As Canada Goes, So Goes Massachusetts

Ezra Levant is the blogosphere's shock trooper. He takes most of the heat for us as we fight the good fight. (well actually, I'm lucky enough to live in America, where we understand that words don't hurt you unless someone is beating you with a billboard, hooray!) So help him out with a couple bucks for his legal defence (I'm feeling very pro Canada today) fund. Remember, no one cares about Canadian fascism until they invade Maine.

Mark Steyn Redux

More shenanigans to report in Britain's slow motion suicide. Harry's Place blog is being sued for accurately quoting a muslim. Looks like Canada is exporting her values to the world after all. Support Harry's Place here

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.

The Nanny State End Game

The New York Times has an interesting piece today on the circus in British Columbia last week and how unique the United States' protection of speech is in the western world. This got me thinking about how we got where we are today, with freedom of speech considered an "American concept" and many in America asking whether or not we are too free. This whole controversy cannot be completely understood if we only look at it from the perspective of speech. Speech itself must be understood as but one of a group of what Enlightenment thinkers liked to call Natural Rights. I believe that history is beginning to bear out that these rights cannot exist independently of one another. It is all or nothing.

I don't walk around wearing swastikas or denying the Holocaust, and I openly discriminate against those that do. They are not allowed in my house or place of business. Discrimination is not a bad thing, unless it is done by the government. Citizens in a free society should be allowed to reach conclusions on their own and let these conclusions guide their actions as long as they cause no one else direct harm. This is how we treat adults. Your words and actions are judged by other adults and they draw their own conclusions about you. However, many western democracies no longer see their citizens as adults. They cannot provide their own Health Care, the government must do it. They can't plan for their own retirement, the government must do it. They can't afford to provide themselves with the basic needs of life, the government must do it. They cannot be trusted to say what they wish in public, the government must regulate it. This is the natural conclusion of the Nanny State. It has taken some time, but it is finally apparent that totalitarianism isn't the exception in a Nanny or Welfare State, it is the rule. You are not an adult, you are a child. The State is your legal guardian. It will be gentle when it can, stern when it must. You are not to hurt the other children's feelings.

This is the way its playing out in much of the western world. I don't think we should be surprised. When you make the State your parent, don't be shocked when it treats you as a child. America hasn't totally descended into the loving embrace of the State yet. The First Amendment has been settled as an ironclad protection of all but the most directly threatening speech since after the Second World War, but I cannot emphasize enough that it has not always been this way. Americans must be ever vigilant or thus we fall into the Statist temptation. It must be clearly understood that the natural rights of man are not to be individually analyzed as neccessary or not. They must exist as a package, a whole. When just one is disregarded, the rest are on borrowed time. Economic freedom is eternally linked to all other freedoms, and is most always the first to go. Once you are dependent on the State to "make a living", the State will eventually control how you live. America must learn from Europe and Canadians must pray its not too late.

Tell Us What You Really Think

Khurrum Awan can't seem to figure out that he lives in Canada, not Zimbabwe. At a forum on free speech and the curtailment thereof at the Canadian Arab conference he called on Canadian muslims to demand a right to participate in the media. The problem is that Mr. Awan lives in a liberal western democracy. You don't just get to demand things, especially not of private companies or individuals. I guess Mr. Awan "demanded" a sick day when they taught that at law school. But it gets better, or rather, worse:

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars," (Awan) said.

Does Richard Warman know this kid is cutting into his racket? For a supposed lawyer, Awan is being pretty candid about shopping around for an activist judge. Then again, Awan doesn't strike me as worried about that whole "gross miscarriage of justice" thing western legal systems have been trying to avoid since the Magna Carta. I hope wider Canada is fully awake to this now. I hope America too is paying attention to recent happenings in the Great White North (oops, did I just commit a hate crime?). Our courts have a troubling habit of citing foreign cases as precedent. Thank goodness our tort system isn't prone to giving out obscene judgments on ridiculous decisions. I'm sure John Edwards wouldn't jump at the chance to represent a minority group in a class action against the rest of society for not liking them.

Thankfully - for me at least - this nonsense is still confined to the Canadian half of North America. However, if Mr. Awan and his islamist ally Mr. Elmasry succeed in revising the list of Canadian rights then Canada will have proven itself to have a European style spine and the list of potential American allies in a fight gets that much smaller. The friendly, easygoing neighbor we've taken for granted is starting to fade away. In the updated version of "Canadian Bacon" Dan Akroyd doesn't make you write all the obscenities on your truck in French, he hauls you off to Barbara Hall for summary judgment.

I make light of this and have a chuckle where one is due, but some of what Mr. Awan says is truly terrifying.

He said that the argument for limitless free speech "is really a far-right Republican argument that is being imported into this country."

So freedom of speech is just a scheme cooked up by the evil Republicans and George Bush over in the States? For what end? Just to defame muslims? I guess we'll just disregard the last thousand years or so of western history. Its unimportant that the ideals like freedom of speech that America was founded on weren't conceived on our continent. The American "experiment" was the best opportunity yet to put into action ideas that Europe had been mulling over for a few centuries. Mr. Awan doesn't seem to understand that America is a product of the enlightenment, as is the rest of the west, Canada included. He doesn't understand that the concepts of liberal democracy and freedom of speech were developed at the same moment in history, that they go hand in hand and cannot exist separately. Worse though, Mr. Awan doesn't see the need to understand this. As far as he's concerned it never happened. Its all a recent, really "far-right Republican argument". I pray that I don't live to see the day that freedom of speech is only advocated on the extreme right wing.

