For
more than twenty years, in this column and elsewhere,
I have been writing against the human rights commissions,
which have quasi-legal powers that should be offensive
to the citizens of any free country. They are kangaroo
courts, in which the defendant's right to due process
is withdrawn. They reach judgments on the basis of
no fixed law. Moreover, "the process is the punishment"
in these star chambers - for simply by agreeing to
hear a case, they tie up the defendant in bureaucracy
and paperwork, and bleed him for the cost of lawyers,
while the person who brings the complaint, however
frivolous, stands to lose nothing.
My
hope is that this case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's
will be fruitful. It will be, if it inspires enough
people - especially journalists, of all political
persuasions - to express outrage at what has been
done; and inspires Canada's free citizens into the
necessary political action to put an end to the human
rights commissions themselves. The worst possible
result is if the case fails to produce this response.
For
another important Canadian column, see my Saturday
post. We can't begin to rest easy on this. The
forces behind human rights commissions in Canada are
powerful. America has got to notice the Steyn case
and speak up. It will make a difference in Canada,
just as a decision against Steyn in Canada (or even
a mere case, however decided, brought against Steyn
that fails to evoke widespread protest) would seriously
harm America.
Anyone
interested in reading in full the Canadian Islamic
Congress' case against me and my Maclean's colleagues
can find it here
(PDF file).
If
convicted, I promise to re-publish the offending pieces
in a special all-Islamophobic anthology. Of course,
we'll have to do that this side of the border, but
I'll use the old bootlegging runs around Lake Memphremagog
to smuggle it across the Maple Curtain into Canada.
Look for me selling it off the back of the pick-up
in the parking lot of La Belle Province at Ange-Gardien,
alternate Tuesdays. I'll be wearing a false beard
over my real beard.
Mark,
thanks for posting the complaint against you. It is
an appalling document. "Appalling" may not
do justice to it, actually. "Totalitarian"
is more accurate. This is a totalitarian document.
If this complaint carries - or is even partially vindicated,
and it's basic framework is taken at all seriously
- free speech in Canada will be on its last legs.
The only good thing to be said for this offense against
freedom is how vividly obvious it makes the corruption
of the term "human rights," as interpreted
by today's censorious multiculturalists.
If
this complaint carries, public discourse on the war
on terror, Muslim immigration, and related topics
would be transformed beyond all recognition (in Canada).
It is as if, instead of simply rebutting or railing
against conservatives and Republicans, liberal Democrats
went to the Supreme Court and had the right side of
the blogosphere, and nearly all conservative opinion
magazines, placed into receivership. It is evident
that the complainants are aware of this. They are
determined to fundamentally reshape a kind of journalism
"that has become increasingly pervasive in Canada
in the last few years." So this is not really
a complaint against any particular factual claim or
rhetorical move. It is instead a request that vast
sections of heretofore legitimate reporting and opinion
journalism be altogether banned.
The
macabre totalitarianism here comes out most clearly
in the sections condemning protests against the very
"human rights" laws and multiculturalist
ideology, resorted to in the complaint itself. The
result is a bizarrely infinite regress of despotism.
(See page 13.) These folks are making a bogus claim
of religious and racial discrimination in order to
persecute a writer, thereby launching a lawsuit on
frivolous grounds. And what are they complaining about?
Why, writers who say that Muslims make bogus claims
of religious and racial discrimination, in order to
persecute writers, and launch lawsuits on frivolous
grounds.
Your
attackers object to claims that Muslims at large believe
in "burning books of learning." Yet they
not only want to burn your book, so to speak, they
object even to articles or reviews that provide a
"guise of legitimacy" to "recognized
Islamophobes" like Bruce Bawer and Claire Berlinski.
So the complainants would not only ban your article,
and by extension, your book, they would ban the entire
genre of books touching on problems raised by large,
relatively unassimilated Muslim immigrant communities
in the West. And to top it off, they'd ban anyone
who has the temerity to protest the very laws that
(in the complainants' view) allow book banning itself.
These guys have got us going and coming. "Totalitarian"
is not too strong a word - although I recognize that,
simply by saying this, I have opened myself up to
prosecution in Canada. (From now on I stay strictly
on the American side of the Falls.)
The
word that jumped out at me here was "potential."
The complainants here object less to specific allegedly
false claims than to matters of degree and emphasis.
How do you remain fair to non-radical and law-abiding
Muslims while still pointing to possible problems
with some or many Muslims, either now or in the future.
You refer to what "potentially" might happen.
Yet the complainants are trying to delegitimate even
the citing of "potential" problems as racist.
In their world, raising a "doomsday scenario"
is forbidden. Of course, arguments about improper
emphasis, unrepresentative examples, "fear mongering,"
and such are commonplace in many or most policy debates.
Al Gore is all about "doomsday scenarios."
Should critics try to ban his movie, or simply rebut
it?
I
could go on and rebut specific accusations, but the
deeper problem here is that the underlying terms of
this complaint obviate freedom of speech as such.
It seems to me that you face some interesting choices
here, Mark. You can grasp the nettle and hurl back
a brilliant reply that unforgettably burns into our
brains the menace to freedom embodied in this complaint.
No one could do it better than you. Or you can refuse
to have dealings with what should properly be considered
an illegitimate tribunal. I don't know which makes
more sense, but it seems to me you need to seriously
consider both options.
