-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 7</A> The Laissez Faire City February 15, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 7 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ----- Freedom of Approved Speech by Peter Topolewski In the first week of February 1999, a US federal court ordered the authors of an anti-abortion web site to pay $107 million in damages to Planned Parenthood and a number of abortion doctors. A few hundred miles up the coast in Vancouver, BC, a human rights tribunal ordered a retired newspaper columnist to pay a $2000 fine for promoting hatred toward Jews. Incomparable sums, but the same injustice. Powerful interest groups successfully drew governmental and judicial bodies into arguments of good taste versus bad. As hoped, the authorities scrutinized a citizen’s right to express what others had deemed a disagreeable opinion. As individuals, the authorities are fellow citizens and peers; but collected in juries and tribunals they have decreed what thoughts we may voice without penalty. Expressible thoughts are far fewer than we had ever assumed. Too late for a viaticum, free speech is dead. No matter how offensive people found either the Nuremberg Trial web site, or the columns by 78-year old columnist Doug Collins, note that none of the authors were charged with a crime for what they wrote, and none faced criminal punishment. Rather, by different routes, the losing sides in each case have been punished in their wallets, and punished for one reason alone: to stop them from expressing their opinions. In the case of the columnist Doug Collins, the $2000 fine is the muscle flexing of an inflated power wrongly created. His sentence fell from a bureaucratic wing of the provincial government known as the BC Human Rights Tribunal. At the foot of its pulpit it drops culprits whom it deems to have violated human rights. Collins, a ranter of underwhelming talent, has made a habit of picking on Jews. His gormless columns retread old Jewish conspiracy theories and lame "inflated Holocaust number" stories. He convinced no readers of his lies, but he convinced many that he is a bitter hack whose career should have seen its zenith after a single appearance in the letters to the editor section. However, according to the Human Rights Tribunal, Collins’ small minded opinion pieces were not simply nonsense, they served to "repeatedly reinforce some of the most virulent forms of anti-Semitism, and perpetuate the most damaging stereotypes of Jews; that they are selfish, greedy and manipulative… and that, through control of the media, they have perpetrated a massive fraud to exaggerate their suffering during the Holocaust." While his views might or might not do all of the above, Collins is guilty only of a mean streak, a rambling style, and a bitter jealousy. (One wonders why these alone were not sufficient to keep his opinions from print, as least as a paid columnist.) In 1997 Collins appeared before the tribunal after the Canadian Jewish Congress complained about a column in which he characterized the movie Schindler’s List as "typical Jewish propaganda designed to make money". He escaped reproof then, only to face this retrial for a collection of columns that injured the "dignity and self respect" of a local Jewish man named Harry Abrams. That such an irrelevant columnist could injure Abrams’ dignity and self respect is plainly sad. What’s worse is that Abrams chose not to simply ignore Collins’ insulting babble (as most readers do), or better yet to make efforts to educate people why stereotypes of Jews (and other minorities) are low, dishonest, ignorant, and lazy. Instead, Abrams resorted to having Collins censored: Collins is not free to insult any one without facing financial punishment. Bastiat’s Rights of Man By invoking their mysterious powers to protect through fines what are loosely labeled "human rights", the BC Human Rights Tribunal is violating the very rights and freedoms which make possible its legal existence. Frederic Bastiat explained this critical relationship once and for all in The Law. He wrote: Life, faculties, production – in other words, individuality, liberty, property – this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it…. Since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force – for the same reason – cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Fining Doug Collins $2000 for expressing his opinion is precisely liberty destroyed. Amazingly the Human Rights Tribunal saw fit to apply its over-extended power to the press. It has ordered Collins’ newspaper to publish a statement which condemns his opinions as dangerous and ant-Semitic. Timothy Renshaw, the newspaper’s managing editor, has called this "pretty distressing for us, because it’s basically content dictated by the government." Bastiat’s proclamation on the rights of law and man apply similarly, but in more than one facet, to the abortion lawsuit in Oregon. No matter how militant, or to what extreme anti-abortionists take the means to their goal – no matter how greatly opinions differ in their own camp – for them abortion is murder, irrespective of what man’s law says. (In this sense man’s law has as much credibility for them as it did for those who opposed laws that made slavery legal.) As far as the anti-abortion movement is concerned, the rights upon which laws are formed – Bastiat’s rights of man – are being denied the unborn. The right to life supersedes man’s law, and specifically for anti-abortionists the God-given right to life supersedes any law that denies any human their right to life. Obviously the crux of the abortion issue is whether the unborn is human, and it is around this question that debate must center. No other argument is relevant – not the mother’s economic situation, not the mother’s age or right to choice, not the opportunities for the child, or its physical attributes; for if the unborn (the fetus) is not a human there is no debate. If it is a human – and the pro-abortion movement has been totally unconvincing in its hairsplitting and waffling on this point – then the abortion debate becomes an argument about human rights, particularly the unborn human’s right to life, liberty, and property. Can the law – a product of life, liberty, and property – deny some the right to life? Until the focus of the abortion debate shifts from a woman’s right to choice to the question of the unborn’s humanity, the fight will not find a resolution. Anti-abortionists argue on behalf of what they believe is a living human; pro-abortionists argue on behalf of choice. To illustrate how misplaced the latter line of argument is, consider where it will be left when scientific advancement allows an embryo to develop to 9-month maturity completely outside a woman’s body. At that time the argument for choice will have nothing at all to do with a woman’s body, rather it would concern exclusively the mother’s – and the father’s – choice to keep the fetus they conceived. Sooner or later, by choice or by science, the debate will center on the fetus’s humanity. Inciting Violence In the mean time, the abortion fight rages along in its current form, and anti-abortionists maintain only a belief that fetuses are humans. The $107 million penalty handed out by an Oregon jury inhibits their right to express that belief. The web site at the center of the case, no matter how distasteful readers might find it, does not accuse the abortion doctors there listed of acts they do not in fact perform, or admit performing. The web site does call abortion murder (as most against capital punishment call that murder), and they do call abortion doctors murderers. These are opinions, and like Doug Collins’ opinions they are being censored. The jury in Oregon, like the in Human Rights Tribunal BC, based its decision on the flimsy notion that the literature "incites violence". In the kangaroo courts in BC and Oregon "inciting violence" was a simple and blatant excuse for the verdicts, not the root of them. It is a completely groundless tact introduced by groups that want to suppress and oppress opinions in opposition to their own. When Doug Collins was fined for expressing his insulting columns, the chief commissioner of the BC Human Rights Tribunal applauded, saying that the decision affirms the idea that freedom of expression comes with responsibility. What a laugh. Will someone who attacks Jews in BC go unpunished because, in their words, Doug Collins incited them to violence against Jews? Will someone who attacks an abortion doctor walk free because he was incited to violence by the anti-abortion web site? And could the authors of the corrupting literature ever be charged in a criminal court as accomplices for these crimes based solely on the words they wrote? These claims of inciting violence demean the individual’s intelligence, and they are dangers to what remains of our liberty. Tax departments incite violence, government bureaucracy incites violence, football games incite violence, rock stars incite violence, and limiting free speech incites violence. Or it damn well should. Or I am not allowed to say that? -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 7, Feb. 15, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved Disclaimer The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its founding trust. Just as the New York Times is unaffiliated with the city of New York, the City Times is only one of what may be several news publications located in, or domiciled at, Laissez Faire City proper. For information about LFC, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
