Friday, July 18, 2008

Rights in Ezra's World

If I hadn't read it myself, I don't think I'd believe it. Apparently, Ezra Levant thinks that informing people about their rights is a bad thing.

He's whining about this booklet that the AHRC has published which outlines in very broad terms the scope of what is covered in the legislation that the AHRC is responsible for implementing.

Apparently he doesn't like that the booklet is full of simple examples:

Let's start with this one, called "Maria's story". I can tell you right now, having read every ruling issued by the Alberta HRC is recent years, that there is no "Maria", and there is no "Maria's story". There has never been a ruling about a woman whose parents came to Canada from Mexico, who was upset about Mexican jokes that aren't funny.

It's a fabrication. That's called propaganda -- telling new Latino immigrants that they're coming to a bigoted province, where Mexicans are treated poorly.


What part of example do you not get, Ezra? It's intended to give people who don't spend their time trolling through AHRC decisions for fun an idea of the kinds of topics that are considered discriminatory.

I'm sad to inform you, Ezra, that you've horribly abused the term 'propaganda'. Propaganda attempts to make a truth out of a non-truth. Giving people examples that are fictitious is not the same thing at all.

It's disgusting to begin with, but the fact that it is deliberately targetting new immigrants is downright vile. The Alberta human rights commission -- in other words, the Government of Alberta -- is trying to persuade newcomers to Alberta to support their grievance industry, and become little race hustlers, little Al Sharptons, just like Khurrum Awan of the Canadian Islamic Congress.


I see. So it's a bad thing for people to know what their avenues of redress under the law are? Sure...

What that really tells us is that Ezra wants the world to revolve around him - it's all about his right to spout off in whatever ugly way he chooses, nobody has any right to challenge him unless they have enough money to do so.

The vast majority of people are pretty benign when it comes to situations where discrimination could happen. But, that doesn't invalidate the need for avenues of redress when it does occur. More often than not, the person on the receiving end of discrimination is in a position of relative social and economic weakness. (especially in the workplace)

Do you like how Albertans are being described to newcomers -- as a bunch of stupid bigots? And do you like the instructions given to 60,000 of those newcomers, in the guise of "learning to read English" -- a propanganda tract telling them to sue their neighbours?


Oh please, Ezra. It's time to get off your high horse. Perhaps you'd like to reserve all knowledge of rights and law to those who have been through law school, but the real world knows that doesn't work in a free, and democratic society. (There's an irony here, since it was Mr. Levant who filed certain lawsuits against Dr. Lund a few years ago in an effort to halt his complaints against Stephen Boissoin and Craig Chandler's "Concerned Christians Canada" organization.)

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