Posted on 12/17/2007 9:55:14 AM PST by mojito
In the olden days, in this country, people who were hurtin' sang a country song. I remember my little sister, when she was eight years of age, singing one in the kitchen, while affecting to wash some dishes. The lyrics were, as I recall: “My daddy hates me. / My mommy hates me. / My brubber hates me. / Everybody hates me and I'm / not very happy.” It needed at least a banjo.
These days in Canada, if you're feeling down and blue, and you think somebody hates you, you bring your case to a Human Rights Tribunal. And the people you think hate you get that knock on the door, celebrated in the literature of the Soviet Gulag, and wherever else ideology triumphed over humanity in the 20th century's painful course. Your daddy, your mommy, your brubber, or more likely some newspaper pundit gets dragged before a committee of smug, leftwing, humourless, jargon-blathering adjudicators. After long delays that are costly only to the defendant and the taxpayer (and justice delayed is justice denied), you will have the satisfaction of making your enemy squirm, in a kangaroo court where he is stripped of the right to due process, in which there are no fixed rules of evidence, in which the ridiculously biased “judges” make up the law as they go along, and impose penalties restricted only by their grimly limited imaginations -- such as ruinous fines, and lifetime "cease and desist" orders, such that, if you ever open your mouth again on a given topic, you stand to go to prison.
Then finally, on “some autumn night of delations and noyades” (I am quoting Auden), the unrepentant practitioners of free speech will be sequestered by their litigator, and “those he hates shall hate themselves instead.”
Alan Borovoy, one of the pioneers of these star chambers in Canada, now expresses himself aghast at their powers, and how they are being used to bring an end to Canada's heritage of free speech and free press. As he wrote in the Calgary Herald, recently: "During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create [these] commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech."
Against him, it must be said that he and his colleagues simply weren't listening when I and mine explained, decades ago, why this would be their inevitable effect. I think back, for instance, to the dismissals we received when I published Ian Hunter's important article, “What's Wrong with Human Rights,” in the Idler magazine of April 1985. Everything that has happened since has confirmed our darkest predictions.
Including the darkest of those predictions: that intellectuals and the Canadian media simply would not care about defending even their own freedom. They would see it as a Left-Right issue, and being overwhelmingly people of the Left themselves, would actually approve the stifling of “racists” and “misogynists” and “born again crazies.”
But to paraphrase the late Pastor Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the redneck trolls, and I did not speak out because I was not a redneck troll. Then they came for the male chauvinist pigs, and I did not speak out because I was not a male chauvinist pig. Then they came for Mark Steyn, and I did not speak out because I was not Mark Steyn. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
It should also be said that people of the Right, who should have known better, also didn't care. I have several quite plausibly rightwing friends who did not hesitate to use the new “human rights” machinery to lodge complaints about vicious attacks in the media on themselves, on Christians and conservatives generally, and especially on Catholics and the Catholic Church. Their complaints were invariably dismissed by the tribunals on sight, and yet by making them they contributed to legitimizing the process by which free speech could be “reviewed,” as a matter of course, by their most deadly enemies.
For nota bene: this should not be a Left or Right issue. Freedom for one is freedom for all, and tyranny against one is tyranny against all. The remark attributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," perfectly expresses the finest, traditional liberal principle, upon which, ultimately, civil society relies.
I mentioned last week the case Mohamed Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress have brought against Maclean's magazine for publishing Mark Steyn -- simultaneously before multiple human rights commissions, a tactic that is itself an egregious abuse of process. It is a case that should clang alarm bells right across Canada. Yet we've heard only a few modest tinkles.
ping.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
We are aware of it and are ready and willing to offer permanent asylum.
“We are aware of it and are ready and willing to offer permanent asylum.”
Right. Because we are probably 10 years behind Canada on this front.
Coming to a town near you.
Plenty o time. We’ll key an eye on the 9th circus where it will appear first.
“Human Rights Commissions” = Homosexuality Uber Alles
Mark Steyn has no reason to return to that frozen gulag of the North, does he?
I’m sure he could find someplace civilized to call home.
This piece from Steyn on Friday was a beaut:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/child-birth-homeless-1942317-year-percent
ping
They need to move to the USA, where they may be free for a little while longer.
BTTT!
We should invade Canada, kick out all of the lefties and take thier resources.
Anti-freedom jihad from the greatest anti-individual, anti-life collective in the history of civilization is propagated by Canadian dhimmies? This is a very interesting case. Anti-freedom collectives may join forces.
Excellent piece. I thought it was by Marc Steyn himself, until I looked twice at the credits. And that’s a compliment.
I don’t know. This may be the case that breaks the tribunals’ backs. They can get away with gagging an Evangelical minister who preaches against homsexuality, for instance, or maybe a Catholic bishop, but I wonder if they can get away with shutting up Steyn, without living to repent it?
And what will this do to the reputation of the Conservative government if they sit back and let this happen?
I have read Steyn’s book, and I can well understand why the Islamists don’t like it. But there’s nothing hateful in it, or even especially provocative, in the Ann Landers style of writing. It’s just a well researched and well written wakeup call.
I gotta be honest - if your sister says “brubber” for “brother,” she has issues.
As to the law of unintended consequences, laws and even constitutional provisions are frequently applied in ways never anticipated by their authors. Those who voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were assured that it would not result in racial quotas. Civil service laws may have reduced the use of political patronage, but they have also contributed to the rise of an anti-democratic entrenched beauracracy. FDR would not recognize today's Social Security Aministration. The Founders did not anticipate that the Establishment Clause would be used to ban all religion from the public square, rather than to prevent the creation of a state church.
As to the Second Rule of Political Dynamics, those who are in government believe in its beneficence and efficacy. They will therefore seek to extend its reach and power to every corner of society if they are legislatively and financially enabled to do so.
Well intentioned conservatives forget these principles when faced with legislation which may have at least one laudable goal. Here in California our esteemed Legislature has passed legislation banning the use of instructional materials in public schools if those materials cast aspersions on a whole list of protected groups. Our even more esteemed Governor has signed this abomination. I cannot convince some of my conservative friends that this law will result in lawsuits to ban the use of important literary works and ultimately to mandate the use of specific works on the theory that the absence of equal treatment constitutes the casting of an aspersion.
<}B^)
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