First of all, I have not been so good at keeping this blog updated as of late. Things have gotten rather busy at work and...well, I could give you a bunch of excuses, but mea culpa, mea culpa. I appreciate the emails and facebook messages from those who actually read this and miss my commentaries and will endeavour to do better though will say upfront that this week is also going to be crazy and I'll be out of town for a bit, so don't hold your breath.
Anyways, while I didn't have so much time to actually write my own blog, I did find the time to read some other folks fine blogs and it seems the whole blogosphere is engaged in quite the debate over the limits of free speech, with Ezra Levant and Warren Kinsella sort of taking the leads on their respective sides.
Now, for the record, I happen to know Warren a little bit (though it's been a while) and I generally consider him a good guy, political disagreements between us notwithstanding. I also know Ezra a little a bit and also consider him to generally be a good guy, again with our (way fewer than with Warren) political disagreements notwithstanding.
For those of you who haven't paid attention, let me do my best to summarize:
I've already written about the trouble that Ezra Levant is currently experiencing as a result of publishing the infamous Danish cartoons of Mohammed in his sadly now-defunct magazine the
Western Standard. To summarize my feelings on that whole incident: Were I in Ezra's shoes, I would not have done it. Not because I'm not committed to free speech. And not because I'm intimidated by extremists. And not because I wasn't in solidarity with journalists who were having their lives threatened. Simply because they weren't very good or particularly insightful or even a little bit funny. I think religion (whether my own or someone else's) is certainly fair grounds for satire if done well. But these cartoons were not satire. They were crude, needlessly inflammatory and gratuitously provocative. Even from a
strategic perspective, they were all wrong. We all know that the world has no shortage of violent, fanatical Muslims intent on killing us infidels. Such people should be - no,
need to be - ridiculued and exposed with as little mercy as they would show us. But the world also has no shortage of Muslims who are kind, decent, caring good people who are as peaceful as anyone else and who are as opposed to Islamic fanatacism as anyone else and who are our allies in this war. And they revere Mohammed, just as any devout Muslim would. And needlessly provoking and insulting people who we want - no,
need - on our side is jsut stupid.
But there's a big difference between doing something inadvisable and having that thing used as the basis for dragging you before a Human Rights Commission. Nobody's "human rights" were violated on the basis of those cartoons being published in a magazine. And for Ezra (and Mark Steyn and many others) to now have to waste time and money defending themselves for stating their bloody opinions is, in my humble opinion, a travesty.
As Paul Martin might say, "I was a terrible PM who got my ass kicked and deservedly do." But that is besides the point. As Paul Martin might also say, "Let me be clear." And so let me be clear: I think that there is a big difference between supporting the right to take a given action and supporting the action, itself. I can support Ezra's right to publish those cartoons without supporting the actual publication of those cartoons, jsut as I can support someone's right to go out tonight, drink two bottles of vodka and gamble their life savings away at a casino, while still considering that an incredibly stupid decision. Last week, I was on the Michael Coren Show and we were discussing, briefly, the hate crimes trial of David Ahenekew and another panellist, David Menzies (who is way nicer in person than he seems on TV) said "You know, I really hate to be put in the position of defending people like David Ahenekew and Ernst Zundel...". And, that's what our opponents need to realize. Yes, people like him and like Ezra and like ME, do
hate having to defend people like that. If anyone out there really believes that someone named "EZRA LEVANT" really
enjoys defending neo-Nazis who hate Jews, I simply don't know what to say to them. Keith Martin, a Liberal MP, has recently introduced a bill to modify the Human Rights Code on hate speech. And, predictably, a bunch of hate-mongers are all supportive of this bill and that very fact has been used by some to try to discredit what Martin is doing. And that is bullshit. Again, if anyone thinks that Keith Martin, himself a visible minority,
likes the fact that he has the support of this scum, I'm really at a loss insofar as a response. Agreement on a single issue does not an ally make. If Ernst Zunel or Mohamed Elmassry or David Duke and I share a position on any issue, that is the result of happenstance at best. The fact that Jack Layton and Adolf Hitler are both fond of moustaches does not mean that they have anything else in common (despite what future Liberal ads might try to insinuate..."Layton has a moustache. Hitler had a moustache. Does Jack Layton have a secret plan to invade Poland? We just don't know. He just won't way. Choose your Canada.")
