Antonia Blumberg, the Associate Religion Editor for the progressive liberal disinformation site that some consider to be the online equivalent of a newspaper, the Huffington Post, has come to the defence of the anti-Islamophobia motion that Iqra Khalid, the Liberal MP representing Mississauga-Erin Mills has introduced into the Canadian Parliament. In doing so she has lived down to the stereotype, popular here in the Dominion of Canada, of the Yankee who spouts off about things of which she knows nothing.
Regardless of whether it is a non-binding motion or a bill, there is a very real threat to freedom of speech here, of which anyone familiar with the Liberal Party’s long war on the traditional rights and freedoms of Canadians would be well aware. There are many parallels between what the Liberal Party is doing now and what it did in the 1970s under the leadership of the father of the present federal premier. Then, as now, it decided that it was the government’s place to combat ideas and attitudes that the Liberals considered to be unacceptable. At the time it was racial and religious prejudice in general, and anti-Semitism in particular that the Liberals were going after. Warning Canadians that the threat of a potential Canadian Fourth Reich existed if these attitudes were not drummed out, stomped down, and extirpated with extreme prejudice, the Liberals, bereft of any sense of irony, established a Canadian equivalent of the Gestapo and the NKVD/NKGB/MGB/KGB in the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Although progressives will undoubtedly sputter with offence and rage at the comparison in the last sentence it is entirely apt and valid. The difference between the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the secret police of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes is one of degree not of kind. If the Canadian Human Rights Commission brought you before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal you would not end up facing a firing squad or being shipped away to a forced labour camp. At most you would be fined an exorbitant and crippling amount of money, slapped with a lifetime gag order, and have your career and reputation completely and utterly destroyed. Nevertheless, the Canadian Human Rights Commission exists for the same reason its Nazi and Soviet equivalents existed – to track down and punish those considered guilty of what, in Orwellian Newspeak would be called crimethink. It was negative thoughts about those designated as “vulnerable minorities” that the Trudeau Liberals considered to be crimethink, rather than negative thoughts about the regime itself, as was the case in the Third Reich, Soviet Union, and Orwell’s 1984, but it was crimethink all the same, and those charged with crimethink found that there was very little in the way of defence available to them. More perhaps, than was available to the unfortunate victims of the totalitarian regimes, but much less than has been traditionally available to the free subject-citizens of one of Her Majesty’s realms. The Liberals were able to get away with this by classifying the legislation – the Canadian Human Rights Act – which the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal enforced as civil rather than criminal law. Civil law does not come with the same legal protections of the rights of the defendant that exist under criminal law. The progressive supporters of the Canadian Human Rights Act and its enforcing bodies deceive themselves, however, if they think this legislation exists to help people settle disputes among themselves, and not to punish people whose thoughts are considered criminal by the “Natural Ruling Party of Canada” as the Grits so arrogantly designate themselves.
Blumberg, citing the CBC, quotes Justin Trudeau as saying, in defence of Khalid’s motion “You’re not allowed to call ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theater and call that free speech.” This is not a valid comparison however, no matter how many times freedom-hating, totalitarian dolts make it. When you yell “fire” in a crowded movie theatre, you can create a panic in which people hurt or even kill people in their rush to get out. It is the act of mischief that is proscribed by law, not the idea expressed (“there is a fire in this theatre”). Indeed, if that idea were true, if there actually was a fire in the theatre, we would want that information to be conveyed, albeit in a more orderly fashion.
A law prohibiting so-called “hate speech” is not like this. If the Liberal Party passes a motion condemning Islamophobia and saying that the government must do everything in its power to combat Islamophobia, a hate speech law will be the next step they take. There is abundant evidence in their past track record to show this to be the case. It is the way they think. Such laws exist for one purpose, and one purpose only, to say “you are not allowed to think this or that.” The argument that says that “hate speech” also hurts people like yelling “fire” in a theatre because it can inspire someone to commit acts of violence is spurious, specious and downright mendacious. If one person expresses a negative view of a race, religion, sex or whatever, and another person who has heard this commits a violent act against a member of the group in question, it will not be an immediate, automatic, response like the panic in the theatre. It will involve someone thinking about the negative view expressed, deliberating on it, and concluding that violence is the right way to act on this information. Such a conclusion suggests that there was something wrong in this person’s head already, long before he heard the “hate speech”. Which is why “hate speech” is much less likely to produce a violent crime than calling “fire” in a theatre is likely to produce a panic. It would be more defensible, perhaps, to argue that speech that explicitly calls for a violent response, of the general “kill the ——-s” type, ought to be proscribed, but the “hate speech” that is prohibited by such laws is never limited to just this, and at any rate, this sort of thing was already covered by the laws against incitement that have been around since long before someone dreamed up the idea of laws against hate and which are far better laws being designed to protect everyone and not some designated group.
What the Liberal Party has done in the past in the name of combatting racism and protecting “vulnerable minorities”, however worthy we may or may not consider these goals to be in themselves, is completely unacceptable in a country like Canada. It is now 150 years since men like Sir John A. MacDonald established Canada as a self-governing Dominion under the British Crown, with legislative and judicial institutions grounded in the tradition attached to the Crown, including all the rights and freedoms of the Common Law. The right way to protect “vulnerable minorities” in our country, would have been to do a better job of making sure that the full protection of these rights and freedoms was enjoyed by all of Her Majesty’s citizen-subjects in our free Dominion, whatever their race, ethnic origin, etc. might happen to be. Instead, the Liberal Party opted to give special protection to “vulnerable minorities” and to abridge the traditional rights and freedoms of all Canadians to do so, while doing everything in their power to undermine our British heritage and the tradition from which those rights and freedoms sprang.
It is evident to every patriotic Canadian who loves his country, its true heritage, and its traditional freedoms, and is aware of what is going on that the Liberal Party is preparing to do more of the same, even if an ignorant Yank writing for a silly left-wing trash site is completely clueless as to what is going on.
