Barbara Hall Has Never Met A Speech That Wasn't Too Free

Barbara Hall does a drive by assault on Free Speech. Crap, did I just stereotype Italians, or slow drivers packing heat? Wait, I live in America so I'm O.K. I'm sure she'll pen a response decrying my comments and lamenting the fact that she has no jurisdiction over me or the Vatican. . . or Thomas Jefferson. Sorry Barbara, but take it from a friend, I know Che Guevara is trendy, but the beret is just not your look. Don't sweat it though girlfriend, the brown shirt and the jack boots really accent your luger nicely.

Pay No Attention to that Trial Behind the Curtain

A particularly sinister quality of the Steynian inquisition in British Columbia this week has been the Tribunal's seeming desire not to record the proceedings for posterity. As Deborah Gyapong points out, the Maclean's defense team is having trouble getting access to recordings of testimony because of "equipment difficulty". If the defense team has trouble accessing court proceedings, how difficult will it be for the public? Most of Steyn's supporters (myself included) have been referring to this sham as a show trial, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that these Human Rights Tribunals don't want to be showy at all. They shrink from the light of day. As crass and totalitarian as a show trial is, a secret trial is far worse. Granted, the press and public have been granted access, but it seems to me that the BCHRT wishes they weren't. I think they can't wait for this to be over and forgotten in the minds of the public and press so they can go back to railroading citizens without the fame or fortune of Steyn and Maclean's. Make no mistake, they would love to rule in Elmasry's favor and firmly establish their right to regulate speech and the press, but I think I tend to agree with Blazingcatfur's assessment that self preservation will lead the BCHRT to find in Maclean's favor. The Human Rights Commissions aren't quite ready for prime time. Maybe after another 30 years of tinkering and public apathy, but not now. Quite frankly, this is terrible for Canadian free speech. Both Steyn and Maclean's know that what's at stake here goes far beyond a columnist and a news magazine. They wanted to lose. They wanted to appeal up the line to the Supreme Court. They wanted to overturn Taylor. They wanted to end this fascist institution before it does another 30 years of quiet damage. Winning this battle may cause the public at large to lose sight of the war.

Idiots Guide to what the Idiots are Doing

Here's a great summary of the entire Human Rights debacle in Canada.

Springtime for Elmasry

Day Three of the BCHRT vs. Maclean's, Mark Steyn, and the internet in general has passed and Andrey Vyshinsky, er, I mean Faisal Joseph has yet to call an actual aggrieved muslim from British Columbia, which supposedly is what this is all about. The plaintiffs' case hasn't even begun to be proven, in fact, I'm not even sure if Faisal Joseph knows what he's trying to prove. Yesterday he called an expert on Bollywood who has written articles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Queen Latifa. Now unless the legions of vampires Buffy kills are metaphors for muslims and Maclean's created her, I have little understanding of what she could possibly bring to the proceedings, but of course she was allowed to testify after the Grand Inquisitors retired to chambers in order to consult season 5 of Law and Order for the proper course of action. Predictably she saw abundant stereotypes throughout the Steyn article, and of course the cover, which is a picture of actual muslims, stereotypes them. Now everyone who reads her testimony and looks at her credentials can see she'd see a stereotype in a Bin Laden tape, but there's a larger point here. Are all books - or articles even - going to be dissected by a Tribunal if a "minority" deems them offensive? Is the government going to vet everything published in Canada? What is the standard used to decide what is publishable going to be? The testimony of an expert on Bollywood? This is comically fascistic, but fascistic all the same. Its as if Canadians have become trapped in "Springtime for Hitler". Funny sure, but would you want to live there? I'm sure most Canadians don't.

BCHRT vs. Everyone

Apparently I wasn't too far off when I imagined the BCHRT might go after dead British General Sir Edmund Allenby considering they're now going after American Catholics posting on an American Catholic blog. Why don't they just get it over with and declare themselves international and make the move to the Hague? I'm sure they're just chomping at the bit for a shot at Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and possibly posthumus indictments of Ronald Reagan and St. Peter. For that matter how about Charles Martel? The Battle of Tours has certainly belittled muslims over the years. I certainly hope Canadians start paying attention considering this post is only slightly more ridiculous than the actual actions of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

A "Bizarre and Frightening Spectacle"

Ezara Levant has a very informative piece on who is sitting in judgment over Macleans at Mark Steyn's show trial. I didn't see Vasiliy Ulrikh listed, but it was only day one. The National Post has a pretty good summation of this "bizarre and frightening spectacle". It points out a fact that I at least was unaware of:

"None of the main players starring in this quasi-judicial drama actually live or work in B. C. Not Mr. Steyn, not the editors responsible for Maclean's, and not Mohamed Elmasry, a Muslim who launched a complaint to the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal on behalf of all Muslims in this province."

