...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Excoriating Jen: The Globe and Mail’s Rex Murphy has some withering words for CHRC Czarina Jennifer Lynch and her misappropriation of Remembrance Day ceremonies:

…Human rights, the real ones, are ours from the beginning. They are not bestowed by the state, because the state does not "own" them; they are not a state's or a ruler's or, for that matter, a human-rights commission's to give. It equally follows that they are not a state's or a commission's to abridge, circumscribe, tamper with or make a toy of.

The concept of human rights, real human rights, has been long with us. But only in modern times did we learn what immeasurable darkness falls on the world when they are nullified. The butcheries of Auschwitz and Buchenwald followed as a straight and bitter line from Hitler's assumption of absolute power in 1933 and his cauterization and extinction of the concept of freedom in the German Reich. Nothing less than the Holocaust underwrites the modern understanding and appreciation of human rights. They are as profound and central a concept to the democracies of the world as we have.

They constitute the core of human freedom. They are the antidote to tyranny. They are fundamental.

Of late, in Canada, however, this most painfully acquired understanding has been utterly unmoored. The various provincial human-rights commissions and their federal godfather have been cutting away at the core of, and extending into utter fatuity the term, human rights. They are capricious, agenda-riven, a great mishmash of political correctness and "right thinking" bulldozing away at the basic freedoms of thought, speech and expression while they, under some osmotic impulse, investigate, prescribe and torment with zealous and self-righteous abandon.

Which is why I find Ms. Lynch's presence at Remembrance Day ceremonies odd. Because Canada's human-rights commissions are diluting and trivializing and thereby offending the very core of the concept that gives them their name. And a Remembrance Day ceremony is an awkward occasion to be reminded of that.

Delegates at the Conservative Party convention are getting set to vote--again--on whether to axe Section-13, the CHRC provision that makes a mockery of the democratic ideals that Canadians have fought for, and have died defending. Here’s hoping that some of the delegates read Rex today, and that he gives those still sitting on the fence the final push they need to side with freedom.

Update: I have it on good authority--a fellow free-speecher attending the convention--that the motion to get rid of the abominable section in question has passed. Let's pause momentarily to savour the victory--and then redouble our efforts to get the government to act.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:43 | link | comments (2)

Comments:

#1  15 November 2008 - 16:23

 

If it were not such a diminished bauble, Levant should be awarded the OC for his work in repealing s.13 of the CHRC.

Anonymous

#2  15 November 2008 - 21:10

 

A "diminished bauble," indeed. The OC is the cubic zirconium of awards--all flash, little value.

scaramouche

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