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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWednesday, December 3, 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The late Sir Roger Scruton had much to say about the difference between \u201cgiving offence\u201d and \u201ctaking offence.\u201d In an interview with Douglas Murray for The Spectator <\/em>about a half a year before his death, for example, he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember though, that there\u2019s this great distinction between giving offence and taking offence and we\u2019re living in a culture where people become experts in taking offence even when it hasn\u2019t been given. And that\u2019s what is taught in gender studies. It teaches young women to take offence at every remark a man might make or even his being there, you know. It\u2019s a wonderful theatrical thing to take offence but it doesn\u2019t lead to any lasting relationships.<\/em> (1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The importance of this distinction has to do with more than just gender. Every form of \u201cidentity politics\u201d majors in taking offence. Identity politics is informed and underlain by the contemporary \u201cmorality\u201d that has supplanted traditional moralities, including both the older traditional morality informed by classical ethics and Christian moral theology and the more recent morality of classical liberalism, in the civilization formerly known as Christendom in the post-World War II era. This is one of the key distinguishing feature between the contemporary \u201cmorality\u201d and traditional moralities. Traditional morality taught you to moderate your speech and behaviour so as to avoid giving offence. Contemporary morality teaches you to take offence and to moderate your speech and behaviour so as to minimize the likelihood of others taking offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The distinction is quite simple. Allow me to illustrate. If I were to go up to you and say something to the effect of \u201cYou dirty rotten so-and-so, you are ugly and stupid, a bum and a loser, and the biggest jerk who ever lived. Now listen to me you miserable punk, you dress like a clown and smell like a skunk, your mother is a whore and your father is a drunk\u201d then I would be giving offence<\/em>. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you \u201cI listened to your lecture on this-or-that historical event and I don\u2019t like your take on what happened because I think it portrays such-and-such a group in a poor light, bolstering unfair stereotypes, and although I am not a member of that group per se, I am deeply offended by your micro-aggression and think you need to be cancelled\u201d or some such blithering nonsense, I would be taking offence<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinarily, when someone gives offence the offence is intentional, he is deliberately trying to hurt the feelings of the person to whom he is speaking. To the person who takes offence, however, the intentions of the person from whom he takes offence are irrelevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With regards to the importance of intent it is worth observing that the cultural shift from the traditional morality of avoiding giving offence to the contemporary morality of taking offence, occurred simultaneously with the rise of technocratic managers in both government and private business. (2) Traditionally, in the Westminster system, the laws by which we are governed are subject to King-in-Parliament acting through legislation<\/em>. While the form remains in Canada, in the post-World War II era, the Prime Minister and Cabinet have increasingly by-passed the constraints the traditional system placed on their ability to impose new rules on Canadians, by relying more-and-more on civil service agencies acting through regulation<\/em> instead. The counterpart to this in the private sector is the increased control of middle level managers operating through Human Resource departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason this is worth pointing out here is because the traditional Westminster system of legislating by King-in-Parliament was closely allied with the Common Law tradition which includes the principle with regards to criminal culpability that actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea <\/em>(a guilty act does not make guilty unless the mind is guilty), that is to say, there needs to be criminal intent for there to be criminal culpability. HR departments, by contrast, seldom if ever regard intent as an essential component of any of the myriad of made-up offences in the rule books through which they micromanage their employees. While the parallel is not perfect it is notable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other factor that distinguishes giving offence from taking offence is objectivity. If you give offence to someone by, for example, calling him a horse\u2019s patoot, the offence is objective because it is reasonable to assume that anyone called this would be offended by it. When someone takes offence that has not been given, however, the offence is largely if not entirely, subjective. In Biblical hermeneutics, we distinguish between exegesis and eisegesis. In both of these words the basic verb means to guide or to lead. Exegesis adds the prefix for \u201cout\u201d