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I've been under the weather in recent weeks, and, at such times, am prone to get a little disheartened by the long campaign to restore free speech to Canada. This is a fairly typical weekend: There are at least three robust columns on liberty by consistent champions of freedom of expression - George Jonas, Alan Shanoff and Salim Mansur. On the other hand, when I read Salim's column this morning, this was the most recent comment:

Sean S
March 6th 2010, 9:18am
Free speech must exist to facilitate the free exchange of ideas. Therefore it must involve mutual respect between the communicator and the communicatee. When someone spews hatred then there is no respect and therefore no free speech. Period.

Wow, he sounds so butch when he puts "Period" on the end like that. Why not "Case closed"? Too much effort to type two words? It seems likely that "Sean S" remains far more typical of Canadian opinion than Salim or George Jonas. But his is the faux sophistication of the brain-dead: Why exactly "must" free speech "involve mutual respect between the communicator and the communicatee"?

I don't respect, say, clitoridectomy practioners or their apologists. Does that mean I have no right to express an opinion on the subject?

Sean S evidently lacks "mutual respect" for those with whom he disagrees or, as he puts it, "spew hatred". Does that mean he should not have the right to opine on them?

I have no respect for someone so snarlingly inarticulate that he reflexively uses "spew" in its leftist definition of "unremarkable observation by someone of an opposing political disposition" under the sad misapprehension that it adds vigor and color to his prose rather than being the bazillionth deployment of one of the lamest tropes in the understocked progressive armory. Does that mean I should have no right to opine on Sean S?

In any case, who adjudicates whether there is "mutual respect"? In Canada, the state does. That's the problem. In Sean S's world, if there is no (government-approved) "mutual respect", then there should be no free speech. The trouble with that is not that speech is no longer free but that you no longer are - even if, like Sean S, you're too dim to grasp that. How embarrassing that this platitudinous invocation of "respect" and the other rotted crutches of Trudeaupian indoctrination can still be trotted out so declaratively by apparently grown men.

That aside, there's lots of goodish news out there. George Jonas writes of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal decision in the Whatcott case:

Justices Hunter, Smith and Sherstobitoff did what an old proverb describes as feeding the goat and saving the cabbage, too. They allowed Whatcott's appeal, finding that while prohibiting speech that belittles or ridicules protected groups doesn't contravene constitutional guarantees of free expression, being referred to as a sodomite abomination bent on corrupting schoolchildren, when viewed "in context" and "properly considered," doesn't ridicule, belittle or affront the dignity of anyone.

Well, you could have fooled me.

Make no mistake, I'm happy with the result. I'm only unhappy with the judges' reason for reaching it. They didn't allow the appeal because they found that Canada is a free country. They allowed it because they found that Canadians can't read.

The Saskatchewan Appeal Court didn't actually add insult to injury, only replaced injury with insult. It twisted what it didn't dare to confront. The judges didn't exonerate Whatcott on the basis that the state has no business telling people who to ridicule and belittle in a free society. No. After much hairsplitting and parsing, the judges exonerated Whatcott on the basis that he didn't really ridicule, belittle and affront.

George is right. The judges made fools of themselves by simultaneously declaring that it's illegal to offend certain groups, but that calling them predatory sodomites who'll roast in hell is fine and dandy. Where I slightly disagree with George is over his "unhappiness" at this ludicrous reasoning. It is now part of a well-established pattern:

Under the British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, Maclean's and I are undoubtedly guilty. But Commissar MacNaughton and her troika acquitted us anyway.

Under the long-established post-Taylor Warmenized interpretation of Section 13, Marc Lemire is undoubtedly guilty. But Judge Hadjis acquitted him anyway.

Under the Saskatchewan "Human Rights" Code, Mr Whatcott is undoubtedly guilty. But the judges twisted themselves into pretzels to insist otherwise.

In an odd way, this may be more effective than getting the jelly-spined squishes of the political class or the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down these laws. Because it makes a public mockery of rule by pseudo-law, which is one of the great blights on the Dominion. To keep the statute but oblige jurists to twist themselves into pretzels to come up with a reason for not enforcing it imposes on them a modest version of the restraints they routinely impose on us.

