporary and their hands would not be the last ones censoring ideas.

As victimhood became fashionable, unsurprisingly Canada’s Thought Police expanded. A few years later when I was editor of the Toronto Sun, city taxpayers footed the bill for an investigation into the newspaper’s alleged “racism.” I was cleared personally, but Sun columnist McKenzie Porter was not. Porter, an elderly British writer who yearned for the lost grandeur of the British Empire, and I had an understanding: I spiked any overly offensive columns of his but promised never to edit him. This seemed to work to his and readers’ satisfaction if not Toronto’s city hall.

Today, Canada’s human rights industry flourishes in a barren landscape where there are no proper rules of evidence, legal procedures or public and press scrutiny. Tribunals can cause you to lose your job and fine you. Fail to answer a witness summons and you face contempt of court � possible imprisonment. Under this scenario, Steyn could become a fugitive from Canadian justice in his New Hampshire home, where he and “Tiffany” (his assistant, long rumoured to actually be Mark avoiding phone conversation with editors) could survey the plains, shotgun ready, for red-coated policemen riding over the hills. Mark has long counselled my husband to stay out of the clutches of the American judicial system. I offer him refuge in Palm Beach.

…

Whether stupid or prejudiced, true or false, suppressing opinion is always bad. Seven of my columns are used as examples of Islamophobia in the report. I want to sue the authors myself for defamation, but my view of their view should not be actionable. One would think most Canadians intelligent enough to grasp that freedom doesn’t mean you are free only to express nice thoughts. Freedom is not a maple-syrup nut cake to be sliced up: you cannot have some freedom of speech or freedom of speech only for those people you like. By definition, freedom is indivisible. It should be so simple really. The thing speaks for itself.

Relatedly:

(That’s German, by the way…it’s pronounced “Vas?”)

Kathy Shaidle remarked thusly:

Ezra Levant (who happens to be Jewish) is hauled before the Alberta HRC, accused by a radical Muslim of “Islamophobia” for printing the “[Muhammad]” cartoons. (Don’t miss Levant’s stirring opening statement to the kangaroo court…)

Mark Steyn (who half the world thinks is Jewish, but isn’t) also faces HRC charges for “Islamophobia”, brought by Muslims.

(Steyn, Michael Coren and — judging by my inbox, me — are regularly mistaken for Jews by people who don’t like us. I’m still convinced the three of us and those similarly honored should start wearing little yellow question marks on our lapels, maybe with the German word for “Huh?” written on them in black Teutonic lettering…)

Okay, Kathy…here you go!

The rest of my readers are likewise welcome to grab the two GIF-formatted images below for use on their blogs (especially if any comment trolls or angry email correspondents have attempted to give rebuttal to your statements by accusing you of being Jewish). As usual, there are two sizes of image, one obviously more suited to blog sidebars than the other. The backgrounds of the GIFs are formatted to be transparent.

And yes, these can be downloaded from the Media page.

Update: Now with lapel-friendly versions available! (Stickers too!)

Update II - Electric Boogaloo: Welcome, fans of the Furious one.