A journalist who loves censorship is like a chicken who loves Col. Sanders

I know, that's a lame headline. Come up with a better one if you can in the comments section.

But what else can you say about a newspaper columnist who actually supports government censorship of the media? I'm referring to the pitiful Naomi Lakritz, who beclowned herself in yesterday's Calgary Herald. Here is her grotesque column. Let me fisk it, briefly:

The Alberta Human Rights Commission has thrown out the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities' complaint against Ezra Levant. Now, maybe the clamour about what an egregious affront to democracy human rights commissions present will die down.

Lakritz thinks this is about me. It's not. It's about a threat to Canada's fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, the press and religion. I just happened to be noisier than most targets of the HRC.

First, it's hard to believe Levant wonders why it took 900 days for the commission to toss out the complaint about his Western Standard's publication of the Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.

That's a really weird insinuation that I was the one who dragged things out. It's more than weird -- it's demonstrably false. Had Lakritz called me, or used something called "Google" on the Inter-nets, she would have come across my responses to the two complaints, and seen the dates on them. I filed each within 30 days of receiving the complaints. That leaves 870 days of abusive process by the government.

Only Levant himself can answer whether he did his part to expedite matters by responding promptly in his dealings with the commission. The process involves much give and take -- answering the initial complaint, navigating the conciliation period and going into the investigation part when settlement issues are debated.

Again, a phone call or Google would have revealed that there was no attempt at reconciliation. Is this really Lakritz's best argument? To challenge my honesty -- to blame the victim? It's a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy.

I'm willing to give Levant the benefit of the doubt and assume that the dragging out of the process was due to the slow pace of bureaucracy. However, as a lawyer yourself, Ezra, you must be familiar with the often excruciating length of judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings; if not, may I refer you to case law precedent for lengthiness -- Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce in Charles Dickens' Bleak House?

Bleak House is a novel -- a work of fiction. So is the story of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. It's odd that Lakritz uses that exaggerated fictional tid-bit from Industrial Revolution England as her benchmark for Canadian justice. I wonder if she'd say the same thing about a criminal accused. But, even accepting her strange analogy, Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce was a private lawsuit, in a real court, between two parties haggling over a family fortune, where both parties and their lawyers chose to fight incessantly. It was a morality tale about litigiousness. How does that apply when one party -- me -- wants to get out of a lawsuit, but the other party -- the government, with its unlimited resources -- refuses to even communicate for months at a time? In a real court, I could have applied for a summary dismissal; at worst, I could have applied for case management, where a real judge would have ordered the other side to comply with a schedule. None of those are open to targets of HRCs.  

University of Calgary law professor Kathleen Mahoney is absolutely right when she says the outcome of Levant's case demonstrates the process works. It does, indeed, and without such institutions as human rights commissions, where would people go for redress? In other countries, when people feel their racial or religious identity is under attack, they take up arms. Here, we have a civilized outlet for making such complaints -- the human rights commission.

Kathleen Mahoney is a left-wing kook. And she's a thin-skinned liberal fascist in her own right. Here's a story in the Globe and Mail about her own human rights complaint filed against Alberta Report, for daring to suggest that some Aboriginal kids benefited from residential schools. 

Opponents of human rights commissions seem to labour under the impression that when a complaint is filed, a panel of dictatorial (and, of course, left-leaning) folks hears it and hands down a ruling. Not so. According to the commission's website, more than 50 per cent of cases are resolved through conciliation.

Yes, I was offered conciliation. The offer sounded like this: "pay cash to the radical Muslims, and give them a page in your magazine, unedited. Then we'll let you go." Most people take it -- they don't have the time or money to fight these bastards for 900 days.

There are checks and balances built into the process all along the way -- including the commission's authority to reject the initial complaint if it does not fall under the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act. Then comes the conciliation process, which tries to find a middle ground to make both sides happy.

What exactly is the "middle ground" when it comes to freedom of the press. In February 2006, Kevin Libin was the Western Standard's editor, and I was its publisher. So either we decided what went in the magazine, or these radical Muslims decided what went in the magazine. How do you split the difference on that? Either the magazine was ours, or it was theirs, courtesy of a thieving state. I'm not quite sure how to compromise. If Lakritz ever gets hit with an HRC complaint for her column, it will be interesting to watch her compromise. Would she pay cash? Whose money? Hers, or would she bravely offer the Herald's? Would she offer her column, unedited, to a critic, if it would get her out of trouble with the government? And would the Herald go along with that?

If that fails, an investigator either throws the complaint out or approves it to proceed. Even then, it doesn't go straight to a hearing in front of the fearsome lineup of supposed lefties. Instead, "the parties are typically invited to discuss settlement," says the commission.

If settlement is out of reach, a panel is appointed to hear the matter. However, only five per cent of cases go before a panel; the other 95 per cent end at some earlier stage.

That's true. We never hear about the 95% of people who give up before going to a hearing. For every one of me and Rev. Stephen Boissoin, there are twenty victims we never hear about. 

The case against Levant never made it to a hearing. The conciliation process broke down, and the complaint went to an investigator, who decided it didn't merit proceeding, based on, according to the commission, "how the act and legal precedents apply." The Edmonton Muslim group has the right to appeal the ruling, however.

The commission is not the kangaroo court its detractors would like everyone to think it is. Under the act, it upheld Levant's freedom to publish the cartoons, although investigator Pardeep Gundara reserved the right to exercise freedom of speech to declare that "the cartoons remain offensive." They are offensive, and that is why the Herald chose not to publish them at the time. But it doesn't mean Levant had no right to publish them, and that's the distinction Gundara makes.