Now, Warren, it seems, at least agrees that the complaints against Ezra and Steyn are baseless. I hope teh commissioners will share that view, but that remains to be seen. But Warren uses Ezra's situation and actions as the starting point to initiate a debate about the limits of free speech, particularly in regards to hate speech.
Warren makes a very good point in one of his posts when he says that there is a big difference between scrawling "Joe was here" on the side of a building and scrawling a swastika on the side of a synogogue. Yes, techinically both are acts of "vandalism" but anyone who professes that they are essentially the same or should be treated the same is being either incredibly naive or incredibly disingenuous.
And Warren, to his credit, gives no ambiguity as to where he stands. He proudly declares himself to be "a censor." Well, so am I. And if you really bothered to think about it, I magine that all of you would be as well. And I'm not jsut speaking of the obvious cases of libel, slander, copyright infringement, death threats, yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre, etc. I'm talking about censoring things because the content is simply too unacceptable for a decent society to permit in most circumstances. And, yes, maybe I'm tarnishing my libertarian credentials (I've long since stopped receiving their newsletters anyways), but the honest truth is that I think we all agree that certain speech is simply too inappropriate, awful or evil be permitted in many contexts. If a TV network decided to run hardcore pornography during the saturday morning children's cartoon hour, we'd all say "That's inappropriate." If a school decided to invite the head of the Ku klux Klan to give a presentation at a middle school Career Day, we'd all say "That's awful." And if any of us ever saw child pornography, none of us would even hesitate in saying "That's evil."
So I'm with Warren in resisting the hysteria that seeks to classify even the most reasonable restrictions on expression as tyranical oppression and the slippery slope towards a police state. I do know that there's a line somewhere. I'm just less confident than Warren in my own ability to pinpoint just where that line needs to be drawn.
Certainly, I think it's reasonable to restrict free speech that will incite violence. I just recognize that this is much easier said than done because it's very difficult - no, make that
next to impossible - to determine with any degree of certainty just what will incite violence. For example, I've listened to
The White Album by The Beatles and concluded "Gee, this is a pretty good album." Charles Manson listened to the same album and conclued that he should go on a killing spree. I've also read
The Catcher in the Rye and concluded "Gee, this is a pretty good book." Mark Chapman read that same book and concluded that he should shoot John Lennon. So if the test on whether to restrict something is whether it is likely to incite violence, I would guess that
The White Album and
The Catcher in the Rye ought to be at the top of the lsit of things to ban, since they've actually been
proven to incite violence as opposed to mere speculation that they could maybe, possibly, somehow, under certain circumstances, perhaps incite violence. Of course, that is stupid. Millions of people have heard the album and millions of people read the book and were not negatively affected by it, with the exception of a small number of nutjobs. And, maybe this is just me, but I don't think we ought to base our laws on what the craziest members of our society jsut might do. Besides, there's no way of predicting that anywyas, which goes back to my point about restricting speech being far easier in theory than it is in practice. I work with statistics all day and employ a lot of advanced analytical techniques to try to determine the relationships betwen, say, a piece of information and an action taken on behalf of having that information. It's actually impossible. You can certainly, pretty easily, show
correlation but you cannot, under even the best of circumstances show
causation. The very basis of the complaint against Ezra was that the publiation of those cartoons subjected Muslims to violence. Well, first, it didn't since to the best of my knowledge, there were no instances of anti-Muslim violence following. But even if there were, it would be next to impossible to point to the publication of those cartoons as the explicit
cause of that violence. Now, there
was plenty of violence following the publication in Europe, all of it from Muslim fanatics outraged by the cartoons. But even here, can we determine that the cartoons were the
cause of that? The protester on the streets of London holding a sign that said "Behead Those Who Insult Islam"...are we to believe that this man was, until then, a peace-loving Jeffersonian democrat who was only pushed to fanaticism as teh result of seeing a crude cartoon? I think not.
So I've touched on speech that incites violence. The other candidate Warren targets for restriction is speech that "promotes hatred," which is an even more nebulous concept to determine since "violence" at least constitutes an easily identifiable action whereas "hatred" is an intangible feeling and it is even more difficult to prove a direct cause and effect relationship between a hateful message and someone absorbing hateful viewpoints.
