Alan Borovoy - [ founder of Human Rights Commissions over 40 years ago], was guest speaker at the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership last year.
Topic: Free Speech:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ERktJImUbI0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nuYXEY_mTx0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nMGl0BeGj-s
Great to see you back, Ezra! Just listening to Kathy Shaidle's interview on Pajama's Media right now.
You ARE needed back and all Canadians are lucky to have you!
Hmmm, just across the harbour. May have to look into this one.
Wow, I would love to go to that. Alas, all my cash is tied up in my/our legal defense fund.
Looking forward to Ezra's post-event blogging, which will be the next best thing to being there.
Oh and I see Professor John Miller will be there. I insult him in my new book about the HRCs 
I'll be there, Ezra, even though I have a big exam that week... :
I'm here already, and definitely plan to attend along with at least two other conservative Nova Scotia bloggers.
“The very first politician I ever met was Sheldon Chumir;”
Ezra: I was warmed by your anecdotal reminiscence of Sheldon Chumir. He was indeed a classic Liberal and a great champion of civil liberty. He touched my life with his dedication and principle as well.
Like yourself I had been raised to be politically conscious, but unlike you I had bounced around in the party system looking for some partisan organization that reflected my sense of democratic populism and civil libertarian passions. Liberal, NDP, PC, I was disillusioned by them all because at the executive and leadership level all abandoned core principle for the ideological compromises needed to acquire and retain power. After PET’s storming out of the WEO coference and the NEP and the psycophant Getty PCs, I was a bitter disillusioned conservative-libertarian and I drifted to WCC as an avowed separatist. I stumped for a separatist candidate in Calgary Buffalo in the ’82 elections and in ‘86 the riding’s PC (Brian Lee?) lost to Sheldon. I was outraged at the affront of a Liberal taking a Calgary riding in a Post NEP scenario (I figured they were all like the statist thugs in the Trudeau Ottawa junta who were systemically robbing and subjugating Alberta). I couldn’t understand how Buffalo voters could be so self loathing as to send one of PET’s Alberta hangmen to Edmonton.
Sheldon was still very active in the law society’s public outreach program (as was Thomas Ross) and was giving a talk at the Calgary library on the newly minted PET Charter of rights and what it meant to Albertan’s civil liberty. I was determined to attend and disrupt his speech about “rights” with loud reminders of all the “wrongs” the Ottawa liberals had perpetrated on Alberta. To keep this brief, I was pretty obnoxious and I had a lot of the crowd booing Sheldon before the lecture was over. It was then that I saw what he was made of. He didn’t attempt to silence me or shout me down or have security toss me out. He answered the questions and was not really defensive of the Ottawa regime in doing so. After the lecture he approached me and we talked for some time. He impressed me as an impassioned man preoccupied with civil justice over partisanism and party politics. As you say Ezra, he was also my kind of Liberal. If the LPC had a Sheldon Chumir at its helm guiding domestic policy in the 80s, there would have been no eastern-centric federalism, western disaffection or Reform party. I wish most liberals were like him.
Welcome back, Ezra!
Good luck, Ezra!
I wish I could come to Halifax, but it is somewhat far from Ottawa.
Let us know when you have a few more HRC-related speeches coming up in the national capital or in Toronto.
I have a major problem with calling this a "right to offend". This is another of those "crimes" that basically allows the supposed victim to define even the existence of an offense on a case by case basis. It depends entirely on the sensitivity of the victim. What kind of law is that?
I'll bet I can find SOMETHING that I could twist into calling "offensive" to me in any speech, written or oral, even from someone I am in total agreement with. Every writer, every talking head, had better be walking on eggshells from here on out.
On top of the that, the one-way, highly selective double standard as to who can be legitimately offended is indefensible, yet the hacks at the commissions can see nothing wrong with it. How can leftists and Muslims get away with the most vile, despicable and ugly comments imaginable, while no one on the right can even get a hearing on a legitimate complaint?
I have to disagree with you, Ezra, on not wanting to fight fire with fire. Christians and conservatives should flood the commissions with real charges against the real perps here. The resulting overload will help bring down these monstrosities.
In the US, I've had occasion to learn about the Marxist Saul Alinsky, who wrote books on tactics and strategies to achieve revolution (of whom Obama is a great admirer.) One of his prime strategies is to overload the systems you are trying to bring down, by holding them captive to their own standards. Since they can never possibly fulfill their own stated mandates if all the really aggrieved parties appeal to them, the resulting chaos can be used to bring them down.
By using a few landmark cases like yours and Steyn's, all you do is make them hunker down, obfuscate, cover their behinds for a short while, and then slowly continue their march towards their goals. They never will go away until you force them to.
Ezra, please prepare your remarks in advance!
I'm delighted to hear that Margaret Wente's going to be there in such a prominent capacity: no one can accuse her or the Globe and Mail of being rednecks. The wider the coalition of those opposing the idiocy and tryanny of the HRCs, the better.
If the CPC and PMSH don't use their strong showing in this election to defang the HRCs, their plans to incrementally increase their number of seats will be stopped dead in its tracks. We Conservatives, who recognize the serious danger of these kangaroo courts, have been very understanding so far. But our patience isn't unlimited. Now is the time for PMSH to move decisively and take on the HRCs. If he doesn’t, he’ll lose the respect and support of some of his most loyal followers.
This is awesome!
We just have to make sure that the focus, the MEDIA's right to offend, does not result in a 'special dispensation' only for the 'media' to say 'offensive things', while individual citizens would be subjected to censorship of their speech.