Pardeep Gundara did not exercise his freedom of speech. He was not acting as an individual, writing a letter to the editor or calling a talk show. He was not even just a spokesman for the Government of Alberta. He was a decision-maker, using the awesome powers granted to the government under the statute.

Lakritz calls the cartoons "offensive". Perhaps they are to her -- a submissive dhimmi, and worse, a Jewish dhimmi. But look at the cartoons (I wonder if Lakritz herself even has). A few of them are politically controversial. But most aren't. Some made fun of the Danish newspaper itself -- including this one, at left, in which the "Mohammed" involved was a young Danish student named Mohammed.

Another was a picture of a man in the desert, at left. Why did the Danish paper publish that one? Because the whole point was to discuss the fact that Danish cartoonist were afraid to illustrate a children's Koran, lest they be killed by radical Muslims. So this was a picture suitable for a child's Koran. Offensive? Only if you're a perpetually aggrieved whiner. 

Mahoney is right on again when she says: "We have to balance freedom of expression with other people's freedom from speech. Otherwise, we'd have absolutism running roughshod over other people's freedoms." It's the old adage about how one person's rights end where someone else's begin.

Say what? "Freedom from speech"? Is a little word trick really a substitute for an argument? Freedom from speech? I guess that means the freedom to turn the channel, or not read a magazine, or not listen to someone. Freedom "from" speech is really the freedom just to ignore someone. We all have that, naturally. What Mahoney and Lakritz are talking about isn't freedom from anything. It's power -- the power to silence their opponents. Mahoney wanted to censor the Alberta Report, because she disagreed with it. Lakritz wants to censor -- well, other than me, I don't know her enemies list, yet. Mahoney and Lakritz had better hope that no government has them on their to-censor list. Because once the precedent is set, anyone is vulnerable. You'd think purported defenders of the underdogs would know that.

The Levant case was not about name-calling, of course. But looking at the bigger picture, people in general cannot go around spewing racist or homophobic epithets at others, without some place those targeted can seek redress. Otherwise, it's just carte blanche for bigots, and the victims have to put up or shut up, since the only alternative is to go to court, the costs of which are prohibitive for most people.

What kind of person, when offended, runs to court? Or to the human rights commission? Again, a perpetual whiner. Lakritz and Mahoney could start a secular church: Our Sisters of the Perpetual Whining. There are other alternative when you're offended: Ignore the offender; offend him back; turn the channel; write a letter to the editor; call a talk show; start a political campaign; complain to your friends and neighbours; etc. What kind of nut-bar thinks that the government should get into the "he offended me!" business? Are we still in grade school here? 

A society in which some people can be harassed by others into feeling like second-class citizens, without any recourse for them but to grin and bear it, is not one any democracy should espouse as desirable for its citizens to live in.

This is my favourite line in Lakritz's whole piece, because it perfectly sums up her idea of what human rights commissions are about. Actually, we agree on this one. Human rights commissions aren't about real human rights. They're not about people kicked out of apartments for being black, or fired for being gay, or any real acts of discrimination. They're about the fake "right" not to be offended.

Lakritz probably thought she was pretty clever. She cast doubt on my honesty (but foolishly; in a way that I could immediately disprove, thus showing her own mendacity); she parroted Kook Mahoney's "freedom from speech" line, thinking that was quite clever, but really revealing her shallowness; and she came right out and admitted that she wants someone to be the feelings police.

I've heard it all before. But usually it comes from someone who sucks on the teat of the HRC industry. I've just never heard it from a newspaper columnist before. It's even weirder, coming from a columnist at the Herald -- which has been one of the most pro-freedom newspapers in the country.

So that's my long reply. Here's a shorter version, that the Herald ran today:

Naomi Lakritz's support of the Alberta Human Rights Commission's investigation of me after I published the Danish Muhammad cartoons is an embarrassing thing for a journalist to have written.

I just hope she never has to deal with such a complaint herself. She too would have 15 bureaucrats going over her work for 900 days, with the statutory power to enter her office, seize papers and copy her hard drive, all without a search warrant. Even real police can't do that.

I wonder how she would feel about a 90-minute interrogation by a government bureaucrat questioning her column. Does she think it's OK for the government to grill her about her "political intentions" -- a question I was asked?

Lakritz says "it's hard to believe" I don't know why my investigation took 900 days, implying I was part of the problem. As phoning me would have revealed, I filed my response to the complaints within 30 days. Lakritz makes other excuses for the government's sloth, including her fantasy they were "navigating the conciliation period and going into the investigation part when settlement issues are debated." Again, I could have told her we skipped the "conciliation" and "settlement" stages -- I wasn't interested in compromising my freedom of speech.

(I should note, though, that the HRC did offer me a plea bargain: If I paid the complainants cash and gave them a page in our magazine for their propaganda, I'd be let go.)

Lakritz approvingly quotes leftist professor Kathleen Mahoney, who says we must enforce "freedom from speech." That's intellectual junk; no one has to endure another's speech. We switch channels, don't buy a magazine or just walk away if we don't want to listen. Mahoney and Lakritz talk about "freedom from speech," but this really means "power to silence."

There's no right not to be offended, and no right to silence those with whom you disagree. At least not in Canada. Yet, that's exactly what HRCs do.

Naomi Lakritz and Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star: the two lonely journalists in Canada who support human rights commissions acting as media censors. What a pair: an atheist Jewish feminist dhimmi, and an apologist for radical Islam. Meet your new leftist coalition.