Comments on: Why the HRC fight is important

By: jay

jay — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:02:37 +0000

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.

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:44:38 +0000

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.

By: DCardno

DCardno — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:51:32 +0000

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.

By: doug newton

doug newton — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:11:55 +0000

“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?

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:47:46 +0000

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.

By: DCardno

DCardno — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:21:23 +0000

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.

By: elixelx

elixelx — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:19:52 +0000

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!