Time Immortal

While I don’t hold John Diefenbaker in the highest esteem, I definitely agree with his sentiments regarding what it means to be a citizen of Canada:

Please note, any and all homosexualactivists, Islamic fundamentalists, and other designated professional victims: this is what it means to be free. Running to the government with your every problem, and demanding that big poppa State step in to make the bad people shut up? That would be the antithesis of free.

Just a little something to reflect on this election day. If you want a free Canada, as defined above, the obvious vote is for the Conservative Party of Canada. A vote for any other party ensures that the tyranny of human rights commissions will not only continue, but expand.

And then we will only be able to speak in fear.
We will only be able to worship in ways that the state deems permissible.
We will not be free to stand for what we think right,
nor will we be free to oppose what we believe wrong.
And while we may retain the freedom to choose who shall govern our country,
it will be a hollow freedom.

Let me clarify that title a little bit, since it’s mostly an attention-grabber. Basically, Canadians are seen as being very “polite” where other cultures are concerned. We tend to be very tactful, even to the point that we don’t want to give honest feedback to immigrants to our country about their behaviour and customs, and the compatibility thereof with Canadian values and customs.

Polite is all well and good, granted…but to many immigrants, it simply comes across as dishonest.

Canadians so prize their reputation as accommodating, welcoming and above all, tolerant, she said, that some may not want to hear what some recent immigrants have to say. That lack of feedback, on everything from personal space to facial expressions, leads to both confusion and a disinterest in bridging cultures.

Dan Shapiro, a research associate with the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, agrees.

“It actually shows much greater respect to offer sincere criticisms, when cultural disagreements occur,” Shapiro said, “than to say nothing — or worse, to assume that behaviour you find inadequate is all you can expect from certain groups.” That, he added, is the very definition of patronizing, and is far more insulting than a well-intended critique.

Of course, some of this politeness is itself very artificial and enforced; one could end up being hauled before a human rights commission if one actually did offer “feedback” to a recent immigrant, if in fact one’s feedback was overheard and misconstrued by a progressive-minded busybody. At the same time, still more of this politeness comes in the form of what some call “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” the ugly assumption at the heart of Canadian multiculturalism that presumes that people from other cultures simply can’t adjust to “the Canadian way” of doing things (poor darlings). Cultural relativism also plays a role.

And yet, such things as these do more damage than they prevent, as evidenced by the above. Talk about your case of the cure being worse…

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

This time from Clifford D. May, opinion columnist for the Minneapolis newspaper, the Star Tribune:

The assault on free speech has gone global

…On campuses and within Western governments it is increasingly taboo to label terrorists who slaughter in the name of Islam “Islamist terrorists.” In Canada, “human rights commissions” attempt to enforce this taboo by putting such writers as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant on trial for the “crime” of expressing opinions that offend Islamic grievance groups — and also for quoting Islamists accurately and thereby casting them in an unfavorable light. If that’s not Orwellian, what is?

Be sure to thank your local HRC, O Reader, the next time you have the chance. Thank them for making Canada into an international pariah which people believe has done away with that bedrock principle of free society: freedom of speech.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Easy to see where Jonathan Kay gets his skill with the written word from:

Ayatollah-prescribed fatwas are so pre-9/11. Nowadays, as liberal elites rush prophylactically to ward off charges of tolerating “Islamophobia,” the fatwas (in all but name) against damn good books like Mark Steyn’s America Alone aren’t bruited in mosques; they issue forth from human rights commissioners.

…

Many Canadians believe the nation’s human rights commissions (HRCs) are motivated by high ideals and good intentions. But in conspiring to silence what a handful of Muslims deem “hate speech,” these good intentions are paving the way for the hell of global “soft jihad.”

The soft jihad is gradualistic and law-abiding, but no less desirous of Islamic domination of the West than its violent counterpart. Soft jihad strategy exploits liberal discourse and weaknesses in our legal system to induce guilt about a largely mythical “Islamophobia.”

The list of complaint-triggering speech offences is long in all Western countries, and ranges from the trivial to the politically existential: A decoration on a lid of ice cream distributed by Burger King offends because it resembles Allah in Arabic script; Fox Entertainment’s drama 24 portrays South Americans, Bosnians, Germans and Muslims as terrorists, but only Muslims complain; a Turkish lawyer sues an Italian soccer team because the red cross on their jerseys reminds him of the Crusades.

…

One way or another we must stop the fatwa industry in its tracks. Begin with removal of speech-regulation from the HRCs’ legal mandate. Build on that with legislation that imposes costs and damages on litigious third parties who seek to chill journalists.

Canada should also pass legislation imitative of the U.S. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) law, presently active in 24 U.S. states, which disallows harassment of those writing on matters of “public concern,” as well as the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, a New York state initiative that will combat libel tourism.

The HRC crisis is not a tempest in a teapot. Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, says: “I don’t think it’s too strong to say that the [HRC] complaint against Mark Steyn is a totalitarian document.”

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Levant and Steyn are fighting for the defining ideal of Western civilization which, once lost, would spell the beginning of the end of all our other freedoms.

Freedom of speech/expression is the cornerstone human right in truly free societies — without it, all the other rights we enjoy will crumble. And in their zeal to protect the smaller rights, the HRCs will destroy this most important right unless we are able, somehow, to reverse their course or cast them down.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad that the Calgary imam who filed a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant has swung his opinion ’round and set it against the HRCs, more or less.

But he still doesn’t get it entirely.

“Is it safe to say you miscalculated the public response?”

Syed:

It was not a miscalculation. I honestly believed at the time that, in Canada, if you felt offended by something that had been said about your religion or identity, this was the way you resolved the issue.

Incredible. 99% of Canadians had never even heard of the HRCs before he brought his complaint against Levant, and most still don’t know what they are. But Syed knew all about them. So where did he get this wacky idea?

Based on what I’d seen in the media and read on the internet, I thought this was a process that brought the parties together to set things right. I had seen, for example, that other groups, including members of the homosexual community, had done it.

Well, thanks again, gay activists, for your absolutely fabulous contributions to Canadian life! This is right up there with amyl nitrate and French bulldogs.

Yeah, gay activists‘ complaints against Christians who dare to publically express their Christian beliefs has brought people together all right — now more straight people hate gays than they did before! Brilliant…

And congratulations to an orthodox Muslim imam for taking a page from the gay agenda manual. I’m sure your co-religionists will be thrilled to learn who inspired you. Will Syed be the token “righteous straight dude” grand marshall at the next Pride Parade?

What a country. Syed, your Order of Canada is on its way.

…

Anyway, Syed’s newfound objections to the HRCs has more to do with this kind of elitist snobbery than with Enlightenment principles. He tells Maclean’s:

Basically, it’s a bunch of bureaucrats: some of them are lawyers, but for the most part these are people without a great deal of legal training. They have neither the ability or [sic] the means to deal with these sorts of issues.

And make no mistake — Syed wants “these issues” “dealt with”. Hooooo yeah.

I’ve never been a fan of the old saying “enemy of my enemy is my friend” — I’ve always preferred http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030929.html”>”enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy” myself — and I’m willing to grant that imam Soharwardy is a fair-weather ally at best. It’s good that he’s swung around to set his opinion against the human rights commissions, but it would seem that his transformation is only one of self-interest.

And self-interest is a fickle sail indeed with which to run any ship.

I wasn’t aware that there was a human rights monument in Ottawa. That said, I’m not at all surprised that it seems to be, in BCF’s incomparable turn of phrase, “a product of the ‘Turd in the Plaza School’.”

How very fitting indeed, that a monument to human rights in Canada should look like a confused, uninspired jumble of poorly-considered components, while at the same time invoking the image of tall walls and a dystopia. A more fitting commentary on the human rights commissions would be hard to ask for.

Syed Soharwardy would appear to have swung his opinion around to the side of right, at least as far as Canada’s human rights commissions are concerned.

When I initiated my complaint against Mr. Levant, I saw human rights commissions as a non-violent means of resolving differences among Canadians.

I was not aware of the controversies between the commissions and Canada’s faith communities. I am thinking specifically of my friend Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary.

Upon learning about the difficulties he and other faith communities have encountered with the commissions, I withdrew my complaint against Mr. Levant.

One of the reasons I chose Canada as my adopted homeland is because of our country’s great respect for religious freedom.

In Canada, I am free to be good Canadian and a good Muslim. There is no contradiction between the two.

In listening to the experiences of Bishop Henry and Pastor [Stephen Boissoin], I realized how precious religious freedom is to our country and how easily freedom is lost.

Strange words to hear from the man who took Ezra Levant to the Alberta HRC over the Muhammed cartoons…but if they are genuine, they are welcome, and it is thus good that he has shifted his thinking.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!