and means to bring out of the text the meaning that is already there in it. This, of course, is the approved hermeneutical method. The other one, eisegesis, substitutes the prefix for \u201cin\u201d and means to read into the text the meaning you wish to find there. Taking offence that has not been given is similar to eisegesis in this regards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this, as in so many other areas, contemporary morality is a poor substitute for traditional morality. Morality informs law and when an inferior morality replaces a superior morality the result will be the introduction and multiplication of bad laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The news media recently learned that the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Blofeld has come to an agreement with the Lower Canadian separatists. (3) The separatists agreed to support the Liberal Bill C-9, a proposed series of amendments to the section of the Criminal Code pertaining to \u201chate.\u201d Over the past couple of years, Canadians have become increasingly disturbed and disgusted at a particular type of \u201cprotest\u201d that has been popping up all over our country and the wider civilization. Ostensibly about the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Middle East, these protests openly embrace not merely the cause of the Palestinians but the organization Hamas, glorify its worst actions, and are filled with violent, revolutionary, rhetoric directed not only against Israel but against our country and Western Civilization as a whole. Bill C-9 is the Liberals\u2019 proposed \u201csolution\u201d to this problem. It is typical of the \u201csolutions\u201d put forward by politicians, especially Liberals, to problems that are largely of their own creation, in that it creates new statutory offences and laws where the already existing laws are more than sufficient to handle the situation if they would only be followed and enforced. Bill C-9 would make preventing access to a place of worship or community centre by means of intimidation \u2013 which already violates more than one law \u2013 into a distinct \u201chate\u201d offence. It would also criminalize the public display of certain symbols. To gain the support of the separatists, the Liberals agreed to include a further amendment in the bill that would remove the existing provision in Section 319 of the Criminal Code that exempts speech that expresses what the speaker holds in \u201cgood faith\u201d based on \u201ca belief in a religious text\u201d from criminal culpability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To do this would be to make a bad law worse. What I said about bill C-9\u2019s making of new statutory offences in the previous paragraph applies to all laws about \u201chate speech.\u201d Anything prohibited by \u201chate speech\u201d laws that warrants being prohibited by law was already prohibited by law before there were any \u201chate\u201d laws. The most defensible limitation on speech in \u201chate speech\u201d legislation is the prohibition of incitement. Incitement is the urging or encouraging of others to commit a criminal act. If the other person(s) actually commit the criminal act, the person who did the inciting shares in their responsibility and therefore criminal culpability for the act. It is reasonable, therefore, that criminal incitement be prohibited by law, at least if the incitement is acted on. Criminal incitement, however, was already against the law before \u201chate speech\u201d laws were thought up. All \u201chate speech\u201d laws did was single out a specific type of incitement, as if telling people to commit a crime against person X was much worse than telling people to commit the same crime against person Y, if when telling them to commit the crime against person X, you give the person\u2019s race, sex, religion, whatever, as part of the reason. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Worse, they expanded the prohibited speech beyond actual incitement. Actual incitement is explicit. It involves someone saying, in so many words, that such-and-such a criminal act should be committed. The concept of \u201chate speech\u201d, however, treats as the equivalent of actual incitement, speech that portrays groups that supporters of \u201chate speech\u201d laws think should be protected in such a negative light that someone might be inspired to act criminally against that group. It is interesting, isn\u2019t it, how the progressive supporters of these kind of laws think that in the case of groups to which they think the law should extend special protection, negative portrayals will inspire people to commit crimes who were not already inclined to do so, whereas in the case of groups they do not think should be specially protected by the law \u2013 Christians, rather than Jews or Muslims, whites rather than any other race, men rather than women, heterosexuals rather than homosexuals, actual men and women rather than transsexuals \u2013 the non-stop stream of negative rhetoric on the part of progressives themselves, usually far more full of expressions of hate in the literal sense of the word than that which they seek to ban, will have no such effect. Basically, \u201chate speech\u201d laws in effect protect groups that progressives feel are entitled to special protection from having their feelings hurt. Here, the thinking of the