----- Original Message -----
Sent: March 24, 2006 07:34
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Canadian Thought
Police on the march
Don't look now but Canada is
changing - Group Think
Gary North would be proud of
you folks.
He tried to bring in New
Geneva and by the looks of it you folks have actually
suceeded!
Robert Martin, professor of constitutional
law at the University of Western Ontario "Canada now is a
totalitarian theocracy. I see this as a country ruled today by what I
would describe as a secular state religion [of political correctness].
Anything that is regarded as heresy or blasphemy is
not tolerated."
Be careful there have been Inquisitions against
professors who attack American Foriegn policy. Hope you do not get turned in,
for your thoughts!
You Cant Say That
Canadian thought police on the
march.
By
David E. Bernstein
I've had the
good fortune of spending this past month on the road promoting my new book
about how anti-discrimination laws are eroding civil liberties. At the end of
a recent talk about the book, an audience member asked whether I believe that
freedom of _expression_ is really at risk in the United States from laws meant
to aid women and minorities. The heart of my response is, "Look at what's
happening in Canada. If we don't watch out, we're next."
The decline of freedom of _expression_ in Canada began with seemingly minor
and
understandable speech restrictions. In 1990, the Canadian supreme court
upheld the conviction of James Keegstra, a public-high-school teacher, for
propagating Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic views to his public high-school
students, despite repeated warnings from his superiors to stop. Keegstra was
convicted of the crime of "willfully promoting hatred against an identifiable
group," which carries a penalty of up to two years in jail. Criminalizing hate
speech, the court stated, was a "reasonable" restriction on _expression_, and it
therefore passed constitutional muster.
Two years later, the same court held that obscenity laws are
unconstitutional to the extent they criminalize material based on sexual
content alone. However, any "degrading or dehumanizing" depiction of sexual
activity including material that the First Amendment would protect in the
United States was deprived of constitutional protection to protect women
from discrimination.
Even the most zealous advocates of freedom of _expression_ often feel
uncomfortable defending the right to engage in Holocaust denial or to
propagate degrading pornography. But, not surprisingly, the inevitable result
of allowing these initial speech restrictions has been the gradual but
significant growth of censorship and suppression of civil liberties across
Canada.
In many cases, the speech that is suppressed conflicts with the Canadian
government's official multiculturalist agenda, or is otherwise politically
incorrect. For example, the Canadian supreme court recently turned down an
appeal by a Christian minister convicted of inciting hatred against Muslims.
An Ontario appellate court had found that the minister did not intentionally
incite hatred, but was properly convicted for being willfully blind to the
effects of his actions. This decision led Robert Martin, a professor of
constitutional law at the University of Western Ontario, to comment that he
increasingly thinks "Canada now is a totalitarian theocracy.
I see this as a country ruled today by what I would describe as a secular
state religion [of political correctness]. Anything that is regarded as
heresy or blasphemy is not tolerated."
Indeed, it has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate
traditional Christian opposition to homosexual sex. For example, the
Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ordered the Saskatoon Star Phoenix
and Hugh Owens to each pay $1,500 to each of three gay activists as damages
for publication of an advertisement, placed by Owens, which conveyed the
message that the Bible condemns homosexual acts.
In another incident, after Toronto print-shop owner Scott Brockie refused
on religious grounds to print letterhead for a gay-activist group, the local
human-rights commission ordered him to pay the group $5,000, print the
requested material, and apologize to the group's leaders. Brockie, who always
accepted print jobs from individual gay customers, and even did pro-bono work
for a local AIDS group, is fighting the decision on religious-freedom grounds.
Any gains the gay-rights movement has received from the crackdown on
speech in Canada have been pyrrhic because as part of the Canadian
government's suppression of obscene material, Canadian customs frequently
target books with homosexual content. Police raids searching for obscene
materials have disproportionately targeted gay organizations and bookstores.
Moreover, left-wing academics are beginning to learn
firsthand what it's like to have their own censorship vehicles used
against them. For example, University of British
Columbia Prof. Sunera Thobani, a native of Tanzania, faced a
hate-crimes investigation after she launched into a vicious
diatribe against American foreign policy. Thobani, a Marxist feminist
and multiculturalism activist, had remarked that Americans are "bloodthirsty,
vengeful and calling for blood." The Canadian hate-crimes law was created to
protect minority groups from hate speech. But in this case, it was invoked to
protect Americans.
A great deal more censorship in Canada seems
inevitable. For example, British Columbia's extremely broad hate-speech
law prohibits the publication of any statement that "indicates" discrimination
or that is "likely" to expose a person or group or class of persons to hatred
or contempt. The Canadian thought police are on the march. Hopefully, it is
not too late to stop them.
David E. Bernstein is a professor of law at
George Mason University and the author of You Can't Say That! The Growing
Threat to Civil Liberties from Anti-Discrimination Laws
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1930865538/103-2028551-5008648?v=glance&n=283155
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