I'm not so naive, however, as to think that such messages are
not influential. Messages and information are
incredibly influential. Advertisers wouldn't spend billions of dollars a year bombarding us with information if it weren't proven effective. In the course of this debate, I've heard simplistic and naive statements like "nobody's ever been harmed by hearing a message." Of course they have! Whenever there's a debate about whether a certain book should, for example, be excluded from school libraries, free speech absolutists are quick to respond that "nobody's ever been harmed by a book." What nonsense. And I suspect that tehy don't truly believe it. Because, if so, tehy'd have to believe the flip side, as well. If you believe that nobody's ever been harmed by a book, you also ahve to beleive that nobody's ever been hlped by a book. And, if so, why is so much thought and deliberation given to jsut what books our kids
should read in school? We beleive that certain messages and ideas can improve people. And if that's the case, then by that very same logic, certain messages and ideas can prove harmful as well. If you don't think so, jsut look at history. Is anyone naive enough to believe that
The Communist Manifesto and
Mein Kamp were not major contributing factors in the rise of the two most evil, murderous regimes in history? No, I'm also not naive enough to believe that they were the
sole factors. But strong contributors? Absolutely.
So I tend to agree with Warren and others who think that certain ideas and messages are harmful enough to be restricted. I guess I just don't share his concern about jsut how serious the threat is today. For example, Warren wrote on his blog about being quite alarmed at seeing a swastika and the words "white power" scrawled on a bathroom wall recently. And this
must have been alarming because bathroom walls are normally reserved exclusively for high-minded political discourse. When someone, apparently employed in the PCO, responded that he didn't see what the big deal was, Warren took him to task for it. Another Liberal blogger, Jason Cherniak, wrote about how when he was a kid, he was alarmed when someone drew a swastika in a sandbox. Um, it seems to me that the very fact that it was written in a SANDBOX gives some indication as to jsut how seriously we need to take it.
Both swastikas were scribbled by kids. Kids can be rather stupid and immature, which is preciselly because tehy are kids. When I was a little kid, we used to determine who would be "it" during games of tag or hide and seek by resorting to a crude rhyme of "eenie meenie minie moe, catch a n--ger by the toe." Not because we were racists or hateful. Just because we were a bunch of stupid kids who didn't even know what the "N-word" meant. I imagine that for many kids back then, myself included, a common insult on the playground was to call someone a "fag" or put something down by declaring it to be "so gay." Again, we didn't know that "fag" was a derogatory term for a gay person. Hell, we didn't even know what "gay" meant. We were kids. And you learn and grow a lot between the time that you're 6 and the time that you're 26 and I'm sure none of us would even think of using that sort of language today.
I don't see a swastika written on a bathroom wall as a cause for alarm. Frankly, if anything, I see it as a cause for celebration. I think it represents a great victory and speaks to how far our society has come that bigots and anti-Semites have been so marginalized and so relegated to the fringes of polite society that they have been reduced to scrawling their bullshit on bathroom walls. It's certainly far better than bigots and anti-Smites spewing their bullshit on the editorial apges of respected newspapers or from the benches in the House of Commons. When
that happens, I'll start to worry.
Don't get me wrong. I have no doubt that Warren's heart is in the right place and that he means well. And it's nice for him to be so concerned on our behalf. But if I - a Jew, the grandson of people who fled Nazi persecution, and someone who walks around all day in public wearing a yarmulke - isn't very concerned about this, I don't see why he needs to be.
Jonathan Kay had a very good article in the Post a couple days ago pointing out that the public outrage and concern expressed over bigotted kooks is pretty disproportionate to their actual impact on society. Every minor incident of racism or anti-Semitism is blown way out of proportion and vested interests begin fear-mongering about it when the truth is that, in the grand scheme of things, it's really jsut not that big of a deal. A couple days earlier, another writer whose name I can't recall had an article in the Post about the problems with the Canadian Jewish Congress and its focus on the wrong priorities. Now, I intend to do a longer, separate post about this subject later on so won't get too into it now. Suffice to say, she sees it as a big problem that the CJC seems to spend a disproportionate amount of its time, energy and resources railing against every incident of minor, marginal anti-Semitism when these are not, or should not be, the priorities of most in the Jewish community. For example, as a Jew, I'm far more worried about how I'm going to afford to send my kids to private Jewish schools than I am about being attacked by skinheads.
