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

Who’s on first?: There days you can count the pro-censorship boosters on your fingers. Let’s see, there’s the CIC, the BB, Wiesenthal, that meeskite from the Calgary Herald and, oh, yeah, the Abbott and Costello of Canadian censorship, Bernie “Bud” Farber and Harpoon “Lou” Siddiqui. 

The slimmer, more hirsute half of the team—the one who writes twice weekly for the Toronto Star—has yet another “yeah, censorship!” piece in today’s paper. Should you care to, you can read it here.

And here’s my response:

Haroon Siddiqui claims it’s “ironic” that the “Harper Tories” have been “neutering the human rights tribunal,” thereby alienating “mainstream” Jewry, a community they have supposedly long courted.

But I see a far bigger irony—the irony of a columnist writing for a large Canadian daily constantly beating the drum for state censorship.

Doesn’t Siddiqui realize that, when  censors are handed the power to decide what can and cannot be said largely on the basis of whether someone’s feelings have been “hurt,”  they could just as easily decide that he no longer gets to speak?

For instance, my feelings have certainly been hurt by false assertions about “Harper Tories” “riding the anti-Islamic bandwagon” (a bandwagon that exists solely in Siddiqui’s imagination), and “neutering the human rights tribunal” (it has done no such thing and, in fact, Prof. Richard Moon, who, in his report called for anti-hate speech provisions to be struck down, was appointed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission). However, I would never think to bring action against anyone for hurting my feelings, because I believe with every fibre of my being that, in a democracy, bureaucrats have no business being the arbiters of “hurt feelings,” and that a society cannot remain free if “feelings” are allowed to trump free speech.

I’m not alone in that belief. Indeed, there is growing support, on both the Left and the Right, to restore Canadians’ free expression—one of four fundamental freedoms enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Ironically, on this particular issue, it is now Siddiqui and a handful of organizations such as the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Canadian Jewish Congress who find themselves out of step with the “mainstream”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments (1)

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