Me and CTV's Lloyd Robertson

At LifeSiteNews.com, I was surprised to find a photo of myself in conversation with CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson taken during a break in a most interesting panel discussion at the Catholic Media Convention in Toronto.

I will have more to say on this panel later. Here's a bit from the LifeSiteNews.com report.

CBC's Kavanaugh had a fascinating story to tell. He told of spending ten days in England at the introduction of the human embryology bill which similar to such bills in North America allowed for in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research. "Much to the shock of the Gordon government," Kavanaugh recalled, "the Catholic Church went ballistic, they blew up, they issued denunciations of the bill from the pulpit."

The CBC Radio producer continued: "The newspapers were filled with commentary from both sides, the front page of every paper was about the battle over the embryology bill. From an outsiders point of view it was a remarkable exercise in a democratic discussion about legislation that was proceeding through the House of Commons. It flowed into everything because the Cardinals and bishops in England suggested to Catholic politicians that they might not be able to vote in favour of this legislation. Gord Brown was in danger of losing several cabinet ministers, possibly 30 MPs.

Kavanaugh added, "It was an amazing exercise in democracy, the country was afire. I was actually invigorated and envious because we almost never have these conversations in Canada."

Significantly he said, "I've been thinking about this for two months now. I've come to the conclusion that its not our fault, its not the media's fault."

"Because the critical element in that story was a church's willingness to actually engage in public, in the fiercest of terms an issue that they saw as being vital to the future of the nation and the future of humanity. And the difficulty is in Canada churches are almost unwilling to do that, are unwilling to engage in those types of issues, in those types of discussions", he said to a room now riveted to full attention.

I don't fully agree. I think there are plenty of voices who would be ready to argue things cogently on the mainstream media, including several Catholic bishops, and some great academics like Douglas Farrow.

But while Kavanaugh said he's never been in a story meeting where bias against religion showed, I used to work at the CBC and I experienced it on occasion. In fact, one excellent guest, an articulate pro-life family doctor, was referred to by some colleagues as "the odious" Dr. so and so.

Some of the bias comes down to just plain ignorance and the secularist mindset that there just are no good or worthy arguments against certain things, so why bother digging harder to find one, just take the first descredible Bible-thumper one can find.

Give people the words they need to fight for what's right

I'm back from the Catholic Media Convention. Here's a link to the story I wrote on Margaret Somerville's keynote address:

TORONTO - Ethicist Margaret Somerville challenged Catholic media to become “word warriors” and ethics agents to give people “the words they need to protect human dignity.”

“Words matter” because human dignity is under “unprecedented threat,” the founding director of McGill University’s Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law told a gathering of about 400 Catholic journalists and communications professionals at the Catholic Media Convention in Toronto May 28. “A few words can turn the tide.”

Somerville gave an example from a recent a conference in Turkey, dealing with the ethics of the selling of human organs. Most participants shared a horror of organ trafficking and “organ tourism,” but some were willing to consider the sale of organs because the organs are so scarce. Somerville said that at that conference she called the sale of human organs the “21st century form of slavery.” People used to sell the whole body, now they will sell bits and pieces of it, she said.

People need to be given the words so they can express what they believe ethically, she said.

“Give them the words to speak their truth.”

The rest. This is what the blogosphere is doing on the freedom of speech issue and the problems raised by so-called human rights commissions.

The calm before the storm

I apologize for the light blogging. Last week I had company from out of town. Today I am on my way to a big media convention in Toronto, checking in from the train. How I love WiFi.

I wondered whether we had hit a lull in the freedom of speech/"human rights" controversy. Outside of Ezra Levant's daily revelations and Binky's round up over at Free Mark Steyn, things seem to have slowed down. Or is it just that I haven't been paying close attention.

My interest, however, has not waned. I just have other business to take
care of right now. I think we are more likely witnessing the calm before
the storm, the storm that will hit when Maclean's and Mark Steyn actually go
before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal last week.

Meanwhile, it will be very interesting to see what impact the panel at the CAJ Conference will have on the journalists that attended, the one that included Liberal MP Keith Martin, Canadian Human Rights Commission top lawyer Ian Fine and Ezra Levant. Ezra
reported:

There was a stunning moment at the end of the debate. It caused groans in
the audience, and both Martin and I quickly jotted it down to make sure we
got it right: one journalist in the audience asked Fine not just to give the
"official" line, but to tell the crowd what he personally thought about
section 13 and other censorship. His answer: "there can't be enough laws
against hate."

If Ian Fine had his way, section 13 wouldn't be abolished.
It wouldn't even be maintained. It would be expanded. He said he wouldn't
rest until there was "no hate" left.

Wow -- legislating an end to hate. Why not legislate an end to war, hunger and broken hearts, while you're at it?

That's nutty utopianism. Which is fine for old Marxists in universities. But it doesn't work so well when it's married to the power of the state -- the power to exact large
fines, to issue lifetime publication bans and gag orders, and to grind
respondents through years of abusive hearings.

Unaccountable commission with quasi-judicial powers that doesn't even have due process

The Quebec human rights commission has asked members of the Saguenay city council to stop praying before its meetings. -snip- Jason Kenney, federal secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, found the order surprising. “Freedom of religion is a foundational principle in Canada and communities, in my view, have every right to exercise it as they see fit,” Kenney said May 15. “Elected local politicians are accountable to their voters, not to some unaccountable commission with quasi-judicial powers that doesn’t even have due process.”

Seeing Jesus in street people

When Judy Graves first started working in Downtown Eastside Vancouver, she found that dealing with addicted, sometimes violent street people who did not bathe was so stressful she had panic attacks.

She used to have go outside to be able to breathe. But now she walks the streets at night, waking the people she finds sleeping in alleys, under bridges, in parking garages. She listens to their stories, and by afternoon, she has found them a room to sleep in, a source of income and bank account.

"Nobody in their right mind would do this," Graves told members of Parliament, ambassadors, clergy and religious leaders at the Canadian National Prayer Breakfast May 14. "It is not natural to find the homeless appealing.

"You don't. I don't. None of us do," she said. "But God does."

Gotcha coming or going

Ezra has posted his second example of a hateful post put up by a Canadian Human Rights Commission employee, a post that easily violates Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Ezra writes:

It's important that the public -- and Parliamentarians -- know about this corrupt, abusive, counterproductive behaviour, that also just happens to be against section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which the CHRC is supposed to uphold.

Michael Teper writes the following in Ezra Levant's comment box:

Section 13(a) does not have an "official business" defence - there is nothing in the law that excuses someone from prosecution on the grounds that they were acting in the course of an official investigation.

Those who uphold Section 13 as it is can be appalled at the fact that for years employees of the CHRC have been violating this section of the Canadian Human Rights Act in the name of enforcing it. This is not a contestable "fact." These employees have admitted doing so under oath. The evidence is there in Canadian Human Rights Tribunal transcripts.

Whether the CHRC gets disbanded because of the behavior of its employees vis a vis its own governing Act, or whether the whole apparatus, Act included, is deemed an unCanadian violation of basic fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, this is the beginning of the end.

Will be see an amendment that adds an "official business" defence? But opening the Act up to one amendment opens it up to many more. A big public debate will ensue. We could see the Act tightened up to include defences of truth or fair comment; we could see the Supreme Court of Canada's Taylor decision's narrow parameters included in the Act itself.

Better yet to scrap the whole subsection. Then there will not be any violations of the Act, because there will be no Act.

I had been sitting on the fence about having some kind of protections against group defamation, something that would protect minorities from having lies told about them and having dehumanizing things said about them. But as some blogger said recently (alas, I can't remember where, but if I find your post again I will credit you), who would determine what is the truth? I sure don't want some Ministry of Truth run by the likes of a Barbara Hall deciding.

Either way, though, a huge scandal is developing. If you like the law as it stands, there is no way you can like the behavior of its enforcers.

If you think the law itself is an abusive law inconsistent with our entire heritage of rights and freedoms extending 800 years before the Charter, the enforcers' actions are all the more reason to scrap the law.

Keep talking about it---you bet

Sean Berry has a great blog post entitled "Keep talking about it." I will.

He writes:

And again, it hit me: my buddy's just some guy. He might be left, he might be right, but he's still Canadian, and these complaints struck him as incredibly un-Canadian. Before calling me, he probably thought he had nothing to fear by writing or saying any damn thing he wanted. Now I was telling him the opposite. That's a tough thing to hear when you're not ready for it. In a way, it's life changing.

I told him that I knew these commissions were a bad thing because last week I sat down to write something...and I paused.

That is the first time in my life as a Canadian citizen that I have ever thought twice about saying what's on my mind for fear of getting in trouble for it. First time ever. The words of the commissions were going through my head: "likely to expose someone to hatred or contempt."

Okay. So tell me what "likely" means. Or "contempt."

I think the blog was about gay marriage. I'm not against it, but I'm not for it. I think it needs time to sink in, and that it shouldn't be rushed. The reason I paused is I suddenly thought, "Could someone spin this as me "likely to expose someone to contempt?'"

Couldn't they do that to anything you or I write?

That's the problem with Subsection 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It can be spun any way the government appointees choose. Just having to face a complaint is punishment in itself, given the high costs of legal fees that you will never recover, even if the complaint is eventually dropped.

MP Keith Martin asks justice committee to investigate

The Catholic Register has picked up my story on Liberal MP Keith Martin's request that the Commons justice committee take a look at the Canadian Human Rights Act and the operations of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Meanwhile, check Ezra Levant's site regularly for examples of what CHRC investigators have admitted under oath to postingposted while operating under false identities. You will hope Martin is successful in getting televised hearings as the appetizer to a full-blown Royal Commission. Here's an excerpt from the Register story.

OTTAWA - Liberal MP Keith Martin has asked the House of Commons justice committee to hold televised hearings on the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the law that governs it.
“I’m almost certain that they will take a look at all of those and do a very profound dissection of the Canada Human Rights Commission, of what they’re doing, of what they’re not doing in the defence of the true rights of our country,” Martin said.In late January, Martin introduced private member’s motion M-446 to remove subsection 13 (1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act. This controversial so-called “thought crimes” section says no person shall publish anything that “indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate” against any person or persons of various protected groups or material that is “likely” to expose them to “hatred or contempt.”There is no need to prove the speech or publication actually caused any adverse effects; nor is truth or fair comment a defence as they are in libel or defamation civil actions.

Human Rights conference POSTPONED!!!!

I just received an email from the Public Policy Forum that the June 3 conference examining the future of human rights commissions has been postponed. No date has been set, but the email said,
it will be rescheduled "likely next spring."

I had a feeling it would be canceled, since as late as last week, there was no word on who would participate on the panel discussion and go head to head with Warren Kinsella that afternoon. It also looked like it was shaping up to be a snore-fest, at least from this former television producer's point of view.

Most interesting.

Pope's UN talk a wake-up call to Canada

Pope Benedict's speech to the United Nations last month serves as a reminder to Canada that human rights discourse stems from a world view based on universal truths and an objective notion of right and wrong.

"Either we recover some of these assumptions and make a serious course correction," McGill University professor Douglas Farrow said, "or we begin to encounter quite rapidly the consequences."

Farrow sees Canada's human rights commissions as a sign the country is in a transitional phase, because increasingly the Canadians are seeing human rights as what we say they are.

"Thus laws can be written concerning human rights that have nothing to do with universal standards."

SNIP

"Our human rights commissars may fancy themselves gods of a sort, but their time is short," he [Farrow] said. "Events, I suspect, will pass them by. But these may well be events in which we lose more than our freedom of speech.

"You can't expect the culture that we have to simply evolve slowly and in a natural sort of way when you change quite radically the world view and the underlying assumptions."

What it was like to cover the papal visit

When I was in New York City for the Pope's visit in April, I tagged along with the Salt and Light TV team. Here's a slightly shortened version of the story I filed that gives some idea of what it was actually like to cover the event, given the overwhelming security.

NEW YORK - Salt+Light TV producer Kris Dmytrenko thought covering the Pope’s visit to the United States April 15-20 would be like “being a pilgrim with access.”

“It was very different than what I imagined,” Dmytrenko, 28, said. “I thought I’d have free access to roam around, a ‘backstage pass.’ ”

“I was very excited about this trip to cover Pope Benedict XVI’s first trip to the U.S.A.,” said Salt+ Light TV camera operator Wally Tello, 43.

Tello remembered Pope John Paul II’s visit to his native Peru in 1984. Since the nunciature was a few blocks away from his home in Lima, he got to see him up close.

This time however, Dmytrenko, Tello and fellow producer David Naglieri, 27, found themselves swept into a gruelling round of 18-hour days that started with dogs sniffing all cameras and laptops for explosives, hand searches of briefcases, hair-raising bus rides under police escort and Secret Service or diocesan minders keeping everyone in assigned locations.

The Public Policy Forum devotes day to HRCs

The June 3 conference entitled Next Gen Human Rights: the future of Canada's human rights commissions begins with a keynote speech by the Canadian Human Rights Commission's chief commissioner Jennifer Lynch.

The policy panel afterwards gives no names of participants. It is interesting, however, that the panel's billing includes these words: "The panel will also look at the challenges of moving Canadian society in the direction of greater respect for individual and group rights, and will consider whether the commissions are the appropriate tools for that policy goal."

The former television producer in me is going Ack! Ack! Boring alert at the questions this panel will consider. Among them: "Can HRCs be made to be more effective? How?" The other questions will drown the morning in the details of process.

The afternoon features a debate between Warren Kinsella and . . . ? Liberal MP Keith Martin is invited. But not confirmed.

If I were Keith Martin I would not accept the invitation. Martin should debate another MP, not a spinmeister. Have you ever noticed how most panels on television do not mix apples and oranges?

They do not put journalists or columnists up against spin doctors. They do not put politicians up against journalists. They reserve special debates within these various groupings and seldom mix people up outside their genres.

The best person to debate Kinsella is fellow lawyer, blogger and Conservative spinmeister Ezra Levant.

The only reason why Mark Steyn debated the Socks was because they are the public face of the complaint against him.

I have a feeling this gathering is going to be a preaching- to- the- converted fest.
It is awfully expensive for a day so it will discourage various bloggers from attending.

Did Obama really say this?

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.

Does he expect people in Arizona to turn off their airconditioning when it is 116 F outside?

Does he expect people in Minnesota to turn down their thermostats when it is -30 F in the dead of winter?

Is he going to create a bunch of thermostat police with extraordinary powers to break into peoples' homes to make sure they have it down to 50 F in the winter and up to 90 in the summer? Is Michele Obama going to monitor whether we eat too much?

Is he going to bring in a Carbon Tax like Stephane Dion promises?

Is that the kind of leadership he's talking about? As much as I'd love to see a black president of the United State, please, not Obama. I wish McCain would choose a viable black candidate for president as his running mate.

h/t ffof

via sda

I loved it when this guy was U.S. Ambassador to the UN

John Bolton is terrifying to pompous asses, the intellectually effete, and the feminized nice people who think Jimmy Carter was a great president. I loved it when he was U.S. ambassor to the United Nations and cut through the b.s. with his simple, forceful, principled stands. How refreshing.

In today's Wall Street Journal he writes:

Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the "what can we lose?" mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.

I love the clarity and precision in this op ed. Read it all.

And check out Mark Steyn's latest on the talk/talk policy approach. He's another one who makes those without backbones shudder.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.

Robert Sibley's prescription: recover the virtue of real tolerance

Robert Sibley wraps up his excellent Ottawa Citizen series on tolerance today in part three entitled: A Return to Tolerance. Please read the whole series. Link to it. Save it. Refer to it often. And get a subscription to the Citizen to support this kind of great, thoughtful contribution to the ideas in the public square. If only, if only, our politicians sounded like this in Question Period and in Commons debates.

Sibley sums up the problem:

Indeed, dissatisfied with tolerance as a virtuous habit of patience and forbearance, we've tried to sidestep the need for it though various attempts to overcome our flawed nature. Whether through politics or pills, biotechnology or behavioural modification, we seek to order human experience in terms of safe, comfortable and passive contentment. As philosopher John Gray puts it: "Grounded as it is in accepting the imperfectability of the human lot, (classical) toleration is bound to be uncongenial to the ruling illusions of the epoch, all of which cherish the project of instituting a political providence in human affairs whereby tragedy and mystery would be banished."

Isn't this a wonderful picture of the kind of inherent utopianism animating the likes of Barbara Hall and other purveyors of the new so-called "human rights" regime? If only she could rein us all in through her carrots and sticks, we could all live happily ever after in a hyper-tolerant heaven on earth, brought to you by our tax dollars and our ideological superiors. Does she not realize she is the modern Inquisitor of today, with the state power to root out and suppress heresy?

But Robert Sibley provides a prescription that is an emetic for the ideological constipation that's fogging our Canadian brains:

For nearly five decades postmodern intellectuals have claimed that the assimilation of non-western immigrants is wrong because it presumes the superiority of western culture. These cultural relativists insist that the contemporary West, with its hard-won heritage of the rule of law, political freedom and individual rights, is no better than those cultures that remain tyrannical, violent and oppressive. The result has been a "therapeutic multiculturalism," to borrow philosopher Michael Walzer's phrase, that promotes the relativity of all cultures and values. But this relativistic multiculturalism amounts to a de facto surrender of those values and traditions that are the very source of tolerance. Therapeutic multiculturalism, says Walzer, threatens to undermine "every sort of common identity and standard behaviour," creating "postmodern vagabonds" who "may not be the most tolerant fellow citizens."

