To begin with, you are referring to something that does not exist, i.e. "war on freedom of speech".  The excerpt itself gives the impression of something I had never considered to exist before: "oral tabloid speech".  He manages to speak for five minutes without saying anything, but giving the impression that you have just heard something if you turn off your mind and allow your emotions to run loose.  He uses value-laden words such as "interrogation, squabble, dump, junk, radical" whcih are great for swaying an unthinking crowd to emotion and mindless behaviour, but are inappropriate for a serious intelligent discussion.  He reduces complex stories into cartoon-like items in a list which themselves are each meaningless since we don't know the story behind any of them.  I wish there had been something of substance.

I have presented before that in Canada we have two sets of values, and the one represented by the Human Rights Commission is one of these values that we hold dear.  In the past it was admitted that in the United States the freedom of speech goes so far as allowing the media to write untrue statements about members of groups who then run the risk of being the object of htred, discrimination, emotional and personal harm.  I find such a thing intolerable, if true, and it is not something that I want to see coming to where I live. 

There is little substance to what has been posted.  Does the man write this way too?

Maxi

I don't know what the man writes. To be honest, I think that a lot of conservative writers are just bad writers or are polemical, as are many liberal writers. But that is not the point. The point is that if you make any speech that *might* offend some *group*, you might as well shut down free speech totally and declare your country to be a "People's Republic". Doesn't it scare you that in Canada, it is now illegal to write anything that *might* offend *anyone* ? And the Human Rights commissions operate in a legal area outside of the law. The conviction rate of the HR courts in Canada is, as I understand it, 100% (or close to it). Normal rules of evidence are denied. You seem to also miss the larger point that since 1200 in Anglo-Saxon countries, we don't just let the government define any speech it wants to as forbidden and then outlaw whatever it likes. Anyone who thinks that the government should be able to do so, is, in my view, not operating within a democratic mindset. You don't need to protect speech that everyone agrees with. The freedom of speech which we Americans (still) enjoy, protects speech that people do not agree with. If you don't understand that, you have totally misunderstood this whole issue. For example, there are some elements of Islam that some people consider (rightly or wrongly) to harm the rights of women to advance. Do you really want to make it verboten to even discuss that ? Does that promote a free society ? If a gay writer criticizes Islam or Muslims because Islam is - in his view - more or less hostile to homosexuals, should that be illegal ? BTW, Canada did back down a bit from this, and no one went to jail, but this is, as liberals put it, "chilling".

John, you have posted a clip that is supposed to illustrate something. The clip features a man who says nothing but evokes a lot of emotion.  I see little sense to what is being said.  I haven't a clue what this has to do with the wrongness of Canadian values which uphold the right of people to seek investigation if they fear for their safety or well-being.  You errroneously confuse an investigation with a trial.  Nor has anyone at any time suggested that discussing the ideas and philosophies of various groups be quashed - in fact I would think that is something strongly upheld.  While you have the melting pot, we have the mosaic.  The tolerance for diversity came through to me yesterday as I first watched the Canada Day fireworks from 2007 with our anthem sung in two languages, and then saw a musical tribute that began with the music of the First Nations before launching into the standard anthem.  Somehow I feel this is tied to it.

Liberals are chilled?   www.liberal.ca/en/party/history 

A belated Happy Canada Day to everyone.

Maxi

Originally written by John Bunch on July 2, 2009 12:25 PM If a gay writer criticizes Islam or Muslims because Islam is - in his view - more or less hostile to homosexuals, should that be illegal ? BTW, Canada did back down a bit from this, and no one went to jail, but this is, as liberals put it, "chilling".

Excellent...and this is what sends liberals into a tizzy.  Previously, having an unfailingly positive attitude toward homosexual rights was the acid test; now, an unfailingly positive attitude toward Islam.  But what happens, indeed, when those two conflict?  Wilders is probably right when he says that political speech is being censored (if only self-censored) to the extent that it must never be irritating to some Muslim, somewhere.

Steyn is a theater critic and a skilled essayist, but he's no scholar.  He knows how to use the telling anecdote, but can't marshal data to any effect.  File Under: Entertainment.

Still, I enjoy this:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/2135/109

And especially this excerpt:

One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of western civilization loathe that civilization — and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing.

Originally written by Scott Rasmussen on July 2, 2009 7:41 PM Previously, having an unfailingly positive attitude toward homosexual rights was the acid test; now, an unfailingly positive attitude toward Islam.  But what happens, indeed, when those two conflict?

Interesting. I have friends who are black and others who are white. Those two colors have been in a permanent conflict. Somehow, I have no problem accommodating both of them.

BTW, Canada did back down a bit from this, and no one went to jail, but this is, as liberals put it, "chilling".

1.  There is no jail term for an investigation, which is not a trial.
2.  "Canada" did not do anything - A request by one of its citizens to investigate a concern was honoured.
3.  Canadian Liberals have not expressed any particular emotion as far as I know, and certain not anything as dire as "chill".

The only thing that happened is that a citizen expressed a concern which was looked into.

Maxi

A shallow article that has changed the original printed facts.  The magazine articles are now cartoons.  The HRC is turned into a poor person's rental watchdog.  Give me a break.

Maxi

Some coments on the HRC, from inside and outside Canada (this is from Wikipedia, and I will leave it up to the readers if this is deemed 'deep' enough to believe). Note: this also might be the first time that I have ever agreed with something said by Noam Chomsky:

--------

"The controversy regarding the HRC's practices comes from its enforcement of Section 13.1 of Canada's Human Rights Act, which states that it is discriminatory to communicate by phone or Internet any material "that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." Critics charge that the HRC adjudicators have limited legal training and poor investigatory resources and the result is that the power of section 13.1 is being abused for nuisance cases that would be rightly tossed out of a real court.[1]

Liberal MP Keith Martin has proposed a private member's bill in Parliament to rescind section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, upon which federal HRC censorship cases are based.[2] Martin described the legal test of "likely to expose" as "a hole you could drive a Mack truck through," and said it is being applied by "rogue commissions where a small number of people [are] determining what Canadians can and can't say."[1]

Martin asserted that some of history's most important ideas "were originally deemed to be sacrilegious and certainly in opposition to conventional wisdom. Who's to say that a commission cannot rule those ideas out of order and penalize people for saying or thinking them?"[1]
Irwin Cotler, a Canadian human rights scholar and former minister of justice, floated (but did not endorse) the idea that section 13.1 cases should require the authorization of the Attorney-General, which is the requirement for criminal prosecutions for inciting violence or promoting hatred.[1]

Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, has also criticized Section 13.1. He cited an example of the book Hitler's Willing Executioners, which alleges the complicity of German civilians in the Holocaust, and said that the thesis is arguably "likely to expose" German people to contempt, and therefore be a violation of Section 13.1.[1]

Borovoy also noted that under Section 13.1, "Intent is not a requirement, and truth and reasonable belief in the truth is no defence."[1]

Linguist and analytic philosopher[3] Noam Chomsky has said about the section, "I think it's outrageous, like the comparable European laws. It's also pure hypocrisy. If it were applied the media and journals would be shut down. They don't expose current enemies of the state to hatred or contempt?"[4]