Posted on 04/24/2008 1:49:56 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
Last week's letters page included a missive from Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., chief commissioner of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, defending her employees from the accusation of "improper investigative techniques" by yours truly. Steyn, she writes, "provides no substantiation for these claims," and then concludes: "Why is this all important? Because words are important. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free rein. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred."
Hmm. "History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes." Commissar Lynch provides, as she would say, "no substantiation for these claims." But then she's a "hate speech" prosecutor and, as we know, Canada's "human rights" procedures aren't subject to tiresome requirements like evidence. So she's made an argument from authority: the great Queen's Counsel has risen from her throne in the Star Chamber and pronounced, and let that suffice. Those of us who occupy less exalted positions in the realm might wish to ponder the evidence for her assertions.
It's true that "hurtful actions that undermine freedom" and lead to "unspeakable crimes" usually have some fig leaf of intellectual justification. For example, the ideology first articulated by Karl Marx has led to the deaths of millions of people around the planet on an unprecedented scale. Yet oddly enough, no matter how many folks are murdered in the name of Marxism-Leninism, you're still free to propound its principles at every college in Canada.
(Excerpt) Read more at macleans.ca ...
(((.)))
I had long ago given up on Maclean’s because of its hopeless left-wing bias but their fight with the HRC has won back my respect. I think I’ll start subscribing again.
Sad, eh?
The ahistorical nitwits in trying to eliminate hate foment it and undermine freedom at the same time. The left never learns from the mistakes of the past.
BTTT!
Three cheers for Steyn!
It is easy to see what sort of speech (if any) results in violence by starting at the violence and working one's way back. One doesn't find many Steyn columns that way, and what one does find doesn't seem to be the subject of the New Censorship. One might start at the bombing of a bank, for example, and work one's way back to the foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric of the radical Left in the persons of Obama's friends Ayers and Dohrn. One might start at burning housing developments and vandalized equipment and find the rhetoric of Earth First and the ELF. One might start at suicide bombings of innocent civilians and find an insane rant in a mosque. Clearly if there is a link between "hate" speech and violence one would find it where there is both.
And just as clearly the speech this particular censor wants to regulate isn't on that list. Were she honest about the affair she'd be trying to censor those on it, not simply those she finds distasteful that are not. She isn't doing so, and she isn't honest.
They have this HRC crap in Canada, and they have it in England, If the Dems win everything in November we’ll have it here too.
-A lawsuit has been served against our Canadian "sister" site, Free Dominion.--
Please see Wil’s post at #11.
You’re right Wil, this is not about the fall of freedom in Canada, it’s about the fall of freedom in the West, and the world.
I don't have as low an opinion of Canadians as Barbara Hall and Jennifer Lynch do. I don't believe your liberty is the conditional discretionary gift of hack bureaucrats advised by Marxist theorists. You defeat bad ideas — whether Nazism, Marxism, jihadism, Steynism or Trudeaupian pseudo-"human rights" mumbo-jumbo — in the bracing air and light of day, in vigorous open debate, not in the fetid corridors of power policed by ahistorical nitwits.
It's not a left/right thing. It's not a gay/straight thing. It's not a Jew/Muslim thing. It's not a hateful Steyn/nice fluffy caring compassionate Canadian thing. It's a free/unfree thing. And the commissars are on the wrong side.
Wow, that's gonna' leave a Mark Steyn.
>>>They have this HRC crap in Canada, and they have it in England, If the Dems win everything in November we’ll have it here too.<<<
We allowed it on our college campuses for years without making a peep, too. I’m afraid that you’re right - and it won’t matter which candidate wins of the three.
Like Johan Goldberg says, when fascism arrives in the United States, it’ll be a happy, light-hearted variety. No death squads. Just show up at the date and time on the summons. Pay the fine. You’re on probation, and we reserve the right to peek into your home and writings to make sure you’re not writing hate speech. You can attend a series of workshops to clean your record. Have a great day!
Today a boy was arrested in Fountain Hills, AZ for having a “Death List” comprising school officials and fellow students. He was fingered by a friend who attended a different school.
He is charged with disrupting and interfering with an educational institution.
OK, the kid may, or may not, be disturbed, it depends on how serious he was in compiling his list and whether he was going to do anything with it, but my question is - if you write a list at home, you never take it to school, you never threaten anyone, then how are you “Disrupting or interfering with an eductional institution”?
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Too late; see "This is America. When ordering, please speak English." Philly HRC gets slammed.
“Like Johan Goldberg says, when fascism arrives in the United States, it’ll be a happy, light-hearted variety.”
It’s called Diversity/Sensitivity training - no different than self criticism programs under Mao.
Mark Steyn is a true treasure of the Western World.
And what the heck is going on in Canada?????
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