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Saturday, April 12, 2008
CHRC Hiring Standards Must Be Very Low
After all, we don't expect the self-exalted of the power elite to caricature themselves:
I wonder if it isn't time for the National Post to cool its attacks on the Canadian Human Rights Commission ("The CHRC Doesn't Get it," editorial, April 8). Ask yourselves whether maybe, just maybe, it isn't the Post that "doesn't get it." Try to take a look at the facts from a different perspective.Is a 19th-century English philosopher (even John Stuart Mill, whom I admire greatly as a defender of individual rights against an overbearing state) really the best arbiter of Canadian human rights standards in the 21st century? At the time Mill wrote, England was openly racist, sexist and anti-Semitic. After two disastrous world wars and the horrors of the holocaust, we are surely obliged to judge rather differently the anything-goes theory of free speech.
What is writer Maxwell Yalden -- "a former Canadian Human Rights Commissioner and member of the UN Human Rights Committee" -- trying to get us to infer? That "anything-goes free speech" somehow gave rise to the World Wars and the Nazi genocides? Where's the connective tissue?
At the international level, the premier United Nations human rights treaty, the Covenant on Civil and Political rights, to which more than 150 countries, including Canada, are parties, asserts quite explicitly that " advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred shall be prohibited by law." At the international level, the premier United Nations human rights treaty, the Covenant on Civil and Political rights, to which more than 150 countries, including Canada, are parties, asserts quite explicitly that "advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred shall be prohibited by law." For more than 30 years, the judgments of the UN's Human Rights Committee have been accepted worldwide.
That's news to your Curmudgeon. We certainly haven't accepted them in the United States. Nor are we likely to endorse the UN's ludicrous "Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," which directly contradicts our Constitutional guarantees, any time soon.
The Canadian Human Rights Act, with its Section 13 forbidding material that exposes individuals to "hatred or contempt" on racial or religious grounds, simply follows these global standards. It also follows plain common sense. We all know, to cite the old saw, that "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre."
The exception for "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" -- strictly speaking, words that are likely to evoke violence or panic -- has always, and rightly, been regarded as very narrow. There must be a demonstrable risk of violence or panic, and a demonstrable intent on the part of the speaker to bring it about.
We also know that you cannot use a public podium to promote violent racist or anti-Semitic propaganda.
This is a form of the fallacy called the appeal to the consequences of a belief, or, in some instantiations, begging the question.
The Internet is the public podium of the 21st century, and people of good will share the view that there have to be some restrictions on what can be promoted on the Web.
So one who dissents is not a person of good will? That's the modern form of ad hominem rhetoric: "If you disagree with me, you're a bad person!"
What the limits on free speech should be, and what standards should be acceptable "in a free and democratic society," to quote the Charter of Rights, are and always should be open to public discussion. And the National Post should recognize that the high road of civilized debate is more productive than below-the-belt bashing of our human-rights institutions.
Which makes a complete mockery of the notion of freedom: No standard arrived at by "democratic" means, whether direct or representative, could be barred from including a provision that criminalizes criticizing it. No doubt this has occurred to Mr. Yalden; no doubt he's desperate to prevent it from occurring to us.
One who is barred from speaking against the current consensus -- whatever it might be, whoever might have been charged with articulating it and establishing the penalties for violating it -- is not free in any sense of the word, whether traditional or trendy. But it's clear from his essay that Mr. Yalden regards rights as gifts from government, rather than the natural inheritances of individuals from human nature -- and still clearer that he wants no more sunlight to shine on his beloved "Human Rights Commissions," an Orwellian designation if ever there was one.
Canada is a lovely country filled with lovely people. Your Curmudgeon and his brood have greatly enjoyed their time visiting it. But if Mr. Yalden is the sort of voluble totalitarian it admits to its halls of power, Americans would be well advised not to contemplate moving there, much less incorporating it into our Union as many have suggested in years past.
The five prominent Canadian bloggers now under attack by the hyperlitigious Richard Warman and his collaborators on the CHRC are in desperate need of funds for their defense. Your Curmudgeon can imagine no better object for one's generosity. If you can afford it, and if you believe in the sanctity of real human rights, as opposed to the insupportable fictions promulgated by Mr. Yalden and his ilk, please consider donating to their cause.
Applause to Sithmonkey at Cold Fury for the link to Mr. Yalden's op-ed.
Comments
More and more, it strikes me that we’re trying to fence the wrong border.
Posted by on 04/12/2008 at 11:48 AMSince the Post is a right-of-center paper, and has in previous weeks published editorials critical of the Human Rights Commissions and their nefarious doings, it seems clear to me that they are trying to spark debate. Hopefully it will result in some strong letters to the editor.
The other national-scale paper, The Globe and Mail, is also on board against these star chambers with Orwellian names, so at the moment there doesn’t seem to be much controversy, which means fewer papers sold. Thus this deliberately provocative op-ed.
Be that as it may, I applaud the Post for doing this. I don’t recall any such against-the-grain editorials ever being published in the Globe on any topic. But then I don’t read dead-tree news much anymore…
Posted by on 04/12/2008 at 07:36 PM
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