contemporary morality with regards to taking offence finds its legal manifestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The old laws against actual incitement were justifiable limitations on freedom of speech because they were not there to prevent the circulation of ideas but rather to prevent the encouraging of criminal acts. \u201cHate speech\u201d laws are not similarly justifiable. Narrowing the range of ideas that can be circulated is precisely what those who introduce such legislation have in mind. Moreover, good laws are few in number, clear and easy to understand, protect people and their property from objective, quantifiable, harm and not from subjective hurt feelings and extend this protection to everyone in the realm and not just to certain groups that progressive political parties think need special protection. \u201cHate speech\u201d laws do not meet any of those qualifications but are rather the opposite. They are the textbook example of bad laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the news was leaked about the deal between the Grits and the Bloc, the apologists for removing the exemption came crawling out of the woodworks. Unsurprisingly, foremost among them was Marc Miller, (4) whom Blofeld just named Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, replacing Steven Guilbeault who resigned from Cabinet last weekend over Blofeld\u2019s pipeline deal with Alberta. It was difficult, prior to last weekend, to imagine that replacing eco-extremist Guilbeault could be anything but an improvement, but lo and behold, Blofeld managed the unthinkable. Miller, a childhood friend of Captain Airhead, belongs to the former prime minister\u2019s innermost circle. If Blofeld really wants to move his party and the government he leads away from the blighted legacy of his predecessor, replacing one Trudeau-insider with another is not the way to go about it. To the point at hand, however, Miller has been shooting his mouth off for months about how he considers certain Biblical texts \u201chateful\u201d and wants to see the religious text exemption for \u201chate speech\u201d eliminated. (5) <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a meeting of the House of Commons\u2019 Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, of which he was at the time the chair, just prior to All Hallows, Miller said \u201cIn Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Romans \u2014 there\u2019s other passages \u2014 there\u2019s clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals.\u201d This is a nonsensical statement. The Bible identifies many different acts as sins. This is not ordinarily interpreted as \u201chatred\u201d, clear or otherwise, towards those who commit such acts, the late Fred Phelps notwithstanding. When the Ten Commandments say \u201cthou shalt not commit adultery\u201d, which act carried the penalty of death under the Mosaic Law, do we understand this to be hatred against adulterers? When the Ten Commandments say \u201cthou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour\u201d, do we interpret this to be hatred against perjurers? If identifying someone\u2019s behaviour as sinful is expressing \u201chatred\u201d against that person, then the Bible could be interpreted as expressing hatred against all mankind when it says \u201cFor all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.\u201d That it would be absurd to interpret it this way, however, is generally understood because the text, St. Paul\u2019s epistle to the Romans, goes immediately on to say \u201cBeing justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.\u201d Far from an expression of hatred towards those who sin, the Scriptures are a message of God\u2019s redeeming love to sinners. The thought contained in the verse from St. Paul just quoted is also expressed in what is undoubtedly the best-known verse in the Bible \u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n When his words were immediately understood by several commentators, members of His Majesty\u2019s Loyal Opposition, and provincial ministers as calling for these Scriptural texts, their being read as Scripture lessons in church, and preached on from the pulpit, to be criminalized, Mr. Miller took offence. All he intended, he maintained, was to say that these texts should not be allowed as defences, in cases of public incitement. This is how he is now defending the proposed removal of the religious exemption from Section 319. Note, however, the sleight-of-hand that is at play. He hopes that those whose suspicions he wishes to allay will understand the public incitement, to which he says sincere belief in these Scriptural texts should not be a defence, to mean someone telling other people that they should commit some kind of violent crime. If, however, interpreting these Scriptural texts in accordance with traditional Christian orthodoxy as identifying same-sex sexual activity as sinful is itself regarded as an expression of hate, then removing the religious exemption from Section 319 would have precisely the effect that Miller\u2019s opponents say it would have, of opening the door for criminal prosecutions of Christian ministers who faithfully preach on these portions of Scripture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All one has to do is look at the track record of the Liberal Party since Miller\u2019s lifelong intimate friend Captain