Now to be sure it strikes at the notion of equality before the law. Why did Ezra Levant and I get off? Because we're blowhards with megaphones. That's the express lane to acquittal: Be a loudmouth with deep pockets. The "human rights" racket knows it can't stand the heat, so there's a certain kind of attention it doesn't want to attract. It's taking a little longer for Marc Lemire: He was supposed to be just another Warman pushover but he proved instead a dogged, tech-savvy awkward customer who pushed back to brilliant effect. You yoke Lemire's revelations of corruption to Levant's publicity skills, and once again the commissars can't stand the heat. By comparison, Mr Whatcott is a nobody. So it has taken him nine long years. But again the lesson is clear: In the post-Western Standard/Maclean's climate, there are no defenders of Canada's "human rights" regime other than those directly or indirectly on the payroll.

I'm freer than I've ever been in Canada. I can say what I like and no "human rights" commission will accept a complaint against me ever again. Go on, try it. Because they know that, if they do, it's not about me, it's about them. Which is as it should be, because they're the forces of (ever less soft) totalitarianism. Yes, it's unfair that my freedoms don't apply to the basement losers taken to the cleaners by Warman. But the lesson of the last two years, from Steyn, Levant, Lemire, Boissoin and Whatcott, is consistent: If you stand up to the state enforcers and you fight them nimbly and publicly, they lose. When you go Magna Carta on Jennifer Lynch's medieval ass, she can't take it, and like all bullies she'll slink off to kick around an easier victim. So don't be one. Push back, hard. I hope Guy Earle bears this in mind when his trial begins in three weeks' time.

Jennifer Lynch, QC (Queen Censor), Chief Commissar of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, has had a rough couple of years. But, no doubt emboldened by her many five-star lunches in Geneva with leading "human rights" bodies from Sudan, Saudi Arabia et al, she's clamped the electrodes to Section 13 and is making a spirited effort to get it up and running again:

    5.1 Definition of hatred and contempt - The Commission applies the restrictive definition of hatred and contempt established by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Taylor case. Applying this definition ensures that the exercise of the Commission’s mandate does not offend the Charter.

    This means that in order to come within the ambit of section 13, the communication that is the subject of the complaint must be so excessive and extreme in nature that it suggests that a given race, sex, religion or other group identifiable in relation to one or more grounds in the CHRA is devoid of any redeeming qualities as human beings. If the message does not meet this threshold, it will not be found to come within the ambit of section 13, notwithstanding that the message is offensive, controversial, shocking or disgusting to some.

As Scaramouche notes, this is complete rubbish. By the time the Maclean's case was under way, Commissar Lynch's dress-up Nazis had long since flown the coop of any "restrictive definition". As I said in my testimony to Parliament:

Hatefinder Warman and his enablers at the commission abused the extremely narrow constitutional approval given to section 13 by the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision and instead turned it into a personal inquisition for himself and his pals.

That's what eventually got 'em into trouble. And their current enthusiasm for Taylor is no more than a tactical feint to prevent the Supreme Court reconsidering the issue in light of Hatefinder-General Warman & Co's all too predictable statist bender.

Kathy Shaidle makes another point - that the CHRC is now Canada's largest publisher of racist commentary: It's the one-stop shop for all your racist needs. To take another point I made to Parliament:

Let me take the most recent example of a section 13 conviction. The sole charge on which Marc Lemire was found guilty a month ago was for a post that appeared at his website, written by somebody else. That piece was read by a grand total of just eight people in the whole of Canada, which works out to 0.8 of a Canadian per province, or if you include territories, 0.6153 of a Canadian. And almost all those 0.6153s of a Canadian going to this website and reading this piece were Richard Warman and his fellow dress-up Nazis at the Human Rights Commission, salivating at the prospect of having found another witch to provide more bounty.

In other words, no one in Canada saw this post. No one in Canada read it. Nothing could be less “likely to expose” anyone to hatred or contempt than an unread post at an unread website. Yet Canadian taxpayers paid for Jennifer Lynch and the Nazi fetishists at the commission to investigate this unread bit of nothing for six years.

In the course of securing this itsy-bitsy single conviction, these psychologically disturbed employees of the Human Rights Commission wrote and distributed far more hate speech of their own.  

By the way, Kathy is absolutely right to reprint one of the "hate poems" helpfully anthologized by the CHRC. Aside from the fact that the author should have been prosecuted for his appalling false rhymes, the notion that material deemed not only criminal but dangerous if printed on a private unread web site can be disseminated perfectly legally by a far more widely read government website exposes the lie on which Commissar Lynch's lavish sinecure rests - that, if exposed to this material, the moronic citizenry would be rampaging down the 401 from one pogrom to the next.

