Quote:
Originally Posted by Trooth
Here is their mandate :-
Alberta Human Rights & Citizenship Commission - Mandate and Function of the Commission
Lots of words, but the summary is it's motivation is :-
Which it claims to achieve in the following areas :-
Now, i can't see how publishing an article about Mohammed or anybody else comes under that remit. I don't see anything in their remit that says "to make sure people aren't offended". What Lavant has not done is discriminate in his publication. Therefore i think that the HRC has completely overstepped it's remit.
If anything what it has done is end any usefulness of the HRC because if i was an Albertan i would take a hint from the article from Lavant that you published Bluesman and complain about the various writings of those complaining about the cartoons. Clog the HRC of A up with such cases and it will get it's neck pulled in.
As to should the HRC exist? That's up to the people of Canada to decide. Do they feel that everyone gets a fair shake of the stick? It's easy for me to say "no such things have the opportunity to Orwellian mis-uses (as in this case)", because i am a White Anglo-Saxon Male with a reasonably neutral accent. Hence I carry nothing before me into most encounters in huge tracts of global society that have been moulded around people like me. If everyone in Canada regardless of their sex, colour, ethnic background or what they sound like can say the same then it doesn't need to exist. |
But it WILL exist, as long as somebody gets to lord their petty (and sometimes profound) power over their fellow man, whether it be justified or not, and whether they have the legal excuse or not doesn't in any way affect the question of the morality of it, as seen in the context of the natural rights of all human beings.
This is the attempt - no, actually, it's now an established FACT - to criminalize certain THOUGHTS. I gives a good goddam' whether it's legal, in the narrow sense that some bureaucrat can point to a duly-enacted law that gives him the excuse (I did not and would not say the 'right') to violate the freedoms that come to us by the simple fact of our existence.
This is WRONG. It should be resisted, and to any extreme that an out-of-control state wishes to push it. Resistance to the system, NOT counter-use of it, in a misguided attempt to break it. Because I can see what would happen: as a government agency that can prove it's got way too much work, it'll request more people, a bigger budget, possibly even a cabinet ministry eventually. All of a sudden, it's not an on-the-ropes puny little office with make-believe authority, it's a massive bureacratic monster, more powerful and much less answerable than before (and it seems altogether too powerful and unaccountable even at THIS stage).
Furthermore, trying to 'win' your case is not resistance (even if the government's 'win' rate wasn't exactly 100%, as is the case), but the granting of legitimacy to something that should be spit on in contempt, rather than standing meekly before it, awaiting the inevitable unfavorable judgement it never had any natural right to make in the first place.
No, what SHOULD be done is to utterly ignore every single thing that ever issues from its insatiable maw. When they summon you to appear, go about your business as if they had NO standing to order you to do ANYthing - because they should NOT. If this is followed by a warning of consequences, make no attempt to protect yourself - no attorney, no alibi or justification, no deal or plea-bargain. And finally, if they attempt to FORCE your compliance, pull a gun and blow the head off the first stormtrooper that tries to take either your liberty or property, because you refused to bow down to the Thought Police. And prepare to die for a principle that's worth your life to defend.
That's what our ancestors did, and they are immortal for their bravery in the face of unjust power. I admire Lavant because he refuses to be intimidated into asking, please, sir, may I be allowed to apologize, and I swear I'll never do it again. If they take ANY action to silence him, he should re-double the 'offensive' speech in volume, amplitutde, depth, breadth and reach. If they attempt to fine him, he should say come and get it, if you're ready to fight to collect it. If they attempt to make him serve time, he should treat the people that come to get him as mere kidnappers, and defend himself from them.
Those are the acts of free men that do not recognize any government's power over their own conscience, or their rights. THAT is RESISTANCE.