Unfortunately, this imprudent thinking has infected the public mind with uncertainty and doubt regarding western values and achievements. So much so, says philosopher Roger Scruton, that "western societies are experiencing an acute crisis of identity." Many westerners no longer conceive of themselves according to the Enlightenment ideal as rational creatures capable of rising above the limitations of birth, culture or geography. Now they assume their sense of identity, their sense of belonging, is tied to a particular religion, ethnic group or lifestyle community. This is a reversion to tribalism. And to the degree postmodern multiculturalism fosters this new tribalism, it threatens the West's liberal heritage.

The retention and continuance of that heritage requires putting an end to the self-flagellating psychology of anti-western postmodernism. One small step in this direction is the recovery of toleration, properly conceived. Genuine toleration presumes disagreement. This disagreement, however, is accompanied a willingness to treat the one with whom you disagree decently and respectfully. That doesn't mean, as the postmodern multicultists insist, that you are required to support, nourish, esteem or validate beliefs or lifestyles with which you disagree.

Amen! Amen! Amen! Great work, Robert Sibley. Thanks for an excellent contribution to the debate and for providing all of us with an intellectual framework to bolster our arguments. May your series be read and reread and studied far and wide.

Part one.

Part two.

Most interesting review of Prince Caspian--the Movie

Thomas S. Hibbs writes a most interesting review of Prince Caspian, the movie based on C.S. Lewis' book of the same name from the beloved Narnia series.

He writes:

A wonderful scene in the second half of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian — the second film in the Narnia series, based on C. S. Lewis’s beloved books — highlights the importance of cultivating a memory of the past in the face of strong cultural and political tendencies toward decay and decline. Returning to Narnia after a one-year absence (1,300 years in Narnia time), the Pevensie children — Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) — find themselves in a cave whose walls are covered with ancient drawings. The drawings are memorials to them and their heroic feats in Narnia; it turns out that they have entered a sort of crypt built around the stone tablet on which Aslan was murdered and from which he rose to defeat the White Witch.

The sense of the remote past, as both almost lost and yet recoverable, permeates Lewis’s book. Yet, apart from the scene in the cave, the film neglects this theme in favor of grand battles and a budding romance between Caspian (in a rather lackluster performance by Ben Barnes) and Susan. Indeed, devoted readers of Lewis’s books will likely take umbrage at the many changes the filmmakers have introduced. The unsettling question they ought to be asking themselves is whether the film transforms what, following Chesterton, we might call a great romance of orthodoxy into a Hollywood bubble-gum romance.

(. . . )

Hibbs praises aspects of the movie, but goes on to highlight what Lewis was trying to do in his novel that the movie lacks.

Lewis is doing more here than giving us a prolix prelude to a final battle. He is attempting to captivate his audience with the art of storytelling and with the superiority of real history over what passes for knowledge of the past in contemporary culture or in an ordinary academic setting. Lewis is also telling us something about the eponymous Caspian, a royal son, raised by his scheming uncle Miraz — who, it turns out, murdered Caspian’s father, and whose opportunistic desire to care for Caspian dissolves once his own wife gives birth to a son. We also learn that Caspian is from his youth a “lover of the Old Things,” in contrast to his uncle, who actively seeks to suppress the ancient and heroic history of Narnia.

Now, it makes sense to streamline Lewis’s historical narration, but, apart from the scene in the cave, the film fails to find a way to inject its version of the story with Lewis’s sense of devotion to the “Old Things.” Stressing Caspian’s longing to revive a lost way of life would have given his character greater gravity, something needed in the film to counterbalance the boyish good looks of Ben Barnes. His pretty appearance, the lack of character depth, and the filmmakers decision to focus on his innocuous flirtations with Susan render him a less than persuasive embodiment of Lewis’s main character.

I have become a lover of Old Things, someone who desires to recover a lost past. I feel I am walking among the precious ruins of Western Civilization, hoping somehow we can revive what was best about it. I also believe the pivotal moment in human history began with the incarnation of Jesus Christ and culminated in His death on the Cross. That is the history we most need to recover, so that we know He rose again, and because He lives, so can we live forever with Him.

At my little church, we use the King James version of the Bible, and the old Book of Common Prayer, once the glory of the Anglican Church, but now in the dustbins of most Canterbury churches. Instead they have a Book of Alternative Services that has modern inclusive language written by people with a tin ear for poetry and a dead ear for the still small voice of God.

Must read primer on tolerance by Robert Sibley

One of the things I have been trying to do on this blog is to try to sharpen my own thinking about human rights and freedom of speech so that I can be an able defender of our fundamental freedoms now under attack in Canada. I am looking for clear ideas, logical arguments, thoughtful approaches that cut through the confusion and relativism of our present cultural Alzheimer's disease.

Today, The Ottawa Citizen's Robert Sibley, in part two of a series, does such an excellent job of placing what ails us in context in a piece entitled Define True Patriot Love. It's a beautifully-written, philosophically-grounded but accessible look at how we have come to this present pass. Please print it off and read it. Link to it, quote it, and reread it and refer to it often. It is an excellent primer.

Sibley is one of the reasons why the Ottawa Citizen still rises to be a great paper in a post-Conrad Black world. I would also advise those who are interested in pursuing the ideas trail further to check out some of his sources, especially J. Budziszewski, a modern-day expert on natural law and the role of the conscience. His seminal essay Revenge of the Conscience is also a must-read.

Sibley writes:

Postmodern hyper-toleration is arguably a reaction to the decline of what philosophers and theologians call ethical theism. The term refers to the assertion that there are unchanging standards of right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. When Christianity held sway over the western mind, these ethical concepts were tied to the reality of God's existence. God was the guarantor of moral standards. This theistic ground provided the moral bedrock of western civilization.

However, as philosopher Charles Taylor argues, the God-based worldview has lost its hold on the western mind since the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Many westerners no longer regard God as the source of truth and morality. Many believe, unreflectively or not, there are no eternal moral truths, that morality is what humans decide it is, while the "truth" of reality is determined by the methods of science. This secular notion that we are the sole determiners of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, informs the modern project to remake the world according to our will and technological capacity. As secular moderns, we made unencumbered human reason our faith, believing it provides us with the means to create heaven on Earth.

Only it hasn't worked out that way. Trench warfare, concentration camps, crematoria, killing fields and cities obliterated in a flash of light and heat; such phenomena, the unintended consequences of the marriage of science and will, have cast a shadow on modernity. As Taylor observes, the success of secularism depended on science's "disenchantment" of the world, but now there is widespread disenchantment with secular humanism. The narratives of modernity that replaced religion as the West's dominant "social imaginaries" -- faith in rationalism, belief in progress, the pursuit of objective truth, etc. -- are now under attack.

On this point we enter the Alice-in-Wonderland world of postmodernism. To the postmodern mind, "truth" is whatever you, or the group with which you "identify," say it is. In the words of theologian Stanley Grenz, "Truth is relative to the community in which a person participates. And since there are many communities, there are necessarily many truths."

Reason suffers a similar fate. Scientific reason is a "social construct," something we have been conditioned to accept because of the hegemonic power of western technology. Likewise, all this Enlightenment nattering about universal values is merely an expression of western imperialism, an attempt by white men to assert planetary rule under the guise of high ideals. According to the postmodernists, anyone (read: white western males) who tries to claim that what he says is objectively true, and uses this "truth" to judge the values, beliefs or lifestyle of another culture or group, is engaging in a power play to dominate that culture or group.

This deconstruction of the western cultural heritage produces the postmodern claim that all cultures are equal -- cultural relativism, in short. This idea, in turn, radically inflates the concept of tolerance. It is no longer sufficient to "tolerate" or endure the views of others for the sake of civil peace. Now you must accept different views as equally valid, equally worthy of respect, and equally legitimate in terms of social function. Everything and everyone must not only be tolerated, but also recognized, esteemed, valued and validated regardless of content or consequence.

Part one of Sibley's series is here.

The great sleight of hand that stole our rights

The editorial writers at the National Post get it. They have a deep enough philosophical and legal grounding to give them a clear-sighted view of the crux of the problem facing Canada today.

That vision comes out in today's editorial entitled Mangling the Charter on the most recent Supreme Court of Canada decision the editors find troubling. The money quote:

Justice Abella's reasoning on publication bans goes against what we had thought was the first rule of Canadian public law: The Charter of Rights is there to protect citizens from the government, not from private actions. Citing a heap of tendentious sociological evidence, the majority in D. B. argues that "lifting a ban on publication makes the young person vulnerable to greater psychological and social stress. Accordingly, it renders the sentence significantly more severe." As newspaper editors, we are startled to learn that our reporting could be logically considered part of a judicial sentence against a criminal.

In case you missed it: "The Charter of Rights is there to protect citizens from the government, not from private actions."

This is such an important concept and it lies at the heart of the whole debate concerning so-called human rights commissions. The Human Rights Commissions are acting as if the Charter is there to give them extraordinary powers to trample foundational human rights in the name of alleged victim groups, often through complaints on behalf of these groups by persons who are not themselves members of that group.

What gives the state the right to come in and trample on fundamental civil rights like freedom of speech in the guise of protecting citizens from speech that may offend them?

Sometime over the past 40 years, even before the Charter, Canadians have missed the sleight of hand that switched our civil rights, based on 800 years of tradition, and replaced it with the Nanny state's bogus, ersatz concept of rights based on the hocus pocus social science propaganda. Shoot, I got my degree in Sociology. It masquerades as a science.

With our eyes focused on the "glittering" social science data, the magicians of an illiberal regime have replaced our God-given rights and freedoms with a power-hungry state that is seizing power to suppress rights in the guise of protecting vulnerable citizens. Yet when real civil rights are being trampled by thuggish behavior, sometimes by criminal warlords acting in the name of some disadvantaged group, the state backs off to avoid confrontation. Instead it picks on people who have done little more than express an unpopular opinion but pose no violent threat to anyone.

Thus the latest jerk with a PhD in social sciences riven with materialist and reductionist philosophies gets persuade our secular fundie elites to throw out our common heritage based on titanic thinkers going back to Moses, Plato, Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Burke, Locke and on and on.

Wake up, Canada. But given the kind of thinking now dominating our Supreme Court, it may already be too late.

Wow-- A "human rights" decision in favor of a Christian group!

Generally, human rights commissions and tribunals tend to punish Christians. They uphold complaints against them. And they tend to dismiss complaints made by Christians when someone has discriminated against them or defamed them as a group and spread calumnies about their religion.

But the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal accepted a complaint by a campus pro-life group and now this group has reached a settlement with the campus student union. LifeSiteNews.com reports:

VANCOUVER, May 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) –The Capilano College Heartbeat Club and the Capilano Students Union (CSU) have reached an agreement that will see the pro-life Heartbeat Club achieve CSU club recognition, pending they submit an application in the fall. The parties released a joint statement shortly after the agreement had been made:

"The Heartbeat Club filed a Human Rights complaint against the Capilano Students' Union. The Club and the CSU have entered into a settlement agreement which is confidential. The parties agree that there is no admission of liability by the CSU and that the Heartbeat Club will be entitled to CSU club status if they apply."

The summer of 2006 saw the CSU pass a motion put forward by a member of the campus “Women’s Center” that made the group an official “pro-choice” organization. Shortly after, the CSU denied the Heartbeat Club’s application requesting official CSU club status. After a second application was also denied, for the reason that the club would hinder "a woman's right to choose", Heartbeat forwarded a complaint to the British Columbia human rights tribunal, that stated the club was being discriminated based on religious belief.

Har har har, heh heh heh, har har har. This is too funny.

Next time someone says or writes something to hold Christians up for contempt, an emboldened member of my religion might complain, invoking Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act or its provincial counterparts. It won't be me, but frankly, I can understand why some of my fellow believers might be so inclined.

All these lefties who have been upholding Section 13 when it targets legitimate Christian and conservative opinion will suddenly join the cause of freedom of speech because they can't defame Christians anymore if we see more Christian complaints and more being acted upon by commissions and tribunals. Next time some political columnist refers to social conservatives as knuckledraggers, he or she might have to go through the crazy abusive process that Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are going through. Not that I agree with doing that on principle, but a lot of my fellow Christians have decided enough is enough. They have had it with a process that is anti-Christian to its roots and are going to start insisting they get a fair place at the multicultural table if that's the one that is being set.

What's fair is fair. If we are going to have these oppressive laws, then Christians need to be protected by them too. No more discrimination against us, not more defamation, no more holding us in contempt.

No wonder the folks at Rabble have realized they better fight for freedom of speech. They would have been toast for their cartoon of the Pope giving the Heil Hitler salute to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Talk about hate speech and defamation in that thread. Ugh. Disgusting.


DO YOU GET IT YET??????

A negative image of Canada's Justice system

Mark Steyn has called the "human rights" apparatus of federal and provincial commissions and tribunals a parallel justice system. He's right. But it is not only a parallel system, it increasingly seems to me to be a negative image of our criminal justice system. In a film negative, the dark spots will come out light in the developed picture, and the light portions will be dark. The "human rights" apparatus is a reverse image of Canada's criminal justice system. Black is white and white is black.

I belong to Capital Crime Writers, a great writers group for novelists, short story writers and aspiring novelists who work in the mystery, crime and suspense genres. I'm on the committee that books guests to speak at the once a month meetings, and last Wednesday it was my pleasure to introduce an assistant Crown Attorney, who spoke at length about her job.

If the Socks make you discouraged about the present state of our law schools, the bright, pretty assistant Crown Attorney would have reassured you that all is not lost, that some young law students are still being schooled in good principles based on the rule of law. You would have found her intelligent, articulate, logical, idealistic in the pursuit of real justice, committed to principles such as innocent before proven guilty, rules of evidence, and the Crown's pursuit of truth rather than convictions--i.e. the disinterest on the Crown's part of winning a case just for the sake of winning.

She spoke about the good faith that she experiences in the courtroom among all members of the bar and with the police, good faith assumptions that people will be operating according to these same principles.

What a contrast to what is emerging about the ways human rights commissions operate. Would a real Canadian court of law ever allow evidence to be switched at the request of the Crown in cahoots with an alleged victim? The assistant Crown Attorney spoke about the fact that they have to disclose everything they have to the defense attorney, including copies of the police notebooks and all the witness statements, even those of witnesses that might have testimony that is injurious to a possible conviction.

Where are the copies of the notebooks belonging to the Canadian Human Rights Commission investigators? Where are the detailed explanations of when and how they assumed the Jadewarr identity to go online and lurk on possible hate sites? Or do they even keep detailed logs of what they do? Is that the reason why there is so much "I don't remember" and "I don't know" ?

Another thing that is interesting given the Justice Department's brief in support of the thought crimes provision, is the stress on the effect of hate speech on potentially vulnerable groups.
This is why the intent of the alleged hatemonger is not considered relevant, nor are defenses of truth or fair comment.

Think about it. One of the key ingredients in a criminal case is mens rea, or a "guilty mind."

If I bump into someone accidentally that is quite different from my deliberately assaulting them
and Canada's criminal justice system recognizes that.

But if I accidentally publish alleged hate speech, even if I have no intent to publish hate speech--AND DON'T ACTUALLY HATE ANYONE--I'm toast if a designated vulnerable group feels like complaining my words are likely to expose them to hatred or contempt down the road.

As a journalist, I could write about crime statistics that show some groups are disproportionately represented, I could write about various overseas conflicts, I could write about some Catholic doctrines, or I could quote what some radicals within some violent movements actually say and find myself the subject of a complaint and ground to a powder by a process that is so oriented towards potential victims that there is no need to show that an actual crime has been committed against them, only the likelihood of their being exposed to hatred or contempt down the road at some undefinable date.

Another thing that struck me about the Justice Dept. brief was its internal contradictions.

The brief states:

2. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) prohibits only a very narrow range of speech, specifically expressions of "unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and villification," (the quote comes from the Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor in 1990) There is little or no truth value in hate propaganda to attract the protection of the Charter.

Interesting. The Supreme Court's words would seem to speak to intent, when referring to "unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation".....and the court seems to be speaking to the importance of truth when it uses words like calumny and villification, because both these words basically mean spreading lies with a deliberate attempt to harm.

Yet later in the brief the Justice Dept. states:

37. . . .The defences of truth and fair comment remain available to torts such as defamation and seditious libel, regardless of the medium in which they occur. However, none of the traditional media can avail themselves of those defences in cases of alleged hate propaganda . . .

Frankly, if Section 13 actually had the words from the Taylor decision included, that decision might have provided guidance for various commissioners so that complaints against various Christians and against Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant and the Chronicle Herald cartoonist would have been dismissed immediately.

But it human rights commissions are not interpreting Section 13 and the provincial counterparts to that section in light of Taylor. They have gone way beyond the very narrow parameters the Supreme Court justices envisioned when they upheld its constitutionality. And yet the Justice Dept. brief as the audacity to say revisiting S. 13 in the courts would be an abuse of process.

What was designed with the best of intentions has run amok like Frankenstein.

I might even support some kind of law against group defamation that falls under the Supreme Court's guidelines in Taylor, as long as truth and fair comment remained defenses and one's hateful intent had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And if there was a built-in fairness so that the accused legal bills were picked up (or assigned to the complainant) unless he or she was found guilty under these very limited circumstances. And if I could have a real, impartial, trained judge instead of an ideologue presiding.

The Pro-life Movement is the Civil Rights Movement of today

The pro-life movement is the civil rights movement of today. That was the message of the 11th annual National March for Life that drew 7,800 to Parliament Hill May 8.