No, they wouldn't. It's wholly irrelevant to the Queen's peace, but it's vital to control-freak conceptions of state power. Underlying the barely veiled classist assumptions of Canada's Chief Censor is the one unyielding belief that you, a supposedly free citizen of a settled democracy, are a child, too stupid to exercise freedom for yourself. The central pillar of Trudeaupia - that a vast government apparatus is needed to mediate relations between designated sub-groups of the populace - is incompatible with liberty. Reject it, resist it, and, if that all sounds too much like hard work, at the very least apply for a grant to make a giant invisible banana to fly over CHRC headquarters. 

Guy Earle is the stand-up comic being dragged through British Columbia "human rights" hell by two drunken lesbians who decided that his put-down of their heckling was "homophobic". His trial begins in Vancouver on March 29th. If you read his latest update here, it's clear that Mr Earle is in a bad way:

The HRC is being used as a tool for personal gain from a group that has no class, scruples or understanding. Of all the Canadian installations, wouldn't you want the HRC to have some kahoonies? Ah but... this is a make work project for their people, isn't it? They don't care that two years of my life is GONE. There is no concept of the damages they cause, the opportunities I've lost... Wow, you thought I was bitter BEFORE? Well, now I've become so bitter I can't perform. In a lot of ways, they've won already.  

And, in case you doubt that, listen to him in this interview with one of the few media guys to be following this story, CHQR's Rob Breakenridge. Mr Earle sounds like a man on the verge of an on-air breakdown.

Different people react to "human rights" torture in different ways: Ezra Levant and I are oppositional by nature and by profession. You take a swing at us, we'll swing back. Go ahead, "human rights" punks, make our day. So is Marc Lemire, whose bloody-minded refusal to sit there and take it wound up inflicting more damage on the racket than anything else.

But most victims of Canada's thought police aren't like that: They're just regular folks trying to get on with their lives without catching the eye of the state enforcers, and, in that sense, Guy Earle is far closer to the gay guy with acute sinusitis forced to close down his b-&-b or the health-club owner taken to the cleaners by a pre-op transsexual who wanted to use the ladies' showers. These are fellows leading fully compliant Trudeaupian lives who nevertheless find they've managed to attract the attentions of an ever more whimsical tyranny. It would be interesting to know what might have befallen Catsmeat Kinsella, notorious ethnic comic and Count Iggy's lead attack chihuahua, had he essayed his culinary jests in a Vancouver comedy club. That's the point: No matter how daintily you tiptoe on PC eggshells, it'll never be enough.

I feel very sorry for Mr Earle. The most interesting part of the Rob Breakenridge interview is when he muses on some of the website comments that appeared after news reports about the case: "This is the best thing that could happen to Guy Earle’s career", etc. "That is not how this works at all," explains the comic, recounting how he was being lined up for some event in Vancouver until the promoter got wind of the suit and decided he didn't need a lot of trouble from the gay community. "A lot of people don’t want to have anything to do with me," he says. "I don’t know what the silver lining is."

And he hasn't even been convicted of anything yet.

It's interesting to me how all those promoters who claim to be committed to producing "edgy", "transgressive", "provocative" comedy wilt like pansies in the face of one "human rights" complaint. But it's invariably the case that the self-congratulatory left, forever hailing itself for its courage in speaking truth to power, is never there when real courage is needed - even if, like Guy Earle, you're essentially one of their own. This shouldn't be difficult even for the myopic politically correct bores who run most comedy clubs. As I wrote here:

Sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two evils, and, if it’s a choice between offensive gags or massive expansion of state power, no self-respecting citizen should find it difficult working out which is the lesser evil and which is the greater threat.

And yet Mr Earle's professional colleagues do seem to be finding it difficult, if not impossible. Strange that.

I haven't followed the Earle case very closely. But, judging from his interview with Rob, he and his legal team have made a couple of missteps. He says he offered a kind of apology and to make a donation to a "woman advocate group", whatever the hell that is. Stupid, stupid, stupid. When you do that, you're accepting their framing of the case - which is that what's at issue is your behaviour. Wrong. What's at issue is BC's and Canada's crappy, worthless, ever more expansive and coercive "human rights" regime. By offering Danegeld (Dykegeld?) to some or other third party, you confer legitimacy on the process. Very foolish.