Airhead took over as leader in 2013 to realize that Miller should not be trusted to mean merely that the religious defence should be removed from cases of actual, explicit, incitement to violent crime. One of the first things that Captain Airhead did upon becoming Liberal leader was to ban anyone who held the orthodox Christian view of abortion from running for a seat in the House as a member of the Liberal party. During Captain Airhead\u2019s premiership, the Liberal government made a lot of noise about combatting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism at the same time that a wave of arson and other vandalism directed against Christian churches was underway. Arguably, the Liberal government itself had a hand in inciting that wave. One of Miller\u2019s Liberal colleagues, John-Paul Danko described the factual reporting of the over 120 churches so attacked as a \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d Repeatedly, over the course of the Airhead premiership, the Liberal government promoted as \u201cCanadian values\u201d ideas that were contrary to orthodox Christian moral theology \u2013 and, as they discovered to their discomfort, contrary to the traditional morality of other religions as well \u2013 and sought through various measures to coerce Christian churches into changing their moral theology to align with progressive values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So no, we should not believe Mr. Miller that the removal of the religious defence will not lead to a wave of litigation and even criminal charges against churches unwilling to change their orthodox moral theology or to muzzle themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of doing what the Liberals and the Bloc are planning on doing, I propose that the government do the right thing instead. It should strike Section 319 from the Criminal Code in its entirety and abandon its plans on reintroducing legislation similar to the notorious Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the bill repealing which had gone into effect the year after it received royal assent and the year before the Liberals resumed government. It is the right thing to do because \u201chate speech\u201d legislation is by its very nature, fundamentally bad law. (6) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since morality informs law, we will also need to repeal the contemporary new morality that encourages people to take offence over every perceived slight to their identity, real or self-chosen, and reinstate the traditional morality that merely encourages people not to give offence. This will be more difficult to do because it cannot be accomplished simply by passing or repealing a bill, but it is here at the cultural level rather than at the political and legislative, that the real battle must be waged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1) https:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/article\/ full-transcript-douglas-murray-in-conversation-with-roger-scruton\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n (2) Today, due to decades of speculative fiction and the current state of AI development, \u201ctechnocratic\u201d, probably suggests to most people the idea of machines taking over. That is not how I am using it here. I am referring to the fact that the professional managers \u2013 government bureaucrats and HR types in the corporate world \u2013 considered as a class, are distinguished by the use of language that is \u201ctechnical\u201d in the sense employed by Michael Oakeshott in the title essay of his Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays<\/em> (London: Methuen, 1962) in which he distinguishes \u201ctechnical\u201d from \u201ctraditional\u201d knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (3) https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/news\/politics\/liberals-bloc-hate-speech-laws-religious-exemptions<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (4) https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/news\/politics\/religion-is-no-excuse-for-hate-carneys-newest-minister-says-of-proposed-removal-of-hate-speech-defence<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (5) https:\/\/www.lifesitenews.com\/news\/canadian-mp-reciting-hateful-bible-verses-about-homosexuality-in-public-should-be-illegal\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (6) Earlier this week, paleo-libertarian editor Lew Rockwell published an article entitled \u201cWhy Banning Hate Speech is Evil.\u201d I agree with the premise entirely although I would employ a different line of reasoning to argue for it. Bans on \u201chate speech\u201d are attempts to legislate what is in the human heart. The civil government that attempts to do this, however, exceeds its own jurisdiction and intrudes into that which belongs to God alone. This is the root of the evil the ancients called tyranny and that is often called totalitarianism in our own day. https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/ 2025\/12\/lew-rockwell\/why-banning-hate-speech-is-evil. — Gerry T. Neal<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The late Sir Roger Scruton had much to say about the difference between \u201cgiving offence\u201d and \u201ctaking offence.