Why the HRC fight is important

Dutch diplomats are already trying to pre-empt international reaction. ‘It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to offend,’ said Maxime Verhagen, the Foreign Minister, who was in Madrid to attend the Alliance of Civilisations, an international forum aimed at reducing tensions between the Islamic world and the West. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other towns with large Muslim populations, imams say they have needed to ‘calm down’ growing anger in their communities. guardian via jammiewearingfool

“but freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to offend”. It does actually. Actual free speech means there will be things said which are offensive to some people.

The alternative is to have what amounts to “licenced” speech. Licenced speech is rather like the situation on the London stage. Until 1968 the Lord Chamberlain had the authority to censor live theatre in England. If you want to get a feel for what licencing in the hand of government looks like here is the Wikipedia entry:

Under the Licensing Act 1737 (10 Geo.II, c. 28), the Lord Chamberlain was granted the ability to vet the performance of any new plays: he could prevent any new play, or any modification to an existing play, from being performed for any reason, and was not required to justify his decision. New plays were required to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for a licence before they could be performed, and theatre owners could be prosecuted for staging a play (or part of a play) that had not received prior approval. A licence, once granted, could be also withdrawn. The Licensing Act 1737 also limited spoken drama to the patent theatres, originally only the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London. The regime was relaxed slightly by the Theatrical Representations Act 1788, under which local magistrates were permitted to license occasional performances for periods of up to 60 days.

The Theatres Act 1843 restricted the powers of the Lord Chamberlain, so that he could only prohibit the performance of plays where he was of the opinion that “it is fitting for the preservation of good manners, decorum or of the public peace so to do”. It also gave additional powers to local authorities to license theatres, breaking the monopoly of the patent theatres and encouraging the development of popular theatrical entertainments, such as saloon theatres attached to public houses and music halls. wikipedia

Note: good manners counted right along with the public peace.

The censors - and we are finding out just who those people are - want, in effect, to licence speech. The chilling effect of the easily offended means that it will now take a good deal of courage to disagree with the happy clapping view of jihad or to suggest that a Catholic newspaper might be within its rights to oppose same sex marriage.

If these people manage to win the Ezra fight or the Steyn matter you have to ask yourself how long it will be before Ministers of the Canadian crown say something very much like the sorry Dutch Foreign Minister. And one can hardly wait for the sing song voices of liberal fascists demanding that magazines and, heck, blogs be licenced lest they say something “inappropriate or, worse, offensive.”

Written by jay on January 21st, 2008 with 7 comments.
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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com elixelx
#1. January 22nd, 2008, at 5:49 AM.

Many years ago there was a philosophical concept known as “fightin’ words”.

Back then, if a man called another man “yellow” in a bar, them’s was fightin’ words.

Nowadays if a man calls another man a Currie-buggering, paedophilicsteyn, well that’s allowed because it’s Free Speech?

You people have genuflected far too long before this false god. There MUST be limits to protect the weak from the strong!

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com DCardno
#2. January 23rd, 2008, at 1:51 AM.

Sure it’s “allowed” - the government has no interest in protecting anyone from hurt feelings. That doesn’t mean that it is without consequence: the result of such speech will likely be a defamation suit, and the speaker will end up making restitution to the person he or she defamed.

We do have a mechanism to protect the weak from the strong (or the merely nasty) - we call it “the justice system.” That system, in fact, is where this stuff belongs, not in a quasi court with loose rules of evidence, few procedural safeguards, and no visible reliance on precedent, and run by officials who seem to feel that their intuition is sufficient to decide the cases before them.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Alan
#3. January 23rd, 2008, at 5:17 AM.

Not to support the immediately above, but it would also be helpful if the defenders of this liberty didn’t roll around on their backs crying about how tough it is to be put upon by the mean investigators. Suck it up and defend the cases like adults or admit that freedom is as frail as their own fortitude.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com doug newton
#4. January 23rd, 2008, at 8:41 AM.

“There MUST be limits to protect the weak from the strong!”

Isn’t that the point of free speech?
To protect the weak from the strong.
Why is this a false god?

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com DCardno
#5. January 23rd, 2008, at 9:21 PM.

it would also be helpful if the defenders of this liberty didn’t roll around on their backs crying about how tough it is to be put upon by the mean investigators
Why Alan? The whole point is that in exercising your rights you shouldn’t need to defend yourself from your own government.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Alan
#6. January 26th, 2008, at 7:14 AM.

Boo fucking hoo. If you stand for something you don’t run at the first complaint against you. These guys would armadillo in the face of a traffic ticket.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com jay
#7. January 26th, 2008, at 7:32 AM.

I’m not seeing much running in the Ezra tapes nor does Steyn seem unwilling to appear and fight.

The larger questions is why should they have to? They have written things and published things which are legal to write and to publish. Some of these things offended some people. So what?

Why should these people have the capacity to complain about a perfectly legal activity. An activity protected by the Charter? And why should they do it on my dime? In a forum in which they cannot be confronted and in which the normal rules of law do not apply?

Look, if Kisella wants to sue me for calling him a liar he gets to pay his filing fees and is on the hook for my costs when he loses. I get to trawl his records, discover him until blood spurts from his metaphorical eye sockets, and have his claim measured against the well established precedents of defamation law. If he pleads that I hurt his feelings the Judge will laugh his or her honourable bottom right off the bench.

The essential difference between the Anglo-Saxon Common Law tradition and this rather Euro, civil law, tribunal approach, is that the Common Law takes law seriously as necessarily independent of the state. The Euro approach takes the law as simply an extension of the State. In the Common Law tradition judges and Courts are seen to be, and for the most part, are, apolitical. In the Euro approach the law’s sublimation to State objectives means it is politicized all the way down.

Which is why this fight really is important. And, Alan, as you know, entirely winnable as a matter of law.

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