WE MUST HAVE AN OPEN SOCIETY!

by Wallace Klinck,
January 2008

The following is a response by Canadian social crediter Wallace Klinck to an article condemning Canada's Human Rights Commissions by George Jonas in CanWest Publications. George Jonas' article "Turning Out the Lights on Liberalism" follows.

Wallace Klinck wrote: Thank you so much for your recent devastating article (Dec. 20/07) condemning the activities of Canada's Human "Rights" Commissions. With your background surely you recognize their similarity to the classic kangaroo Bolshevik Peoples Courts. I wrote to the Alberta Report years ago when these monstrous institutions were being promoted, declaring that we would need God to help us if they were ever instituted. Of course, consequent to the entire corrupt and treasonous nature of party political politics and the general deliberate educational degradation of an understanding of our long historic struggle to free ourselves from arbitrary and unaccountable power, going back before the Magna Charta in 1215 and henceforth, their establishment was a virtual inevitability. Anyone who understands the nature of genuine freedom in the Christian sense, as the British best, if not perfectly, defined it and developed constitutional measures to defend it, could not fail to see the transparent intent of such commissions.

They have now become so desperate in their attempts to use their arbitrary powers for blatant political agendas--which properly should be the subject of popular and protected public debate rather than being imposed by tyrants--that they have decreed that truth is no defence in their hearings!

Truth is no defence! And no usual established rights of defence as in a proper court of law! This is madness and a complete violation of our historic British system of justice under the Common Law. These Commissions should be abolished outright with a ringing denunciation explaining to all citizens their essential threat to a free and advancing society.
And what have the politicians done to correct this situation? Nothing! It is to their lasting disgrace that they will only act if they think it might adversely affect their political aspirations to ignore it. Considerations of power are supreme. Principles be damned! Nor is it very impressive that the established media has done almost nothing until it has become obvious that this policy of state censorship is backfiring upon them. What about the fate of the procession of defenceless victims who have been abused by these tyrannical and fanatical Commissions since their establishment? Shame again!

But better late than never and I hope that the recent criticisms by yourself and others marks the beginning of the end of these kangaroo courts with their suppression of speech and association in this country. Not only suppression of these but the denial of the right also to hear, to know and to make conclusions--indeed, to think--especially feared by the censors. Whether these Human "Rights" people act with complete hypocrisy or assume arrogantly that they are the repository of all virtue and knowledge, the rest of us being either morons or naturally bent toward every evil, is irrelevant. The bullying has to stop. We must have an open society.

We have plenty of laws to protect persons and property both in criminal and civil courts. We do not need, and cannot afford, to have irresponsible and immature people with fragile egos incapable of sustaining criticism, supported by dictatorial censors, exercising an arbitrary influence over the nature of our society. Critical examination is the basis for both personal and social development and honest citizens should welcome it. Thank God that I have been criticized during my lifetime. Crimes against others can be justly dealt with for what they objectively are without being defined by subjective, and deceitful anti-"hate" so-called legislation. I find it difficult to believe that some of the people who promoted this sort of outrage were not fully aware of what they were perpetrating. Now some of them seem to want to "back off" gracefully. I am afraid that this does not wash. Please excuse this long tirade--but I like many others have "had it!" If anyone should be hauled into court for reasons relating to speech, it should be those who have conspired to deny freedom of it to their fellow citizens.

TURNING OUT THE LIGHTS ON LIBERALISM

by George Jonas
https://www.georgejonas.ca/recent_writing.cfm?id=605

"The Blood Runs Cold" is the headline of Melanie Phillips' piece in the current issue of the British Spectator: "The lights are going out on liberal society," her column begins, "and it is the most liberal societies with their fingers on the switch."
So writes Canada's George Jonas:
What makes Ms. Phillips' blood run cold is Human Rights Commissions in this country summoning Maclean's magazine and columnist Mark Steyn into their inquisitorial chambers to answer for their misdeeds. Misdeeds? Would that be crimes or torts? No, for those one sues or calls the police. The misdeeds for which Human Rights Commissions were set up 30 years ago weren't criminally or civilly wrongful acts or words -- such as, say, defamation -- but heresies. Heresies to what? Why, to liberalism, Canada's state religion. But wait a minute. If a country's state religion is liberalism, how can it investigate and prosecute lawful acts and words? Ah, here's a paradox to chill the blood, and not just Ms. Phillips' but many people's, including mine.

Human rights laws and agencies were set up in 1977 to protect Canadians against "discrimination" -- say, basing an appropriate act (hiring) on an inappropriate motive (gender) unless properly appropriated by affirmative action. They were to safeguard an ostensibly free society against politically incorrect conduct. Or thought crimes. In short, they were to be liberal society's defence against liberty.
To me this seemed entirely predictable. What I found amazing was that many genuine liberals, including such professional civil libertarians as Canadian Civil Liberties Association General Counsel Alan Borovoy, didn't see it. They certainly do these days.
When the Alberta Human Rights Commission was contemplating an action against The Western Standard (now defunct) for reprinting some cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Mr. Borovoy wrote that "During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create [human rights] commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech."

Many liberal-minded social activists thought they could regulate conduct without affecting speech -- except maybe such dreadful expressions of intent to discriminate as "help wanted male." How could prohibiting discrimination in employment and housing, they asked, turn into censorship in the media? Yet it required no imagination, for the evidence for it was there at the outset.

In the summer of 1977, shortly after it came into being, Manitoba's Human Rights Commission took it upon itself to caution Maclean's for Barbara Amiel having used the word "Hun" with reference to Germans in an article about the war-years. The Commission felt it had a mandate to express a government-sanctioned disapproval over a journalist's choice of words. The post-liberal state's action against Maclean's and Steyn comes on the 30th anniversary of the post-liberal state's warning against Maclean's and Amiel. This doesn't show a liberal agenda hijacked or kidnapped; it shows an illiberal agenda that was there right from the beginning.

Considering that Canada had civil courts to use against slanderous or deceptive speech, and criminal courts to use against speech deemed to be fraudulent, seditious, treacherous, or pornographic, it ought to have been a mystery to Borovoy and his colleagues what Human Rights Commissions could possibly be used against if not free speech, or speech previously regarded as free. Which is precisely what happened. It happened several times during the last 30 years, sometimes to nasty little scribblers and publications, but occasionally to nicer and bigger ones. The newsweekly Maclean's and the brilliant Steyn are the best and biggest to find themselves in the jaws of the Human Rights Dragon, not the first.

Maclean's and Steyn may be big enough for the Dragon to choke on, which would be a blessing. The liberticidal monster should have been strangled at birth -- but better late than never. By now Human Rights Commissions are populated with officials who speak disparagingly of "fundamentalist liberals" and describe free speech as an "American idea" with no weight in this country. They're dragging magazine and writer into their rank dragon's den for allegedly suggesting that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. By doing so, they prove Melanie Phillip's point about the hand on the light switch.

"If any culture is incompatible with liberalised western civilisation, it is clearly Canada's," offers the author of 'Londonistan'. I'm afraid she's right -- assuming, that is, that there's still such a thing as a liberalized western civilization. Perhaps what we should say is that a liberalized western civilization is becoming incompatible with itself.
Source: CanWest Publications, December 20, 2007

FURTHER READING:
"The Great Liberal Death Wish," by Malcolm Muggeridge: A most important read to understand the mindset of modern liberals. Heritage Book Services and Veritas Publications carry this most important booklet.

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