Thursday, June 12, 2008

Revised and Extended on the NY Times re: Free Speech

Here's an email I sent to some compatriots discussing the NY Times piece which I had previously commented on. It revises and extends my remarks. I've added some links for the fun and convenience of any potential readers and/or historians.

Super huge props or whatever the blog-appropriate version is to Ezra Levant upon whose blog I have relied to follow the Canadian mess. I heartily recommend it.

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Honestly, I find the whole thing too depressing to even get on a high horse about.

What can be said? The Times' attitude is apalling but not at all surprising coming from such staunch supporters of the latest in US campaign finance reform, which is basically a "speech for me, not for thee" piece of legislation from their perspective.

The article actually does a decent job of presenting both sides, though it way front-loads the criticism of free speech and support for "hate speech" laws. The headline and brief summary provided for your email forward, however, betray their true feelings quite nicely. We're "out of step with our allies" and "some legal scholars" think we should reconsider our bizarrely wide scope of free speech protection.



Meanwhile, you're probably thinking, as I did, that they have free speech up in Canada. You are wrong.

The latest decision handed down by a Human Rights Commission up there had as its punishment the proscription on a Christian minister from ever again expressing any "disparaging" remarks about homosexuality. Oh yeah, he also had to publish a public apology for having held those beliefs to begin with. And you thought show trials with public apologies went out with the Cultural Revolution. Shame on you.

I really feel like these things are going to get more and more press, even down here. The more you learn of them, the more shocking they are, NY Times white-washing support aside.

These are tribunals whose "judges" need have no legal qualifications at all and frequently don't. When they do, those qualifications are often of the "divorce lawyer" sort. Can you imagine having a divorce lawyer appointed to a middling bureaucratic post determining where the proper limits on free speech are? (Memorably, one such commissioner was asked what weight he put on the right to free speech. His answer was "free speech is an American concept, so I give it no weight." Apparently he'd never read or heard of the Canadian Charter of Rights or had even a passing familiarity with centuries of common law evolution...)

Then there's the way these things are run. There's no rules of evidence, no presumption of innocence, no reliance on precedent either of the commissions or real courts, pretty much no established procedure at all. Fully half of the section 13 hate-speech complaints have been filed by one man, who, by the way, used to be an investigator for one of these comissions. He gets 5-figure settlements for his efforts, despite often not actually being a member of the group who he feels might have been offended.

Some of their investigative techniques involve stealing a neighbors wireless internet connection, using it to log onto white supremecist websites, posting outrageous messages, and then launching a complaint over the replies.

And the best part? The section 13 cases have a 100% conviction rate. Yep, that's right, every single complaint that's gone to "trial" has been found guilty. I'm not super up on my totalitarian history but I'm reasonably sure even the Soviets liked to throw the occassional "innocent" verdict into the mix, just to keep up appearances.

Of course, much like the Soviet trials, the investigation itself is in fact a punishment of sorts. You see, if you make a complaint that's the end of your responsibility. From there on out, the state pays to investigate and then prosecute the complaint. Of course, the defendant pays his own way, which can run to 6 figures or more (these cases can drag out for years as well). And if you're found innocent? (Which you never are if the complaint is a "hate speech" one) No getting the costs back. Real Canadian courts have the admirable "loser pays" feature.


At any rate. As I've said before, you should really read up a bit on what's going on up there, if only because it's so chillingly interesting. Also, I must again recommend Steyn's book, an excerpt of which set off his hate-speech trial, as an excellent, funny, and morbidly depressing read. (Quite an accomplishment to mix those attributes.) I've said it before, I'll say it again: Western Civ. is on it's way out. Faster rather than slower. The irony is those hurrying to usher it out are prob. going to miss it most.

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