“It’s my bloody right to do so”

12Jan08

That’s Ezra Levant’s answer to a government question. They had asked him to justify publishing the Muhammad cartoons.

You can see a few pieces of his state inquisition. It’s so genteel. But you must keep in mind what happens to him if he doesn’t appear. You have to remember that you are witnessing government force being used because of what a man thinks. No physical crime has been committed, the complainant, a radical Saudi immigrant has had no physical harm done to him, he’s not lost his job, his home, he doesn’t have a bruise on him. He’s got the state behind him because his religion was offended.

Here’s the testimony.

These commissions need to be held up to contempt. The best way to do that is to exercise the rights that they are undermining - and that is to publish these proceedings as widely as possible. To embed these videos on your blog, grab the URL from Ezra Levant’s YouTube page.

Filed under: Canada |
Tags: Atheism, Ezra Levant, free speech, islam, Mohammed, Muhammad, Muslims

7 Responses to ““It’s my bloody right to do so””

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1 Kini on January 12, 2008 said:

Contempt indeed. When will the Imams be held to this standard, if you can call it a standard. Bloody nonsense if you ask me.

Half of my family lives in Canada, from BC to Newfoundland. Cheers!
2 Dr.Dawg on January 13, 2008 said:

So far, what has the AHRC done wrong? It’s hearing a complaint. That’s what HRCs do. They haven’t even ruled yet. The process is complaint-driven. Any citizen may make a complaint.

It seems to me that the Levant case is being used to attack protection for human rights period. I hope I’m incorrect.
3 Robert Jago on January 13, 2008 said:

The outrage over the Levant case or the MacLean’s case for that matter is that these complaints are even being heard. Using the state to impose religious rules on any person (even an adherent of that religion) is not a human right.

That is what the AHRC is doing wrong - they are hearing this complaint. They ought not to have a mandate to hear it, or to regulate speech in any way.

Which right is greater? The right to think and say what you wish, or the right to not have your religion offended.
4 Dr.Dawg on January 13, 2008 said:

Actually, they are at the screening process–a preliminary review. My prediction is that this is where things will stop. I don’t think that Levant broke any laws with his offensive conduct. He’s done far worse than that–attacking a bus driver for being Muslim in a column so vile that it was pulled by the Sun, mocking the spelling and speech of recent immigrants, attempting a character assassination of an MP complete with slimy references to his Saudi origins, etc.

But this isn’t about Ezra Levant, or indeed about free speech. All that is leverage for those who want to abolish HRCs so that they can spread hate unmolested.
5 Robert Jago on January 13, 2008 said:

My choice - which I think is an informed choice - would be to rewrite the HRC mandates to exclude publications and to only cover actual discrimination. I don’t want HRCs ruling on unverifiable charges of incitement like we have with Levant, or with the Alberta Pastor a while back.

Now as for Levant and bus drivers and spreading hate - so what? It’s not relevant. Does it need to be said that the point of free speech protections is to protect unpopular speech?
6 Dr.Dawg on January 13, 2008 said:

Is freedom of speech absolute, then?
7 Robert Jago on January 14, 2008 said:

Freedom of speech is one of the old liberal ‘natural rights’. When it comes to those rights, I don’t think they should be restricted unless there is an immediate risk of harming another person or their property.

Think about that old saw about shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. That’s perfectly understandable. If you did that there’d be a stampede and people would get hurt there and then.

But, allow that rule to be interpreted by an illiberal tribunal like the HRCs and it becomes a Rube Goldberg machine with people becoming liable for second and third order effects that no physical evidence can connect them to.

How can you know if anything you do is legal or not, if it’s not connected to your actions, but to the actions of others who may or may not have heard you, or to unspecified, unmeasurable ‘climates of fear’ or what have you?

If you research the ‘fire’ case you’ll find that it was used to silence an anti-war activist during world war I. The man was handing out pamphlets asking people to resist the draft - the state argued that in time of war, that is the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theatre, that he was in effect aiding the Kaiser’s army.

The man wasn’t passing out bullets or passing secret messages, he was expressing an unpopular point of view, as is his natural, “god given” right.

So is free speech absolute then? No, but it needs to be much freer than it is now - in particular, it needs to be free of the HRCs.

Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHrtlO5Hg88