\u201d In an interview with Douglas Murray for The Spectator <\/em>about a half a year before his death, for example, he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember though, that there\u2019s this great distinction between giving offence and taking offence and we\u2019re living in a culture where people become experts in taking offence even when it hasn\u2019t been given. And that\u2019s what is taught in gender studies. It teaches young women to take offence at every remark a man might make or even his being there, you know. It\u2019s a wonderful theatrical thing to take offence but it doesn\u2019t lead to any lasting relationships.<\/em> (1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The importance of this distinction has to do with more than just gender. Every form of \u201cidentity politics\u201d majors in taking offence. Identity politics is informed and underlain by the contemporary \u201cmorality\u201d that has supplanted traditional moralities, including both the older traditional morality informed by classical ethics and Christian moral theology and the more recent morality of classical liberalism, in the civilization formerly known as Christendom in the post-World War II era. This is one of the key distinguishing feature between the contemporary \u201cmorality\u201d and traditional moralities. Traditional morality taught you to moderate your speech and behaviour so as to avoid giving offence. Contemporary morality teaches you to take offence and to moderate your speech and behaviour so as to minimize the likelihood of others taking offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The distinction is quite simple. Allow me to illustrate. If I were to go up to you and say something to the effect of \u201cYou dirty rotten so-and-so, you are ugly and stupid, a bum and a loser, and the biggest jerk who ever lived. Now listen to me you miserable punk, you dress like a clown and smell like a skunk, your mother is a whore and your father is a drunk\u201d then I would be giving offence<\/em>. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you \u201cI listened to your lecture on this-or-that historical event and I don\u2019t like your take on what happened because I think it portrays such-and-such a group in a poor light, bolstering unfair stereotypes, and although I am not a member of that group per se, I am deeply offended by your micro-aggression and think you need to be cancelled\u201d or some such blithering nonsense, I would be taking offence<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinarily, when someone gives offence the offence is intentional, he is deliberately trying to hurt the feelings of the person to whom he is speaking. To the person who takes offence, however, the intentions of the person from whom he takes offence are irrelevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With regards to the importance of intent it is worth observing that the cultural shift from the traditional morality of avoiding giving offence to the contemporary morality of taking offence, occurred simultaneously with the rise of technocratic managers in both government and private business. (2) Traditionally, in the Westminster system, the laws by which we are governed are subject to King-in-Parliament acting through legislation<\/em>. While the form remains in Canada, in the post-World War II era, the Prime Minister and Cabinet have increasingly by-passed the constraints the traditional system placed on their ability to impose new rules on Canadians, by relying more-and-more on civil service agencies acting through regulation<\/em> instead. The counterpart to this in the private sector is the increased control of middle level managers operating through Human Resource departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason this is worth pointing out here is because the traditional Westminster system of legislating by King-in-Parliament was closely allied with the Common Law tradition which includes the principle with regards to criminal culpability that actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea <\/em>(a guilty act does not make guilty unless the mind is guilty), that is to say, there needs to be criminal intent for there to be criminal culpability. HR departments, by contrast, seldom if ever regard intent as an essential component of any of the myriad of made-up offences in the rule books through which they micromanage their employees. While the parallel is not perfect it is notable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other factor that distinguishes giving offence from taking offence is objectivity. If you give offence to someone by, for example, calling him a horse\u2019s patoot, the offence is objective because it is reasonable to assume that anyone called this would be offended by it. When someone takes offence that has not been given, however, the offence is largely if not entirely, subjective. In Biblical hermeneutics, we distinguish between exegesis and eisegesis. In both of these words the basic verb means to guide or to lead. Exegesis adds the prefix for \u201cout\u201d and means to bring out of the text the meaning that is already there in it. This, of course, is the approved hermeneutical method. The other one, eisegesis, substitutes the prefix for \u201cin\u201d and means to read into the text the meaning you wish to find there. Taking offence that has not been given is similar to eisegesis in this regards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this, as in so many other areas, contemporary morality is a poor substitute for traditional morality. Morality informs law and when an inferior morality replaces a superior morality the result will be the introduction and multiplication of bad laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The news media recently learned that the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Blofeld has come to an agreement with the Lower Canadian separatists. (3) The separatists agreed to support the Liberal Bill C-9, a proposed series of amendments to the section of the Criminal Code pertaining to \u201chate.