"We now treat unborn babies like blacks were treated," Alveda King, the daughter of civil rights activist Rev. A.D. King and niece of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., told a news conference sponsored by the parliamentary pro-life caucus.

Even thought DNA and ultrasound tell us that unborn babies are people, they are treated as if they are not. It is discrimination to get inconvenient people out of our lives by calling them subhuman, or a mere clump of cells, she said.

She decried the growing practice of sex selection abortion that has created skewed populations in countries like China. People want a boy, but they "hide their discriminatory attitudes towards females behind the discrimination of abortion. Blacks and the disabled are also targeted this way.

King (on the right) stands with members of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

Rob Nicholson sighted in Ottawa

I have had two Rob Nicholson sightings in the past two days! From reports, these sightings are pretty rare. For example, the Justice Minister has not responded to Mark Steyn's requests for interviews, so Mark wondered if he had entered a witness protection program.
I know of at least one other journalist who has tried to find him for an interview and had no luck. Ezra Levant recently urged Nicholson to call his office.

My first sighting occurred on Wednesday. I was walking along the first floor corridor in East Block
and poof! There he was! I was so shocked that all I could muster was, "Hello, Mr. Nicholson."

He's a very nice, cordial man. So, he said "hello" back. He moved by too fast for me to say anything more. I wondered whether he has ever read my blog.

To my surprise---I saw him again on Thursday morning. I felt like a bird watcher who had managed to sight the same rare species twice in a row in different environs. But he was faaaaaar away, up high on a platform at the head table of the Canadian National Prayer Breakfast, while I was seated at a round table in the Congress Centre ballroom way towards the back.

Nicholson sat next to representatives of the three other political parties in the House of Commons and read a Scripture passage selected by Judy Graves, a Vancouver homeless advocate who gave the keynote speech. Bloc MP Raymond Gravel was up there, too, wearing his Roman collar. NDP Leader Jack Layton was up there reading Scripture, too--the only party leader I could see at the packed event that has grown too large to be hosted on Parliament Hill anymore. There were more than 800 people, including MPs from all parties, ambassadors, clergy and religious leaders.

It is my hunch that Nicholson does not agree with the Justice Department brief that has caused such an uproar on the blogosphere, though I do not know Nicholson in the same way I know many of the other MPs and cabinet ministers. Given how busy cabinet ministers are, it is distinctly possible that he had not even read it, though I imagine (and I hope) he has now, or his staff deserve to be fired en masse.

There are others who know me well enough to talk to me off the record, but he's not one of them. Nicholson is caution personified. I think that's why he was put into the job and Vic Toews shuffled from Justice to Treasury Board. While Toews is eminently quotable , Nicholson is a master of blandness. You'll never catch him making a gaffe (which is why he was put in the post during the controversial marriage debate), but you're pretty unlikely to see him quoted anywhere either, because journalists are looking for spicy 7-second sound bites, or quotes that zing off the page. Nicholson deliberately does not provide them.

Ezra Levant has a good overview today of the growing momentum to end the abuses of so-called human rights commissions.

He writes:

It's tough to gauge political momentum in Ottawa, especially from 3,000 kilometres away. But I think that the campaign to abolish section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the thought crimes section, is positively buzzing.

Well, I'm here in Ottawa and yes, it is positively buzzing. But a lot of the buzzing is still behind the scenes. My tally of MPs who support MP Keith Martin's motion to axe s. 13 continues to grow well beyond the number whose support has been identified publicly.

But the press gallery has not picked up on that buzz. For example when Keith Martin scrummed yesterday at the microphone in the House of Commons foyer and called the Justice Department brief "shocking," the size of the scrum was not exactly huge and bristling with microphones. CP's Joan Bryden drifted by as did the CBC's Julie Van Dusen, but I don't think they stuck around long. CPAC was there, but asked a question on something else. Mostly it was CFRB Radio bureau chief Brian Lilley and myself.


As Ezra points out, now that the Justice Department has filed a brief in support of the controversial thought crimes provision, the mess has landed on the Justice Minister's lap and he is going to have to respond:

But the chemical reaction really heated up when the Department of Justice released its outrageous legal brief in support of section 13. The kind of junk arguments in that memo -- that slavery and the Holocaust wouldn't have happened had there been hate speech laws; that the legal defences of truth and fair comment ought not to apply to "hate speech"; that Jews rely on hate speech laws for their self-esteem, etc. -- are the sort of thing one encounters all the time at human rights commissions. But what made this so stunning was that it was a memo written by two of the Justice Minister's own lawyers, Simon Fothergill and Alysia Davies, not some arms-length commission. These weren't CHRC nutbars. They were Rob Nicholson's own nutbars. And 50 pages really lets a guy and a gal express their nuttiness well.

That memo caused a buzz on my own website, spiking traffic, and not just from outraged readers (including appalled conservatives and Conservatives). Judging from my visitor statistics, plenty of folks in Parliament, the Justice Department, the Federal Court of Canada and various human rights commissions were very interested in the public reaction the memo got -- including that it got a public reaction at all. I understand that Blazing Catfur, who has done a particularly good job at rebutting the junk law in that memo, has received a spike in nervous visitors from both the Justice Department and the CHRC, too.

But the memo (which you can read here if you have the stomach) has caused a ruckus bigger than the blogosphere. I have had two reporters -- who haven't reported on HRCs before -- e-mail me to get background on the memo. One reporter -- to his credit! -- didn't even believe the memo was real, asking me for corroboration that it wasn't a "forged document". That's exactly how I reacted to so many of the insane details about the CHRC when I first encountered them: I simply didn't believe they were real. (I mean, if a Hollywood screenwriter came up with this, it would be rejected by test audiences with a "yeah, right!")

This document is radioactive. But it is couched in a lot of bromides about human dignity that are appealing on the surface, lulling the unwary and concealing its draconian elements, such as that truth and fair comment are no defense when it comes to alleged hate speech; or that revisiting the constitutionality of s. 13 would be an abuse of process. Or its insistence that human beings are irrational and therefore they need to have hate speech laws. Yeah, and leftwing ideologues know so much more about human nature than the philosophical titans who provided much of the foundational thinking for our traditional understanding of the rule of law and real human rights. The document basically chucks reason out the window and assumes that we need the likes of people like Ontario Human Rights Commissar Barbara Hall or Canadian Human Rights Commissar Jennifer Lynch to monitor our irrational tendencies.

Who is going to monitor their irrational tendencies?

We may not see action immediately. Marc Lemire is not someone I suspect the Tories want to risk making a poster boy for freedom of speech. Taliban fighter Omar Khadr gets more sympathy as a former child soldier experiencing an alleged miscarriage of justice than Lemire does, at least on the front pages of Canada's newspapers.

A response may have to wait until after Mark Steyn and Maclean's Magazine go before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. (If the Commission folks are smart they will dismiss this complaint, like yesterday).

I hope Keith Martin is successful in getting the Commons justice committee to hold televised hearings that will require members of the commission to testify and face examination and also give an opportunity for those pro and con the thought crimes provision to speak. The best bet, however, would be for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to call for a Royal Commission headed up by great nonpartisan legal minds who could subpoena witnesses and make them testify under oath. We need not only an examination of the law, but also an examination of the process.

This independent commission could then make recommendations that the government can put in place, with I hope the support of most parties. Harper was able to bypass the controversy over Afghanistan by a similar move. He might find that calling a Royal Commission the most responsible way to proceed.

Keith Martin responds to Justice Dept. brief

After Question Period on Thursday, Liberal MP Keith Martin responded
to the Justice Department brief that defendsthe anti-free speech 
subsection 13 (1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

"Were you shocked to find out that the Justice Department's
 own filings said truth and fair comment are no defence?" 

"Well, there were a lot of things in the Justice  Department's missive
 which I find absolutely shocking," said Martin. " Not only that but about
blithely talking about restrictions on freedom of expression.  That
has absolutely nothing to do with hate crimes, nothing to do with hate
crimes and nothing to do with hate speech whatsoever.  So the Justice
 Department's missive really was a trampling of basic human rights, human
 rights that are enshrined in our Charter and I was very disturbed by
 their intervention.  So I'm hoping that our Justice Committee actually
reviews the Commission and hopefully they'll be able to -- that we'll be
able to bring in members from the Justice Department to be able to
account for their statements."

Martin has sent letters to all the members of the Justice Committee in hopes it will
hold televised hearings that will not only examine s. 13 (1) but also how the
Canadian Human Rights Commission operates. That will include how the commission handles
evidence, whether investigators are using assumed names to plant hate messages and
entrap people, and the way respondents are treated as if they are guilty until proven
innocent.


"All these things are very disturbing and that's why I'm
bringing this up so that we can take a look at the Canada Human Rights
Act and also the Canada Human Rights Commission and the committee is a
master of its own destiny.  It will do what it feels it should do and
it's up to the members.  But I'm almost certain that they will take a
look at all of those and do a very profound dissection of the Canada
 Human Rights Commission, of what they're doing, of what they're not doing
 in the defence of the true rights of our country."
 Question: "The first thing that happened when you raised the issue of
 repealing Section 13-1 of the Human Rights Act was you were linked with
 white supremacists and you were out there for people to support the
 KKK.  Do you think the Conservative government is afraid to even touch
 this issue because they're afraid of being associated with the same
 thing?" 

"I think Mr. Harper has told Mr. Nicholson, our Justice
Minister, to put a muzzle on their MPs.  But the Conservative MPs, as
many members in my caucus, have expressed deep concerns about where the
Canada Human Rights Commission has gone.  They have expressed a great
deal of support for my motion to remove Section 13-1 from the Act.  And I
think that's a fair thing to do would be to have this out and open.
Have a public hearing through the Justice Committee and televise it so
that Canadians coast to coast can hear those who believe that the status
quo is acceptable and those of us who believe that the Human Rights
Act has to be amended to ensure that we have freedom of speech because in
my view freedom of speech is being trampled in Canada right now. 


What are the chances that the Justice Committee will take a
 look at this because they've been a pretty dysfunctional committee up
 until now?

I think -- I've spoken to members on the Justice
Committee and there's a great deal of support across party lines to deal with
this because members on the Justice Committee recognize that the
removal of Section 13-1 and an investigation of the Canada Human Rights
Commission is in support of that fundamental human right, the right to
freedom of speech.  And they recognize that it is our responsibility to
defend this right, a right that Canadians bled for and fought for over two
world wars and that it is our responsibility in this House of Commons
to defend that right. 


Question: Now at the very end of the Justice Department brief it
 talks about how the law is settled as if to even inquire about this or to
 take it up to go to the Supreme Court again would be an abuse of
 process.  What do you think of that?

Well, laws can be changed and the Human Rights
Commission, Canada Human Rights Commission came about at a time with very
laudable goals.  The goals were to ensure that people had recourse if they
were being discriminated against, against employment -- in employment or
in housing.  Those are laudable goals that we embrace and fully support
but over time their actions and mandate have changed and some of the
actions that they've been taking of late have been very disturbing I
think to a lot of us and to a lot of Canadians.  So that's why I put forth
the motion to remove Section 13-1 but I think taking it to the Justice
Committee, having a public and televised assessment of the
proceedings, having an examination of the Canada Human Rights Act and the
Commission will serve the Canadian public and serve the fundamental rights that
are the pillars of our democracy.

The Binks waxes eloquent on a free Interent

He writes:

In any case, if the lights are starting to go out on the free web, let’s rage and fight against the dying of the light, and make the maximum good mischief we can while opportunity affords. After all, the foundation of Western civilization is not the power of rulers or the whims of bureaucrats, but the eternal light shining from the broken tomb, an undefeatable victory.

Even if we’re not sure about faith, we can act as if we do, and fight for the right with a hope and confidence and character that worldly power cannot understand or destroy.

Amen and Amen and Amen.

Read the whole thing.

And while you are at it, scroll down and look at the Giant Puppet Worship video that's headlined as an advertisement for atheism. ROTFLMAO

The draconian government defence of hate speech laws

I just printed off the Dept. of Justice brief in defence of the hate speech provisions (Subsection 13 (1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Just skimming around I came across this horrifying argument.

37. Mr. Lemire complains that the prohibition against disseminating hatred via the Internet is not accompanied by the defences of truth and fair comment that are available to tradtional news media in torts ranging from defamation to seditious libel. This argument is misleading. The defences of truth and fair comment remain available to torts such as defamation and seditious libel, regardless of the medium in which they occur. However, none of the traditional media can avail themselves of these defences in cases of alleged hate propaganda, whether the communication appears in print, on television or on a website.

38. As the Federal Court has explained, defences that may be available in tort actions are not available in cases of hate propaganda because the prohibition is concerned with adverse effects, not with intent.

In case you are still sleeping, TRUTH AND FAIR COMMENT ARE NO DEFENCE WHEN IT COMES TO ALLEGED HATE PROPAGANDA. AND THIS IS THE OPINION OF THE CONSERVATIVE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.

I guess that's why the new totalitarians equate Oriana Fallaci a journalist who told the truth, with Ernst Zundel an anti-Semite who lied because truth does not matter.

The brief then goes on to quote the Supreme Court of Canada's reasoning in the Taylor decision:

I am of the view that the Charter does not mandate an exception for truthful statement in the context of s. 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

I feel like a coup d'etat has taken place and I have awakened to the aftermath.
And this egregious affront to civil rights and to the freedom to speak the truth in Canada is being perpetuated now by the Conservative government.

Woe is us. I have this awful, awful feeling that we're too late. The war has been won by the other side and there are just mopping up operations left, and those that will be mopped up will be those who try to speak the truth in ways that the elite power structure does not like. I no longer think my Tanks t-shirt is funny. I want to weep into it.

The inbuilt tendency to scapegoat

One of the most paradigm-shifting books I've read in recent years was I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by cultural anthropologist Rene Girard, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of years ago when he participated on a panel discussion at Saint Paul University.

In a 2005 interview in New Perspectives Quarterly, Girard said:

In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to "forgive them for they know not what they do." He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

Girard explores in a most convincing way the origins of violence and scapegoating. It is his thesis that society is founded on murder, the murder of a scapegoat, who becomes a safety valve for the violence that becomes contagious until the victim is killed. When the victim is "sacrificed," and the mutual violence suddenly dissipates, that society would view the victim as a god. But in the case of the mythology, the "god" or victim was guilty of the evils that were befalling society. The "proof "came in how much better everything was after the victim's murder.

He also points out that the Jewish Scriptures begin to unveil a truth that victims could be innocent. There is also the scapegoat motif in the Old Testament, the goat upon which all the sins of the tribe were placed. Girard came also to believe that the Christian Scriptures reveal the ultimate innocent victim, Christ and break apart the secret, shrouded in mythology, of the foundational murder. He also writes quite compellingly of how the whole notion of the victim is a distinctly Western working out of Christian belief, though in a more and more secular way.

So now we have the victim, but we have lost sight of Christ. And I can understand that much of the best intentions of the human rights codes designers is to prevent scapegoating and othering. But, unfortunately, it is just creating a whole new set of "others" and scapegoats in the process.

As human beings we all have an inbuilt tendency to project onto other people the unpleasant things we do not wish to see about ourselves. We have a propensity to blame and to scapegoat, to demonize the other. That's why it is important that we examine our lives and hearts, that we take responsibility for our sinful natures and that we develop character and virtue.

This is why Christians are commanded to love our enemies and to recognize that we war not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. In other words, to secularize this, we war against false ideologies and lies, not against the human beings who may believe them.

This is a long preamble to a discussion over at Lawiscool that had me thinking. It follows a charge that the supporters of Mark Steyn are Orwellian.

Law is Cool: This is hardly the first human rights complaint in Canadian history, and all have followed a similar pattern. As stated, most actually have a measure of respect and deference to the Commission, allowing them to resolve issues amicably. Instead in these cases, respondents have verbally abused complainants, called the tribunals into disrepute, and even rallied for their disbandment. In at least one related case, this intimidation has resulted in the withdrawal of the complaint.
A truly principled movement would have been established independently of any actual complaint, and instead these measures are seen for what they are, motivated by self-interest. Calls for legal reform are frequently done, and without indignation characterizing this specific response.

Comment by Sav — May 9, 2008 @ 11:22 pm

you throw words around and you dont know what they mean.

ORWELLIAN? Who’s got the orwellian position here? HINT: Its the one that is trying to impose on everyone else its morals as to what is allowable topics of discussion. Its the anti-freedom position. Its the position that suggests government can decide for you which political opinions are okay to have. I mean how can you suggest that its orwellian to support free speech - do you have ANY clue what you’re talking about - oh yeah it was BIG BROTHER, and the people wanted bigbrother to regulate more but the poor people were left to decide what to read for themselves. How horrible.

Those traits are not only orwellian, they are objectively fascist. I dont even mean that as the backwards slur lefties throw around without knowing what it means. Having the state step in to provide a solution in an area that was previously left to the choice of the individual (what to read), is objectively, positively fascist. Mussollini would have LOVED it.

---

Law is Cool: Actually, we have a pretty good idea of what Orwell is about. See our posts on the subject previously.

Fascism is a far-right ideology, more akin to what Steyn fans espouse, rather than what liberal human rights activists exemplify. Neither fascism or Nazism ever aspired to protect minorities; in fact, both exerted the power you describe to protect majority interests at the expense of minorities.

This is really interesting. First of all, I absolutely reject the premise that Mark Steyn or his fans are fascist or even far-right. They are conservative. Methinks I see some use of scapegoating and demonizing and seeing the "other" in a negative light on the part of the Lawiscool poster.

