timeimmortal

That would seem to be Mr. Kinsella’s contention, at any rate. Or, rather, his contention would seem to be that because immature youth of today scrawl Nazi symbols on the walls of public bathrooms, MP Dr. Keith Martin should withdraw private members Bill M-446 and all the rest of us in Canada should just not worry about the HRCs or their mission of Censorship.

To be fair, I actually agree with Warren on one point:

That look like a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas, to you? Perhaps Keith Martin and the editorial-writers at the Globe, Gazette and Post think it is, but I sure don’t.

No, I don’t much think it’s a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas. But, equally, so what? So it’s a useless contribution to the marketplace of ideas. Again, so what?

Usefulness is a dangerous criteria to begin to use in determining what constitutes acceptable vs. unacceptable speech in any ostensibly free nation, much like wantedness is a dangerous criteria to use in determining whether it is acceptable, morally or under the law, to terminate the life of a human being prior to the point of natural birth. That is because usefulness, like wantedness, is a side issue, a distraction, a dodge that would-be censors can use in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

No, scrawling “White Power” and two swastikas on the bathroom wall is not a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas, anymore than drawing a picture of a penis on the same wall would be. Strangely, I don’t hear Mr. Kinsella arguing that depictions of human anatomy should be outlawed. I mean, he makes the point of mentioning that the scrawlings he took a picture of* are at “a kid’s eye level**” — if this is all about “the children,” then one would think that Mr. Kinsella, and all decent people, would be every bit as up in arms over grotesque depictions of the human anatomy on bathroom walls as Mr. Kinsella is over this bit of Nazi-eqsue rubbish. Why should some scrawlings be allowed and others disallowed, if in fact all of them send poor/bad/hurtful/disgusting messages to the children?

The beauty of the marketplace of ideas is analogous to the beauty of the actual open-air market, of the sort that one finds all over places like, for example, Greece. At a food market, you can tell within seconds when rotten meat is on display, and react with appropriate revulsion to it. In the marketplace of ideas, the same principle applies; when rotten ideas are aired, the rest of us can react — almost immediately — with the appropriate levels of revulsion. We can hear these ideas and make the conscious choice to reject them.

When ideas are suppressed, even distasteful ideas, people will go in search of them, because curiosity is a part of the human condition. That alone is sufficient argument against the imposition of censorship through the human rights commissions. That those who would seek to maintain the imposition of censorship are reduced to taking pictures of bathroom scribblings to advance their cause is just icing on the cake, I suppose.