Canadian Cincinnatus

Toronto Mayor John Tory attacks free speech

World-famous pick-up artist Roosh V is going to give a few lectures in Toronto on how to pick up women. Toronto Mayor John Tory took time out of his busy day of governing a city of 2.7 million people to tweet the following:

“While free speech is the law in this country, promoting violence against women is wrong.”

While we’re on the subject of free speech John, you know what? If you don’t support speech you disagree with, then you don’t really support the concept of free speech. There is also the concept of tolerance, something that you no doubt wholeheartedly profess to support. However, if you stop and think about it, the word ‘tolerance’ means tolerating things you don’t agree with. If you only tolerate things you agree with, then you aren’t really being tolerant, are you?

And if you are really into stopping those who promote violence against women, why don’t you crack down on all the Marxist professors proselytizing at the University of Toronto and York University? According to historians, communism killed about 100 million people in the 20^th century, give or take a few tens of million. Given that at least a few millions of these victims were women, you’ve got some real misogynists on your hands, especially as both universities lie within Toronto’s borders. But I’m guessing you won’t be doing that anytime soon.

Then Mr. Tory took more time out of his hectic day to tweet this:

“I am calling on those hosting this tour to do the right thing – cancel this show.”

You know what I am getting sick and tired of? Politicians who refuse to stay within the bounds of their job description. In the case of the City of Toronto and its Mayor, these duties are defined by the City of Toronto Act. The City of Toronto Act gives the City and its Mayor plenty to do: collect garbage, run the police force, inspect restaurants, maintain the fire department, clean the snow off the roads, and many other essential tasks. You know what isn’t on that list? Regulating the content of private meetings held on private property. Doing that isn’t part of your job, Mr. Tory. Instead, why not concentrate of providing the best municipal services you can while keeping the property taxes down? If you do that, and do it well, not only will you be re-elected, but you will also find that your day will be filled from morning to night with productive tasks.

So Mr. Mayor, I suggest you mind your own business and make sure my trash is picked up on time.

 

Of soccer games, HR departments and PC lynch mobs

When I was small, my parents told me stories about what it was like in the Soviet Union. One feature was that every workplace, every classroom had snitches. You could sometimes tell who they were and sometimes you couldn’t. As a standard practice, there were at least two snitches in each setting, each of whom didn’t know who the other was. That way, the authorities would know if somebody was withholding incriminating information on their classmates or co-workers. The purpose of this massive surveillance apparatus was, of course, to control speech.

Growing up in the seventies, the attitude with regard to speech couldn’t have been more opposite. Traditional prudery was dying while liberals were still running around quoting Voltaire’s famous dictum, “I may disagree with what you say but I defend with my life your right to say it.” At the time, I thought that speech codes this side of the Iron Curtain were forever impossible. Anybody who tried would be labelled a prude and run out of town on a rail.

That was then. In the ensuing decades I have watched with increasing horror as former Voltaire-quoting liberals transmogrified into the Thought Police. A revealing skirmish in the Culture War occurred just this Sunday in Toronto at a Toronto FC soccer game.

While a TV reporter was interviewing fans, she was heckled by other fans (likely drunk) who harassed her with crude, sexual comments. Instead of ignoring these taunts, the reporter confronted the goons directly with her camera and mike. Instead of backing down and apologizing, they doubled down and said even worse things. The video went viral and soon the instigators were forced to cancel their Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far, so good.

Now the troubling part: one of the foul-mouthed punks was found to work for Hydro One (a local power utility) and was fired from his (lucrative) job. Driving home from work, I heard a labour lawyer gleefully announce on the radio that just because you are not on the job, your employer has a right to hold you accountable for actions you take and words you utter in your spare time, even if it has nothing to do with your work. Huh? When did this happen? When did it become permissible for your employer to discipline you for things you said or did on your own time? It certainly wasn’t that way in the 70’s. Any Junior Gestapo type in the HR department who tried to censor your off-work speech would have been tarred and feathered. Hydro One has subsequently stated that the employee in question was fired because he had violated their ‘code of conduct’. So now employers have the right to enact ‘codes of conduct’ that cover what you do or say on your own time? Swell.

