With friends like these...

[ciroccoj]

Fox News: Anne Coulter Got What She Deserves

I'm... disgusted on so many levels. The woman being interviewed by Fox News is just... gah.

OK, so, you know what? We do, in fact, have free speech here. It's pretty important to us. It's different from American free speech, but take a look at the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, please, before you go on TV. Specifically, see Section 2:

Fundamental Freedoms
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

I expect to get pissed off at Fox News and Anne Coulter. Right now I'm rather pleased with them, for being true to themselves. Being this pissed off at someone representing a POV I generally agree with is infuriating.

Comments

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, because I'm in the middle of a school project and can't look things up - has there been a case where a leftist got pulled up in front of the human rights committee dealie up there? I know Mark Steyn and another guy (Ezra Levine? Levant?) did, and there's been a few other examples here and there of conservatives being called to account for using terms like "Islamofascism," but I don't know if the reason I haven't heard of equivalent consequences on the left is because the right-wing blogs wouldn't report those or whether it's that they don't exist.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Good question, and I'm suddenly hit with the realization that I haven't a clue. It has definitely been threatened a few times, specifically in relation to religious institutions claiming that some of the rhetoric used against them is hate speech (eg, saying that churches that don't allow gay marriage are backwards or homophobic or full of hatred). AFAIK, it hasn't gone anywhere because what the anti-church folks said wasn't "...and therefore they should be torched and their leaders lynched."

Anne Coulter said that when she was warned about Canadian hate speech laws, that meant that she was a victim of a hate crime, and she just might sue on that basis. That ain't gonna fly. Giving information isn't the same as saying "all conservatives must die."

I dunno if she might have a case against the students who basically booed her off of the campus. Don't know enough about what was said about her. If they were threatening, or if they made statements that might incite hatred against an identifiable group (conservatives), she might have a case.

It's actually not as easy as you'd think to convict someone of hate speech. The Charter's a pretty important document here, and s. 2 guarantees free speech. That includes speech that is politically incorrect, speech that is stupid and wrong - even things like child porn. The reason we don't actually allow things like child porn, or hate speech, is that s. 1 of the Charter says our freedoms are "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society", and it's usually not that easy to demonstrably justify a limit to any freedom.

Child porn, yeah, of course you can demonstrably justify a limit to that. "Go out and shoot Jews" is also easy to limit. "Our church does not condone homosexuality" and "We don't approve of homophobic churches" would be quite a bit harder.

That's an interesting question, though. I'll see if I can find any examples. Like I said, I know it's been threatened, but don't know what happened.