\u201d Over the past couple of years, Canadians have become increasingly disturbed and disgusted at a particular type of \u201cprotest\u201d that has been popping up all over our country and the wider civilization. Ostensibly about the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Middle East, these protests openly embrace not merely the cause of the Palestinians but the organization Hamas, glorify its worst actions, and are filled with violent, revolutionary, rhetoric directed not only against Israel but against our country and Western Civilization as a whole. Bill C-9 is the Liberals\u2019 proposed \u201csolution\u201d to this problem. It is typical of the \u201csolutions\u201d put forward by politicians, especially Liberals, to problems that are largely of their own creation, in that it creates new statutory offences and laws where the already existing laws are more than sufficient to handle the situation if they would only be followed and enforced. Bill C-9 would make preventing access to a place of worship or community centre by means of intimidation \u2013 which already violates more than one law \u2013 into a distinct \u201chate\u201d offence. It would also criminalize the public display of certain symbols. To gain the support of the separatists, the Liberals agreed to include a further amendment in the bill that would remove the existing provision in Section 319 of the Criminal Code that exempts speech that expresses what the speaker holds in \u201cgood faith\u201d based on \u201ca belief in a religious text\u201d from criminal culpability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To do this would be to make a bad law worse. What I said about bill C-9\u2019s making of new statutory offences in the previous paragraph applies to all laws about \u201chate speech.\u201d Anything prohibited by \u201chate speech\u201d laws that warrants being prohibited by law was already prohibited by law before there were any \u201chate\u201d laws. The most defensible limitation on speech in \u201chate speech\u201d legislation is the prohibition of incitement. Incitement is the urging or encouraging of others to commit a criminal act. If the other person(s) actually commit the criminal act, the person who did the inciting shares in their responsibility and therefore criminal culpability for the act. It is reasonable, therefore, that criminal incitement be prohibited by law, at least if the incitement is acted on. Criminal incitement, however, was already against the law before \u201chate speech\u201d laws were thought up. All \u201chate speech\u201d laws did was single out a specific type of incitement, as if telling people to commit a crime against person X was much worse than telling people to commit the same crime against person Y, if when telling them to commit the crime against person X, you give the person\u2019s race, sex, religion, whatever, as part of the reason. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Worse, they expanded the prohibited speech beyond actual incitement. Actual incitement is explicit. It involves someone saying, in so many words, that such-and-such a criminal act should be committed. The concept of \u201chate speech\u201d, however, treats as the equivalent of actual incitement, speech that portrays groups that supporters of \u201chate speech\u201d laws think should be protected in such a negative light that someone might be inspired to act criminally against that group. It is interesting, isn\u2019t it, how the progressive supporters of these kind of laws think that in the case of groups to which they think the law should extend special protection, negative portrayals will inspire people to commit crimes who were not already inclined to do so, whereas in the case of groups they do not think should be specially protected by the law \u2013 Christians, rather than Jews or Muslims, whites rather than any other race, men rather than women, heterosexuals rather than homosexuals, actual men and women rather than transsexuals \u2013 the non-stop stream of negative rhetoric on the part of progressives themselves, usually far more full of expressions of hate in the literal sense of the word than that which they seek to ban, will have no such effect. Basically, \u201chate speech\u201d laws in effect protect groups that progressives feel are entitled to special protection from having their feelings hurt. Here, the thinking of the contemporary morality with regards to taking offence finds its legal manifestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The old laws against actual incitement were justifiable limitations on freedom of speech because they were not there to prevent the circulation of ideas but rather to prevent the encouraging of criminal acts. \u201cHate speech\u201d laws are not similarly justifiable. Narrowing the range of ideas that can be