Yup.

Okay, I'm going to sound pedestrian and backwards here, but I think this is a lot more complex than that.

As a teacher in a supposedly 'rough' high school, I am always shocked by what gets repeated by students from the media, verbatim. As well, bias is constantly streaming through supposedly objective sources such as news broadcasts - and that too is repeated as absolute truth.

And it's not just kids, and not just followers, and not unintelligent individuals.

You posted about the Gay Pride Parade, so I'll refer to a CBC broadcast from the 60s which shows doctors saying homosexuality is a disease, and person after person on the street saying homosexuals are a menace. Tacitly, or sometimes overtly (ie the former British law that allowed 'homosexual advance' as a defence to murder, pleading it down to manslaughter), this view was reinforced. And what came of it? Decades of violence and a completely horrific rate of suicide.

It is fine to criticize the practice but it also needs to be put into context. We are coming off generations where deeply inflammatory statements, seen as obvious and honest, ignited the loss of livelihood, security and sometimes lives. This may seem ideologically unsound, but it is also a practical measure aimed to demonstrate that demented opinion will not become the golden mean.

Once things are a little closer to fair and safe - and I think we're getting closer all the time - we can work on swinging back?

I don't know to sum it up, but do believe that there ARE vulnerable individuals who deserve protection - and are not in a position to get it themselves, or from their familes - and that is a lot stronger than a few hurt feelings.

Canada has CCC provisions against hate and incitement. And well-developed defamation law in tort, along with the cumbersome due process and established defences- which is why the CIC cherry-picked specific HRCs as its litigation fora, rather than the criminal or civil courts.

That is why the CHRC's "blinking" on the Maclean's case was so problematic (exactly as I posted here earlier)- the SCC, through the Maer (sp?) case appears to stand in part for the proposition that there is no right not to have one's feeling hurt.

As a teacher, you are well-aware of the West's tradition of post-Enlightenment, Judeo-Christian-secular thinking. Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Austin, Bentham, the Federal Papers. This body of thought will, on hopes, be the bulkhead that holds back the Islamists' unceasing attempts to stifle the free discussion of Islam in the West.

Yes, Canada does have provisions on hate and incitement - the problem is that often the most hateful and inciting statements are not seen as such at the time they are made. They are seen as bona fide expressions of freedom and even moral codification.

As a teacher, I have read, first-hand, Rousseau, Locke and Bentham. No one escapes Judeo-Christian values in schools - they're too deeply entrenched at the moment. I have read people who read Voltaire. I know the basics of Post-Enlightenment but am not an expert. One of my classes saw PERSEPOLIS this year, and we read about the efforts to discredit the movie - from Iran - as anti-Islamic (which it isn't - it's anti-fundamentalist).

Does that count as awareness in the way you mean it? I'm not sure.

Like the law, or any interpreter of the law, I am an imperfect stand-in. As a teacher, I am less than what I am meant to be if the ideal is to be completely committed to practice.

I have just heard a lot of people say, "Well, Canada says you can do anything you want as long as you don't make anyone cry." And then they do, to prove they can.

Sorry - I didn't mean you, in the last paragraph. Also, I put this in as a debate, because I thought the strength of your language suggested that's what you aim for Hope it wasn't a misinterpretation.

I can't wait for Ontario's new human rights complaints system to really kick in. That's when Ontarians start being bled by a legal profession - one by one - for legal fees to defend themselves against facetious complaints by minorities nurtured at the Public Whine Teat. Naturally, the Law Society will DEFEND the human rights legislation.

Head Crazoid Barbara "Fuck the trial nonsense!" Hall will move against the "big boys" herself. Babs'll file against MEN'S JOURNAL for excluding women BY DESIGN by publishing articles of interest to men only! Ditto GUNS AND AMMO (a personal favorite). It'll be BABSTIME all the time in Ontario, where ciggies are hidden, magazine racks empty, nothing but halal crap at the foodstands.

It'll be REALLY FUNNY when Babs Hall moves in on Dalty McGuinty's special Catholic school system and squashes it completely, also declaring Catholicism "hatemongering" in Ontario. A string of "Catholic Re-Education Camps" will be opened across Ontario, employing THOUSANDS of Ontarians at a time when Ontario's economy needs the boost!

Just THINK of the surreal possibilities - and ALL of them will likely come to pass before Ontario's sheep stop and notice.

It's a FUNLIFE here in Canuckistan, ain't it?

Time to develop a taste for goat meat, Ontario!

This is gonna be FUN.