A modest proposal for the Halifax Chronicle in their battle against HRC suppression of speech:
The paper would find themselves getting much more support among elected politicians IF the Chronicle simply STOPPED / eliminated / cut off 100% of the coverage of the speeches, events, press releases, mutterings and meanderings of ALL elected politicians in Canada.
Simply DENY coverage to elected politicians in the Halifax Chronicle UNTIL those elected politicans DO SOMETHING to rein-in the "Speech Suppression Movement" perpetuated in HRCs.
Today's FREE idea, to do with as you please.
Dave
"Freedom includes the right to say what others may object to and resent... The essence of citizenship is to be tolerant of strong and provocative words."
- April 9, 1970, House of Commons.
I'm pretty sure Dief the Chief would put the boots to the current incarnation of the HRCs.
Here's to more strong provocative words from Ezra, Small Dead Animals, and in Parliament!
Voted in the advance poll, don't much care for line ups.
Prediction: Effective Conservative Majority because Stephen Harper is 'scary' in a "Cookie Monster" kind of way.
Thank God the Sesame Street antics of the parties during the election period will finally be over.
Kermit will return to his lily pad, Miss Piggy will don her lipstick, JackO will hang his lantern for Halloween, and the Duceppe-tionists will be BLOQed!
We now return to regularly scheduled programming with AliSteve Cookie and Monsterpiece Theatre featuring S.91 of the Constitution 'Act' 1867.
Go get 'em Ezra!
Cheers!!
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
Frankenstein Battalion
2nd Squadron: Ulanen-(Lancers) Regiment Großherzog Friedrich von
Baden(Rheinisches) Nr.7(Saarbrucken)
Knecht Rupprecht Division
Hans Corps
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group "True North"
Yes, welcome back. The right side of the blogosphere had a big hole in it for a while. Now that you're back - go get 'em!!!
I am a journalism student looking to discuss an issue in media ethics with you. We are being asked to focus on a specific case, and yours has interested my group. If you are willing to discuss, not for publication other than for class, we would greatly appreciate your help. This seems to be the only way to reach you. Please let me know if you are available. Thank you.
Karin Krisher
The leftist fauxprofessor -- yet another face of Islam. A fauxbic voice of faux-cialism's misery.
The universities are infested with these facsist, malcontent, hurt-feelings-sensor censors.
.
.
I can scarcely believe that a conference on the right to offend is going to occur on a university campus in Halifax.
Wasn't a university in Halifax responsible for censuring Professor Shiraz Dossa after he attended the big Holocaust conference in Tehran?
Didn't a university in Halifax refuse -- twice -- to host a debate on multiculturalism between Jared Taylor and professors David Divine and Peter March?
The universities in Halifax might talk about the glories of free speech, but they find reasons to curtail debate when it's potentially offensive. Make sure you can refund your airplane tickets in the event that the discussion is cancelled!
Hmm...I thought there might be an email to use, but this will suffice.
I have been self-publishing my own mag for over eight years in Barrie, Ontario, and I don't know why anyone studies journalism, as most of it is garbage. If you want to read something good like this, it's on the internet. Journalism isn't like studying to be a doctor, kids!
Anyway, I helped out the local Libertarian this election, and also filled in for him at a school debate. I squawked at the local TV station at the end, for not giving the Libertarians any coverage last year, and I got a big pop from the crowd. The local Green guy couldn't have that, and contacted the Libertarian candidate, and tried to get me banned, and uttered slander, and later published libel about me. As a guy who has self-published for eight years, I'm for anything you want to say, and be as abusive as you want, but don't lie. I sued the bugger:
http://paolofabrizio.synthasite....leader-
sued.php
If Ezra emails me, I'll give him the passwords to the private area of the website: dthx1138@csolve.net
To review, the Green guy went after me with lies after I offended the local teevee boys. Check out my videos, if you'd like. And offend as you deem fit:
http://www.youtube.com/
profile_v...er=darrenroskam
Does anybody have any idea why the HRCs were not an election issue? Why didn't Harper so much as comment on it? Ezra do you know why?
Warren,
Nobody wants to be, "The Political Party (or Politician) that campaigned against Canadian Human Rights".
This cunning naming of the HRC has protected it against most political intervention. It would be much easier to drive the wooden stake through its heart had it been named as the "Faux Court That Is Trying To Prevent Canadians From Exercising Their Rights To Free Speech", or FCTITTPCFETRTFS
I'm the guy who posted about the lawsuit. Any Conservative lawyers in Barrie, Ontario or Toronto wanna do a little pro bono?
dthx1138@csolve.net
Yeah, I sued him, myself, but I could use a little help.
Is anyone at all surprised that it was a "Green" who went tattling and complaining about the libertarian Mr. Roskam and possibly defaming him? His experience bears out that many if not most "Greens" are actually "watermelons" i.e. green on the outside to attract one issue voters but red on the inside.
Greens are absolutely allergic to anyone coloring outside the lines they try to stringently enforce even while they hypocritically demand all kinds of concessions for their own outsider status such as having their leader included where she had no business being until she or someone in her party won a few seats, in the leaders' debates. (In the end, she turned her party into just another branch of the liberals after pretending to be something different).
Welcome back. Long may you continue to use your considerable intelligence, humour and energy in the glorious cause of freedom of speech and liberty!
Richard Franklin Carter, Halifax is also home to a uni (Saint Mary's) where a philosohy prof took a lot of heat from the media and Muslim students when he posted the notorious cartoons on his office door. I think his name is Peter March
Commenting by HaloScan