circulated is precisely what those who introduce such legislation have in mind. Moreover, good laws are few in number, clear and easy to understand, protect people and their property from objective, quantifiable, harm and not from subjective hurt feelings and extend this protection to everyone in the realm and not just to certain groups that progressive political parties think need special protection. \u201cHate speech\u201d laws do not meet any of those qualifications but are rather the opposite. They are the textbook example of bad laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the news was leaked about the deal between the Grits and the Bloc, the apologists for removing the exemption came crawling out of the woodworks. Unsurprisingly, foremost among them was Marc Miller, (4) whom Blofeld just named Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, replacing Steven Guilbeault who resigned from Cabinet last weekend over Blofeld\u2019s pipeline deal with Alberta. It was difficult, prior to last weekend, to imagine that replacing eco-extremist Guilbeault could be anything but an improvement, but lo and behold, Blofeld managed the unthinkable. Miller, a childhood friend of Captain Airhead, belongs to the former prime minister\u2019s innermost circle. If Blofeld really wants to move his party and the government he leads away from the blighted legacy of his predecessor, replacing one Trudeau-insider with another is not the way to go about it. To the point at hand, however, Miller has been shooting his mouth off for months about how he considers certain Biblical texts \u201chateful\u201d and wants to see the religious text exemption for \u201chate speech\u201d eliminated. (5) <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a meeting of the House of Commons\u2019 Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, of which he was at the time the chair, just prior to All Hallows, Miller said \u201cIn Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Romans \u2014 there\u2019s other passages \u2014 there\u2019s clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals.\u201d This is a nonsensical statement. The Bible identifies many different acts as sins. This is not ordinarily interpreted as \u201chatred\u201d, clear or otherwise, towards those who commit such acts, the late Fred Phelps notwithstanding. When the Ten Commandments say \u201cthou shalt not commit adultery\u201d, which act carried the penalty of death under the Mosaic Law, do we understand this to be hatred against adulterers? When the Ten Commandments say \u201cthou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour\u201d, do we interpret this to be hatred against perjurers? If identifying someone\u2019s behaviour as sinful is expressing \u201chatred\u201d against that person, then the Bible could be interpreted as expressing hatred against all mankind when it says \u201cFor all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.\u201d That it would be absurd to interpret it this way, however, is generally understood because the text, St. Paul\u2019s epistle to the Romans, goes immediately on to say \u201cBeing justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.\u201d Far from an expression of hatred towards those who sin, the Scriptures are a message of God\u2019s redeeming love to sinners. The thought contained in the verse from St. Paul just quoted is also expressed in what is undoubtedly the best-known verse in the Bible \u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n When his words were immediately understood by several commentators, members of His Majesty\u2019s Loyal Opposition, and provincial ministers as calling for these Scriptural texts, their being read as Scripture lessons in church, and preached on from the pulpit, to be criminalized, Mr. Miller took offence. All he intended, he maintained, was to say that these texts should not be allowed as defences, in cases of public incitement. This is how he is now defending the proposed removal of the religious exemption from Section 319. Note, however, the sleight-of-hand that is at play. He hopes that those whose suspicions he wishes to allay will understand the public incitement, to which he says sincere belief in these Scriptural texts should not be a defence, to mean someone telling other people that they should commit some kind of violent crime. If, however, interpreting these Scriptural texts in accordance with traditional Christian orthodoxy as identifying same-sex sexual activity as sinful is itself regarded as an expression of hate, then removing the religious exemption from Section 319 would have precisely the effect that Miller\u2019s opponents say it would have, of opening the door for criminal prosecutions of Christian ministers who faithfully preach on these portions of Scripture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All one has to do is look at the track record of the Liberal Party since Miller\u2019s lifelong intimate friend Captain Airhead took over as leader in 2013 to realize that Miller should not be trusted to mean merely that the religious defence should be removed from cases of actual, explicit, incitement to violent crime. One of the first things that Captain Airhead did upon becoming Liberal leader was to ban anyone who held the orthodox Christian view of abortion from running for a seat in the House as a member of the Liberal party. During Captain Airhead\u2019s