Apparently the British Columbian Human Rights Tribunal doesn't deal with petty technicalities like jurisdiction. I'm sure its only a matter of time before some imaginative muslim files a complaint in B.C. against Sir Edmund Allenby for the horrible insensitivity he showed when he proclaimed “today the wars of the Crusades are completed,” after drubbing the Turks (A minority in the Ottoman Empire) in 1917.

For now though the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will have to make do with the crimes of Maclean's, and they are legion. Lawyer Faisal Joseph, representing the complainant, describes them in detail:

"The Steyn excerpt that Maclean's published in October, 2006, presented Muslims as 'a violent people' who hold traditional Canadian values 'in contempt,' he alleged. Their religion was portrayed as 'inhuman" and 'violent.'"

Not only that, but also:

"'20 other articles' that ran in Maclean's, beginning in January, 2005; these were also unkind to Muslims. . . Mr. Joseph even slammed Maclean's for publishing letters from readers praising the magazine and Mr. Steyn."

If these blatant examples of Freedom of the Press weren't enough to damn Maclean's, even

"the cover image that Maclean's chose to run with the Steyn excerpt was hauled before the inquiry. The image of two Muslim women, along with the magazine's cover line, 'could have been the picture of a horror cult movie,' declared Mr. Joseph."

Ignoring the hate crime Mr. Joseph committed by implying that a photo of two actual muslim women looks like a "horror cult movie", let's examine this new standard for the publication of photos. If publishing photos of minorities that resemble scenes from horror movies is prohibited, doesn't that rule out Holocaust photos? I can't think of anything more "horrific" than the piles of emaciated bodies awaiting incineration or mass burial. Will the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal actually put Canadians in the situation where both Holocaust denial and Holocaust proof are considered hate crimes?

The Sunset of Canadian Freedom

The more I read about events in Canada, the more thankful I am that some States required the promise of a Bill of Rights before agreeing to join the Union. Canada doesn't have a clear protection of public speech written into its Law. In America, Freedom of Speech is a sacred and unimpeachable right, enshrined in the First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

In Canada however, Freedom of Speech and now the Press have come under increasing assault. The Voltairian principle "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" has been wholly rejected by the Canadian political elite. (In fact this is just a symptom of the general rejection of the concepts of the Enlightenment by Western Civilization in the past hundred years). Human Rights Commissions are now in operation in Canada with the power to police speech in the public sphere. These have been tolerated by Canadians because in the past they have mainly gone after Canadian Nazis (real or imagined) and homophobes (like a pastor who was uncouth enough to take out an add in a paper with quotes from the Bible condemning homosexuality and sodomy. Yep, quoting certain parts of the Bible is now a no-no in Canada.). Now however, the Human Rights Commissions have created a backlash by taking up complaints by Muslim groups trying to stifle discussion of Muslim immigration, assimilation, and terrorism.

The Canadian public has finally taken notice of the tyranny of these courts -even as much of the Canadian press has not- but I fear it’s too late. The defense of speech rights seems to already be lost. How else can one explain this defense of the Human Rights Commissions by the supposedly conservative Attorney General of Canada?

"Dr. Tsesis has developed an extensive critique of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ notion of the “marketplace of ideas,” and reaches similar conclusions: Beyond the theoretical difficulties of Holmes’ marketplace of ideas it is simply untrue that the dissemination of vitriol defuses racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism. Experience disproves the notion that falsehood is always vanquished by truth. To the contrary, history teems with examples of times when lies, distortions, and propaganda empowered groups like the Nazis to repress speech and perpetrate mass persecutions … Even when both true and false beliefs are available, persons often cling to the false to retain power. In spite of the availability in the United States of literature against slavery, that institution did not end through rational discourse but through a bloody civil war."

It is difficult to realize the sheer antipathy this line of thought has toward liberal western democratic tradition without suffering a stroke, but I'll do my best. We'll take it line by line:

"Dr. Tsesis has developed an extensive critique of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ notion of the 'marketplace of ideas,'"

Firstly, who was Oliver Wendell Holmes? Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in the early 20th Century. Holmes stance was that the protections of the First Amendment gave citizens the right to "do harm" with their speech, i.e. insult a person, group, government, etc. unless that speech constituted a "clear and present danger" of causing harm that has been prohibited by law, i.e. injury, death, destruction of property, etc. Basically, someone can write "Eric Schimweg is an asshole" on a sign in their yard or the community newsletter. However, someone may not write "Eric Schimweg's neighbor would do the community a service by beating him to death with his own golf clubs" on a sign or in a newsletter if it provoked my neighbor to inflict bodily harm on my person.