But Lawiscool does make a point. I do agree that fascism and Naziism trampled all over minority rights. Jews were scapegoated by the Nazis and sent by the millions to their deaths. So were disabled people, homosexuals and Christians who spoke up against the regime.

Jews are routinely scapegoated in the Middle East in countries that want to blame Jews for their plight rather than recognize their own societal dysfunctions.

Scapegoating is evil. It is wrong. Period. It is sick, a form of psychopathology, denial and projection.

But interestingly, the kind of scapegoating that happened in Marxist regimes targeted social classes and bourgeois thinking (and religious belief), and ethnic groups, too. Marxist regimes were guilty of mass murder that liquidated or starved nations of people (ask the Ukrainians) or classes of people (ask the intelligentsia.)

Canada's secular fundamentalist multiculturalism is, on the surface, very respectful of minorities. But how much real diversity of opinion is allowed within the multicultural framework? Yes, lots of different races and different outward religious emblems (except Christian of course) but the only view that is able to be expressed publicly is that of Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch.

The scapegoats, the out group, the other, are the minority of Canadians who happen to be conservative, especially socially conservative Christians. And Jews have always been vulnerable as a scapegoat. In North America, they are far more vulnerable to hate crimes than Muslims, according to the latest statistics.

I exhort people on all sides of this debate to do self-examination to make sure we are not demonizing or projecting our own inward ugliness onto others. Until we are prepared to gaze at the sin within, we are in no position to judge the sin of others. But we must also not let our own sin be an excuse for refusing to discern truth and to call things as we see them. But let us not be clouded by our own resentments and anger.

Let's be careful not to scapegoat Muslims either. But that does not mean that Muslim beliefs and practices and acts done in the name of Islam should not be criticized. The same goes for any belief system.

Most Canadians would rather have a Muslim political leader

I was reading the Hill Times this morning and came across a most interesting, long story about the annual National Prayer Breakfast (coming up this Thursday) and how some people areworking to make the event less Christian.

There was this tidbit buried in the text:

Though the interest in the National Prayer Breakfast is such that organizers had to seek out a larger venue, a 2006 Ipsos Reid poll conducted shortly after the Conservative government was elected, indicated that Canadians are becoming increasingly uncomfortable mixing religion and politics.

The poll, conducted for CanWest News Service, revealed Canadians would be more open to voting for a party led by a Muslim or atheist than one led by an evangelical Christian.

In 1996, 80 per cent said they would vote for a potential prime minister who is an evangelical, however that number dropped to only 63 per cent of Canadians in 2006. Sixty-eight per cent said they would vote for a leader who is Muslim or atheist, down from 74 per cent and 72 per cent, respectively, in 1996.

The campaign of demonization and marginalization of believing (as opposed to nominal) Christians, has been working.

There is a concerted attack on the rights of Christians to be Christian in the public square, whether it is freedom of religion, freedom to set moral standards for our own members, freedom to associate with like-minded believers and so on. Political hacks have used fear-mongering to paint Christian social conservatives as "scary" and "hateful;" and much of the media and judicial elite share the so-called progressive views that see Christianity as a problem rather than the very foundation of all the rights and freedoms Canadians used to hold dear. There is a big, big difference in a society that holds human rights to be inherent and God-given and to be protected by the state and one that sees rights as granted by Trudeau and the state. In the latter instance, the state that grants rights is the state that can take them away or reinvent them or create new rights.

That leads me to realize that Mark Steyn is not joking when he says his career in Canada will be effectively ended by "human rights" commissions, and the first hearing starts early next month.

The bias against Christianity by these bodies has been revealed again and again. Instead, there is a new religion in town, secular fundamentalism, that worships the state and the individual in relation to the state, but tramples every other intervening institution from the family to religions to charities like Christian Horizons.

It is odd that in a culture of victim groups, where everyone is jockeying for the greatest victim status, Christians are the ones who are victimized and vilified. It's okay to scapegoat us, apparently. It's okay to hate us, to blaspheme our religious beliefs and to defame us as somehow dangerous to the public good.

Yet social science shows that it is believing Christians who form the core of a fragile volunteer sector, who provide the social glue that keeps the bottom from falling out underneath the most vulnerable in society.

Canada has got to replace the current relativist, anti-Christian multicultural policy with a robust pluralism that allows a wide-range of freedom for competing viewpoints, within a moral framework that all persons of good-will can agree to. That moral framework found a good expression 60 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was not a Christian document, but there is nothing anti-Christian about it. It is something that came from a range of cultures and nationalities and religions and represents, as Pope Benedict XVI told the United Nations last month, the law written on the human heart.

I should be able to be Christian in the public square and belong to groups that ask its members to follow a moral code consistent with my faith; the same goes for gay people, who should be free to express their viewpoints or have their own clubs free from the interference of busybody heterosexuals. Where we disagree, we can agree to disagree with civility and mutual respect for our innate human dignity. Other religions should have the same rights, too. But we need to have an over-arching code so that some things, whatever the beliefs, are just not on in Canada, especially when those beliefs begin to interfere with fundamental human rights.

But the right not to be offended is not a human right. The truth is often offensive, especially to those in power. That's why we need to respect freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion and conscience---so the truth has a chance of getting out. The first thing that tyranny's do is stamp out the truth.

BBC correspondent recognizes important but paradoxical truths

They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.

It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.

Peace and serenity

What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.

Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken. (h/t sda)

The government's support of Subsection 13 (1)

When I attended the March 25 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Hearing, I introduced myself to an attractive young woman in the hallway and found out she was the Dept. of Justice Lawyer, representing the government. Frankly, I wonder how she can live with herself after having a front row seat on what has been going on. For her political masters, I have even more harsh things to say, for after all, she is a civil servant doing as her political masters tell her.

What's important to emphasize here is that the Conservative government is not just remaining silent on the out of control "human rights" commissions, it is an active participant in a process that is flawed both in principle and in practice.

We need a Royal Commission to examine both, because the legal principles no longer resemble anything of the Western inheritance of inherent human rights and freedom that extend back 800 years.

The Act doesn't even resemble the Universal Declaration on Human Rights from 60 years ago. It seems to be some wonky concoction whipped up by left-leaning ideologues and social scientists who owe more to scientific determinism and Marx than the great philosophical and spiritual foundations of our freedoms and rights.

We need a Commission to thoroughly examine the logical consequences of this kind of thinking, one with the legal erudition and philosophical grounding to help get us back on our proper foundations. May I suggest retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice Charles Gonthier as one of the commissioners? Canadian Civil Liberties Association general counsel Alan Borovoy as another?

Ezra Levant has obtained a copy of the government brief in support of Subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

He writes:

1. The Conservative government believes that the constitutionality of section 13 has already been approved by the Supreme Court, and so it shouldn't be questioned again; and

2. In any event, section 13 is a reasonable limit on free speech.

My two general responses would be:

1. In the 18 years since the constitutionality of section 13 was examined in 1990, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has taken a more and more abusive approach to its application, exceeding the narrow permission granted by the Supreme Court eighteen years ago.

2. The government's arguments that hate speech is the precursor to violence -- and that laws banning speech are necessary to prevent violence -- are absurd. They're logically false and they're historically false.

Mark Steyn writes:

As I always say, the CIC lawsuits objecting to America Alone's thesis in fact confirm it - that in the long run free societies are at risk not from fellows flying planes into skyscrapers but from a misbegotten alliance between the likes of the CIC and bovine western "progressives" only too willing to sign away ancient liberties.

I don't know why any self-respecting person would want to work in the "journalistic" environment Nicholson and Co are creating, a world in which audacious propagandists will be free to use "human rights" courts as a threat to browbeat the press into serving as spineless pliable propagandists. Personally, I'd rather be Eliot Spitzer's hooker. The principles are the same, but the hourly rates are higher.

Right now, most journalists are still asleep to this issue. They have no idea what is going on. Or if they do, they don't mind seeing conservatives like Steyn and Levant getting ground through the process, since they don't think it will ever involve them.

But that is changing. I hope the CAJ conference changes this dramatically.

It is odd to me that Omar Khadr's rights are far more important to the mainstream media than their own right-of-centre colleagues'. Or Brenda Martin's plight in a Mexican jail.

Wake up, journalists, wake up, because your freedom to do your job could soon end.

Hijacking access to a wider circulation than they can attain on their own

Dorothy Cummings attended the Faisal Joseph newser and filed this column in the Catholic Register. She makes some interesting observations:

I am particularly interested in the controversy around press freedom and religious minorities for I have read slights against the Catholic Church and the Holy Father in Toronto papers all my life. But I also watch in dismay as Canadian Christians, most notably Calgary Bishop Fred Henry and the editors of Catholic Insight, are made subject to costly investigations by human rights tribunals for voicing their opinions. Of course we get tired of jeers against religious folk in the mainstream press, but the HRC cure seems to be worse than the disease. Meanwhile, we do have our own newspapers.

When the Toronto Star publishes its perennial Christmas and Easter “Was Jesus real?” articles, I don’t threaten the editor so that he’ll give respected theologians as much space as he gives to Tom Harpur. I merely put down his paper in disgust and pick up The Catholic Register instead. If The Register came with a TV guide, there’d be no need for my family to take the Star at all. Freedom of the press means freedom of the religious press.

This in mind, I asked Faisal Joseph how many newspapers the Canadian Muslim community had. He didn’t seem to know, but he cited a Muslim newspaper in London, Ont., with a circulation of 5,000 readers. How about Montreal, I asked. How about British Columbia? Any papers? “But those are community newspapers,” said Joseph. “That’s like comparing grapes and watermelons.”

I’m not so sure about that, especially as the tiny Catholic Insight, like Maclean’s magazine, is considered worthy of an HRC complaint. The issue, then, appears to be not that Muslims associated with the CIC are denied freedom of the press, but that the CIC wishes to publish its views in a press with a wider circulation than it can itself achieve. Joseph reminded the “ladies and gentlemen of the media” that the B.C. human rights tribunal might force Maclean’s to publish the CIC’s rebuttal. If it does, it will have set a very frightening precedent.

I am all for civility and sensitivity when it comes to other religions and minority groups. I know what it is like to have my religion mocked and revered figures in my faith, especially our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, defamed and blasphemed. So I try to think of how what I might write might affect devout Muslims or Jews or members of any other religion. I try to practice civility when I blog. Of course it means my readership is about 20 a day under normal circumstances. But I abhor the idea of state-mandated civility. Virtue that is coerced is not virtue at all.

Brean writes near full-page article encapsulating battle so far

Who appointed Warren Kinsella as spokesperson?

That is my biggest objection to Joseph Brean's nearly full page spread in today's National Post on Mark Steyn and the battle for free speech in Canada.

I hope Mark will never, ever debate him. I would welcome a real debate on the subject of where limits to free speech might be drawn, or on his arguments in America Alone, but not with someone whose position is so inconsistent and changeable. And those are kind words to describe his tactics.

But Brean does get some good admissions from Kinsella that are important to keep on the record:

"It did seem passingly strange to a lot of people that he was prepared to have a debate with a bunch of kids, effectively, but he isn't prepared to debate somebody who is more or less his own size," said Mr. Kinsella, who has challenged Mr. Steyn to a debate next month at the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa and called him a "chickensh**" for not accepting.

Mr. Kinsella, who said he believes the complaint against Maclean's is without merit and has warned the students as much, said critics of human rights law are not thinking of the implications of "castrating or denuding the country of any kind of human rights code, and what the consequences will be for Islamic extremists or neo-Nazis.

"That's what those guys most desire."

At the same time, he says there is "no way that there's going to be wholesale change to the federal human rights code while there's a minority government. It's become too hot an issue."

"I don't know why Warren Kinsella is inserting himself into my hate crime. Why doesn't he get a hate crime of his own?" Mr. Steyn quipped in response.

Yeah. Most Christians oppose filing hate crimes complaints on principle, but if they did not Kinsella might have his own for the demeaning way he ridiculed and smeared Stockwell Day's religious beliefs with a purple Barney dinosaur doll on live television back in 2000.

He owes me and every other Christian a BIG APOLOGY for participating in the wholesale smear of Christians as "scary" in the Chretien campaign against Day and the Canadian Alliance. Maybe he even orchestrated the efforts to marginalize and demonize Christian social conservatives and bragged about it in his book about the dark arts of spin, but I would never buy his book, so I don't know. Maybe he thinks he was funny, but when Paul Martin and crew were calling anyone who didn't support same-sex marriage anti-Charter and unCanadian, well, you can see the logical extension and the danger to people like myself of being marginalized and hated when we have every right to a place at the political table in a pluralistic democracy without being demonized or called names or labelled as a threat to democracy or the rights of others.

I can understand how Asians must have felt during "Yellow peril" scaremongering prior to World War II, and yes, even how Muslim Canadians feel when people are not careful to distinguish between dangerous extremists and ordinary, law-abiding Muslim Canadians who just want to worship in peace and who support our shared freedoms. But using the power of the state to crush freedom of expression didn't work in the Weimer Republic or stop the Nazi take-over or protect Jews from the gas ovens and the firing squads.


I am willing to entertain some kinds of protections for groups against slander and lies like those so rampant in the Middle East against Jews--but TRUTH HAS TO BE A DEFENCE. So does the concept of innocent until proven guilty. The system as it exists now needs a complete overhaul. From our reverse onus defamation laws, to human rights commissions at the federal and provincial levels, to the use of SLAPP suits to stifle political debate to, yes, perhaps a look at an effective but freedom-of-expression-and-truth-respecting way of protecting groups from wholesale lies and incitements to violence.

For decades, the state through human rights commissions is making concerted attacks on Christians collective rights of religious freedom as well as our individual rights to publicly express our beliefs in the public square. We are becoming a persecuted minority in our own country thanks to this illiberal apparatus that is hollowing out the foundations upon which our freedoms are built.

Why, if Kinsella is concerned about Islamists getting free reign to promote hatred of Jews, gays and women and Americans etc. etc., is he aligning himself with complaints designed to make criticism of Islamists a hate crime? Maybe Kinsella can show the successful use of Section 13 against Islamist hate speech? If there is one out there, I would be genuinely interested in knowing about it.

There is one good reason why Mark Steyn can't make the "debate" in question in early June, aside from an understandable desire not to dignify Kinsella's consistent smears against him with any legitimacy:

Mark will be too busy at the time, defending himself before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal against a complaint that is, according to Kinsella, "without merit."

No...I think that Ezra, who is ready and willing to fly into Ottawa at his own expense, would
do just fine in Steyn's stead.

This is appalling

I sat through the March 25 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing and I heard the Tribunal say they would have not court reporter or transcript of the proceedings, but instead it would be on digitally recorded audio. I thought it was odd at the time, especially since a court reporter is necessary to make sure there is a record in the event the technology crashes. It also makes it extremely difficult for anyone researching the hearing to search for key words.

However, it turns out the CHRT did make a transcript. But they apparently released it to a reporter but not to the "respondent" in the case, Marc Lemire. Ezra Levant has more on this appalling development.

There needs to be a Royal Commission on the whole matter called this week. This is out of control. Things have gone way too far.

You know, whatever you may think of Marc Lemire, this is one more indication that the man has not received due process.

Here's another. Only recently has his lawyer received necessary documents they had requested years ago from the Commission. Closing arguments are coming up, but only recently has Barbara Kulaszka received some 400 pages of heavily redacted documents. Here's a link to her letter here at John Pacheco's Socon.ca blog.

And Pundita has looked into the Lemire case here and found it crazy-making.

The momentum is growing--the "monster" is gonna get you

It's like watching one of those horror movies where some underground monster's tentacles are suddenly raising horrifying mounds of earth as they move along the surface ready to break out and wreak havoc.

Except the one's who need to be horrified are those who still support the illiberal "human rights" commissions. And I'm cheering those tentacles on.

The fact that the commissions will be under the spotlight at the Canadian Association of Journalists conference in Edmonton is huge, folks. HUGE. It means that about three hundred more journalists who maybe have not invested yet in this fight are going to have their consciousness raised.

My oh my, it looks like a fabulous conference.

Look who's going to be there:

 Dr. Keith Martin  Liberal MP

      Ezra Levant  blogger, lawyer, conservative political activist and former
   publisher of the Western Standard magazine.
      Ian Fine  Canadian Human Rights Commission 

H/t Blazing Cat Fur who links to this piece of Ezra's on Ian Fine.

He writes:

I don't generally go line by line through an article, but this one is just too delicious to pass up, so please allow me:

Rights group defends itself

That's the headline. Three months ago, the idea of an HRC on the PR defensive was unthinkable. Now it's a national news story.

Facing calls for its abolition or reform, commission moves to rebut 'misinformation'

Even more improbable three months ago was the idea of reforming these commissions, let alone abolishing them. Now it's a serious enough threat that the CHRC has gone to the barricades. But my favourite part about this sub-headline (a "deck" as it's called in newspaperology) is the commission's condescending approach: Canadians are simply misinformed. "Shoo! There's nothing to see here, little people," they say. "Now stop telling fibs about us, or we'll have to re-educate you -- or even charge you with some trumped up offence".

I love the denial. Not only because it is so patently unbelievable -- coming the day after the Privacy Commissioner herself has joined the fight -- but because it shows the bunker mentality at the CHRC. A savvier, politically aware CHRC would acknowledge its errors, issue some bumf about being more responsible, announce a few token reforms on its own initiative, and try to let some air out of the balloon. But that kind of reasonableness just isn't in the DNA of these people. How could it be? It takes an especially arrogant person to censor the thoughts of his neighbours; it take an even more arrogant person to break the law and violate natural justice to do so.

