Monday, April 14, 2008

Could not say it better if I tried~

Comments section from: http://rationalreasons.blogspot.com/2008/01/ezra-levant-is-no-hero-even-if-you.html


Charles,


Levant was NOT FORCED against his will to show up anywhere. He chose to go in person. He could have answered with a registered letter (under $10) or to say nothing at all. Therefore he voluntarily chose to present himself to the investigator, because doing so suited his own agenda (as noted by 3 days of run-up ranting and the presence of the camera).


Also, this was not a tribunal, but a single person investigating the merit of the claim. There is a difference.


Don't get me wrong here, he should even have to do THAT. This claim against him is spurious and should have been dismissed out of hand before it got this far. It should be dismissed now. I still believe that, as I stated in the first line of this post, that we should not have HRCs or hate speech laws, and instead use our existing common law to remediate speech which provably caused harm.


But lets not clutch our pearls and scream about jackboots and star chambers here, because that is not the case. It shows yet another reason why we should not have these kinds of tribunals, but it is no where near the seriousness it is being made out, except in Ezras fertile imagination.


I would like to point out that a far worse threat to free speech is the reverse onus of our libel laws resulting in SLAPP lawsuits, which, ironically, is exactly what Ezra is doing himself right now. That's right, Ezra is suing someone for writing a letter to the editor that offended him, in an effort to quash his speech.


So, given that, among other things, you'll pardon me if I don't fall for his grandstanding and jump on his bandwagon.


1:59 PM

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