Favors citizen advocacy over human rights commissions

Warren Kinsella for the record.

http://www.warrenkinsella.com/index.php?entry=entry080205-100949

He quotes his correspondence with the National Post, hoping to get equal time to rebut today's John Ivison column:

The problem, here, is that human rights commissions have the power to dismiss frivolous and vexatious complaints speedily - and they haven't been using it. They will blame underfunding, but I think that is an excuse. They needed to establish a reasonable threshold for jurisdiction, and that they didn't do. In that gap, Ezra has built a flourishing second career. [I have bolded for emphasis]

Ironically, what I favour most of all is citizen-based advocacy, with no human rights commissions or Criminal Code provisions being necessary at all. Make group defamation easier to do - that is the best way for a society to express itself. When that was done in Oregon in the 1990s with the White Aryan Resistance, it put them out of business. They have never recovered. That is always the way to go, to me - citizen-based advocacy. Being condemned by a peer is always more effective than being pursued by a bureaucrat.

Another Warren Kinsella quote for the record:

As such, I'll keep saying it until someone finally hears me: I don't support the complaints against Steyn or Levant. I think they are utterly without merit. In fact, I believe they have the potential to denude future, more-serious fact situations of all credibility.

Besides: given my own political past (cf. the fuzzy purple dinosaur, inter alia ), I can hardly take the position that it should be somehow illegal to speak caustically - even cruelly - about deeply-held beliefs.

Thus, David Mader's point: the debate, here, should be about where to draw the line - not whether there is a line or not.

url: http://www.warrenkinsella.com/index.php?entry=entry080204-205415

Mader is worth reading. He writes:

For example, I don't think anyone has argued that publication of the Biblical verses addressing homosexuality resulted in harm to the body of any Canadian, gay or straight (or otherwise). Surely some will see an inherent harm, manifest in the perpetuation of homophobic attitudes, perhaps augmenting the obstacles faced by gays and lesbians struggling with their sexual orientation and seeking family or community acceptance.

These harms are absolutely real, in their own way. But the distinction between these indirect harms and the harm resulting from a physical assault should be obvious: all conduct causes indirect harm, to a greater or lesser extent. We focus on the most egregious causes of indirect harm - hate speech, pornography - precisely because they stand at the very edge of the indirect. But if we choose to cross the line, we give up any objective defense against further limits; the only differences between the speech we allow and the speech we proscribe are subjective limits based on the personal preferences of the individuals who enjoy lawmaking power at any given time.

Good stuff. I disagree with Mader, however, that free speech limits are largely settled. They are about as settled as the abortion issue, when 30 years of polls show that Canadians would prefer to have some restrictions on abortion, but our politicians tell us the issue is "settled."

Mader also has an interesting post about human rights in general:

The thing about human rights is, it's pretty hard to argue about who's for'em and who's agin'em when there's no set definition of what 'human rights' actually are.

For instance, if you think that people have a human right not to be subject to hateful speech or literature, then you're likely to think that those who disagree with you are "opposed to human rights." On the other hand, if you think that people have a human right to free expression - including hateful expression - then you're likely to think that those who disagree with you are likewise "opposed to human rights."

and he concludes with this:

Reasonable minds will disagree; they always have. But how about we start disagreeing, and lay off this whole "you don't believe in human rights" meshugas?

Amen!