Latest cartoon complaint could be the tipping point

The latest human rights complaint against an editorial cartoon in the Halifax Chronicle Herald could prove to the the tipping point. When people see groups complaining of an anti-Islamic hate crime concerning a cartoon of a particular individual who actually looks like the cartoon, then we could see a MASSIVE swing in public opinion that that has been smoldering beneath the surface.

The Chronicle Herald is a mainstream, middle-of the-road newspaper if there ever was one, in a province that likes is social programs and is definitely no Alberta. Sucking the Herald and its cartoonist into the "human rights" commission maw is a huge miscalculation. I mean, some people don't like Ezra Levant or Mark Steyn because they are conservative voices, so they might think, oh, well, I don't read their stuff and maybe there's something to the complaints, let the human rights system run its course. But the Chronicle Herald? Puhleeze.

It is as if the people (of all sexes, religions, hues and backgrounds) who want to undermine Canada's freedoms are emboldened by the silence, emboldened by the paralysis of political correctness. Maybe they sense weakness or appeasement and want to move in for the kill.

I think what they are guaranteeing is a huge Conservative majority in the next election.

Even though many bloggers are impatient with the Tories and the public silence on the whole human rights commissions issue, most of us know in our heart of hearts that there probably is not a Tory MP or potential candidate who would defend what is going on right now before human rights commissions.

Remember the Ontario election and John Tory's plan to bring fairness to school funding? Well, publicly a lot of the talk was about the risk of Christians teaching creationism in private schools, but what many of the candidates were actually hearing on the doorsteps had to do with fear of Islamic schools as breeding grounds for terrorism. Yeah, it ain't fair, (I personally support fairness in school funding for religions though I was not crazy about Tory's specific plan) but unfortunately, the behavior of Islamic groups is not reassuring people that their fears are unfounded. Average voters see them acting like victims an when, the voters themselves feel like victims of their hatred, intolerance and hypersensitivity. They saw the evidence in the smoking ruins of 9/11 that killed 24 Canadian citizens.

They may stay silent, but just as Conservative candidates got shredded on the doorsteps over the school funding issue, in the next election any candidate, Liberal (because there are many good ones who are also alarmed by what's going on) or Conservative who does not support freedom of speech is going to get turfed, save for some illiberal candidates of those Trudeaupian strongholds in Toronto.

There is a growing gap between what can be said publicly and what is being said privately, but what is said privately is growing more and more important and soon the public facade is going to shatter.

But publicly it is as if there is choke-hold of political correctness that prevents people from saying what they mean or what they are really concerned about. Of course it doesn't help that saying certain things publicly can land you a human rights complaint. But you better believe those unspoken concerns will manifest themselves at the ballot box.

Read this thread at Rabble and be proud of your fellow Canadians

After reading this thread at Rabble.ca I am proud of my fellow Canadians on the Left, even if I disagree with them about most everything else. The vast majority of posters uphold freedom of speech, they get it, and some argue quite cogently on freedom's behalf.

The most eloquent defender is a Muslim who grew up in Iran. Sanizadeh writes:

First of all, I don't think there is a consensus that Steyn's book or article promotes hate. Even the complainants have failed to quote any specific hateful material there. As a muslim I find Steyn's article paranoid and a little ridiculous. But I do not want to live in a society that bans speech like his (I have emigrated from one such society and would never let canada become another one).

Regarding freedom of speech or press, everybody agrees that there are certain limitations to it. The question regarding section 13 is whether a comment or speech that is "likely" to "expose" someone to hatred crosses such limits. As Noam Chomsky noted, any limitation on freedom of speech should be in extreme cases where danger to individuals or groups are imminant and certain. "likely to expose" does not provide that grounds.

Why is freedom of speech (and freedom fo press) the most important element of demovcracy? well, I can probably answer this better than most as I have come from a country that does suppress freedom of speech. I was born and lived in Iran for decades and now living in Canada for several years, I can testify that most if not all differences between the two societies come from the issue of freedom of speech and association. When you restrict these freedoms , the govening system gets no feedback and never corrects itself. As a result, abuse of power becomes widespread and democracy and human rights suffer.

To paraphrase George Orwell, once you obtain the right to say 2+2=4, all other rights will follow.

Here is a story that affected me personally the most: in Iran during former president Khatami (whose name you might have heard) first term starting in 1997, the press were allowed more freedoms and a lively and active press flourished. Debates were common in newspapers and media. Corruption was exposed. People felt they could start having a saying in the real running of the counrty. Then in 2000 the supreme religious leader of the counrty severely criticized the media for crossing the red lines and what he called "weakening of the system". Within 48 hours, hundreds of defamation complaints were filed against most newspapers. Interestingly, Iranian speech code is not that different from Section 13; it bans "offensive and defamatory speech". After all, any speech is bound to be offensive to someone! The Tehran prosecutor general shut down dozens of newspapers over night, and charged their editors. One of the most prominent ones, a former interior minister in Khatami's administration, was sentenced to five years in jail for daring to suggest that Iran should not interfere in Israel-Palestine issue, among other things. The country became a dead zone, a ghost town within a few months.

That was the time I realized that there was no hope left in Iran.

At least we understand the basic principle of agreeing to disagree and working within a democratic system that upholds freedom.

Terrorism is the biggest fear

I spoke with someone Friday who recently had a public speaking engagement at a conference. This person went from table to table to talk to the attendees, to find out what was uppermost on their minds so he could tailor his speech to the audience.

The people attending were socially aware, concerned about helping people, and many would probably be Liberal voters. The speaker expected to hear people raising concerns about the global rise in food prices and its impact on the poor. It was that kind of group.

What he found when he moved from table to table was fear of terrorism. He was surprised.

Maybe people are not in the kind of denial post 9/11 that I thought they were. And I wonder if the growing profile of human rights complaints is feeding this fear , revealing that something terrible is amiss and we will soon lose our freedom to even talk about the threats around us.

National March for Life draws 7800 people

It's been a great march. Campaign Life Coalition president Jim Hughes, who stands with a clicker counting marchers as they go by, said about 7800 people were there at the peak. That's about 800 more than last year's record numbers.

The theme is "Life--the First Human Right" and there were rousing talks by various Members of Parliament, Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, and Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life in the United States. The pro-life movement is the civil rights movement of today is the message they brought.

There were a handful of young fascist anarchist types, chanting "Take your rosaries off our ovaries" and trying to drown out the speakers. Dressed all in black, ugly, pierced tongues and the like, hair dyed black....made me wish I had a crucifix and some holy water. I am sure the six or seven of them will get equal billing on the news tonight with the other 7800 pro-lifers. Have to have balance, right? As they were leaving they were chanting something about getting rid of Christians, "not enough abortions." That's hate, folks. Lord have mercy on their souls.

The police had to come and surround them. But they have rights to freedom of speech. They sure know about their rights, but have, obviously, no respect for anyone else's, especially that of the unborn.

It was nice to see some of the young MPs bring their children with them to the stage. Awesome. I think the top picture shows Conservative MP Jeff Watson and his family.

We had great music again this year, thanks to David MacDonald and his band. He even wrote a great song for the march.

Christian Horizons will appeal the Ontario HRT ruling

Got an alert from the Catholic Civil Rights League that Christian Horizons is going to appeal:

To update you on last week’s news item, Christian Horizons has decided to appeal part of the recent Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision. While it will no longer require employees to sign its lifestyle and morality pledge, it is challenging the tribunal’s claim that a former employee was treated unfairly, and the requirement that it begin basic human-rights training for all employees and adopt an anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy.

The League's alert pointed me to this story in the National Post. Sorry can't find a link right now. Here's a quote:

A provincially funded Christian organization that runs 180 homes across Ontario for people with developmental disabilities is appealing part of a ruling from the Ontario Human Rights Commission after it forced out an employee who admitted to being a lesbian. Heeding the commission's ruling, Christian Horizons says it will no longer require prospective employees to sign a lifestyle and morality statement in which they promise to be faithful to their spouses, refrain from premarital or homosexual affairs and not promote alcohol or tobacco.

Here's a link to the story I wrote on the case, now uploaded to CanadianChristianty.com

OTTAWA (CCN) -- The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal (OHRT) has ordered an evangelical Christian charity to rescind its morality code and require employees undergo anti-discrimination training.

It also ordered Christian Horizons to pay $23,000 to a former employee who engaged in a lesbian relationship after signing the code. That award includes $10,000 for general damages and $5,000 for mental anguish due to a poisoned work environment.

Christian Horizons is an evangelical Christian charity that serves about 1,400 developmentally disabled people. It helps them live in the community in Christian homes or apartments under the supervision of staff.

The organization required its employees to sign a 'Lifestyle and Morality Statement' that prohibited homosexual activity, viewing pornography and other activities deemed contrary to the living out of the Christian faith.

"The decision is inconsistent with a proper understanding of freedom of religion under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms," said constitutional lawyer Peter Lauwers in an interview from Toronto. "It really challenges social welfare organizations that are run by Christian and other faith groups on the basis of whether they will continue provide the services they do."

I am glad they plan to appeal.

Mark Steyn on the Hour

I'm watching it online now.

Anti-Bill C-51 movement goes viral

I oppose Bill C-51. The more I hear about it, the more I don't like it. It's another example of overreaching government.

Well, seems I'm not the only one. I'm starting to get emails like this, you know the kind ordinary citizens forward to all their friends:

Bill C51 was introduced on April 8, 2008, and it proposes to control all natural and alternative substances and products! It proposes to rename all natural products as a drug and prescriptive therapy. All "users" of natural products will be violating the law. This can go so far as to say garlic must be prescribed. Someone, even a mother to a child, convicted of "prescribing" or recommending garlic for health reasons without a medical license can have themselves thrown in jail, have their property seized without warrant, and fines of up to $5,000,000.00. 70% of Canadians use alternative health care. HOW CAN THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS???? Because the government sees the alternative industry as a cashcow.
> Use your democratic freedoms and stop Bill C51. Visit:
> http://www.stopc51.com
> Garlic and dandelion greens are going to become a "controlled substance" and yet alcohol and cigarettes will STILL be available for purchase everywhere by anyone of the appropriate age??? Does this make any sense?????

More thoughts on the TVO appearance

I have refrained from calling the Sock Puppets the Sock Puppets because I have tried to discipline myself to stay focused on ideas and principles and not to resort to name-calling and other forms of ad hominem "attacks." "Sock Puppet," however, is pretty mild, and, if you are not them, kind of funny.

Last night, though I was tempted to join some of my fellow bloggers in calling them "Sharia Creeps," because, I confess, they made me angry. I've recovered from that. And I'm glad to see that Mark Steyn quickly regained his Happy Warrior state of mind once he reached the sidewalk after last night's TVO appearance. He writes:

I succeeded in bouncing the Sock Puppets into agreeing to a face-to-face discussion, though it wasn't my finest hour or theirs. I believe the final words of the show were me saying, "Do you wanna go to dinner?", and Khurrum Awan yelling back, "No." We didn't go for dinner, but we did have a relatively pleasant conversation after the broadcast that I thought was much more productive than the show. Khurrum was a bit chippy but the two ladies, Muneeza Sheikh and Naseem Mithoowani, are rather cute, even when they're damning me as a racist and hater. (Years ago, the BBC used to keep putting me up against humourless Marxist feminists only to find that on air I'd go all sweet on them and just make goo-goo eyes.) One confessed to finding me "mildly funny", which I took as a tremendous compliment until she remarked that she found "Little Mosque On The Prairie" funnier. Evidently by "mildly funny", she sets the bar down at world-champion limbo level.

Well, I wonder if Mark's writing that the ladies "were rather cute" will prompt the puppet masters to insist they start wearing hijabs. And if the great "Islamophobe" still finds the faces unframed by that beautiful glossy hair cute, maybe they'll be wearing burkas or niqabs down the road. But I doubt these ladies would put up with any man forcing them to wear a head-covering. They are far too Western for that.

That's what struck me about last night. These kids are thoroughly Westernized, thoroughly postmodern, thoroughly multicultural. I bet these ladies would see wearing a hijab as a fashion accessory or a choice or something they can do to reflect their Muslim identity. They have no idea of the consequences of the kind of Sharia creep they consciously or unconsciously advocate, because they are more Trudeaupian than Muslim.

Mark nails it here:

I was struck by something Naseem said to me on the sidewalk. I'd mentioned that I'd heard her on NPR saying that it was improper for me to attack "multiculturalism" because multiculturalism was officially embedded in Canada's constitution. And I said: So what? A free society shouldn't have an official ideology, but, if it has, I certainly reserve the right to object to it. If I'd lived in Italy 70 years ago, I would have objected to their official ideology (Fascism), and I object to Canada's, notwithstanding its touchy-feelier name. And she looked at me as if I was bonkers. I feel rather bewildered at meeting graduates of an elite institution in one of the oldest settled democracies on the planet who seem to think just because Pierre Trudeau cooked it up it's chiseled in granite. You can only marvel at what an amazing job he did of wiping a society's collective memory. What was the most depressing part of the post-game show for me was realizing that for my accusers the assumption is that every defect in society can be corrected by government intervention.

Theodore Dalrymple has written about the Muslim youth in the housing projects surrounding French cities, how they have embraced a combination of the most pernicious forms of modern American "gangsta" culture, right down to the baggy pants, the hoodies and the backwards caps the pimp walk and the criminality along with the most pernicious aspects of Islamism---violent jihad and the abuse of women. But gangsta "yout" don't bother with the scrictures of Islam, like praying five times a day and the accompanying ablutions or alms for the poor or pilgrimages to Mecca. The identity they have forged is like a mutated virus, combining the worst features of the West and Islamism, with none of the gentle piety and family values of their parents. Some of them even think raping infidel women is justified as a form of jihad.

The mentality of these kids on TVO last night also seemed to be a mutated virus, but instead of the French "youts'" American gangsta hostility and jihadist rage, they manifested something far more "grown in Canada." In fact, except for when Awan seemed to be muttering prayers or something under his breath, these were just leftist kids who drank the Trudeau Kool-aid, that wedded their minds to the multicultural ideology poured into their brains by similarly brainwashed teachers they have studied under all their lives. There was nothing especially Muslim about them except their backgrounds. They certainly did not come across as particularly religious.

The Muslim "thing" seems almost like an add-on, a fashion accessory like the hijab the girls can choose to wear or not to wear, something to give them an identity with which to shove their way to the trough of public money and government power.

While I doubt they are secular Muslims, they seemed to me to be cafeteria Muslims, picking and choosing which parts of the Koran to believe, reserving the right to select which doctrines they will follow. No imam is going to tell them what to do or what to believe. Religion of Peace Muslims delighted to take their place in the Rainbow Flag of multiculturalism. They reminded me of cafeteria Christians who really worship on the altar of their individualism and choice, and have been shaped more by multicultural relativism than the Christian faith as handed down by the Apostles.

The "Socks" virally mutated ideology has made these otherwise bright, attractive and articulate young people stupid, incoherent and irrational. Not only that, it has blinded them to the consequences of their actions.

There are two possible consequences down the road if they get their way. One is that the multicultural, relavistic secular fundamentalism will eventually prevail and their religious freedom, their choice to wear a hijab in government offices or universities, or be accommodated publicly, will be taken away by a state that will privatize all religious expression to some kind of closet where you can have your beliefs but no ability to act on them or express them in the public square Many human rights decisions and court cases have indicated this trend so far as Christianity is concerned. More and more laws will clamp down on any kind of expression that seems likely to upset any group. And believe me, Christians will jump on this bandwagon with a quick me-too and soon Christianity will be off limits to criticize (or express) publicly, too. Religion and disagreement about religion will be seen as potentially harmful to public peace, so it will be pushed out of sight and persecuted if it pops up.

Or....as Mark Steyn has warned, multiculturalist relativism could become the vacuum into which radical Islam is poured. We might all find ourselves forced to accept forms of Sharia. It will not be a choice. Head coverings and modest dress will be forced on these pretty young ladies. But they are too blinded by the sugary high of the Trudeaupian Kool-Aid to see the logical consequences of their actions.

Should the Sock Puppets win in the courts, the future is totalitarian.

Students proved Mark Steyn to be right

For students who distinguish themselves from Islamic Jihadists to argue that the government ought to punish or prohibit such speech is for them to condemn Western philosophy, and - even if unwittingly - to wage a war against the West. Given the ferocity with which they asserted their views, dare I say, a “Holy War”?And so it was with great admiration that I watched Mark Steyn expose the three students for what they were: young people engaged in an effort that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, serves not the interests of Western philosophy, individual freedom, and the West, but of the Jihadists. Had these three students spent as much time denouncing theocracy, and defending the West’s commitment to free speech, as they spent trying to force private publications to print their articles, they would have done for Muslims in the West a much greater service than they have done. At the end of the day, their efforts instead merely prove Mark Steyn to be right.David, a youthful and shining example of greatness succeeding and rousing the happiness of those of moral soul, refueling them for another day of pursuing their own happiness; Mark ensuring that such happiness remains possible by giving no quarter to those who, feared because of the statements of theocrats and Islamic terrorists around the world, call upon Western governments to condemn Western philosophy. To each I say “Thank-you”.

Israeli Ambassador responds to CIC screed

Ambassador Alan Baker writes in the National Post Full Comment section:

A recent article by Canadian Islamic Congress national president Mohamed Elmasry -- as referenced on Monday by Jonathan Kay's posting on this blog -- attempts to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel by casting aspersions on the circumstances of its founding and by distorting the history of the conflict. This biased piece lays the blame for the Palestinian's suffering solely at Israel's doorstep, ignores the decades of Arab violence and terrorism that have taken so many innocent Israeli lives and completely absolves the Palestinians of any responsibility for their own fate.

