Seems like old times. The great columnist Andrew Bolt made some mildly pointed observations about prominent and strikingly pasty-faced Australians choosing to identify as “aborigines”, and found himself hauled into court by the thought police:
I never thought I’d have an opportunity to see a real-life heresy trial in 21st-century Australia, but that’s exactly what’s been going on this week in Melbourne’s Federal Court.
Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt has been dragged before a judge and accused of thought crimes against the high church of political correctness. He’s being prosecuted and persecuted for the lese-majesty of challenging the cult of victimhood that dominates racial discourse in Australia.
The plaintiffs in this case claim to be aggrieved by several Bolt newspaper columns that cast doubt upon the authenticity of their Aboriginality. And while I’m sure their feelings of umbrage are quite genuine, I’m equally certain they are ultimately irrelevant.
But they’re not. In Canada, I too committed the crime of “offending” certain approved identity groups. And there is no defense to that: Truth, facts, evidence are all irrelevant. If someone’s “offended”, that’s that: You’re guilty. And increasingly, in Canada, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Scandinavia, the human right not to be offended trumps all.
This is disastrous. It puts free societies on the same continuum as the ululating savages of Mazar e-Sharif. They were also “offended” – by some no-name pastor on the other side of the planet burning a book. The Taliban’s idea of due process is less protracted than the Australians’, but operates on the same basic principle – that the right not to be offended is sacred.
As some of us said over the free-speech wars in Canada, if a multicultural society is not to descend from soft totalitarianism into naked thuggery, its citizens need to grow thicker skins: We need not sensitivity training, but insensitivity training. Instead, the Euro-Aussie-Canadian model thinks things will all work out if only we tiptoe ever more daintily on multiculti eggshells. Or as The Daily Caller’s Mike Riggs tweets:
What are you willing to stop doing to avoid offending violent religious zealots?
What core liberties are you willing to trade for a quiet life? Because however much of the baggage you toss out the balloon, it will never be enough. Short of punitive military measures we’re not willing to take, there’s not a lot we can do about baying Afghan mobs hot for decapitating people because someone expressed an opinion. But we could at least put some clear blue water between our legal inheritance and theirs by not dragging people into Australian, Dutch, Austrian and Danish courts for the same “crime”.
PS “Death To America, Death To Obama.” As Powerline remarks, that middle name may not be quite as magical as the President believes.
It's depressing when you read this day in and day out. While I'm not remotely surprised by the Aghan butchers (the same people we are helping??) as I expect nothing more from people with a brutal mediaeval mindset (misogyny, xenophobia, etc), I am far more disturbed by the Big Brother Thought Police we see here in the West (as you yourself discovered with our wonderful, morally bankrupt HRC).
I encounter this sort of thinking on a depressingly regular basis. That is, the sin of offending is far worse than any beliefs/actions that may have taken place by people of a particular background (they likely had a good reason for it - victimhood status can only really survive so long as many of us in the West accept it and condone it).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm glad we have the First Amendment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAh, Liberalism, "Freedom of Speech for Me, but not for Thee"...
We complain about the erosion of personal freedoms in the U.S., but evil, hateful, bigots like Westboro Baptist Church are protected, and the height of religious persecution is a slight pause before saying "Merry Christmas" to a stranger in December. Sometimes we forget how good having a Constitution that articulates individual liberty is. It's too bad so few of our leaders seem to have actually read it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust like "multiculturaism" and "self-esteem," I believe the "right not to be offended" will soon be inculcated in the up-and-coming public school population through the current government sponsored "anti-bullying" efforts. (Of course bullying is bad, but watch how the definition of "bullying" subtly expands over time, requiring more and more government oversight.) I fear that in a couple of generations (or less), free speech will be nothing more than a quaint notion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThese people don't seem to understand that their right to even BE offended is intrinsically tied to someone elses right TO offend.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUpon reading about the enlightened ones in Mazar-omar-sharif this morning, my husband said we should all meet in St Louis (middle of the country) and burn a mountain of korans.
On a serious note, why in heck are we still there? I guess it's cover for going into Libya.
And I love the signs in English on the powerline link. I'm sure all those illiterate Pashtuns and Urdus and Afghans who are unable to read/write their own language are perfectly competent and literate in English.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is the hypocrisy that stands out. Those who scream that their right not to be offended is being offended are the most offensive people around. The UN workers that got decapitated had a right not to be offended also. Maybe they found getting killed rather offensive. Terry Jones has a right not to be offended also. Maybe Mr Jones finds people screaming "Death to America" somewhat offensive.
We must deal with the Muslims with a standard of perfect reciprocity. Once they have internalized the costs of being offensive then they will begin to treat others with respect. That is essential before, not after, they can be trusted to learn and change and become part of society. Perhaps when the idea that Muslims have a special right to bully and threaten and lie and kill is extracted from Islam it will reform and become a useful part of the human experience. Perhaps once those things that are offensive are stopped there will be nothing left and it will disappear.
Personally I find anyone over the age of 12 on any day other than Halloween who covers their face offensive and threatening. Personally I am deeply offended by people who believe that they have a right to kill any American citizen or ally of America.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne the one hand I am proud to live in the nation has the strongest tradition of free speech on earth, but on the other I am saddened by the self-censorship that seems to prevail in our mass media, much more so than in other English-speaking countries, it seems.
Large newspapers in Britain, Australia, and Canada often suffer from legal pressure when they print controversial things on their opinion pages. In contrast, US newspapers face no censorship, but for whatever reason, they NEVER print any controversial columns, at least not from the right side of the spectrum.
