Ever since this magazine attracted the attention of Canada’s “human rights” regime, defenders of the system have clung to a familiar argument. In a letter to Maclean’s, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., Canada’s chief censor, put it this way:
“Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free rein. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred.”
“Hateful words” can lead to “unspeakable crimes.” The problem with this line is that it’s ahistorical twaddle, as I’ve pointed out. Yet still it comes up. It did last month, during my testimony to the House of Commons justice committee, when an opposition MP mused on whether it wouldn’t have been better to prohibit the publication of Mein Kampf.
“That analysis sounds as if it ought to be right,” I replied. “But the problem with it is that the Weimar Republic—Germany for the 12 years before the Nazi party came to power—had its own version of Section 13 and equivalent laws. It was very much a kind of proto-Canada in its hate speech laws. The Nazi party had 200 prosecutions brought against it for anti-Semitic speech. At one point the state of Bavaria issued an order banning Hitler from giving public speeches.”
And a fat lot of good it all did.
But still the old refrain echoes through the corridors of power: vigorous honest free speech will lead to mass murder unless we subject it to “reasonable limits.”
Actually, the opposite is true: a constrained and regulated culture policed by politically correct enforcers leads to slaughter. I’m not being speculative here, as Commissar Lynch is about my murderous prose style. It’s already happened, just a couple of weeks back. Thirteen men and women plus an unborn baby were gunned down at Fort Hood by a major in the U.S. Army. Nidal Hasan was the perpetrator, but political correctness was his enabler, every step of the way. In the days that followed, the near parodically absurd revelations piled up like an overripe satire, but a two-panel cartoon at the Toronto blogger Scaramouche’s website provided the pithiest distillation:
“This is your brain. This is your brain on political correctness”—a small and shrivelled thing.
Major Hasan couldn’t have been more straightforward about who and what he was. An army psychiatrist, he put “SoA”—i.e., “Soldier of Allah”—on his business card. At the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, he was reprimanded for trying to persuade patients to convert to Islam and fellow pupils objected to his constant “anti-American propaganda,” but, as the Associated Press reported, “a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.”
This is your brain on political correctness.
As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in U.S. history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave the presentation to a roomful of fellow army psychiatrists and doctors. Some of whom glanced queasily at their colleagues, but none of whom actually spoke up. And, when the question of whether then-Captain Hasan was, in fact, “psychotic,” the policy committee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center worried “how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents.”
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This page provides some insight as to political correctness and cultural Marxism.
http://sites.google.com/site/thegospelaccordingto...
This is a dire crisis. The Fort Hood incident reveals a glaring weakness in our ability to defend ourselves from domestic terror attacks, and the MSM STILL won't entertain the notion that Hasan was a dedicated jihadist.
Fearing that someone who repeatedly spouts jihadist rhetoric and taking them at their word is not political correctness. There is overwhelming evidence that those who spout such rhetoric have a high likelihood of carrying out their threats.
Political correctness is worrying that taking common sense steps to forestall future attacks is the inevitable first step to a police state. We have demonstrated a consistent pattern of restoring civil rights after the crisis is ended since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1800.
Iran is also being ignored at our peril. The hitler of our time means what he says. As do all jihadis.
mark's column in today's Issue of MacLeans tells it like it is. Political Correctness if our National Shame. We have become a Nation of whiners and scared cats. At least Mark is trying to put some steel in our backbones, instead of the Jello dished out on Parliament Hill!
Liberalism is a mental disorder!
In light of the Swiss ban on Minarets, it is my fervent hope that more countries stand up to the spread of Islam. We are at the risk of losing our own cultural identity because we are so fixated on this whole "multicultural" schtick. The average Canadian who comes from our foundation stocks of Judeo-Christian European ancestors can see what is happening in Canada. We are no longer educatiing our students in the hitorical foundations of our country so no wonder they don't see anything wrong with Muslims coming here and bringing all their baggage with them. Germany, France and Britain are realizing too late where their accomodations for Muslims have landed them. How long before it is too late on our continent?