It is deplorable that 60 years after its establishment, attempts to delegitimize the existence of Israel have not disappeared. How absurd that one of the few countries whose establishment was approved by a Resolution of the United Nations should have its basic right to exist questioned.

The establishment of the Jewish state in the Land of Israel is no accident of history. Israel is where Jews have lived continuously for 4,000 years, the place from which Jews never left by choice, only by force, and the land to which they had prayed for two millennia to return. The restoration of Jewish sovereignty in this tiny strip of land was not an injustice, but rather the righting of an historic wrong.

TVO round up

Blazing Cat Fur: And then my head exploded

Right Girl: You're comparing Ernst Zundel with Oriana Fallaci ?

Five Feet of Fury: Muslim debating secrets revealed during "best 60 minutes of Canadian television ever"

I'm too annoyed and angry to post anything right now. I'm glad Mark Steyn forced the sock puppets to debate him. But clearly, anyone who thinks Mark thinks this is fun, or that he wants to be a martyr, got disabused of this opinion tonight.

Because he has a sense of humor and is usually cheerful, it is easy to think that, oh well, he's fighting this battle on our behalf and it's not really costing him much in terms of stress and time and inconvenience, to say nothing of the money in legal bills.

Think again, folks.

And yet the sock puppets get funded at taxpayers' expense. I have to pay for them to undermine my freedoms and that of every other journalist in Canada.

This makes me furious.

I'm waiting to hear Mark's debrief on Rob Breakenridge's show here. Should start any minute.

God save Canada from these thought police.

Have you bought your subscription to Catholic Insight?

My first issue just arrived. It's full of good stuff. It's not on the web (yet) so buy a subscription and support this victim of human rights abuses, I mean, complaints.

Like this from Ian Hunter:

"Ezra Levant videotaped his interrogation by a human rights apparatchik and posted it on You Tube. It's hilarious viewing, especially because the bureaucrat plays her part to Kafka-esque perfection, at one point actually telling Levant: "Of course, you have a right to your opinion." when Levant is sitting there precisely because he does not. But the humour wears a little thin when one notices the lawyer sitting at Levant's side, then recalls the cost of legal services, and remembers that ultimately one can go to jail for expressing heterodox views in Canada."

Or this from Mariette Ulrich:

"Earth worship: I am so sick and tired of this false religion, I cannot express it in 700 words or less. The day I embrace environmentalism is the day Al Gore travels by donkey cart to his many speaking engagements--and meets his crowds outdoors (say, perhaps on a mount) and speaks to them without the aid of loudspeakers and microphones--and maybe when he feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two fish.

Make no mistake. I love the earth, but I love it because it is God's creation, not because it is a god."

There's a piece by Magdi Allam, recounting his conversion from Islam. He's the guy the pope baptized at the Easter Vigil this year. He writes:

"Thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies, deception, the call the violent death that leads to murder and suicide, and the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom."

No thanks to this kind of change

Pundita has another great post (with great links) about Barack Obama's associations.
She writes:

Yet looking beyond his connections to an entire network of hard-core
Maoists -- looking to his connection to a Kenyan warlord, to a pastor who as
much advocates the violent overthrow of the US government, to a Chicago
political fixer with ties to the Baathists -- the true picture of Barack Obama
slowly emerges. Throughout his adult life, Obama has been drawn to people who are essentially fascist in their outlook, people who find the democratic process too messy and slow to bring about change, people who believe in manipulating the system of democracy to undermine its principles in order to grab power.

Protecting vulnerable minorities

Though I am veering more and more towards unfettered freedom of speech because of the illiberal actions and the illiberal ideologies that have hijacked so-called "human rights" commissions, I am not totally opposed to some kind of mechanism to protect groups from defamation.

But state-imposed censorship is not the solution. Maybe some changes in our defamation laws. I dunno. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I don't think it would be a great thing to have major radio stations calling Christians a bunch of cockroaches who eat the blood of children, for example, or television stations that run the kind of stuff that is routinely shown about Jews in the Middle East. Or for any other group to be similarly lied about. I also think that those who incite violence should be arrested.

But there is a difference between defamation and negative press coverage that is based on facts. Unless you use a Sharia definition of defamation, in which anything that hurts your reputation, regardless of how true, is actionable.

Truth has to be a defense. That is why subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, that says anything (whether true or not) that is likely to subject a person or persons to hatred or contempt has got to go. And so must any provincial legislation that resembles it. Truth or fair comment are no defense under this legislation. That's why it is hideous.

But Faisal Joseph wants this kind of law expanded. If he gets his way, will journalists and columnists only be able to talk about Islam as a religion of peace? Or else? Of course, Christians will still be allowed to be attacked or lied about, but that's another story.

The fact of racism against Muslims can no longer be denied. In a 2004 Heritage Canada survey, 80% of Canadians agreed that Muslims and Arabs are the main targets of discrimination in Canada today.

The media cannot shy away from its contributory role in the discrimination of Muslims any longer. As the Ontario Human Rights Commission said in a historic public statement issued last week: "the media has a significant role to play in either combating societal racism or refraining from communicating and reproducing it."

The statement was the result of human rights complaints filed by my clients - the Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of Osgoode Hall law students - against Maclean's magazine for its refusal to publish a mutually acceptable response to just one of more than twenty Islamophobic articles published between January 2005 and July 2007. Among others, these articles allege that "enough" Muslims share the basic objectives of terrorists; refer to Muslims as "sheep-shaggers"; and allege an impending, "bloody" Muslim takeover of the West.

I'm not going to bother with the many problems in these paragraphs, including the wrong assertion that Islam is a race. Islam is a religion. People of all races, colors and nationalities are Muslims. Arabs share racial characteristics. But some Arabs are Christians. Nor will I get into the "mutually acceptable response." If a mutually acceptable response had ever been on the table in the first place, there would never have been threats of human rights complaints and criminal charges. But I digress.

Mr. Faisal, if you want to know why journalists and columnists write negative stories and columns about Muslims, then look no further than your co-religionists. You know, the ones who are doing horrible and barbaric things in the name of your faith and the imams who egg them on .

If you spent even half the energy speaking up against the beheaders and the bombers of innocent civilians and their cheerleaders that you expend trying to prevent legitimate journalism and commentary about them, then you would do more to restore a positive image of Muslims than any expansion of state power to shut down freedom of expression.

But right now, you are contributing to a negative image of Muslims, because you are joining illiberal leftists in efforts to undermine Canada's fundamental rights and freedoms. I am all for Muslims being accommodated and left free to worship as they please as long as they don['t violate the Criminal Code. But I am not for allowing any faction or group to undermine a free and democratic society that is based on Judeo-Christian foundations and natural law.

I think most of the news media in Canada and the United States is bending over backwards to avoid negative portrayals of Muslims. I think this stems from a concern that mistakes like the internment of citizens of Japanese and German descent during World War II never happen again. I applaud that concern and all attempts to avoid demonizing Muslims or tarring all of them with a "terrorist" brush. I make an effort to do that myself and exhort others to do so, too.

No one wants to see hostile acts against Muslims in North America. That's why people in my profession make an effort to be sensitive and responsible. You may not think we're doing enough, but believe me, we are making a huge effort to put your community in the best possible light, to stress that it is diverse and not monolithic and that most Muslims abhor violence etc and appreciate the freedoms in the West and want to help preserve them. But you are not helping us.

We journalists do not want to be bullied or silenced or subjected to communal violence ourselves, like threats our news offices will be bombed or burned to the ground, say if we publish a cartoon.
Or threats that our foreign correspondents will be punished if the CBC shows the Danish cartoons. We do not want to have our throats slit if we produce a movie. Why don't you speak up against the people that do these things?

But we also do not threats that we will be hauled before an illiberal, expensive "human rights" process where we are guilty until proven innocent, rules of evidence don't apply and an ideologue who already has her mind made up will make the ruling, even without seeing evidence.

We don't like threats, sir, that our privately-owned publications will be hijacked and told by the state to print material that is contrary to its journalistic standards.

I hope you will join Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy in his courageous realization that he was wrong to file human rights complaints against Ezra Levant. I hope you will come to recognize the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of religion in Canada the way he did.

Then you will see the already large reservoir of goodwill towards Muslim Canadians start to grow again. The actions of your clients are causing seepage. You can stop that.

Follow the links in this Pundita post for some good reading

The saying goes that politics makes strange bedfellows. The battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is a case in point. Check out this Pundita post to see how ideological opponents are nodding their heads in agreement over revelations concerning The Amazing Obama, especially his foreign policy weaknesses.

Pundita writes:

I myself, having spent years sticking pins in my Ambassador Joseph Wilson doll (it's a long story having to do with Nigerian yellowcake), am urging you to read what B'rer Joe has to say about Obama's qualifications in the area of foreign policy. I never thought I would see myself writing these words but Wilson's analysis is dead on target.

Follow the links. Most interesting.

Go Hillary.

Even though I would vote Republican no matter who they put up, I am kind of proud of plucky Hillary. I think she is showing herself to be an amazingly strong candidate, just being able to stay in the ring and remain unflappable with such a grueling schedule.

And for all the Clintons flaws, I never have wondered whether they love America.

Stop the molly-coddling and have a real debate

FOURTH UPDATE:
Mark Steyn writes:

UPDATE! Sock Puppet pantywaists wimp out! Three Sock Puppets against one Islamophobe is apparently unfair odds as "they would not have the time to prepare for the debate." More developments to come. But for the moment the Socks are refusing to go mano a mano a mano a mano with Steyn.

Maybe Faisel Joseph should step up
to the plate.


UPDATE!!!!!! Mark Steyn writes:

UPDATE: It's on! It looks as if the producers of The Agenda have agreed to let me go head to heads with all three of the Sock Puppet Three. We indicated we'd rather debate the real plaintiffs, but interestingly in his most recent email the producer is now describing them not as "the complainants", but as "authors of a paper enumerating examples of "Islamophobia" in the pages of Maclean's." Which in terms of media accuracy is, I suppose, a modest improvement. See you on the air at 8pm Eastern.

Kudos to the producers and host of The Agenda.

FURTHER UPDATE:

Mark Steyn writes:

One final note. As I understand it, the Socks have agreed to Round One: Me first; Round Two: All of us together; Round Three: The Sock Puppet Three alone. That still's upside down: They're the accusers, I'm the accused - and in civilized societies the accuser states his accusation and the accused responds. We'll see whether TVO's producers manage to straighten up and fly right (as the Gipper would say) between now and air time.

They should go first. Then all three together. Then Mark Steyn.

But I confess, as a former television producer, I would hesitate to start with the Sock's boring, "agitprop" confusion-fest off the top. It's like having a crappy lead in a news story that'll guarantee no one will bother to read the rest. Steyn makes for a far better opening act. But that's still not fair to Steyn, unless they have a part four, in which Steyn rebuts their rebuttal.

Yeah, wearing my producer hat, I'd say "book-end" the hour by opening and closing with Mark Steyn.

Let Steyn warm up the audience. Then put everyone on for a good free for all. Then the sock puppets have their time to restate the agitprop that I am sure we have already read over a hundred times in myriad repetitive and dull op eds in newspapers across the country. That gives us time to go make popcorn. Then Steyn to close to make sure the audience goes away entertained and stimulated. Sounds like an award-winning, top-rated show to me.

Here's my earlier rant.

One of the things that has bugged me for a long time about the direction of modern journalism is how postmodern the attitude towards truth has become.

Instead of old-fashioned notions of objectivity--the idea that facts exist out there to be proven-- we now have "your truth" and "my truth" and "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

A doctrine of fairness and equal time has infected my profession and replaced the demands of finding the truth "out there" because, well, everyone has their side of the story to tell and there is no real truth to get at. Why we even have Western journalists embedded with the Mahdi Army in Iraq!!!!! How impressive. Gee, I wonder how well it would have gone over if say the Washington Post embedded reporters with the SS during World War II, and if newcasts back then gave Hitler and Churchill equal time, as if the Fuhrer's rantings had some legitimacy. Afterall, the Germans needed their "elbow room," no?

Words like extremist or militant or insurgent have replaced terrorist in editorial desk lexicons because "terrorist" has a moral judgment attached to it. No, no, no, journalists are never supposed to make moral judgments in this postmodern universe because there is no truth, only a range of perspectives that all deserve equal airing. There is no right and wrong, only differing power relationships and subjective Eurocentrism. We can't only have history written by the victors, now can we?

Which gets me to the behind the scene machinations on Steve Paikin's The Agenda tonight on whether Mark Steyn will get a chance to debate the so-called Sock Puppets, the law students who originally went to Maclean's Magazine to demand equal space and control over the cover art and a donation to a charity of their choice.

I am reminded of the time Paikin practically hauled Ezra Levant across the carpet for republishing the Danish cartoons. I believe Paikin has already had the Sock Puppets on, has he not? Has Mark Steyn ever been on his program? Why does he feel the need to give them a separate but equal forum on tonight's program. I think it is time for some producer to tell the Sock Puppets (and their puppet masters, the real complainants from the Canadian Islamic Congress) that they have to stop ducking behind the power of state censors and actually have a debate face to face with the man they are accusing.

When the Sock Puppets were on previously, did Paikin give them the same tough ride he gave Ezra? Or did he just give them a forum to whine and air their propaganda? I hope not.

I dunno. There are a lot of people who will tune into The Agenda tonight just to see Mark Steyn.
Those same people have heard so much of the Sock Puppets that they will turn off the set rather than listen to their array of misconstrued paraphrases and claims of victimhood again, especially if Paikin is not well-enough armed to challenge them about their ever-shifting versions of what happened in the editorial offices of Maclean's.

I find it especiallyannoying that The Agenda plans to give the Sock Puppets the right of rebuttal. In other words, the way it is set up now, they get the last word, as if they are the accused and not the accusers. I think at the VERY least, Steyn should follow them. Steyn is the victim here, not these people.

Here's my advice for the story meeting, Wodek, if you are still producing the show: if no face to face debate with Steyn; then no air time for the Sock Puppets or their puppet masters. Mark has the right to face his accusers and challenge their version of events.

Frankly, most mainstream journalists are just not up to speed on this file. So either out of laziness or postmodern views of truth, they say "whatever" and lapse into the fairness and equal time routine. Either they don't have the time to ascertain the facts, or they don't believe such things as facts exist. I don't watch The Agenda enough to say whether this is true of Steve Paikin. I hope not, because he really has tried in this show to have real debate and intellectually challenging programs in some of the ones I have seen. I have been of the opinion he is generally better than most. I hope he lives up to that tonight.

The start of a Conservative "revolution"--scratch that make it "revival"

Not long ago, I wrote about how one of the things that desperately needs correcting in Canada is the tendency of various unions to engage in political activities, often outrageous activities, on their captive members' dues.

Well, Jonathan Kay, who is shown in this great picture drinking from a Support the Canuck-6 mug, (Gee, where can I get one, Binks?) has begun to hear from CUPW members who are disgusted by that union's anti-Israel stance.

I see a national movement growing, a counterpart to the Common Sense Revolution that swept Ontario under the noses of all the left-leaning pundits back in 1995.

This is a Freedom Revolution. We're going to take back our rights from an overreaching, increasingly illiberal state. We will fight to see government trimmed, along with all sorts of of busybody commissions and their confining rules and regulations and extraordinary powers to violate our rights as free-born (and immigrant Canadian citizens like myself, a free-born American).

Union members are going to start dumping their out-of-touch leadership and one way that's going to change is through laws that protect the right of conscientious objection, so that those who find their consciences violated by a union's political stand can divert their dues to a charity of their choice. If the leadership has no dues to fund their illiberal anti-heterosexism campaigns, or their anti-Semitic demonize Israel campaigns, then what are they gonna do?

Here I am wearing my new "Tanks" t-shirt.

The revival has begun.

See you at the March for Life on Thursday. Make it the biggest one yet. It will focus on our first and foremost human right--the right to life.

The next "rabbit" to pop out of TheAmazing Obama's hat

Sometimes I marvel at Mark Steyn's writing. Especially since he hunts and pecks on a keyboard rather slowly, as I witnessed back in Ottawa March 25. But more than that, it is his imagination and wit that allows him to come up with some great images that have lasting power. Like his image of Barack Obama as a magician, The Amazing Obama, in this column about the Democratic nominee's attempts to overcome the Jeremiah Wright problem, first through a speech:

It was never a great speech. It was a simulacrum of a great speech written to flatter gullible pundits into hailing it as the real deal. It should be "required reading in classrooms," said Bob Herbert in the New York Times; it was "extraordinary" and "rhetorical magic," said Joe Klein in Time – which gets closer to the truth: As with most "magic," it was merely a trick of redirection.

Obama appeared to have made Jeremiah Wright vanish into thin air, but it turned out he was just under the heavily draped table waiting to pop up again. The speech was designed to take a very specific problem – the fact that Barack Obama, the Great Uniter, had sat in the pews of a neo-segregationist huckster for 20 years – and generalize it into some grand meditation on race in America. Sen. Obama looked America in the face and said: Who ya gonna believe? My "rhetorical magic" or your lyin' eyes?

The Amazing Obama--he will forever be that to me now, thank you Mark, has another problem he will need to vanish into thin air.

