By now, most people living in Canada and a great many living in the US will know that a group of students at Osgoode Hall Law School have decided to take the Canadian weekly newsmagazine, Macleans, before several provincial incarnations of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Their charge? The Canadian Islamic Congress is offended by passages from Mark Steyn's book, America Alone, which were published in an issue of MacLeans, the most offensive of which, is a quote from a Danish Muslim cleric (
see second page), which the students seem not to have grasped (and what does that say about the standards at that once great, grand old institution, Osgoode Hall?).
The action has raised a significant and overdue debate in Canada, at least part of which focuses on the Human Rights institutions that have become an extrajudicial arm and hammer for the purveyors of political correctness.
First of all, check out what my hero,
Rex Murphy has to say on this ridiculous fiasco. Rex is right on the mark, as usual. Canadian Human Rights Commissions have become the thought police and it's time to overhaul or dismantle them. The silly boys at the Osgoode Hall Law School should have their bottoms spanked and their privileged parents made to pay, and if that doesn't happen then perhaps that good school should itself be taken before the Commission.
The superb
rebuttal to one of the complainants by Ali Eteraz and his
extensive take down of the Canadian Islamic Congress are also priceless.
Political correctness is the enemy of human rights. I will await the Human Rights Commission's response to this petition. If they take it seriously and sanction either Macleans or Mark Steyn, then we are indeed in serious trouble. Someone, perhaps Steyn himself, or even a group of citizens, should take the Human Rights Commission to court. Surely, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which includes freedom of expression, would be sufficient to rein in such overweening monstrocities.
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