“Hate” hustlers

Blazing Cat Fur does a great job of taking on Bernie Farber’s and Haroon Siddiqui’s defence of the "Human Rights" Act Section 13 and Mark Mercer adds some excellent discussion in the comments. Prof. Mercer covered a lot more, but I’ll focus on just these five points:

The task is to get s. 13 (1) deleted, not merely revised.

Just about everyone accepts that s. 13 is too wide and vague...

... the job of the censor is to censor; if one's on the payroll, he'll find a way to do his job.

... terms like "hate" and "contempt" are inevitably elastic.

... the actual haters among us are few and far between...

On the third point re. "the job of the censor" it’s worth emphasizing that the censors have not only expanded their ‘mandate’ into policing "hate" speech (as ‘elastically’ defined by themselves or by complainants) they are actually hustling for more business. The official censors are actively trying to create the impression that there’s a seething caldron of hatred out there - and the Bernie Farbers and Haroon Siddiquis are only too happy to help them. This disturbing trend is evidenced in: the CHRC’s involvement in posting racist comments on ‘target’ web sites; OHRC’s Barbara Hall’s assertion that the rate of complaints is too low, that she’d like to see more, and; Ezra Levant’s recent posting about the AHRC’s despicable race hustling propaganda brochure being circulated to new immigrants.

So, while Prof. Mercer’s observation that "the actual haters among us are few and far between" is true, the sooner the HRCs are forced out of this rotten racket altogether (ie. "get s. 13 deleted, not merely revised") the better.