Rex Murphy teaches Jennifer Lynch the definition of "rights"

Rex Murphy's latest column in the Globe and Mail examines the incongruity between the so-called "human rights" espoused by Jennifer Lynch and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the real rights fought for and died for by our soldiers in Canada's wars.

The news peg, of course, was Lynch's showy and self-congratulatory wreath laying at the national war memorial.

Here are a few excerpts; here is the full article.

Jennifer Lynch, chief of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, participated in this week's ceremonies at the National War Memorial by laying a wreath. It's nice to know the commission honours Canada's veterans and the cause for which so many fought and died.

The cause, distilled to its fundamental point, was freedom...

At the heart of this freedom the Second World War taught us so dearly to cherish is the notion of the individual's intrinsic or, as we say now, human right to think, speak and write as he sees fit, circumscribed only by certain time-tested laws (defamation, libel, public safety) evolved over centuries and subject to the oversight of a trained and independent judiciary...

Like the right not to wash one's hands while working in a fast-food restaurant, or the alleged right to strip past a certain age, or the right not to be offended by a Mark Steyn article. These "cases" may have merits, and some wild philosopher may articulate those merits. But they do not abide, as rights, on the same plane as freedom of thought, speech and expression. They may be something, but what they are will not be inscribed on any cenotaph: They are not human rights.

Human rights, the real ones, are ours from the beginning. They are not bestowed by the state, because the state does not "own" them; they are not a state's or a ruler's or, for that matter, a human-rights commission's to give. It equally follows that they are not a state's or a commission's to abridge, circumscribe, tamper with or make a toy of...

You really ought to read the whole thing.