You hit it on the nose, Mark.
Keep up the fight against PC.
(had to clean up my wording for the language police)
Another MacLean’s article with wacky facts and a Western extermination theme reminiscent of Steyn on Muslim demographics. This time it’s rats, but the impossible numbers are about the same. “It is…possible for a three-year-old rat to have given birth to 43 litters of 516 rats. Add in children and multiple generations of grandchildren and she can be responsible for 16,000 offspring in a year, and up to 100,000 over three years…” (this is all impossible of course!) Come to think of it, that MacLean’s article that wiped out all the Finns on the planet several times over was written by someone named “Mohamad”! An entire blond, blue eyed ethnic group exterminated by just one Muslim – just like Steyn warns us every week!
I think I speak for all of us when I say "Huh?"
Why did I & millions of other Americans serve in the Military from 4 to
30 yrs & today it`s a misdirected Policeman. Did I hear the word PC .
It`s brought down a great nation! We`re adrift with out any leadership
in sight . Whatever happens across the USA will continue because
there`s NO Deterrent at all thanks to our leaders at every level. So when 10 to 25 of us are killed we`ll be told not to rush to judgement..
this piece is pure propaganda bs. i doubt any of it is true.
If Mark Steyn contends that “Commissar” Lynch is an “enabler” because (he feels) her views ultimately lead to the events at Fort Hood, then one can just as easily hold Steyn to account for the legislation in Uganda that proscribes the death penalty for gays, brought in with the help of Steyn’s friends in the American Christian Right like Rick Santorum (see MacLean’s “Uganda proposes anti-gay laws”, Nov. 5). http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/11/05/uganda-propose...
Mark…you done it again! Great job! Where is this political correctness going to end? Now the "world" is breathing down Switzerland's throat for disallowing Minarets…too intolerant. Where were these same people when the Ten Commandments had to come out of the court house? That was tolerance?
To Stan: Disallowing minarets (apparently there are only 4 in Switzerland, which has a tiny Muslim population) is not analogous to removing the "Ten Commandments from the court house", if they ever were "in the court house". That has to do with religious symbols in buildings of the secular state. It is analogous to saying Jews can't build synagogues for worship anywhere, or Buddhists can't build temples, or Christians can't build churches with steeples.
This is the only piece of real journalism I have seen in a very long time. I commend the author!!!! You hit the nail on the head. Honestly it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It is a breath of fresh air in this upside-down world we are living in of political correctness!!
No, I don't mean to say that at all, LOL.
It's just that my Christian friends have been remiss in getting the gay men and women stoned. I'm sorry, I meant, of course, stoning them to death. They just pick and choose through the Bible, find the more convenient verses and live by them, even though Leviticus plainly says what to do and how to do it.
Now, take our friend Ahmedinawackjob in Iran, he can be as nasty as he wants to be. There's a country with a strong religious backbone, where the law and the Good Book agree. I'm sure they're so proud.
The Rideau Canal is in Ottawa, not Kingston; the drivers went into the St. Lawrence seaway.
I was following along with Mark up until this point, thinking that although he comes across as a guy who just whips off rants on his laptop, that there's something more to what he says, and that 'rant' is just his literary style. But he didn't stop to check his facts or even Google maps, and it discredits him. I didn't want to think he was just a laptop ranter who had cooked up a human rights dispute simply to milk it weekly for a buck. I wanted to think he was genuine, but if he can't even be bothered to check the details of a Canadian story in a Canadian magazine, how can we trust his other assertions to be correct?
It's disappointing, because he makes some interesting points and were he careful of his facts he could very well turn out to be a good journalist.
The Rideau runs from Ottawa to Kingston, and vice versa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rideau_Canal
And yes, they were in the canal.
" You don't become an enemy combatant by saying incendiary things. "
That's precisely the type of thinking that got those fourteen people killed. All the clues which identified Hasan as a jihadi terrorist were deliberately overlooked to satisfy political correctness. You are interpreting the First Amendment as a suicide note.
