Poison Candy on Limiting Free Speech

“I would refer Mr. Coyne to the period in European history most notorious for its silencing of Jews, about six million of them in Germany from 1936-1945. The systematic murder of Jews--along with Communists, people of color, the mentally and physically challenged and homosexuals—began with a book, with pamphlets, with posters, which lead to actions, laws and concentration camps. The insidious nature of the enterprise began with words, which ‘range true’ in the minds of people who might not otherwise have begun to think in such ways.

“The through-line from hate speech to murder is not always as evident as the Nazis made it, but it’s there.”

—By Marc Cote, Toronto, in a letter replying to a column in the National Post by Andrew Coyne questioning a Supreme Court decision to further limit free speech in Canada.

Hell on earth began with a book?

Are we willing to risk the murder of millions merely to defend a liberal principle: the freedom to write, to publish, and to widely promote another very bad book? Fortunately, that historical proposition is dead wrong.

The terrible anomaly in Nazi Germany wasn’t the success of an especially nasty book by a popular politician. Europe was already awash with nasty books and pamphlets about Jews and other minorities, inspired, for instance, by the Christian Bible and Social Darwinism.
What was special about the 1930s was the early ability of one awesome national government to stop people from freely and persistently expressing their opposition—of rebutting, satirizing, and shaming a hateful book and its ridiculous author.  

Brain Candy on Free Speech in Canada

In Saturday’s National Post, George Jonas explained how Canada’s Supreme Court parsed the limits of free speech in the case of Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. Whatcott:

Q: Dear Supreme Court, is there free speech in Canada?

A: It’s not absolute, you know.

Q: Well, yes, we know that, but is there limited free speech?

A: There must be. The Charter says there is, and the Charter wouldn’t lie. We support the Charter.

Q: Spiffy. So can I go and say whatever I like?

A: Yes, of course. That’s what “free” means. Unless you cross a line. Like anti-gay activist Bill Whatcott. He said some nasty things, you know.

Q: Is that the line, saying nasty things?

A: Oh no, you can say nasty things. It’s a free country.

Q: So where is the line?

A: When you cross it, we’ll let you know.

Q: Does it have a name?

A: We call it hate speech.

Q: What is hate speech?

A: It’s speech we hate.

Q: But speech you don’t hate needs no Charter protection. What do you say to people who argue that unless the Charter protects speech you hate, it protects nothing?

A: Let them say it, we say. It’s a free country.

Not every Canadian accepts that their country’s reputation for civility is well served by how they treat the LGBT community.  Not every Canadian accepts that Canada’s high standing as a free society is also tested by how they treat those they think of as bigots and careless loudmouths.

Lack of unanimity on this point is impossible and, thankfully, unnecessary. After all, they wrote a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and set up an independent Supreme Court to restrain popular opinion when it takes offense.

Didn’t they?

In Canada today, according to the Supreme Court’s Whatcott judgment, you won’t get in trouble with the law for being rude and impolite. You might, however, if your utterances are hateful—if, potentially, they could interfere with the “self esteem” and “self-fulfillment” of their intended target. Constructive criticism is fine. However, even using bits of “truth” to serve hateful ends, sometimes, is not.

If you still know a Canadian who expresses ugly ideas, or invents jokes that aren’t very funny, or a coffee shop bore who asks rhetorical questions, you probably should ask whether he or she knows the co-ordinates of a good lawyer.

Socrates wouldn’t have to take poison for what he said in Canada. But he might get stuck with a criminal record if he set up his famous Q & A Show in a public space in downtown Toronto or Regina without a lawyer at his side.

The Canadian Supreme Court, however, is not only worried about how cranky people express themselves. They’re interested in what these people actually want to accomplish. Here their assault on free speech is radical.

Innumerable bloggers and some wonderful peace-loving polemicists actually get up in the morning to try to do real harm to the self-assurance and reputations of those who promote and follow ideas they don’t like. 

What would the Supreme Court have done if Christian fundamentalist Bill Whatcott had stood on a street corner proclaiming: “Gay activists expect taxpayers to fund their Porn Addiction” while Cambridge atheist Christopher Hitchens was still alive and standing opposite, waving his placard: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”? 

Would the judges want both of them charged? Would they tell Whatcott that he’d do less harm and better serve his own cause if he’d just ask Hitchens how to find a Canadian publisher? After hours, would any of the judges read Hitchens’s polemic “God Is not Great” or only his memoir? 

What Makes Canada Special: Benign Authoritarianism?

It is widely agreed in clever circles that the Harper Government’s decision to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the War of 1812 was an inept expression of crass base politics and silly British nostalgia.

That war, after all, only kept alive the possibility that, way off in the future, there might be an independent Canadian dominion. Colonists and Britain’s First Nations allies were, in effect, magnificent cannon fodder in another British Imperial enterprise.

