University of Stupid strikes again

...but I'll defend to the death your right to...

oh.

Never mind.

Ezra explains it in small words

Uh, if all it took was a law to end hate, we would have passed the "Love Each Other Act" a long time ago.There is no magic spell like that. And laws, like section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, that seek to criminalize "hatred and contempt" actually breed more hatred and contempt, for they compound the feelings of grievance felt by those who are targeted by the law, because the implementation of the law is by necessity so politically biased...

I mean, if a government cared so little for real human rights -- right to life, right to self-defence, mobility rights, property rights, etc. -- why would it suddenly stop to care so deeply for fake human rights, like the right not to have your feelings hurt?

He didn't have an answer, and nor did the other dreamers in the crowd, who are clearly looking for some silver bullet to stop the anti-Semitic hate in the world. They didn't take kindly to being reminded that Weimar Germany had anti-hate speech laws...

Ezra Goes to Washington

Ezra told an audience of foreign affairs experts and human rights watchers in Washington: "Add Canada to your watch list of countries that abuse human rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion".

Canadian human rights commissions, however, are not respectful of the sensitivities of all religions. Less politically correct faiths are regularly prosecuted by them. This May, an Alberta pastor named Stephen Boissoin was given a lifetime gag order, never to say anything critical of homosexuality – not in a church sermon, not even in private e-mails. As well, in what can only be called a Maoist verdict, he has been ordered to renounce his religious beliefs, and to publish a self-denunciation in the local newspaper.

This is Canada we’re talking about. Not Iran, not China, not Cuba.

How did this happen? How did Canadians lose their rights, on the one hand, to criticize radical Islam, and on the other hand, lose their rights to practice Christianity?

The answer is a combination of good intentions and bad intentions.

The good intentions came from do-gooders who, thirty or forty years ago, set up these human rights commissions with the noble ideal of promoting harmony amongst different religions and races. But those good intentions came with the power of the law to censor people who said rude, even racist things. So it became illegal in Canada to say anything that was regarded as hateful, even if it was non-violent.


We invented “thought crimes”.

The actual wording of the laws is to ban anything that is quote, “likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt”. Note the word “likely” – you don’t actually have to do anything wrong. You can be convicted for a “pre-crime”, something that hasn’t happened yet. And look at what’s illegal: causing emotions. Not real harm or damages. Just exposing someone to feelings. By the way, the truth of what you say is not a defence. And at the Maclean’s magazine trial last month, half a day was spent determining whether their jokes were funny. They even had a joke expert.

Don’t laugh – literally. Just three weeks ago, a comedian was ordered to stand trial for telling off-colour jokes in a night club. Warning to Chris Rock: don’t bother coming to Canada.

According to Alan Borovoy, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, even a documentary about the Holocaust is against the law, since it could, possibly, cause people to have feelings of contempt for Germans.

At first, these thought crimes were targeted at people so odious, no-one spoke out in their defence. Neo-Nazis mainly – including an 80-year-old man named John Taylor who served 9 months in jail for having an anti-Semitic phone message.

We don’t like anti-Semitism or other bigotry; I certainly don’t. But instead of the traditional answer to offensive speech – more speech, better speech, truer speech – Canada took the easy way, and simply outlawed hurt feelings. Instead of doing the hard work of building a truly tolerant society, we thought we could wave a magic wand, and legislate bad feelings out of existence.

More

The Blogger Problem

Where do you stand on the blogger problem?

"As weblogs represent an important new contribution to media pluralism, there is a need to clarify their status, and to create legal safeguards for use in the event of lawsuits as well as to establish a right to reply, says a recent own initiative report drafted by Estonian Socialist Marianne Mikko."

Oh Ho! I do love it when socialists start talking about "clarifying" the "status" of people who cause them trouble.

...Ms Mikko told us "the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them".

Asked if she considered bloggers to be "a threat", she said "we do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace". She added, "I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why."

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

And who gets to decide what constitutes "misinformation" and "malicious intent" Miz Mikko? Who gets to decide the criteria?

