Category Archives: Free Speech

Update II: Canadian Anti-Coulter Cretins Crave ‘Positive Space’

Ann Coulter, Canada, Christianity, Fascism, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Judaism & Jews, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Political Philosophy

I’m so very pleased that Ann Coulter has, by necessity, turned her wrath on one of the most oppressive instruments in the Canadian state, the Human Rights apparatus. The Human Rights Commission, a Kangaroo court, operates outside the Canadian courts, affording its victims none of the defenses or due process the courts afford. For example, mens rea, or criminal intention: the absence of the intent to harm is no defense in this “court.” Neither is truth.

The apparatchiks of this machine have designated certain groups as protected species. Thus, the bedrock of western law, the rights of the individual, is turned on its head. Based on your membership in a group, you get to claim protected species rights—and acquire a lien on the property of other groups, who become prime potential offenders. The quasi-judicial Tribunal then acts on these definitions in the substance of its decisions. It’s all great for social cohesion.

And the designations keep growing. Last I covered the quasi-courts, it was deliberating as to whether to extend protection against discrimination on the grounds of “social conditions.” In other words, much like in the US, you do not posses absolute rights to your property. However, over and above the infraction against freedom of association and property that is American Civil Rights law, the Canadian kangaroo code would make it an offense to refuse to rent your apartment, for example, to a welfare recipient.

Devastating complaints have been launched against individuals whose speech the protected species dislike, often bankrupting and destroying innocent individuals guilty of exercising property rights or expressing politically incorrect thoughts.

In a truly free society, the kind we once enjoyed, one honors the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Simple. So long as your mitts stop at my mug, you ought to be free to do as you wish. (Including ingesting drugs and ending one’s life, for vices are not crimes. “If for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else—government—owns him.”) People ought to be arrested only for crimes they perpetrate against another’s person or property.

Particularly apt is Ann’s swipe, in “Oh Canada,” at the mob mentality and congenital stupidity issuing from the free-thinking Millennials (whom I’ve described at length in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”):

the Ottawa University Student Federation met for seven and a half hours to hammer out a series of resolutions denouncing me. The resolutions included:

“Whereas Ann Coulter is a hateful woman;

“Whereas she has made hateful comments against GLBTQ, Muslims, Jews and women;

“Whereas she violates an unwritten code of ‘positive-space’;

“Be it resolved that the SFUO express its disapproval of having Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottawa.”

At least the students didn’t waste seven and a half hours on something silly, like their studies.

Update I (March 25): Where do you think “The Silly Sex?” would land this writer were she to return to Canada? Or “Women Who Wed the Wrong Wahhabi”? Or “‘Obsession’ By Muhammad”?

Update II: Coulter has never called for the conversion of Jews, as Myron (and lefties) contends. I’ve long since “Disentangled [That] Coulter/Deutsch Dust-Up”:

Although some Christian denominations have watered it down, a general filament of the Christian faith is the belief that salvation is predicated on accepting Christ. If Coulter were more than a brash, bonny (if bony) babe, she’d have explained that doctrine: To get past the Pearly Gates, Christians believe one has to accept Christ.

“But is belief in ‘perfection’ or ‘completion’ through Jesus tantamount to hostility to Jews?” asked Gabriel Sanders of the Jewish daily “Forward.” And he replied, quoting Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a specialist in Jewish-Evangelical ties: “A conservative, Jesus-oriented faith doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that people are anti-Jewish. Some of the more favorable attitudes toward Jews have developed in Evangelical circles.”

‘Son of Hamas’: Israel Has A Moral Code, Hamas Not

Free Speech, Israel, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Palestinian Authority, Reason, Terrorism, The West

Enlightened, realistic, intelligent people (western, left-liberal intellectuals are precluded by definition) who visit or come to know Israel—the place, the people, the purpose of it all—abandon the easy, destructive, fashionable path of the Palestinians.

Such a man is Mosab Yousef, a “Son of Hamas”—also the title of his book—interviewed extensively by CNN’s Christian Amanpour.

This extremely bright young man’s central conversion is religious—once he embraced Christianity, his political change of heart followed. (How ironic, then, that western “intellectuals,” claiming to bear christian witness, routinely root for savagery as against civilization?!)

Amanpour, a fan of that authentic, ever-elusive, tame Islam, was shocked to hear these two stupendously courageous statements from Mosab Yousef:

1. The gangster of the world is the God of the Qu’ran.

2. Shin Bet has rules; is committed to a constitution, is not thirsty to kill Palestinians. Hamas’s goal, on the other hand, is to kill civilians, plain and simple.

Amanpour—who finds herself unable to abide Yousef’s admission that Shin Bet has a moral code, Hamas does not—then spent the rest of the admittedly penetrating interview trying to discredit Israel and the convert.

“Who turned you to working for the Israelis,” she demanded of Yousef.

