Canadian Courts Agree To Hear "Human Rights" Violations Complaints... Against Mark Steyn

The Canadian Islamic Congress (what?) has petitioned Canada's Human Rights Commission Censors to hear a complaint that Mark Steyn's book, specifically a "flagrantly Islamophobic" passage from it excerpted in Maclean's, has violated their "human rights" somehow.

Several readers and various Canadian media outlets have enquired what my defense to the charges is. Here’s my answer: I can defend myself if I have to. But I shouldn’t have to. If the Canadian Islamic Congress wants to disagree with my book, fine. Join the club. But, if they want to criminalize it, nuts. That way lies madness....

These "human rights" censors started with small fry - obscure websites, "homophobes" who made the mistake of writing letters to local newspapers or quoting the more robust chunks of Leviticus - and, because they got away with it, it now seems entirely reasonable for a Canadian pseudo-court to sit in judgment on the content of a mainstream magazine and put a big old "libel chill" over critical areas of public debate. The "progressive" left has grown accustomed to the regulation of speech, thinking it just a useful way of sticking it to Christian fundamentalists, right-wing columnists, and other despised groups. They don’t know they’re riding a tiger that in the end will devour them, too.

This is shameful. All those dark fantasies conservative "crazies" concocted about the left actually becoming Nazi-like and Stalinist in purging and persecuting those it found troublesome on the right... well, they're not fantasies, and those conservatives weren't crazy. People like me who said "Oh shush with that nonsense, they'd never dare, they too have a commitment to basic liberal values, if perhaps not a very strong one" were actually the crazies.

Thanks to CJ.

posted by Ace at 12:29 PM

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