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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