Its cliche to call this Orwellian, but its a perfect example. Mr. Awan is just making up the past as he goes to fit the situation. Soon Common Law will be a recent GOP invention. The whole HRC process is already an affront to western legal tradition. "Of course we can have a separate sharia law for the Umma, one law for everyone is an intolerant American notion". What will be next? Freedom of Assembly? Representative Democracy itself? I may be spouting extreme worst case scenarios, but once you throw out one supposedly universal human right, aren't the others up for debate?

What Mr. Awan truly needs to understand is why we fear him and his ilk. Its not his religion that gives me pause, its his secular views on the role and power of the State in society. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of who you pray to. What he's really doing is hiding behind Islam and his minority status so he can claim any vitriol directed toward him is actually directed at his religion. I don't believe Mr. Awan is an islamist, terror supporter, or an anti Semite like his pal Elmasry, but I do believe he's a Statist, and to me that's just as damning.

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.

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.

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?

Trudeaupia: Free from Demoralization

It is sad to watch Canada somewhat unknowingly approach the slippery slope of totalitarianism. Once it becomes acceptable to regulate speech deemed "inappropriate", the taboo is lifted and elements of society without the traditional democratic scruples toward censorship rush to end the debate that they've been forced to deal with since the birth of progressivism. My purpose here is not to pick on Canada. Europe is and has certainly been just as guilty. The United States has had her moments as well: The Alien and Sedition Acts of the first Adams administration, the basic suspension of the First Amendment during the Civil War, Wilson's sedition and treason laws, and FDR's stifling of dissent during the Great Depression. However, these were all put over on the public at times of crisis, and thankfully were rejected after the crises were over. I come back to Canada merely because she keeps popping up in the news.

Case in point, the National Post had a story yesterday about the York University Student Union's effort to essentially ban pro-life (in their words "anti-choice") clubs from campus.

In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it "within a pro-choice realm," and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance.

So in response to a controversial debate, they wish to stop the debate by banishing the side deemed inappropriate. Aren't Universities supposed to be forums for free discussion? Well, according to Ms. Massa, it isn't about freedom of speech.

"You have to recognize that a woman has a choice over her own body," Ms. Massa said. "We think that these pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they're sexist in nature ... The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing. They call them murderers, all of them do ... Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women's rights."

This isn't framed by the left as a free speech issue, its "women's rights". Referring to abortion as murder is "demoralizing" to women. Demoralizing? At least they accuse Mark Steyn of inciting hatred. Where exactly is the statute against demoralization? Is the right not to be demoralized now sacrosanct to feminists? What about the demoralizing effect the HRC will have on Mr. Steyn when it bans his writings from the Dominion? Or is it only leftist advocacy groups that should be free from feeling bad? When a cartoonist draws a picture of George W. Bush wearing a swastika, its free speech. When Steyn accurately quotes a Scandinavian imam, or a pro-life apologist calls abortion murder, its inciting hatred and has to be stopped before any number of so called "oppressed" groups becomes even more oppressed (or apparently, demoralized).

To their credit (and my surprise) the schools administration "condemned the decision as contrary to its academic mission". Let me be clear, I'm not trying to paint all leftist students and Canadians with the same brush. There are many liberal Canadians who recognize this for what it is: "Michael Payton, a York student who argued the pro-choice side" points out that "'When the YFS (York Federation of Students) says they believe in free speech, they believe in free speech for them, for the positions they hold, not for freedom of speech for positions they disagree with.'" But these attacks on free speech are appearing more and more in Canada and the West in general. Conservative positions aren't just being looked down upon, but outright banned - in the case of the HRC's under penalty of law. The consequences of this will be enormous, for Liberals and Conservatives. Governments with this power always abuse it. Barbara Hall and the HRC's are actually decrying the lack of HRC cases. How can they reshape society if people don't complain?

What's worse, there's an effort to take the YFS's tyranny national:

"Efforts to formalize the York ban on anti-abortion groups began in earnest last weekend, when the YFS brought a successful motion to the annual meeting in Ottawa of the Canadian Federation of Students, a national umbrella group of student unions.

'Be it resolved that member locals [of the CFS] that refuse to allow anti-choice organizations access to their resources and space be supported. And further, be it resolved that a pro-choice organization kit be created that may include materials such as a fact sheet, buttons, contact information for local pro-choice organizations and research on anti-choice organizations and the conservative think-tanks that fund them," the motion reads.'"

I have no problem with full disclosure of who is behind any organization, but notice that there is no mention of pointing out who is funding pro-abortion groups. Student governments of public universities have no business quashing a student group or club because of their political beliefs. I myself am a conservative who believes abortion to be reprehensible. However, I don't believe pro-abortion groups should be banned from campus. Universities should encourage debate, not conformity. All groups should be tolerated unless they actively advocate violence. (And not the imagined violence Mark Steyn is accused of promoting)

I know Universities have been actively leftist for a long time, and non orthodox view points have been frowned upon if not suppressed. When I was at school, a staff member of the "official" student newspaper tried to convince a business advertising in a new, independent conservative student newspaper to stop by basically comparing it to Völkischer Beobachter. Student's were also discouraged from handing out free issues at University events. But this is chillingly blatant. If students feel they can openly advocate the suppression of free speech and free assembly, what does it say about trends in Canadian society, or Western society for that matter? The last time we had such an exhaustion with Enlightenment principles, Fascism and Communism seemed fresh and attractive. I pray we're not going down that road again.

Update: Apparently Ms. Massa is a pro-abortion muslim student. Its nice to see there might actually be free thinking (if misguided) muslims in Canada, I just hope she doesn't find out the hard way what the penalty for abortion is under sharia. Its not smart to be a moderate muslim and be against freedom of speech. Otherwise in the end you'll probably be stoned.