This image of his political supporter and Chicago neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers, stomping on an American flag, will give new meaning to Obama's refusal to wear a flag pin. Because this flag stomping happened in 2001, not when the Amazing Obama was eight years old.

H/t Michelle Malkin.

Modern day exorcism on the CBC

Check out this video on CBC Sunday.

Most interesting.

So are the comments.

Rex Murphy calls for reining in of human rights commissions

In Saturday's Globe and Mail, Rex Murphy again sounds a warning against Canada's out of control 'human rights commissions' and suggests to the Tories what their next election issue should be:

Were Mr. Harper, however, looking for an issue centred unequivocally on a matter of the most profound principle, I think we would have heard from him by now on the wretched intrusion of human rights commissions into the domain of this country's free expression and free speech.

These commissions have stealthily migrated from their original and defined mandate to prevent discrimination in housing or employment, from deeds of discrimination, to an activist and capricious role of monitoring speech or thought. Under the hopelessly elastic and malleable rubric of "any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" they investigate and rule on everything from bishops to magazine editors, from genital surgery to hand-washing protocols at McDonald's.

-snip-

Yet Mr. Harper, with all his tactical prowess, has let the controversy over human rights commissions go on without so much as a comment. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, outlandishly, can decline the now celebrated complaint against Maclean's and then proceed to mercilessly slag Maclean's, in public, and Mr. Harper's Tories sheepishly let the whole mess pass by without a word.

He will have Mr. Flaherty say that an election will be triggered over the grey question of tax-credits and film content. But he is mute as a beach rock over a fundamental offence to democracy. So too, it should emphatically be noted, is one of Pierre Trudeau's successors as leader of the Liberal Party - Stéphane Dion. Liberals used to have regard for free speech.

The next election will be fought on freedom of speech. Whether it is the "message" of any of the party leaders or not.

Why didn't this story get more play?

I think it's the durned subscriber wall over at the Globe and Mail that's responsible for the fact that another example of a strange Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision, involving an Iranian-born Mountie cadet never got a good Ezra Levant and/or Mark Steyn slicing and dicing.

Here's a bit from the CP story now hidden behind the Globe's protective barrier:

The tribunal was ordered to include consideration of RCMP statistics which Mr. Tahmourpour obtained under federal access to information legislation. He concluded that the statistics show visible minorities accounted for 11 per cent of RCMP recruits between 1996 and 2001, but made up 23 per cent of the rejections during that period.

Mr. Tahmourpour told the Federal Court of Appeal there was “systemic discrimination” against visible minorities in the RCMP. At the time, the RCMP denied his allegations, saying Mr. Tahmourpour was simply not Mountie material.

He also told the court that instead of treating his request to wear the pendant during fitness classes respectfully, a sergeant told the class in a “condescending and hostile” manner that “no one is going to wear his religious jewelry, except for Ali, of course.”

Now, to clarify some confusion you might be experiencing. Tahmourpour filed human rights complaints that were originally dismissed. He appealed, and eventually the Federal Court of Appeal ordered the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to hear his case. So, in their latest decision, they ordered:

[267] Pursuant to its authority under s. 53(2) of the Act, the Tribunal orders the following:

(i) Unless otherwise agreed upon, the Respondent shall offer Mr. Tahmourpour an opportunity to re-enroll in the next available RCMP Cadet Training Program at Depot;

(ii) If Mr. Tahmourpour accepts the offer of re-enrollment, the Respondent shall undertake a fair assessment of his skills at the outset of the training program to determine the areas in which training is needed;

(iii) The Respondent shall pay Mr. Tahmourpour compensation for salary and benefits he lost for the first 2 years plus 12 weeks of work as an RCMP officer after graduating from Depot. The compensation shall be discounted by 8%;

(iv) The Respondent shall pay Mr. Tahmourpour the difference between the average full-time industrial wage in Canada for persons of his age, and the salary that he would have earned as an RCMP officer until such time as Mr. Tahmourpour accepts or rejects an offer of re-enrollment in the training program at Depot. The Respondent shall compensate Mr. Tahmourpour for the average amount of overtime paid to other constables who graduated from Depot in 1999, unless otherwise agreed upon by the parties. The compensation shall be discounted by 8%;

(v) The compensation must reflect a promotion to Corporal after 7 years;

(vi) The parties shall attempt to agree upon the measures and a timetable for addressing the issues set out in the "Systemic Remedy" part of this decision. In the event that they are unable to reach an agreement on this portion of the award within 3 months from the date of this decision, the Tribunal will make a final determination;

(vii) The Respondent shall pay $9,000 to Mr. Tahmourpour in compensation for the pain and suffering caused by its discriminatory conduct;

(viii) The Respondent shall pay $12,000 to Mr. Tahmourpour pursuant to s. 53(3) of the Act;

(ix) The Respondent shall pay $9,500 to Mr. Tahmourpour in compensation for the expenses he incurred in minimizing his losses. The Respondent shall also compensate Mr. Tahmourpour for the legal expenses he incurred in this matter;

(x) The Respondent shall pay interest on the compensation awarded in this decision as set out above.

"Signed by"

Karen A. Jensen

OTTAWA, Ontario

April 16, 2008

The Decision lays out the facts as follows:

4

] Mr. Tahmourpour alleged that from the first day of training at Depot he was singled out for negative treatment on the basis of his religion, race and national or ethnic origin. He stated that he was ridiculed for wearing a religious pendant and for signing his name in the Persian style. He was subject to ongoing verbal harassment, hostile treatment and negative performance evaluations by his instructors. This had the effect of undermining his confidence and impairing his ability to develop and demonstrate the necessary skills at Depot. When Mr. Tahmourpour challenged one of the instructors who was treating him negatively, the instructor in question began mounting a campaign to have him removed from Depot. At the urging of this instructor, Mr. Tahmourpour was given negative and inaccurate performance evaluations which ultimately led to his dismissal from the training program. The final act of discrimination occurred, in Mr. Tahmourpour's view, when the RCMP denied him the ability to return to the program on the basis of an inaccurate evaluation of his mental stability.

[

5] It is Mr. Tahmourpour's view that the negative treatment he received was a manifestation of systemic discrimination against visible minorities at Depot. According to him, the systemic discrimination at Depot consisted of the RCMP's failure to address a culture of disrespect and negativity towards visible minority cadets at Depot, as a result of which the attrition rates for visible minorities were higher than for non-visible minority cadets.

[6] The RCMP denies that there was systemic discrimination at Depot during the time that Mr. Tahmourpour was there. The RCMP states that Mr. Tahmourpour's performance at Depot was fairly evaluated and found wanting. His training contract was terminated for no other reason than that he failed to meet the standards at Depot. When he was informed that his contract was terminated, Mr. Tahmourpour's negative reaction to this event demonstrated that he could not deal with challenges. Therefore, the RCMP was justified in putting a note on his file recommending that he not be considered for re-enrollment.

[7] The Canadian Human Rights Commission did not participate in the proceedings. However, it remained a party to the proceedings and indicated its interest in any preliminary, resolution, enforcement or judicial review proceedings that might arise.

Here's some of what the "respondent" had to say about this cadet:

[67] Corporal (now Inspector) Bradley testified that from the beginning, she perceived that Mr. Tahmourpour had a great deal of difficulty in scenario training. He had difficulty reading the environment and responding appropriately. She stated that his difficulties stemmed from poor communication skills. Communication skills are more than just speaking. They involve listening, taking in information and responding appropriately. As a result of his inability to communicate effectively, Mr. Tahmourpour was poor in all aspects of risk assessment, police and public safety assessment and interactions with suspects.

[68] Corporal Bradley stated that Mr. Tahmourpour was given regular verbal feedback about his communication skills. For example, in the anger management scenario, Mr. Tahmourpour was unable to respond to the cues and to use the techniques that he had been taught. In keeping with the standard procedure, his performance was critiqued after the scenario. Corporals Jacques and Bradley testified that the feedback would have been provided in a constructive way.

[69] With regard to the Community Consultative Group, Corporal Bradley stated that Mr. Tahmourpour seemed to have formulated an approach to dealing with the problems presented in the meeting. Regardless of the information or emotion that was presented to him, he would not deviate from his plan. The result was that he did not listen to people and would not react to what they were saying. The group became increasingly angry when they perceived that Mr. Tahmourpour was not responding to the issues they were raising. He did not use the techniques that had been taught to engage in interest-based negotiation such as paraphrasing, identifying interests, asking questions, reading emotions and saying things like "ok, I can see that this is really important to you, what can we do to help you with this?"

[70] Inspector Bradley provided credible testimony regarding Mr. Tahmourpour's communication difficulties. She performed well during a rigorous cross-examination on this point. When challenged, for example, about the fact that Mr. Tahmourpour's peers thought that he remained in control throughout the Community Consultative Group, Inspector Bradley stated that it was not inconsistent to remain in control of the group (which was generally positive) and yet, be unresponsive to the needs and interests that were being raised during the meeting. She did not waiver in her assessment that Mr. Tahmourpour's performance during this meeting was unacceptable. She was able to respond to the questions put to her by counsel for the Complainant in a calm, straightforward manner. She was assertive and forthright, and spoke with conviction and an air of candour that I found convincing.

[71] In contrast, I found Mr. Tahmourpour's evidence on the issue of his communication skills to be less credible. He asserted that his performance in the Community Consultative Group was excellent because he came up with a solution. It appeared to me that he did not fully appreciate that there is more to communication than expressing one's own ideas and coming up with a solution to a problem. For example, when Mr. Tahmourpour was asked what he thought was meant by "active listening" he stated that he thought that it meant taking good notes.

[72] Mr. Tahmourpour also demonstrated his weakness in self-assessment during the hearing. He agreed in cross-examination that he might have some weaknesses in communication skills. Yet, when asked what these weaknesses were, Mr. Tahmourpour was unable to identify any area. He often repeated that, like everyone, he had areas that he needed to work on. But, when pressed on what those might be, he was evasive.

[73] Therefore, I think it more probable than not that by September 8, 1999 Mr. Tahmourpour had demonstrated that he was failing to develop certain communication skills that are essential to police work: active listening, consensus building, interest-based negotiation, and speaking in a commanding tone of voice. The first part of Mr. Tahmourpour's prima facie case, therefore, is not made out.

[74] However, Mr. Tahmourpour asserted, in the alternative, that his weaknesses at Depot resulted from the constant unfounded criticism that he received at Depot. Mr. Tahmourpour did receive a lot of attention from the instructors at Depot. Some of the attention he received came in the form of sincere efforts to assist him to overcome weaknesses in areas such as communication skills. However, as I have already noted, he was also subjected to verbal harassment and derogatory remarks by Corporal Boyer that were based, at least in part, on his race, religion and/or ethnic or cultural background. Mr. Tahmourpour stated that he felt intimidated and his confidence was seriously undermined by this treatment.

This decision did get a good slicing and dicing by the Globe's Margaret Wente, again behind that blasted subscriber wall. But here are some salient quotes:

Ali Tahmourpour always dreamed of being a Mountie. But it was not to be.
In 1999, the Iranian immigrant washed out of cadet school after he was
singled out and harassed because of his ethnicity.

Last week, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal awarded him upward of half
a million dollars and ordered the RCMP to give him another chance. "I
believe I have a lot to contribute to the force," declared the
35-year-old.

-snip-

Since flunking boot camp all those years ago, Mr. Tahmourpour hasn't
exactly displayed the resilience, resources or self-reliance you might
expect from someone who wants to be a Mountie. For example, he hasn't
held a job. He got a real-estate licence, but that didn't work out. He
qualified to be a translator, but that didn't work out, either. He
claims he was too busy fighting his case to look for work. Mercifully,
the adjudicator didn't swallow that one. That's why she awarded him only
half a million dollars, which was far less than what he wanted - 8 1/2
years back pay from the RCMP, including upgrades for promotions.

So, all in all, I guess we should be grateful. Mr. Tahmourpour got his
day in court, and then some. Now he'll get a second chance to fulfill
his dream and, this time, the people who run boot camp will be very,
very careful. Will our nation be well-served if he makes it? You decide.

Douglas Farrow blasts new Quebec policies

I hope this essay is read far and wide. Douglas Farrow is one of the most prophetic voices speaking in Canada today. In yesterday's Montreal Gazette, he blasts the new religious education curriculum that Quebec will impose on all school children, whether they are in public or private schools. But in this essay are profound lessons that all Christians, wherever they are in the West, must take to heart.

Farrow writes:

When, I wonder, will we wake to the fact that the situation has changed quite fundamentally in the West? When will we take concerted action aimed at preserving our freedoms, so that they may be handed on to our children and to the next generation?

I think the advent of the new Québec school curriculum, Ethics and Religious Culture, should be a wake-up call. Let me tell you why.

It is not because I am against the teaching of children - older children - about religions other than Christianity. As I teach on a faculty of religious studies, you would hardly expect me to be against that. I am against the new curriculum because it is being imposed even on private and religious schools, and even on young children.

I am against it because - make no mistake about this! - it is intended to wean children away from traditional religious and moral commitments and to train them up in an ideology antipathetic to those commitments, the ideology of so-called "normative pluralism."

It is intended to teach them the Sheerman principle that faith is all right as long as people are not that serious about it. It is intended, in other words, to pry them away from their most basic communities of socialization - their families and their houses of worship - and to unite them in the state, with the state, and under the State, a state that regards itself as more fundamentally important than their families and churches.

It's this same pernicious statism that underlies the recent Ontario Human Rights Tribunal's Christian Horizons decision. The same fundamentalist secularism that animates ideologues like Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall.

This rabid new anti-religious form of fundamentalism is antithetical to religious freedom and antithetical to the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of all the civil rights and freedoms we enjoy in the West. And yet, this secularist fundamentalism is no match for radical Islam. As Mark Steyn has written, it is the vacuum into which radical Islam pours.

Please spread the word about this great essay, and while you are at it, pick up a copy of Farrow's book Nation of Bastards, and Divorcing Marriage, which he co-edited with McGill colleague Daniel Cere. Divorcing Marriage is the best non-religious collection of apologetics in favor of traditional marriage and family that I've read.

Arm yourself spiritually and intellectually for the battle at hand. These two books are essential reading.

The Ezra Levant analysis I've been waiting for

Ezra Levant, in a great blog post entitled Ezra in Wonderland, looks around at the audience who listened to Jason Kenney's speech Friday that warned against the "dangerous" and "illiberal" use of human rights commissions to combat racism.

On Kenney's speech and the National Post coverage, Erza said:

That's the toughest broadside yet aimed at Canada's human rights commissions. "Dangerous". "Illiberal". "Undermine those constitutional values". That's tough talk.

So far, it is still only talk -- but it shows a growing school of thought within the government: Canada's HRCs are out of control, and are paradoxically becoming a menace to real human rights, like freedom of speech.

That the cabinet minister in charge of domestic human rights and multiculturalism would call "anti-hate" activists on the carpet so publicly and pointedly is dramatic. In a way, it is as important as Keith Martin's private member's motion to repeal section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the thought crimes provision. Martin's motion is more precise. But, as a motion (as opposed to a bill), it is what lawyers might call obiter dicta -- a non-binding statement of opinion, not a change in the law. Martin's motion is a call for a Parliamentary rebuke of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Kenney didn't bother to wait for the vote!

Ezra's post is long, and deliciously detailed. But he has a great suggestion for the Tories about where to make some budget cuts should tough economic times and Liberal harping about the GST tax cuts, etc. make it important to cut "services" in order to avoid a deficit.

Ezra writes:

I had never heard of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation until this week. I don't think most Canadians had, either. I can't think of a single reason why the Conservative government shouldn't pull the plug on them the first day of their majority government. I truly believe that race relations in Canada would be better without this horde of Jeremiah Wrights. And at least he gets his money from his churchgoers.

Shoot, how much would the government save by cutting the budget of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, too?

If we are going to have some kind of mechanism for settling matters concerning various kinds of wrongful discrimination, then I would suggest we develop a system of independent arbitrators who are known for their fairness and legal acumen, arbitrators that both sides in a dispute would agree to have hear their case. And if complainants get funded, then "respondents" must get funded, too. No more of this guilty until proven innocent stuff, and general sloppiness that has arisen from the informal administrative, mediation-oriented beginnings of human rights commissions but have metastasized into illiberal, administrative procedures with all the force and powers of a regular court but none of the safeguards built into our Common Law tradition, like truth being a defense and so on.

And the wrongful discrimination should apply only to wrongful deeds, not speech or expression.

The Code is gonna get you

Blazingcatfur sent me to this chilling post about how human rights tribunals have already forced publications to print material.

Just as they have forced mayors to proclaim gay pride days, forced people say things that are against their conscience and religion.

This post shows how old this problem is and how asleep at the switch most of us have been. David Burlingham writes:

Reading about this, I remembered that the Tribunal has, in fact, used its power to order a publication to print certain things. The second Doug Collins case had such a remedy as part of its outcome, as well as the Boissoin case in Alberta and the Owens case in Saskatchewan. In Collins, which was the case of a holocaust denier disseminating his beliefs in a newspaper column, the Tribunal ordered the offending publication, North Shore News, to run a summary of the tribunal member's reasons. The tribunal member did not cite any specific subsection of the Human Rights Code in support of this remedy, stating only that"[t]he Code also provides the Tribunal with broad discretionary powers to remedy the effects of conduct that contravenes the Code."

Watch out folks, the Code is gonna get you. And the enforcers don't even need to cite any reasons. The Code has its reasons, the mind cannot even comprehend.

Civilizational suicide watch

This story in today's National Post headlined Christianity without Christ is more distressing than all the posts on Jihadwatch on any given day.