Now, I don't know Bernie Farber, the head of the CJC. My father knows and tells me that he's a really good guy and I don't doubt this. I know he's sincere and well-intentioned. I just think he's stuck in a 1950s mindset that jsut doesn't reflect the reality of today. The organized Jewish community needs to stop being so glum. We've won! We've made it. We can live in any neighbourhood, go to any school. We're well-represented in top hospitals, law firms and other businesses. We've served as cabinet minsiters and party leaders. We publish newspapers and magazines. We're doing just fine, thank you very much. And msot of us go through our lives every day and never even remotely worry about bigotry.
And even when it affects us, we recognize that it's just not that big of a problem.
Last year, the synogogue that I attend in Toronto was vandalized. Some asshole came by at 2 in the morning and threw rocks through the windows. This guy wasn't some terrorist mastermind. He didn't represent some great existential threat to us. Throwing the rocks through our windows was not the first incident of a second Kristallnacht. He was some 20 year old loser with no power or influence. A TTC bus was going by when the incident happened and the driver called the police and the guy was arrested within an hour. Problem solved.
The rabbi who runs this synogogue is a wonderful and wise man and a dear friend of mine. I remember seeing this on a newspaper website as breaking news and called the rabbi up and told him that I would like to make a donation to help cover the costs of the repairs. And he wouldn't take my money. Instead, he told me about the yeshiva in North York that was falling apart and where families were working two jobs or taking out extra mortgages to send their kids there. He said that if I wanted to do something to help the Jewish community, to give that money to them instead. And I did and am confident that helping some struggling family, making it even jsut a little bit easier, to give their kids a Jewish education is a far better use of my own limited resources than paying to fix windows. Besides, some neighbours of the synogogue had already come up with the money for the repairs. And none of them were Jewish. Just normal, decent citizens, just like the other 99.9% of Canadians who look upon bigots with nothing but contempt.
Alright, this has ended up being way longer than I anticipated but I don't want to end it without mentioning one of the better blog commentaries I've read on this, written by my old friend Omar Soliman. You should read the whole thing and can do so at
www.soliman.ca under the "blog" link at the top, but I wanted to touch briefly on one point he made.
He says:
"The absurdity of this approach is simple: you can’t be a social conservative and a libertarian at the same time. You can’t be the apostle of liberty on one hand and a fierce critic of it on another. You can’t call the complainant an “anti-semitic imam,” and then turn around and support the right of anti-semites to spew their hatred. It’s flawed logic."
And while I generally thought his entire post was very good, I have to respectfully disagree with Omar on this point. He's right that it's difficult to reconcile socially conservative policies with libertarian policies. But it's not as difficult to reconcile socially conservative values with libertarian policies. One of the smartest people I know, David Frum (he said, name-dropping), had a great line that basically says (I'm paraphrasing) that in a decent society, libertarian policies produce socially conservative results. So, if you look at any of the big moral issues that trouble social conservatives, he suggests that libertarian economic policies are the best manner of actually producing the results that social conservatives desire. Take the rise in out-of-wedlock births, for example. Because all humans respond to incentives, by employing libertarian economic policies, i.e. drastically overhauling welfare policies that make having out-of-wedlcok children an economically viable option for unwed teenage mothers, you will reduce the incidence of such births simply by making it no longer economically viable to do so. Instead of the financial burden being borne by society as a whole, the burden will be exclusively on the unwed mother and if she is a rational human being, will take the necessary precautions to avoid finding herself in this situation.
I don't see the inherent contradiction in condemning this Calgary imam as "anti-Semitic" (though I ahve no idea if he is, in fact, so) while at the same time defending the rights of others to spew their own anti-Semitism. As I mentioned earlier, supporting the right to an action should not be miscontrued as supporting that action, itself. The freedom that gives this imam the right to be anti-Semitic is the same freedom that gives Ezra the right to condemn him for it.
And, this, in my humble opinion, is the best way to deal with such people. To refute them. To marginalize them. To confine them to the fringes of society where no one takes them seriously. And in our own decent society, we've done a pretty good job of that so far. 
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