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A few months back, Jennifer Lynch, QC, head of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, wrote to Maclean's to denounce me for my complacency over the threat that free speech presents to the Queen's peace:
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.
Commissar Lynch, as I have had cause to observe before, is an ahistorical nitwit. Had she, instead of regurgitating her totalitarian talking points, troubled herself to spend ten minutes looking into the subject she would have discovered that pre-Nazi Germany was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia of "hate" laws, with over 200 prosecutions for anti-Semitic speech and a public speaking ban on Adolf Hitler himself. And a fat lot of good it did. Not only did free rein for free speech not lead to the Holocaust, you might far morelogically argue that "reasonable limits" on it did: After all, anti-Semitism is "the oldest hatred", but it didn't turn genocidal until Germany introdiuced its Canadian hate speech. As I said in response to Commissar Lynch:
You might as well argue that Weimar's "reasonable limits" on free speech led to the Holocaust: after all, while anti-Semitism is "the oldest hatred," it didn't turn genocidal until the "reasonable limits" proponents of the day introduced group-defamation laws to Germany... Look, the defenders of the present "human rights" regime started this whole free-speech-leads-to-the-Holocaust line. I'm not saying that Canada's thought-crime enforcers are planning to murder millions of people...
But maybe I spoke too soon. Kathy Shaidle points out:
Speaking of Human Rights Commissions: it seems appropriate to recall, in this week of ghoulish anniversaries, that the one-time head of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission was none other than... mass murdering Marxist Jim Jones.
Jim Jones started out as a highly vocal and effective anti-racist activist -- and ended up killing more African-Americans in one day than the Arkansas KKK did in one hundred years.
Hmm. Pearl Eliadis, the "human rights" genius reduced to comparing me and Maclean's to the Rwandan radio broadcasts before the Tutsi genocide, seems to have overlooked the far more explicit correlation between mass murder and prior employment at a human rights commission. Look, I'm not saying that Jennifer Lynch or Barbara Hall are planning to start up Lynchtown or Halltown any time soon, and even if they do I'm not saying they'll be ordering up vats of maple-flavored Kool-Aid, but to lapse into Lynch-speak:
Why is this all important? Because human rights commissions are important. Lynch would have us believe that human rights commissions should be given free rein. History has shown us that human rights commissions lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and other democracies need to enact legislation to place reasonable limits on human rights commissions.
See how easy it is?
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