Saturday, December 22, 2007

Fatwas and jackbooted liberals

Today the ‘Post’ started a series on “faith”. George Jonas’ contribution turned to the subject of free speech:

As for relations between the faithful and the faithless, don't push it. An exchange of fatwas isn't a dialogue.

Talking of fatwas, I've been suggesting for years that super-liberalism is likely to have sub-liberal consequences. What's super-liberalism? It's a condition, common in Canada, whose main symptom is bending over backwards to be straighter than vertical.

What do fatwas have to do with liberalism? Well, super-liberalism's fatwas are routinely issued by Human Rights Commissions, federal and provincial; and their sub-liberal consequences include a denial of constitutional guarantees of fundamental freedoms.

A journal is free to print what it considers right as long as it also prints what it may consider wrong, according to sub-liberals. They wouldn't have complained to the Human Rights Commission about Mark Steyn writing in Maclean's ... had Maclean's agreed to publish a rejoinder "from a mutually acceptable source."
[...]
it's a novel approach: the Human Rights Commission as a literary agent. Ingenious. Maclean's is a hard market to crack and Steyn is tough to compete with, but perhaps if I get my agent a pair of jackboots and turn her into a Human Rights commissar ...

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