Though an ordained minister, she does not like the title of reverend. It is one of those symbols that hold the church back from breaking into the future -- to a time "when the label Christian won't even exist" and the Church will be freed of the burdens of the past. To balance out those symbols of the past inside West Hill, there is a giant, non-religious rainbow tapestry just behind the altar and multi-coloured streamers hang from the ceiling.

"The central story of Christianity will fade away," she explained. "The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away."

The head of the United Church of Canada, David Giuliano, who went to divinity school with Ms. Vosper 20 years ago, said if he felt the way that she does, he would not be a minister. But it is not his job to condemn, he said, and the church is structured in such a way that complaints have to come from the congregation before any action can be taken. And so far there have been no complaints. He also sees the United Church, considered the most liberal of the mainline Protestant churches, as broad enough to encompass a wide range of theologies.

Even Rev. Giuliano agrees that the name Christian -- which carries the baggage of colonialism and other ills -- should probably be phased out. Instead, he would replace "Christian" with "Follower of the Way" or "Follower of Jesus."

This story is a sign of our civilizational suicide. What's worse? Having a "minister" like this inside a once Christian church? Or having a church designed to the glory of the Christian God and paid for by faithful believers in Jesus as God the Son turn into a mosque or a community centre that holds jazz concerts and art exhibits. Or a condo development for aging Baby Boomers. I doubt she will be able to attract people who are hungry for a real, personal relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ.

Her kind of religion is, to borrow some words of a priest friend of mine, "spiritual euthanasia."


But we have adopted the political correctness mush, and the suicide cocktail of multiculturalism and relativism of our own accord. We are chucking out all the things that made our societies the envy of the world and living on the inheritance, without a clue that the capital is being spent now and rapidly disappearing.

It is so sad to me that the Episcopal and Anglican Churches have mostly consigned the old Book of Common Prayer to the dust bins, or maybe they have an 8:00 a.m. service once a month for some old biddies and geezers to keep them from complaining. But the Canterbury Anglicans have become just as relativist and self-hating as the United Church

Our faithful Anglican Catholic congregation---Book of Common Prayer, King James Bible---is hoping the pope will step in to protect our beautiful heritage, an heirloom of Western Civilization, but taking our Traditional Anglican Communion under his wing.

We cannot have a vibrant, virtuous culture without an overarching story. Sorry, but the crap about rising from the primordial slime by chance just doesn't cut it for me, even if it satisfies the likes of John Derbyshire.

No....give me the Story that starts in Genesis...."In the beginning, God . . . "

and ends in Revelation.

Our very lives depend on it. Onward Christian soldiers. There is a war on. It is not against flesh and blood. But it is war, nevertheless.

Unions should not be allowed to be political

Or there should be a law that allows members to divert their dues under conscientious objection claims. I mean, imagine, being a Jew and having to pay dues to CUPW and their anti-Israel policy.

Or being a devout Catholic and being forced, like Susan Comstock and Dave MacDonald, to support
PSAC's anti-heterosexism policy.

Robert Fulford writes in today's National Post in This is why we hate unions:

When you hear the phrase "Canadian values," you know something ugly and mendacious is beginning -- a speech by Paul Martin, for instance.

Martin made unctuous bragging about Canadian values (he said they were the envy of the world) into the closest thing he had to a platform when he stumbled toward defeat in the 2006 election and turned over the government to Stephen Harper. But it was Martin's friend and admirer, Basil Eldon ("Buzz") Hargrove, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), who used those words this week, in an exceptionally foolish article he contributed to the Toronto Star.

Hargrove probably admired the way Martin wielded the phrase when they appeared together during the campaign, both wearing CAW windbreakers, so that Hargrove could help Martin and the Liberals stay in office. Hargrove believes in tactical voting, and imagines himself a master of this devious art, though his record so far, in provincial and federal politics, has not reflected the canniness the work requires.

In 2006, he urged all progressive citizens, including his fellow New Democrats, to vote for the candidates most likely to defeat the Conservatives. Often that meant a Liberal, and Martin was duly appreciative. But Hargrove grew so intoxicated by his anything-to-stop-the-Tories rhetoric that he went a big step farther and recommended voting for the Bloc Quebecois if that would help do the job. He thus aligned himself with a party that has so far kept secret whatever enthusiasm it may feel for "Canadian values," or even Canada. This gaffe so embarrassed Martin that he felt called upon to say that he didn't agree with separatism. It also put another rock in the hands of the eventual prime minister, Stephen Harper. In the end, Hargrove did Martin no good at all. (He did manage, though, to harm as well as infuriate the NDP.)

I personally don't hate unions. I think unions can do some good work in protecting the rights of workers and ensuring good benefits and safe workplaces. But I think most unions have been hijacked by radical twerps who would rather hate Israel and dump on Catholics and evangelical Christians than do the work they are supposed to be doing in guaranteeing a fair shake for workers.

And I don't hate business either. I think business and capitalism are good things.

But my election slogan forever will be "It's about character--stupid!"

It all depends on the virtue of the characters involved, whether in business, in running labor unions, or politics.

But in our world where we can no longer discriminate among terrible, bad, good, better and best, it is becoming impossible to preach in the public square the "how-to" aspect of virtue and character.

Sad but true.

Come March for Life this coming Thursday in Ottawa

OTTAWA - This year’s National March for Life in Ottawa May 7-9 will honour the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The theme of the three-day event, is “Life — the first human right.” The theme is based on the declaration’s preamble which recognizes the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” as set out in the declaration’s preamble, as well as Article 3, which says “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Despite Canada’s signing this declaration, it is the only developed country that has no laws protecting the unborn child.

“We won’t rest until there is a law to protect the unborn,” said Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) national organizer Mary Ellen Douglas. “We want to highlight that without the right to live, all the other rights don’t fall into place. The right to live is the most basic thing.”

-snip-

The May 8 March will feature speeches by Alveda King, Martin Luther King’s niece, who is part of the group Silent No More that represents women and men who regret their involvement in abortion. When King spoke at this year’s National March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 22, she described abortion as a civil rights issue.

“When you kill a baby you are taking away that baby’s civil rights,” she said. “My civil rights were also affected, because my life was deeply damaged.”

Political correctness---one of jihad's most potent weapons

Jihad is not just fought with guns and bombs one of its most effective weapons is Political Correctness.

Must read essay on the relationship of freedom and constraint

From City Journal, a great magazine, a wonderful essay on freedom and happiness. But more than that, on the relationship of freedom and moral constraint. As I have long argued, we cannot be a free society unless we find a way to be a virtuous, self-governing people. If not, if we descend into libertinism and license, especially in the sexual realm, then we will have a need for a big, huge state to clean up the consequences of our "free" moral agency--the fatherless children, being the main consequence.

Arthur C. Brooks writes:

The earliest American definition of liberty—stated frequently by the Founding Fathers—is about constraints on personal actions: if I don’t hurt anybody else, I should be free to pursue my own will. As Thomas Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Despite more recent attempts to expand our understanding of freedom to include claims on one another or on government—FDR’s 1941 State of the Union speech, for example, which mentioned “freedom from want”—about two-thirds of Americans still define freedom in terms of doing what they want, being able to make their own choices, or having liberty in speech and religion.

Understanding freedom is a matter of no small importance. The Founders believed that it was one of at least three fundamental rights from God, along with life and the pursuit of happiness. These three rights are interrelated: not only does liberty, of course, depend on life, but the pursuit of happiness depends on liberty. In fact, evidence shows that freedom and happiness are strongly linked. But what kind of freedom makes Americans happiest? And what can government best do to promote freedom and help us pursue happiness, as is our inalienable right?

. . . .

But in cases where all can agree that our private, immoral behavior does not harm others, our happiness is best served with rules in our private lives that constrain our morality and protect us from excess in moments of personal weakness. The recipe for happiness is a combination of individual liberty, personal decency, and moderation. And government protects our freedom best when it forgoes infringements on our moral choices but vigorously defends our right to restrict these choices ourselves.

Yet in Canada, illiberal forces through government agencies are restricting our rights to teach, preach and practice moral restraint in public settings. The recent Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision against Christian Horizons is a case in point.

One of the key restraints is sexual restraint. As Michael Coren argues today:

Christian welfare groups tend to be the most successful in dealing with the needy, much of their work is performed by volunteers and most of their money comes from donations. They are motivated by their faith -- the same faith that leads them to sign morality statements and not to lie, cheat, be promiscuous or, sorry, engage in homosexual sex. Goodness, this isn't brain surgery. If people want to be homosexual, that is their business. If people want to be Christian, it should be theirs.

In California the Salvation Army was forced to close down several inner city missions because officials refused to sign a document approving of homosexuality. The destitute suffered terribly as a consequence. In Britain the Roman Catholic church similarly was obliged to shut the doors of its adoption agency.

This is not about justice, equality or discrimination. It is about crude bullying and triumphalism. The campaign stopped being about tolerance a long time ago and now is about penalizing anyone who will not embrace a particular social and sexual agenda. It's enough to drive you to drink -- unless you've signed the morality clause!

Now, a little lunch and more cleaning house.

Oh no! Keith don't go!

Liberal MP Keith Martin, the biggest defender of freedom of speech in Canada's Parliament is planning to fight his last election. That means that after the next Parliament, Keith won't be around to fight for human rights.

The National Post has a great profile of Keith Martin today. It's entitled Sick and Tired of Ottawa.

Don't forget that he has been leading the fight in Ottawa to get the egregious Subsection 13 (1) removed from the Canadian Human Rights Act through his private member's motion M-446.

But it looks like Conservative MP Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, is stepping up to the plate [it does not seem to be uploaded yet] in the lion's den yesterday. The National Post covered the event here. I think it's good that Jason didn't experience what Monte Solberg did when, as Immigration Minister, he went into a lion's den of people opposed to Conservative immigration policies and, for his trouble, got swarmed by thuggish protesters who then roughed up his chief of staff.

I am eager to see Ezra Levant's report on the speech, since he was at the head table.

I have promised myself to get some housekeeping done today, so blogging will be light.

But I wanted to mention a couple of more things from yesterday's World Press Freedom Day luncheon. One of the attacks on freedom of speech in Canada that was also mentioned from the podium was the violent physical attack on a journalist in Mississauga for the way he covered Islam.

In 2007, of the 102 journalists killed in 2007, 44 died in Iraq. The next greatest number were killed in Afghanistan. Er, you know it wasn't the Americans killing them. Or members of the elected Iraqi or Afghan governments.

Ergo, it would seem that the greatest, looming threat to press freedom---the kind of threat that involves death and violence---is coming from Islamism, that pernicious political ideology that combines the worst features of modern totalitarianism--fascism and communism, with a theocratic, pre-modern version of Islam. But at home in Canada, the threat to press freedom comes from government agencies, our own sense of fairness and confusion over human rights, and illiberal groups who use our weaknesses to further the silencing of those who dare to report on them or criticize them. In a bizarre inversion, the rights of enemy ideologies and those who purvey them seem to trump those of our own journalists and citizens.

I also want to write more about the keynote address from CBC China correspondent Patrick Brown. Just a few thoughts before I go clean the birdcage, scrub some toilets and dust the livingroom:

Patrick Brown spoke about the role the Internet plays in the uncovering of news, including a horrific story about how young men were being kidnapped at a train station and put into forced labor at a brick kiln, under conditions rivaling the worst concentration camps. The news of this came out when parents started frequenting chat rooms, looking for information about their missing sons. A symbiotic relationship has grown up between Internet citizen journalists and professional journalists who sometimes feed stuff to the Internet to they can then report on things that are being said on the Internet. But, in China there is the great firewall of China, brought to us by our "Do no evil" friends over at Google etc.. Also ISPs are responsible for the content. Brown said China has at least 10,000 Internet police who go around looking of for stuff to block. ISP providers, since they are liable, also go onto sites and bulletin boards and remove content. "Brick kiln" is now a blocked search word in China.

I dunno, but Brown's speech and the looming shadow of the 800 pound Islamist gorilla that was mentioned several times yesterday, had a weird synchronicity to it because of parallels between China's thought policing and what is happening or on the verge of happening here in Canada. I thought of the intrepid Jadewarr and Lucy and all the secret identities of Canada's own thought police. Of the lawsuits that are aimed at making service providers and search engines responsible for content. Of efforts to tame the Internet in ways that remind me of China's.


But on a hopeful note, Brown said that the blocking capacity of the Chinese firewall is not that great. People have found ways to get around it. And the blockers cannot anticipate the future. Who would have thunk that "brick kiln" would become a forbidden word.

Maybe we Canadians will have to start looking at our SPAM folders for clues on how to get around our Canadian thought police. You know, the wonky misspellings of certain organs that some people seem to think need enlarging, etc. Hiumin Ritez anyone? Phree Speechez?

You must listen to this interview with Tarek Fatah

Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress on Rob Breakenridge's show recently. This is a must listen interview.

Mark Steyn on Mike Duffy Life

Mark Steyn's interview on Mike Duffy Live is great. You can watch it here.

At the very end he asks where the Justice Minister is and notes that he hasn't returned his calls. Paging Rob Nicholson!!!!

More pix from the World Press Freedom Luncheon

Pictures from today's World Press Freedom luncheon.

1) The winners Gilles Toupin and Joel-Denis Bellavance with someone
from the Canadian Commission for
UNESCO making the presentation


2) Former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, National Post columnist Father Raymond De Souza and Maclean's Magazine editor Ken Whyte

3) Mark Steyn and Ken Whyte at the Maclean's table.


4) Gerald Langlois, QC, a lawyer and freespeecher who has taken a big interest in the human rights issue. He and I sat together. And of course, he's standing with Mark Steyn.

See in the post below Irwin Cotler's rebuke of the Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall and her drive-by verdict of the Steyn book excerpt.

Former Justice Minister on Barbara Hall's verdict

Former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who is a former academic and human rights expert, did not approve of the Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall's verdict without a trial of Mark Steyn's excerpt of America Alone in Maclean's Magazine. I caught up with Mr. Cotler at the World Press Freedom Luncheon today and he was willing to speak about it on video. You'll find it at the bottom of this post. He said the commission should have dismissed the complaint at the outset.

Mark Steyn didn't win though he got an honorable mention. The winners were Gilles Toupin and Joel-Denis Bellavance, who risk jail terms for refusing to reveal their sources.

Interestingly, there is an Islamism connection in the winners' case too, according to Reporters Without Borders:

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders condemns a Montreal federal court ruling on 18 January 2008 ordering two journalists employed by the French-language daily “La Presse”, Joël-Denis Bellavance and Gilles Toupin, to identify the source of a leak at the request of Adil Charkaoui, a terrorism suspect who was the subject of the leak. The newspaper is planning to appeal.

"It is quite surprising that the ’basic rights’ of a person suspected of terrorism are being used as grounds to violate the basic right of journalists to protect their sources," the press freedom organisation said. "While agreeing to Charkaoui’s request, the court cannot easily deny that it also wants to know the name of the journalists’ source. The judicial system has only itself to blame if it did not comply with a legal requirement to notify Charkaoui of the information concerning him."

Reporters Without Borders added: "The press cannot be held responsible for an error of judicial procedure. This is not the first time that the confidentiality of journalists’ sources has been threatened in Canada. This federal court’s decision could have a lasting impact on the future of press freedom."

The Montreal court ordered Bellavance and Toupin to reveal the source of a classified document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) accusing Charkaoui, a 34-year-old Moroccan citizen, of being an "Al-Qaeda sleeper agent" who received military and theological training in Afghanistan in 1998 and discussed hijacking a plane in Montreal with two other people in June 2000.

Here's another story from the CBC on the case:

The rights of a Montreal man accused of being a terrorist override journalists' privilege to protect their sources, according to a Federal Court ruling issued Friday.

Two journalists, who alleged Montreal resident Adil Charkaoui was part of a plot to hijack a plane, will have to answer questions under oath about their secret source who provided classified information used in a newspaper report, Judge Simon Noël wrote in his highly anticipated ruling.

Toupin became quite choked up during his acceptance speech. He said his Algerian-born wife really deserved the award, because she had fought Islamofacism in her home country as a journalist, and saw many of her friends and colleagues killed "just because they believed in democracy." He said she was forced to leave everything behind for fighting for the liberty to think, to believe and for liberty of the press. He said he was stunned to face this attack on press freedom in his home country, Canada, after having covered many world hot spots.

Bellavance spoke of facing six grueling hours on the witness stand. They face another two years of court battles. "What impact will this have on our families?" he asked.

I think we bloggers need to start paying attention to this case, too. Here's the former Liberal Justice Minister as promised:

I'm going to miss Dubya when he's gone

Watch this video and you'll hear some straight talk from President George W. Bush on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dr. Sanity writes:

The last time I felt this way about a US President was Ronald Reagan, who also managed to evoke a visceral hatred from many of my peers and colleagues for the same sort of moral clarity. History has since vindicated Mr. Reagan, and I believe it will do the same with Mr. Bush, who--whatever his failings--has, IMHO, got the one thing that is most important in our generation absolutely correct. And he has unflinchingly faced its reality with a clarity that is stunning for any politician, despite the unpopularity it has brought him, and despite all the anger, rage and hate that has been directed at him for it.

In many ways, George W. Bush is an extraordinary man and the sort of politician people say they want (someone who really brings 'hope and change'). Sadly, most such people are completely unable to recognize either of those rare qualities even when they are right in front of them, preferring instead the glib and easy promises of rather ordianry political hacks who look really good, but lack substance or moral character.

I agree.