[BartSimpson]

From http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/ ... 1672_31672

Excerpt - go to the link for the whole article:

Please send more complaints
Otherwise how will our taxpayer-funded hate police manage to keep their cozy sinecure?
MARK STEYN | April 23, 2008 |

Last week's letters page included a missive from Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., chief commissioner of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, defending her employees from the accusation of "improper investigative techniques" by yours truly. Steyn, she writes, "provides no substantiation for these claims," and then concludes:
"Why is this all important? Because words are important. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free rein. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred."

Hmm. "History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes." Commissar Lynch provides, as she would say, "no substantiation for these claims." But then she's a "hate speech" prosecutor and, as we know, Canada's "human rights" procedures aren't subject to tiresome requirements like evidence. So she's made an argument from authority: the great Queen's Counsel has risen from her throne in the Star Chamber and pronounced, and let that suffice. Those of us who occupy less exalted positions in the realm might wish to ponder the evidence for her assertions.

It's true that "hurtful actions that undermine freedom" and lead to "unspeakable crimes" usually have some fig leaf of intellectual justification. For example, the ideology first articulated by Karl Marx has led to the deaths of millions of people around the planet on an unprecedented scale. Yet oddly enough, no matter how many folks are murdered in the name of Marxism-Leninism, you're still free to propound its principles at every college in Canada.

[Wada]

We never had Senator J. McCarthy.

[ridenrain]

Amazing that something like this dosen't grace the pages of the main stream media.

[Bodah]

ridenrain ridenrain:

Amazing that something like this dosen't grace the pages of the main stream media.

Our free speech problems are getting more coverage in the U.S. than here, which is terribly sad.

I bet ya more Americans know who Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant is, than Canadians.

[Zipperfish]

ridenrain ridenrain:

Amazing that something like this dosen't grace the pages of the main stream media.

Doesn't he write for the National Post anymore?

[Bodah]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

ridenrain ridenrain:

Amazing that something like this dosen't grace the pages of the main stream media.

Doesn't he write for the National Post anymore?

You can find his current columns in Maclean's Magazine.

Or here .

[BartSimpson]

Bodah Bodah:

ridenrain ridenrain:

Amazing that something like this dosen't grace the pages of the main stream media.

Our free speech problems are getting more coverage in the U.S. than here, which is terribly sad.

I bet ya more Americans know who Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant is, than Canadians.

You'd be right. FreeRepublic has a "ping" list for Mark Steyn fans and Steyn is regularly quoted on radio shows down here.