Besides, the War of 1812’s authoritarian themes do not resonate with Canadians  in 2013. Right?

Certainly, that’s what we say to each other and to the pollsters. Indeed, Nanos Research just confirmed that 47% of Canadians would rather have celebrated the 30th Anniversary of Canada’s emphatically liberal Charter of Rights and Freedoms, while only 28% supported celebrating the War of 1812—a war in which the forces of order and solidarity beat back those self-indulgent libertarians to the south.

Yet almost daily we witness the extraordinary deference of Canadian opinion toward established institutions—especially the un-elected ones—and the competence of those institutions to secure the people’s best interests.

Here are two rather significant examples: keeping an un-elected Senate and abridging free speech.

Liberal America wouldn’t tolerate either; liberal Canada, at its best, is of two minds.

Undoubtedly reflecting the American streak in Western Canadian politics, Stephen Harper has been trying for nearly seven years to start moving Canada toward an elected Senate.  Indeed, he’s the first Canadian Prime Minister yet to try to devolve his Prime Ministerial power to appoint Senators—to allow voters instead to make that decision. So far, not one Liberal or New Democrat leader in Ottawa has felt sufficient public pressure to support his efforts.

Interim leader of the Liberal Party Bob Rae and his unavoidable successor Justin Trudeau would rather hold Harper accountable for the caliber of his appointments to the Senate than help him surrender that power to the people.

This week, the Canadian Supreme Court unanimously upheld the right of provincial legislatures and the Canadian Parliament to circumscribe free speech, when hateful words could possibly “marginalize” individuals.

The decision was carefully written, and concern for free speech won’t end with one news cycle. However, it is noteworthy that the court’s verdict was unanimous, that newspaper and editorial writers are almost unanimously opposed, and that Canada’s political leaders—the people-trackers who respond in hours when it's an easy question—are silent.

Qualifying free speech to protect Canada’s brand?

Erna Paris has won numerous awards in the free-wheeling genre of literary non-fiction. However, she’s hardly free-wheeling about freedom of speech.

The Canadian Supreme Court is being asked again to determine whether freedom of speech can be restrained in order to restrain hateful public attacks on minorities and their beliefs. There’s no dispute that being free to express yourself doesn’t include libel, slander, and incitement to attack other individuals violently. However, a growing number of Canadians worry whether it’s possible—and proper—to limit freedom of speech in order to protect other public virtues.  

Paris isn’t squeamish about this task. She sees freedom of speech as one “public interest” that can be qualified in order to respect others. Her claim that freedom of speech should pay obedience to the “Canadian zeitgeist” of respectful, harmonious discourse would, however, transform an individual right into nothing more than another good thing in our basket of collective virtues.

Paris singles out writers Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn as “free-speech extremists.” Amazingly, she elaborates by saying “Both these authors have tried to shift the Canadian consensus by normalizing previously unacceptable levels of speech.”

This is velvet totalitarianism. The Canadian consensus in Erna Paris’s head—and conceivably in the heads of a winning majority of fellow citizens—is not in the Constitution or should not be the business of the Supreme Court.

Free speech, itself, is an extreme idea and is practiced everywhere to shift the consensus of the day. Levant and Steyn may be singleminded about insisting that Muslims suck it up and accept Mohamed doesn’t govern on this continent or prescribe the liberties of Canadian women and magazines of opinion.

Paris’ op-ed starts by making this radical assertion: “Given Canada’s multicultural fabric, it’s naïve to assume that our mythologized consensus over tolerance can’t be easily eroded by hate speech.” She concludes her op-ed piece by saying:

“It has been more than 20 years since our Supreme Court last wrestled with this issue, then upheld Canada’s hate-speech provisions by ruling (narrowly) that James Keegstra, an Alberta teacher who quizzed his students on their “knowledge” of his anti-Semitic views, was wilfully promoting hatred of a Canadian minority. The Canada we live in today is considerably more fragile than it was in 1990. Freedom of speech must be balanced with freedom from the destabilizing effects of public hatred in this, the world’s most heterogeneous society.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/there-are-limits-to-free-expression/article2216380/

Setting aside the arguable proposition that our society is less fragile than it was in 1990, this concern for social harmony is reactionary and ironic. One of the reasons Canada and the United States are the most popular destinations in the world for minorities and eccentric is that their governments don’t use the term “harmony” and “respect” to silence, arrest and persecute those who thumb their noses at official ideologies and gods.

Canada is multicultural because it’s a safe place to be free to be yourself. It’s crazy to suggest we need to be less free to remain a heterogeneous society.

Maybe Immigration Canada should add something like this to primers for prospective immigrants: “In Canada, you are free to practice your religion and traditions and spread your beliefs. However, you must be prepared even to be laughed at by others who think you’re ideas are wrong.”