The other mistake Guy Earle seems to have made is really psychological. Two years ago, when the Canadian Islamic Congress thing went public, I spoke to Ezra, and his very first words to me were to caution against allowing myself to be consumed by the case. That's very important - because, as Jennifer Lynch, QC, Heather MacNaughton, Barbara Hall and the other commissars understand, the object is denormalization. You can denormalize the victim by convicting him, or simply by drawing out the process for a sufficient period of time that you damage his reputation irreparably. But sometimes you can persuade the victim to denormalize himself, applying such pressure that a regular mainstream generalist guy becomes a quivering one-note obsessive gibbering to himself in a corner. Ezra's advice was very useful. There were moments when I felt myself getting boxed into the aforesaid corner, and, remembering Ezra, I made a point of punching my way back out. As readers will know, a couple of weeks after the British Columbia trial ended, I was in London recording "A Marshmallow World". People wondered why. Well, in part to prove that I could - that I wasn't going to be defined by Commissar MacNaughton's troika of tossers or Mohammed Elmasry's sock puppets, and wind up as someone who talks about repealing Section 13 for the rest of his life.

I'm glad to say the denormalization failed. Since getting labeled a hatemonger, I've gotten more invitations to Sussex Drive than I ever did before. When Ezra and I spoke in Ottawa last spring, half the cabinet showed up, and even several Liberals and Bloquistes. Best of all, I have Canada's "human rights" regime to thank for transforming my reputation in the Province of Quebec. I used to get nervous in Montreal restaurants when I'd be dining with non-political friends and catch someone at a nearby table murmuring sotto voce the dread words "droits des personnes". But in every case it turned out to be a fellow diner wanting to congratulate me for sticking it to the kangaroos. A prominent Quebec businessman sent over a magnum of champagne to my table in gratitude. An usher at the Montreal Jazz Festival moved me down the aisle to a better seat. Running late for a flight to Heathrow from Dorval last month, I was very grateful for the crossing guard who stopped the traffic for me and told me to keep fighting till the HRCs were scrapped. A few weeks ago, I was in the Ivy in London late one night having a drink with a producer pal when a very famous actress came in. "Mark, you old hatemonger you!" she bellowed across the room, and came over for a big huggy-kissy. After all the slobbering, my producer chum said, "I'm always surprised your thespian friends still speak to you." So am I, to be honest.

But they do - if you frame the issue in liberty-vs-state terms rather than one of political correctness. By contrast the last surviving sock puppet Khurrum Awan - formerly of the Sockson Five, the Four Socks, the Sockston Trio, Socky and Cher and now Socky Bono - has been reduced to suing Ezra Levant because his friends no longer speak to him. Who denormalized whom, eh?

Guy Earle sounds like he could use a bit of Ezra-type advice right now, so for what it's worth here it is: Get on with your life. Do comedy shows. Do a show somewhere in Vancouver while the trial is on, even if you have to rent the room yourself. You're a full-time comic and a part-time defendant, not the other way round. And, if you do talk about the case, don't meet 'em halfway by talking bullshit about making donations to "women advocate groups". The only issue is this: Canada is now a land where the state regulates comedy acts.

The trial on March 29th will be a disgrace. You don't apologize, you don't donate, you put the system on trial.

That's really the only insight you need: It's about them, not you.

PS Kathy Shaidle says: "Just tell them to **** off." I would guess he doesn't want to have his bank accounts frozen or be rendered unemployable in British Columbia. Also, I don't believe, under BC law, you can appeal to a real court if you don't acknowledge the process in the most minimal way. That's why, as I did, you should show up in Heather MacNaughton's courtroom, guffaw occasionally, and in the scrum on the steps aside denounce her as a statist thug and buffoon. In other words, if you're going to tell them to f**k off, do it to their faces.

Under BC's shitty "human rights" code, Maclean's and I were, as a point of law, guilty. So we dared them to convict. And, like all bullies when someone stands up to them, the gutless pussies wimped out. I understand Guy Earle doesn't have as deep pockets, but he needs a support network that will make the political price too high for Commissar MacNaughton. The freespeechy bloggers fulfilled that function for me. The radical comedy crowd don't seem to be stepping up for Mr Earle. In the end, one Kathy Shaidle is worth a hundred guys who do lame-o Stephen Harper gags.