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I have watched, on You
Tube, Ezra Levant’s appearance before the Alberta
Human Rights Commission. Every American should watch
it.
For those who still don’t know,
Ezra Levant was the editor of The Western Standard (now
defunct) when the magazine, two years ago, published
the notorious “Mohammed cartoons.” They were
published to illustrate a news article about the world-wide
Muslim outrage over the cartoons, which originally appeared
in a Danish newspaper. Levant thought his Canadian readers
ought to see the cartoons so they would know what all
the fuss was about.
Some Saudi sheik living in Canada. First
he went to the police and demanded they arrest the editor.
That’s how it’s done, where he came from,
but they haven’t quite gotten to that point in
Canada: not yet.
But then the sheik had a better idea.
He scrawled out a complaint and submitted it to what
Alberta laughingly calls its Human Rights Commission—which
for the sake of accuracy we shall hereafter refer to
as Kangaroo Kourt—has the power to do anything,
to anybody, anytime. It derives its authority from a
Canadian law that makes it a hate crime to say or write
anything that might—whether it actually does or
not is totally immaterial—expose some individual
belonging to one of several favored minority groups,
at some indefinite time in the future, to some unspecified
kind of hatred or contempt. Because there is no substance
whatsoever to such a complaint, there is no possible
defense against it.
As an added inducement to thin-skinned
prigs to take offense, the state will pay all the plaintiff’s
legal fees. The accused, of course, must pay his own.
The Kangaroo Kourt is not bound by law, or rules of
evidence, or precedent. It is not obliged to consider
whether anything the accused said might happen to be
true. After all, the fact that some doofus says he found
the defendant’s speech offensive is proof that
it offended somebody and therefore must be punished.
Which brings us back to Ezra Levant.
The Kangaroo Kourt wouldn’t let him be counseled
at the hearing by a lawyer of his choice; but what they
didn’t anticipate was that he would bring a video
camera and record the proceedings for posterity. They
had no rule against it, for no one had done it before.
And so we are able to witness an incident in the demise
of freedom in the Western world.
No reporters were allowed to cover the
hearing, nor was the public invited to be present. It
was all done behind closed doors, in an ordinary conference
room.
We may marvel at Levant’s eloquence
as he denies the Kourt’s right to put him through
this inquisition, which has so far cost him some $100,000.
We may marvel at his courage, his pluck, and the unassailable
logic of his arguments.
But what is more marvelous still is
the bovine indifference of the hearing officer. Levant
would have done little worse, talking to a bottle of
carpet cleaner.
What we see here is a petty bureaucratic
tyrant who knows that the accusation alone is enough
to find the defendant guilty, and that the whole procedure,
as she understands it, is a waste of breath. She knows
she’s not obligated to listen to a word the defendant
says. It’s all she can do to restrain herself from
cutting out paper dolls while Levant speaks.
She also knows that she and her Kourt
are accountable to no one; that they, and they alone,
decide what is permissible speech in the Province of
Alberta; and finally, she knows that the Kourts have
a 100% conviction rate. It’s Stalin’s show
trials all over again, without the firing squads.
Tune in to You Tube, Americans, and
watch these proceedings. Take a good, long look—
Because there are uncounted hordes of
politicians, academic pinheads, media mullahs, gay activists,
and other “leaders” who just can’t wait
to hammer these fetters onto this country. They want
it so badly, they can taste it; and they think each
election will bring them closer to their goal.
Lee Duigon is a Christian
freelance writer whose work can be seen regularly at
www.chalcedon.edu
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