It almost makes our wonderful free speech protections seem like a waste.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It's too bad so few of our leaders seem to have actually read it." Not only that, but some of them, like Jim McDermott, D, WA, was quoted as saying on the House floor that he thought it was a waste of time. "“I’m tired of reading the Constitution and all of the silly things we’ve done over the last 13 weeks.” I find that offensive.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you, Lifeofthemind. It, too, seems to me that the wrong (and most offensive) people are constantly finding themselves 'outraged.'
After this latest Afghan atrocity, the death of even one more American soldier in defense of this or that strain of radical Islam would be one too many. Let them perish in their own 9th century bigotry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn theory, the fact that you can never be inoffensive enough is true, but only in theory. In reality, only some people are guilty of giving offense. Members of victim groups can malign their own group, or often any other, without fear of the thought police (usually. Zealotry sometimes catches up to them, though not often).
It's only the perceived oppressors who have to walk on eggshells all the time. AND THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. It's not to punish them for having said the wrong thing or offended the wrong person. That's just a convenient club with which to punish them for being the wrong kind of people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA lot of people seem to be outraged by how outraged other people are.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs I wrote in another thread last week, American-style democracy just cannot occur in these Mid-East countries. They have no history of the rule of law, and while they do have the religion (any religion will do) necessary to provide a moral & ethical background, they have unfortunately chosen a religion that is completely intolerant of anybody not subscribing to its strictest, most fundamental tenets. They are totally tribal (a direction BTW in which I see the rest of the world slowly heading) and cannot abide people from another tribe, even if they believe in the same religion.
We should vacate the whole area, with the proviso that if terrorists attack us, we promise that the terrorist's country of origin (& if indeterminable, we'll just pick one) will be nuked back to the Stone Age. It's a short trip.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>In Canada, I too committed the crime of “offending” certain approved identity groups. And there is no defense to that: Truth, facts, evidence are all irrelevant. If someone’s “offended”, that’s that: You’re guilty.
Except you're not guilty. Literally. The Canadian court dismissed the complaint against you.
I know that as a thoroughbred polemicist getting convicted for hate speech would have been your finest hour. But it didn't happen and you shouldn't pretend it did.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd not surprisingly, after checking a news source that isn't Mark Steyn (External Link
) I see the Australian case isn't so much about a guy being "prosecuted" by the "thought police" as it is about a guy being privately sued in civil court.
Seems like a silly lawsuit. I wish Steyn would have just called it such instead of lying about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou say the right to not be offended is sacred, but in reality, that's only half the truth. The more correct version is that if you are in an accepted victim class, then the right not to be offended is sacred. Being a married, white, Christian male, I can expect that any offense I might take at any kind of characterization would be met with yawns and some lecture on my oppression of others for centuries. Receive numerous death threats like the Republicans in Wisconsin and you get nothing from a shrug in the media with sort of an acceptance that they had it coming. Have one of those politicians comment that Unions are lazy and need to get off their butts, and one could expect their homes to be burned down with the subsequent acquittals for the perps because of the injury they had suffered. It seems another one of the unintended consequences of our current collectivism, when having way to much time on your hands, you have way to much opportunity to be offended about something.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAha! So H. Bruce Franklin has found his pink destiny.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHello Redfate,
It was not a Canadian court that heard the case, but the BC Human Rights Commission. Mark brought along a lot of lawyers paid for by his publisher, Maclean's Magazine. After a few days of hearings in the BC Human Rights Court, occasioned by a complaint from several Muslims types from Ontario, the Commission decided to back off given all the bad publicity a finding of guilty by the BC HRC would generate.
I do not know how much the episode cost the taxpayer nor how much it cost Macleans, but it was certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Most defendants in these proceedings, where court room procedures of evidence are ignored in favour of belief, feeling and opinion, do not have that kind of legal ammunition. Nor do they have such a national voice like Macleans. Proceedings and awards just bankrupt the defendants or yield grudging guilty pleas.
The plaintiffs had shopped their complaint to several provincial commissions before finding the BC abettors. What they originally demanded was equal time in Macleans to rebut Mark Steyn. They did not get it and consequently filed their complaint.
One hard fought and costly success against so many failures.
Maybe one should read a little bit on the subject before opening their grossly ignorant yap.
Regards,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGary Marshall
Also Redfate,
The case is being heard in a Federal Court by a Federal Court judge. The only one who seems to know how to lie in this matter is you.
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ELEMENTS of Andrew Bolt's defence in a Federal Court racial discrimination case have been questioned by Federal Court judge Mordecai Bromberg.
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Regards,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGary Marshall
@redfate - "I know that as a thoroughbred polemicist getting convicted for hate speech would have been your finest hour. But it didn't happen and you shouldn't pretend it did."
I suppose you're totally cool with the fact that Steyn and MacLean's, his publisher, were dragged before the Political Correctness Tribunal and forced to expend much time and treasure to not have their speech penalized? Of course you are. Whenever great powers like government are wielded to frighten people into silence for fear of being bankrupted because something they said offended those with terminal cases of aggrievedness, people like you smile because contrary voices must be silenced. "Free speech for me, but not for thee" and all.
When Steyn was on trial - along with persecutions of a clergyman who'd spoken against homosexuality and was ordered to never say those things again; and Ezra Levant (read the interview comments here: External Link
to see how liberal fascists roll with their kangaroo courts, er, Human Rights Commissions) - he said that if he wasn't backed by a deep-pocketed magazine, he may not have fared as well.
It never ceases to amaze me how the people who won't ever shut up about their support for free speech, diversity and tolerance have no use for any of those in their own conduct. They are empty platitudes to fuel their smug hypocrisy.
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