Tellingly, the Hamas gangster she entertained to that end had a fit about being pitted against an Israeli expert on espionage, Yossi Melman of the leftist Haaretz.

An enlightened young man, with a fidelity to what’s infront of his eyes, turning against Hamas? This, to the western woman hot for the Hamas hottie, his bombs and his “causes”, is incredible.

Amanpour and the other Muslim academic she herded in for the occasion are, seemingly, quite invested in discrediting a born-again Christian whose conversion has seen him reject barbarism.

Regulars on the pro-Palestinian libertarian/left sides of the ideological spectrum might be warned of a major contradiction they risk committing, as they gather to slander Mosab Yousef, “Son of Hamas”:

Boy-oh-boy, has this man hungrily embraced civilization both from the depths of his being and in his actions. Yousef is risking his life to court the ways of the West: speaking, writing, arguing; having fun and making money while doing it all.

Now this is a hero in the Randian mold. May he stay safe.

'Son of Hamas': Israel Has A Moral Code, Hamas Not

Free Speech, Israel, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Palestinian Authority, Reason, Terrorism, The West

Enlightened, realistic, intelligent people (western, left-liberal intellectuals are precluded by definition) who visit or come to know Israel—the place, the people, the purpose of it all—abandon the easy, destructive, fashionable path of the Palestinians.

Such a man is Mosab Yousef, a “Son of Hamas”—also the title of his book—interviewed extensively by CNN’s Christian Amanpour.

This extremely bright young man’s central conversion is religious—once he embraced Christianity, his political change of heart followed. (How ironic, then, that western “intellectuals,” claiming to bear christian witness, routinely root for savagery as against civilization?!)

Amanpour, a fan of that authentic, ever-elusive, tame Islam, was shocked to hear these two stupendously courageous statements from Mosab Yousef:

1. The gangster of the world is the God of the Qu’ran.

2. Shin Bet has rules; is committed to a constitution, is not thirsty to kill Palestinians. Hamas’s goal, on the other hand, is to kill civilians, plain and simple.

Amanpour—who finds herself unable to abide Yousef’s admission that Shin Bet has a moral code, Hamas does not—then spent the rest of the admittedly penetrating interview trying to discredit Israel and the convert.

“Who turned you to working for the Israelis,” she demanded of Yousef.

Tellingly, the Hamas gangster she entertained to that end had a fit about being pitted against an Israeli expert on espionage, Yossi Melman of the leftist Haaretz.

An enlightened young man, with a fidelity to what’s infront of his eyes, turning against Hamas? This, to the western woman hot for the Hamas hottie, his bombs and his “causes”, is incredible.

Amanpour and the other Muslim academic she herded in for the occasion are, seemingly, quite invested in discrediting a born-again Christian whose conversion has seen him reject barbarism.

Regulars on the pro-Palestinian libertarian/left sides of the ideological spectrum might be warned of a major contradiction they risk committing, as they gather to slander Mosab Yousef, “Son of Hamas”:

Boy-oh-boy, has this man hungrily embraced civilization both from the depths of his being and in his actions. Yousef is risking his life to court the ways of the West: speaking, writing, arguing; having fun and making money while doing it all.

Now this is a hero in the Randian mold. May he stay safe.

Updated: If Justice Samuel Alito Were Ill-Mannered …

Barack Obama, Constitution, Elections, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Law

He’d have cried out “You Lie” at the president during the State of the Union, last night. It so happens that Justice Alito is a gentleman, so he didn’t. All Alito did was gesticulate in surprise at the president’s audacious “misrepresentation ” of the SCOTUS’ invalidation of “a portion of the McCain-Feingold Campaign finance law.”

Writes Judge Andrew P. Napolitano:

“The 20-year-old ruling had forbidden any political spending by groups such as corporations, labor unions, and advocacy organizations (like the NRA and Planned Parenthood, for example). Ruling that all persons, individually and in groups, have the same unfettered free speech rights, the court blasted Congress for suppression of that speech. In effect, the court asked, ‘What part of ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech’ does Congress not understand?’ Thus, all groups of two or more persons are free to spend their own money on any political campaigns and to mention the names of the candidates in their materials.”

“Thus, as a result of this ruling, all groups may spend their own money as they wish on any political campaigns …”

“On Wednesday night, during his State of the Union address, the president attacked this decision by arguing that the ruling permits foreign nationals and foreign corporations to spend money on American campaigns. When he said this, Justice Samuel Alito, who was seated just 15 feet from the president, gently whispered: ‘That’s not true.’ Justice Alito was right. The Supreme Court opinion, which is 183 pages in length, specifically excludes foreign nationals and foreign-owned corporations from its ruling. So the president, the former professor of law at the one of the country’s best law schools, either did not read the opinion, or was misrepresenting it.”

For posterity:

Update (Jan. 29): Randy Barnett on “a shocking lack of decorum”:

“In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.”