Two Ottawa speeches

I just spoke at the Canadian Jewish Law Students Association annual conference in Ottawa. The theme was human rights, so I'm delighted that I was invited to give my perspective, as someone who had been put through the wringer of a human rights commission.

I compared the counterfeit Canadian "human rights commissions" with the Orwellian "human rights council" at the United Nations, and pointed out that neither actually lived up to their name -- both were turned into tools of political abuse; both actually violated human rights.

I was pleased with how engaged the students were -- we had to tack on an extra half hour for questions and answers. The group was divided between those who understood the new threat posed by HRCs, and those who still clung to the naive hope that maybe criminalizing "hate" would somehow spare the Jews the hatred that is increasingly being directed at them around the world and here in Canada.

Uh, if all it took was a law to end hate, we would have passed the "Love Each Other Act" a long time ago. There is no magic spell like that. And laws, like section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, that seek to criminalize "hatred and contempt" actually breed more hatred and contempt, for they compound the feelings of grievance felt by those who are targeted by the law, because the implementation of the law is by necessity so politically biased.

There was a Tutsi law student from McGill (not Jewish, I assume!) in attendance, and he suggested that if hate speech laws had been in place in Rwanda when he was a child, the anti-Tutsi bigotry (that he encountered as an eight-year-old) wouldn't have manifested itself later in massacres.

Again, naive thinking -- even moreso. Because it was the undemocratic, illiberal Hutu government (if I recall his assessment) that butchered the Tutsis, I'm not quite sure how an anti-hate-speech law, in the hands of that same Hutu government, would have spared the Tutsis. As I said to him: such a vague and political law, in the hands of an anti-Tutsi government, would probably have been used as just another tool to attack any Tutsis that dared speak up against their own destruction.

I mean, if a government cared so little for real human rights -- right to life, right to self-defence, mobility rights, property rights, etc. -- why would it suddenly stop to care so deeply for fake human rights, like the right not to have your feelings hurt?

He didn't have an answer, and nor did the other dreamers in the crowd, who are clearly looking for some silver bullet to stop the anti-Semitic hate in the world. They didn't take kindly to being reminded that Weimar Germany had anti-hate speech laws, laws that not only were impotent to stop Adolf Hitler, but that were actually used by Hitler once he himself took over.

Sorry folks: there is no easy way to combat the human emotion of hate, other than through hard political and personal work. It's foolish to entrust that work, to outsource it, to a corrupt, political, wasteful government agency like a human rights commission.

There were a number of Jewish students who squawked at my brutal assessment of HRCs; but I didn't feel that any of them had a strong counter-argument. I challenged those who called for censorship to be mighty sure that the gag laws they stand for are never used against them -- an obsolete challenge already, given the abuse of such laws by the Canadian Islamic Congress, et al. Any Jew who would double down on censorship laws in the face of that ongoing abuse is clearly in denial: our enemies are using censorship to silence us, and only a fool would strengthen those tools. Jews -- perpetual dissidents, perpetual minorities -- should be the last people who would want to criminalize anomalous views.

Fortunately, a good number of the students were on the side of liberty, judging by the number of students who approached me before and after my speech. I think they see that the threat of "hate" in Canada today does not come from white neo-Nazi nobodies on the Internet -- Richard Warman's fetish at the CHRC -- but rather from radical Islam on the streets, which Warman, the CHRC and other HRCs studiously ignore, out of political correctness and outright fear.

Warman addressed the CJLSA last year; I took a few moments to document for the students some of the neo-Nazi organizations Warman has joined over the years, and some of the filthy anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-Black comments he had written on their websites. Something tells me Warman didn't disclose that to the students when he told them how heroic he was.

A couple of months ago, Warman and I were invited to debate each other, in Ottawa, at the annual meeting of the media lawyers association. I accepted immediately; Warman declined. Of course he declined, the same way Warren Kinsella declines to debate me (and in fact tries to stop journalists from even talking with his political opponents). Because that's how censors operate. They are either unable or unwilling to justify their arguments and make their cases, and they certainly don't like to take criticism. I loved the back and forth with the students today -- and they seemed to like it enough to keep it going for an unscheduled extra half hour.

I think if Kinsella or Warman had taken the tough questions I did, they would have probably sued some of the students for defamation, or filed human rights complaints against the kids. That's really all those two know how to do. How pitiful. I sense that young Jewish law students today are far more open to the ideas of liberty and the importance of free speech than they might have been five years ago. We're winning their "hearts and minds" -- even my invitation (my second in three years) is a sign of that sea change amongst what was once a uniformly liberal group.

It was a great conference.

I'll be back in Ottawa mid-next week, to give another speech, this one open to the public (there is a registration fee). I'm the dinner speaker at a conference at the War Museum. I'm really excited about my topic: "The Importance of Politically Incorrect History". If you're in town on Wednesday night, come by!