In other words, the real fear isn't either the diversity of media or the rise of bad bloggers -- it's just that they're afraid that speech they don't like will become popular, whereas those who agree with them might get drowned out. That would also explain the ridiculous assertion that Europe needs a "right to reply." A sort of cousin of the fairness doctrine, a right to reply is designed to let someone respond if a publication says something about them that they don't like. This isn't the first time this has been proposed in Europe.

Well, now that the Big Kids are watching

I better get blogging then.

Just taking a quick glance at Steyn's thing on Mark Lemire and Mr. Warman. In truth, I've not really been following it all that closely. It's like the US presidential thing, I let Dale and Steve bore themselves into a coma over that. On the Iraq thing, David is the expert, so I don't have to do the work. Same with CHRC. What can I add that hasn't been said way funnier and better by others?

But something did pop into my mind when I read this:

Let's take it as read that Marc Lemire is guilty, if only because, if you're unfortunate enough to attract their attention, you're guilty: in the entire history of the CHRC, not a single defendant charged with a federal Section 13 "hate messages" crime has ever been acquitted.

It just reminded me of something.

Several years ago, I went through a phase of reading the Greeks. I ploughed through the Odyssey and then went systematically through the plays that dealt with the aftermath of the Trojan war, the pivot around which almost all Greek literature revolves. I remember quite distinctly coming away with the impression that the very worst thing that could happen to you is to be noticed by the horrible, fickle and perverse Greek gods. It never goes well.

If Apollo hates you, you're toast. If he falls in love with you, some other god will become jealous and...toast again. Even if no one else gets upset, and you happen to fancy the village blacksmith instead of the god...you guessed it...toast. Even if some other god comes along and tries to rescue you. Look what happened to poor old Daphne. A tree!? That's the best he could do?

The theme "You can't win" is the guiding principle in Greek thought, pagan fatalism. Once you are noticed by the gods, you're toast. It was the thing that finally put me off any sort of modern revival of paganism. It isn't all sipping absinthe and dancing around trees to Enya CDs.

The whole mindset is alien to me. Gods shouldn't do bad things and problems ought to be solvable. There ought not to be traps like these and I'm infuriated when people just shrug and say, "what can you do?" I'll tell you what you can bloody well do!

Take the case of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister to Orestes. Now there's a disaster that everyone always thinks was "fate". Inescapable. But the solution was perfectly obvious to me, a Christian and a white Westerner.

Agamemnon (who in this production was not played by Sean Connery) wants to go to war with Troy. This has Artemis quite annoyed because she heard Agamemnon, after shooting a deer, boasting about how he's a better hunter even than the gods, and she has raised a lot of storms and things to prevent the fleet from setting out. He asks his soothsayers what to do and they say, sacrifice Iphigenia to the goddess.

OK, right there, Agamemnon had a chance to do the right thing, but, being a pagan fatalist, he blew it.

So he kills his daughter, the storms drop and he sails happily off into legend. But the string of events leads to disaster after disaster. He comes home, Cassandra in tow, to be greeted ten years later by a still furious Clytemnestra who murders him and poor old Cassandra (who has, herself, annoyed Apollo, if I recall, who cursed her with the worst thing I can imagine as a blogger,) and triumphs over his blood in a most grisly and exciting way. Orestes, the good son, and also an idiot, hears this and decides that in order to avenge his father he must murder his mother... which he duly accomplishes, thus incurring the wrath of the furies who pursue him to his miserable end.

UGh.!

Who spotted the flaw in all this?

The one thing that could have been done right from the start that would have solved everything?

No?

It's obvious.

Kill the soothsayers.

Don't play along.

If you hear from the CHRC

don't play along.


The gods are thugs. The gods are fascists. Don't grant them the moral authority. Don't be a dhimmi.

There's no such thing as fate. Fate is pagan nonsense and it's another way in which the CHRC and all their little minions, friends and relations, are opposed to the stoic manly Christian virtues. They expect everyone to just shrug, say, "it's the will of the gods" and sacrifice Iphigenia.

DO NOT sacrifice Iphigenia.

Kill the effing soothsayers and go to war anyway.

"Now listen you queeah..."

Buckley's famous hate crime: