Time Immortal

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!

The left-wing Canadian Jewish Congress, the special-interest lobby group most responsible for criminalizing speech in Canada, is obviously feeling some political heat because of what they have wrought. Their figurehead co-presidents, Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Sylvain Abitbol, wrote a muddled column called “Some human rights complaints are frivolous”. That’s actually less mealy-mouthed than it sounds, given that the commissions have a 100% conviction rate for thought crime hearings. But what is the standard for acquittal that the CJC proposes?

“Human rights commissions must constantly recalibrate where the balance lies between free expression and its abridgement, but the determination of where to place the fulcrum must always be based on the statutory standard that such expression is �likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

and

“the appropriate application of statutory criteria is our best defence against those who would eliminate the law to protect their interests, and against those who would use the law to promote a narrow political agenda.”

In other words, the concept of a “pre-crime” is still fine by them. No-one has to be exposed to hatred or contempt for someone to be found guilty. It just has to be “likely” that could happen. And hatred or contempt — emotional feelings — are enough. The CJC doesn’t even think that a discriminatory act is necessary for a conviction. They support the notion of thought crimes.

If the human rights commissions apply the standards in this fuzzy-headed op-ed, Mark Steyn and I will still be convicted.

What an embarrassment the CJC has become. Essentially they are pleading for Steyn and I as special cases. Is it because I’m a Jew and Steyn sounds like he might be, too? Is it because we’re being sued by Muslim fanatics? Or is it because the CJC is taking some political heat for their support of these illiberal, anti-intellectual commissions, and the CJC’s alliance with Richard Warman, the serial human rights complainant and foul-mouthed, anti-Black, misogynist bigot?

The CJC’s op-ed will be seen as nothing but more proof for anti-Semites and neo-Nazis who claim — with historical and statistical validity — that the hate speech provisions are a tool used mainly by secular, leftist Jews to punish their anti-Semitic critics. But now that those same precedents are being used against Jews and philo-Semites by Islamic fascists, the CJC wants to change the rules.

As disgusting a thing as Holocaust denial is, we began the slide down this slippery slope of censorship, and the attendant denial of the legitimate right to that every human being is theoretically entitled to, when we made it illegal to say that the Holocaust was just a hoax. And anyone who says that Levant is innocent, but then turns around and says that the likes of Ernst Zundel are guilty, is just a hypocrite.

Freedom of expressions means that even those opinions we personally consider distasteful have a right to be said aloud, or it means nothing at all.

Time was when “human rights” was a truly large and noble idea. I associate the concept with, and its birth out of, some of the great horrors of the past century: the bestial depredations of the Nazis, their ‘race science’ and death camps, the horrors of unbridled totalitarianism - under which, the whim of the rulers was sufficient to mutilate, torture and destroy lives, collectively or individually - send millions to arctic slave camps - the debasement of internal exile and psychiatric rehabilitation.

More currently, I associate real human rights advocacy with the case of a young Saudi woman, who very recently was repeatedly gang-raped - and then she � the victim - charged and sentenced by a Saudi court to 200 lashes and six months in jail for being in a car with a male not her relative. The sentence, after international protest, was voided — but that young woman�s case represents a real example of the violation of basic human rights.

What I do not associate with this deep and noble concept is getting ticked off by something you read in a magazine - or for that matter hear on television - and then scampering off to a handful - well, three - of Canada’s proliferate human rights commissions - seeking to score off the magazine: this is what four Osgoode Hall law students and graduates — a very definition of the ‘marginalized’ — under the banner of the Canadian Islamic Congress have done after reading an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s America Alone in . The complainants read the article as �flagrantly islamophobic�.

Maclean�s magazine? Well, we all know what a hotbed of radical bigotry and vile prejudice Maclean�s magazine has been. Go away � for what seems like a century Maclean�s was no more “offensive” (that is the can�t term of choice these days) than a down comforter on a cold day and if Mark Steyn’s article offended them: so what? Not every article in every magazine of newspaper is meant to be a valentine card addressed to every reader’s self-esteem. Maclean�s published a bushel of letters following the article’s appearance: some praised it: others scorned it. That’s freedom of speech: that’s democracy: that’s the messy business we call the exchange of ideas and opinions.

But where does the BC Human Rights Commission, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Human Rights Commission come into this picture? Has anyone been publicly whipped? Has someone or some group been hauled off to a gulag? Is there a race frenzy sweeping the land?

Why is any human rights commission inserting itself between a magazine, a television show, a newspaper and the readers or viewers? Is every touchy, or agenda-driven sensibility now free to call upon the offices of the state and free of charge - to them - not their targets - to embroil them in “justifying” their right to write and broadcast as they see fit? The Western Standard magazine, during the so-called Danish cartoon crisis got hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the cartoons that all the world was talking about. The action drained the magazine�s resources - but it was free to the complainant.

Meantime real human rights violations - threats of death against Salman Rushdie, riots after the cartoons, death threats against the artists, the persecution of Hirsi Ali, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, neither inspire nor receive human rights investigations.

Maclean�s and its columnists - especially of late - are an ornament to Canada’s civic space. They should not have to defend themselves for doing what a good magazine does: start debate, express opinion, and stir thought. And most certainly they should not have to abide the threatened censorship of any of Canada’s increasingly interfering, state appointed and paradoxically labeled human rights commissions.

Relatedly:

Update: Kathy Shaidle has this linked as well, and her added commentary is well worth repeating:

PS: the site accepts comments, and some are quite good. However, note the number of Muslims — who still can’t spell — calling for a less “one sided” approach to the story yet again.

Once again: why don’t you people just start your own damn magazine, first of all, instead of acting like parasites. (Professional tip: when you do, hire a proofreader for whom English is his first language…)

If you want to be treated respectfully, start by having the self-respect to quit all this crying and begging.

Second, there is no such creature as the “rights of communities to participate in media discussions” (??) except in your fevered, brainwashed minds.

Their complete refusal or inability to comprehend elementary Western concepts like “freedom of the press” and “private property” is truly sad. They wallow in hysterical victimhood, tossing around left-liberal platitudes and charges of “Islamophobia.”

That people like them are the cause of so-called “Islamophobia” escapes them completely.

God save us from these pathetic whiners. Alas in these and other ways, they are perfectly assimilated little Canadians.