Inequality Under the Quasi-Law

The Canadian Association of Journalists' panel discussion of Canada's various Human Rights Commissions is well worth the watch, even at an hour and a half. The panelists include Ezra Levant and Keith Martin, and Ian Fine of the CHRC.

Ezra Levant has already outlined the most glaring deficiencies of Ian Fine's argument--insofar as his ever managed to be an argument--so I'll just add that what I found most telling about the proceedings was not Mr. Fine's completely dubious assertion that there "can never be enough laws against hate"; nor indeed was it his utter failure to even attempt to explain the disparity between sections 13(1) and 13(2) of the Human Rights Act; nor, even, was it his hysterically redundant characterization of hate speech as "hateful hatred".

No. Rather, the part that I thought best encapsulated the basic incoherence of the human rights racket--as a racket and not just the subject of an isolated controversy--was Mr. Fine's dithering, by way of reply to Ed Camps of the Alberta Press Council, that: "Of course, it's hard to speak in hypotheticals." He effectively dodged the question on these grounds.

That, I strongly suspect, provided the one and only occasion during the discussion wherein the other two panelists, likely the entire room, were in agreement with Mr. Fine.

The problem is: speaking in hypotheticals--in unsubstantiated likelihoods--is Ian Fine's entire stock and trade! Dealing with hypotheticals, where it has no legitimate authority to do so, and using means that are themselves highly unethical (if not illegal), is precisely the reason why the CHRC is now the subject of two effing inquiries!

Here is the place where one man's excuse is another man's crime; where one man's defence is the other's offence.