I'm not American, but if I were I'd gladly die protecting the First Amendment, yes.
Mark Steyn for Prime Minister!! FInally someone who is speaking out against the greatest evil of our time – “political correctness”. But he should not stand alone. All who share his beliefs have a duty to speak out at any opportunity. Dare to be the un-popular one at family gatherings or office parties or down at your neighbourhood watering hole. Speak up – it’s YOUR duty to the freedom we all cherish.
A woman told me that this story is all fake and that the so-called Major Hasan is made-up by a private secret agency.
If what she said is true, they would have promised him of millions $$$ and trained him. They promised him to be released after 3 years and that a death penalty will NEVER be discussed. The massacre made and end to his career, but his pockets are already full! One cannot imagine this, it all seems like a movie…but tens of pure innocent souls are lost in this game.
As a member of a cultural community (even if I don't like much this term) I feel impelled to say that ….. I totally agree with Mark Steyn on this one. I think political correctness nowadays is a weapon in the hands of a thought police that prevents people from expressing their ideas and, as they remain hidden, some of these ideas tend to become the seed for further radicalization (that is – the denial of any other alternative view). Unfortunatelly , as in a soccer match (ok, hockey match), real life events do the testing of these ideas (call it reality's reality check , if you will). I agree with Mr Steyn when he says that each and every view should get its airtime/ free expression and its proponents should be open to listening to the opposite view (or to common-sensers, who potentially can contextualize and put these views in perspective). Exposing bigoted, racist, prejudiced views would, in fact, help expose these views as the stupidity that they're proof of.
Way to go , Mr Steyn.
Two things about Maj. Hasan. First, he was not going overseas to kill Muslims. He is a doctor. He wouldn't even likely be carrying a weapon in the hospital wherever he was assigned. Doctors don't shoot people. Secondly, why did more people not blow the whistle on this guy? Easy. The Army is so concerned about prejudice since that is the bigger problem, that nobody is willing to put their career on the line and complain about a minority. The guy just never got into enough trouble for supervisors to act. If you aren't aware, there are different standards for minorities than the rest of the military. I am not talking about written standards, but an understanding that every supervisor has instilled into them regarding minorities…any minority. If a minority is up for promotion and you don't sign off on it, you better have a real good reason and doing poorly on exams and acting crazy aren't enough. The Army needs to look at itself, not the individuals who let this slide, cause they were just doing what the Army has always told them they wanted them to do at least in the last 30 years.
Hello Mark,
You have a right of free speech, but not one of ignorant speech. As a columnist and employee of a news magazine, you should be held to a standard. Your continuous display of ignorance about Islam, culture, and extremism displays, among other things, a large ego that requires self reflection. In your pursuit of humor and playing devil’s advocate, too often you take a simplified view of complex issues. A simple study of Islam reveals why it attracts more converts than any other religion today. You carelessly associate honor killings, female genital mutilation, misogyny, and extremism as facets of Islam. Don’t you realize that Islam was created in fact to end these types of curses?
I always love it when an author takes a terrible tragedy and loss of life, and uses it to push their own agenda! Being familiar with Steyn's shock-jockey tactics, I was eagerly waiting for the proof of his bias to show itself. I didn't have to wait long. The very first words in this article were all about the censure and criticism he was getting. Not sympathy for the victims or their families, not how this was a terrible tragedy that could have been prevented. Nope, it started with him and all the negative publicity he's been getting, and how it's political correctness that's to blame, not his style of journalism. The shootings at Fort Hood was merely the proof he was looking for. It's standard practice for right-wing loudmouths to claim that tolerant and liberal-minded people are the REAL bad guys, and Steyn is no stranger to self-victimization. It seems every article he writes involves a sense of persecution, but to go to this length… Was this article even about Fort Hood, Steyn? Or was this just some big cross for you to nail yourself to?