premiership, the Liberal government made a lot of noise about combatting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism at the same time that a wave of arson and other vandalism directed against Christian churches was underway. Arguably, the Liberal government itself had a hand in inciting that wave. One of Miller\u2019s Liberal colleagues, John-Paul Danko described the factual reporting of the over 120 churches so attacked as a \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d Repeatedly, over the course of the Airhead premiership, the Liberal government promoted as \u201cCanadian values\u201d ideas that were contrary to orthodox Christian moral theology \u2013 and, as they discovered to their discomfort, contrary to the traditional morality of other religions as well \u2013 and sought through various measures to coerce Christian churches into changing their moral theology to align with progressive values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So no, we should not believe Mr. Miller that the removal of the religious defence will not lead to a wave of litigation and even criminal charges against churches unwilling to change their orthodox moral theology or to muzzle themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of doing what the Liberals and the Bloc are planning on doing, I propose that the government do the right thing instead. It should strike Section 319 from the Criminal Code in its entirety and abandon its plans on reintroducing legislation similar to the notorious Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the bill repealing which had gone into effect the year after it received royal assent and the year before the Liberals resumed government. It is the right thing to do because \u201chate speech\u201d legislation is by its very nature, fundamentally bad law. (6) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since morality informs law, we will also need to repeal the contemporary new morality that encourages people to take offence over every perceived slight to their identity, real or self-chosen, and reinstate the traditional morality that merely encourages people not to give offence. This will be more difficult to do because it cannot be accomplished simply by passing or repealing a bill, but it is here at the cultural level rather than at the political and legislative, that the real battle must be waged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1) https:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/article\/ full-transcript-douglas-murray-in-conversation-with-roger-scruton\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n (2) Today, due to decades of speculative fiction and the current state of AI development, \u201ctechnocratic\u201d, probably suggests to most people the idea of machines taking over. That is not how I am using it here. I am referring to the fact that the professional managers \u2013 government bureaucrats and HR types in the corporate world \u2013 considered as a class, are distinguished by the use of language that is \u201ctechnical\u201d in the sense employed by Michael Oakeshott in the title essay of his Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays<\/em> (London: Methuen, 1962) in which he distinguishes \u201ctechnical\u201d from \u201ctraditional\u201d knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (3) https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/news\/politics\/liberals-bloc-hate-speech-laws-religious-exemptions<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (4) https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/news\/politics\/religion-is-no-excuse-for-hate-carneys-newest-minister-says-of-proposed-removal-of-hate-speech-defence<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (5) https:\/\/www.lifesitenews.com\/news\/canadian-mp-reciting-hateful-bible-verses-about-homosexuality-in-public-should-be-illegal\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (6) Earlier this week, paleo-libertarian editor Lew Rockwell published an article entitled \u201cWhy Banning Hate Speech is Evil.\u201d I agree with the premise entirely although I would employ a different line of reasoning to argue for it. Bans on \u201chate speech\u201d are attempts to legislate what is in the human heart. The civil government that attempts to do this, however, exceeds its own jurisdiction and intrudes into that which belongs to God alone. This is the root of the evil the ancients called tyranny and that is often called totalitarianism in our own day. https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/ 2025\/12\/lew-rockwell\/why-banning-hate-speech-is-evil. — Gerry T. Neal<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taking Offence and Denying Defence The Canadian Red Ensign Wednesday, December 3, 2025 Taking Offence and Denying Defence The late Sir Roger Scruton had much to say about the difference between \u201cgiving offence\u201d and \u201ctaking offence.\u201d In an interview with … Continue reading Taking Offence and Denying Defence<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Throne, Altar, Liberty<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
The Canadian Red Ensign<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWednesday, December 3, 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Taking Offence and Denying Defence<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n