And your comments on "FUNDIES" have hurt me, I understand it as an attack
on me & multiple groups of my friends. ; )
Zündel was denied the right to cross-examine his accusers or to know all
the evidence against him.
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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