Holmes believed that ideas should sink or swim of their own merit in a "marketplace of ideas". (Ironically he didn't believe in an economic free market). He famously defended the right to dissent during World War I when the Wilson administration passed draconian sedition and treason laws. One may think that minorities must be protected from inflammatory speech by the government, but once a society grants government the power to decide what is appropriate speech, that society can easily lose the right to speak out against said government.

"Beyond the theoretical difficulties of Holmes’ marketplace of ideas it is simply untrue that the dissemination of vitriol defuses racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism."

Holmes believed that vitriolic speech should be allowed into the marketplace of ideas so it could be debated and refuted. Let ideas see the light of day, and let them sink or swim on their own merit. To prohibit offensive speech is to prohibit its dissection and disproval in the full view of the public. Making ideas and speech taboo is to give them more power. Why do some kids carve a swastika into a bathroom stall? Its not because they believe in Nazism or Fascism, it’s because they want to shock and rebel with a forbidden symbol they know little about. As Mark Steyn -who's writing has sparked Canadian human rights complaints- has put it: "what would (Hitler) be most steamed about? That in some countries there are laws banning Nazi symbols and making Holocaust denial a crime? No, that wouldn't bother him: that would testify to the force and endurance of his ideas - that 60 years on they're still so potent the state has to suppress them. What would bug him the most is that on Broadway and in the West End Mel Brooks is peddling Nazi shtick in The Producers and audiences are howling with laughter."

As for stopping "racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism", those are worthy goals, but as Canadians are now discovering, if you create weapons to stifle speech, those weapons can be used to stop discussion on important issues and questions, like sharia law in Canada.

"Experience disproves the notion that falsehood is always vanquished by truth."

This is perhaps the most alarming part of the Attorney General's statement. If we accept the premise that falsehood must be suppressed in order to save truth, because truth can't be trusted to win out on its own, we come upon a sticky question: Who is to decide what is falsehood and what is truth? Is it what the government decides? Shall unelected Human Rights Commissions decide? Is this what we've come to in Western Civilization? The people can't be trusted to make up their own minds? The government must push and cajole them into the correct way of thinking? Does anyone really think that governments can be trusted to be the arbiters of truth? Joseph Goebbels had his own version of the truth. So did Stalin and Mussolini. The British parliament saw "the Right of the People to alter or to abolish" a government that fails to secure their rights as a falsehood. In the marketplace of ideas, some colonists agreed with them, some didn't. In the conflict that ensued, a (mostly) free Constitutional Republic was founded on the ideals of the Enlightenment. Any contradictions remaining in the system were corrected later, not under the guise of the government, but through the actions and competing ideas of free people, often contrary to the views of government. To deny a citizen the right to weigh the evidence and decide for himself is to abandon faith in reason and to reject the concept of the free man.

"To the contrary, history teems with examples of times when lies, distortions, and propaganda empowered groups like the Nazis to repress speech and perpetrate mass persecutions …"

I can't imagine the Attorney General didn't recognize the contradiction in this. We must repress speech in order to stop others from repressing speech. How long until this descends into Jacobism? Shall we establish a tyranny in order to keep others from establishing a tyranny?

This is ultimately a rejection of Democracy. The people can't be trusted. An enlightened dictatorship will protect all. (Directory anyone?) Sound far fetched? Perhaps, but is it such a reach to conclude that if the people can't be trusted to decide what to read and think, how can they be trusted to vote?

"Even when both true and false beliefs are available, persons often cling to the false to retain power."

Again, who is to decide what is true and what is false if not the people themselves? Freedoms of Speech, Press, and Religion among others are specifically designed to protect minorities from a hateful or oppressive majority. Take these away, and the government is able to create its own reality, free from dissent.

"In spite of the availability in the United States of literature against slavery, that institution did not end through rational discourse but through a bloody civil war."

Here is a perfect illustration of a government creating its own truth. The Civil War was not specifically fought to abolish slavery. That is a falsehood. The abolition movement was born in an environment of free speech, both in the United States and in the British Empire. The Civil War may have been the context for the abolition of slavery (two years into the war I might add) in the United States, but the end of the slave trade was decided on through rational discussion and discourse.

Imagine if Uncle Tom's Cabin were examined in terms of truth and falsehood. Certain depictions and stereotypes in that landmark novel are at least exaggerated if not untrue. Imagine if Harriet Beecher Stowe were sued the way Maclean's magazine in Canada is for supposedly stereotyping Muslims and inciting hatred by publishing a Mark Steyn column. Should Stowe's writing career in America have been threatened for stereotyping Southern slaveholders and black slaves the way Steyn's is in Canada? It is indeed a slippery slope.