Keep in mind that the man in question was not a public representative of Hydro One (like a PR flack) nor was he doing anything related to his job or career, nor did he identify whom he worked for. While he knowingly made crude comments on TV, he never identified himself. This incident had no bearing whatsoever on his job, except for the fact that his employer made his personal business their business. All of this is corroborated by the fact that the Social Justice Warriors had to actively hunt down who he was and where he worked.

In the Toronto Sun twitter feed, there were many people who said things like “fire him, yeaaah!”, and “serves ‘im right”. I am sure that there were conservatives were among them. I have this to say to conservatives (and anybody else) who think this guy should be fired for violating old-fashioned notions of chivalry: you are a dupe. The social justice warriors have you bamboozled. This is because the reasons given by the witch hunters for firing this guy have nothing to do with gentlemanly codes of conduct towards the fairer sex. They justify their actions with concepts like ‘harassment in the workplace’ and ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘war on women’ and ‘safe spaces’. In short, they are employing the same ideas that they use to suppress free speech on university campuses.

Now clearly, the guy’s actions were wrong. So what should have been done? The cops say they are looking into the incident. I can see that he might violate some petty larceny-type misdemeanor offence like disturbing the peace or public drunkenness or indecent behaviour. Great. Then charge him and convict him and give him his $500 fine or 2 weeks in the local jail. And of course, his employer shouldn’t be any required to accommodate any incarceration time he may be awarded. But terminating somebody after his fair trial is over is different from destroying his career just because the mob is screaming mad over something he said.

The justification given to the empowerment of the HR thought police is that we want to create a ‘harassment free workplace’. This goal sounds good in theory, but in practice it means employees living in constant fear for their jobs lest they make some off-colour joke or say something that somebody subjectively determines to be harassing for obscure personal reasons. This destination looks a lot more like the Soviet Union and a lot less like the Voltairean 70’s. Who wants to work in a place like that?

Any liberty loving person should find these social and legal trends repulsive and should refuse to go along with the burn-the-witch mentality that is all too prevalent these days.

Je Suis Charlie

Why I’m OK with Spike Lee’s ‘racist’ rant

We usually complain about Political Correctness only when somebody on our side falls afoul of it. See here for instances in this regard, where I defended people on the ‘cultural right’. But Political Correctness is an evil regardless of whether it hurts the right or the left. Therefore, one is doing a disservice to cause of free speech by remaining silent when the truncheon of the PC Thought Police happens to crack the head of somebody on the other side. 

In this spirit I defend the black radical, left-wing filmmaker Spike Lee. Apparently Mr. Lee is exorcised by the fact that the hipsterification of Brooklyn is turning the corner of Brooklyn where he grew up white. Some people were upset by his comments:

‘What’s really bothering Lee is that he doesn’t like seeing his old neighborhood full of white people, which makes him historical detritus.’

Personally, I sympathize with this view of hipsters, and therefore, this interpretation of Spike Lee’s rant:

‘I’m sure the first reaction by a hipster or out of town gentrifier to Spike’s rant is “he’s racist”. He isn’t. He is specifically talking about hipsters; smug wannabe creative-type, gentrifying hipsters and yupsters who are trying to live upper class lives in working class neighborhoods. Sure New York is always changing – but this last decade’s hipster invasion has made the change too drastic; unfair to normal working families and young natives trying to live and work in the places they grew up; this does not just mean “black neighborhoods”.’

While I don’t know which version more accurately reflects Spike Lee’s mental state more accurately, let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that Time Magazine has a better read on his thoughts. Would he still be guilty of Thought Crime? 

By present day conventions, no doubt he is. But should he be?

I argue no.

Why?

Because the division of people between “us” and “them” is one of the most natural instincts people the world over possess. This is why the current predilection of labeling this instinct as a form of mental illness - i.e. ‘xenophobia’ - is really dumb. When you criminalize everyday thoughts, or classify them as mental illnesses (the way the Soviet Union did), all you do is turn ordinary people into law-breakers. This is always the end result of socialism, and make no mistake about it, Political Correctness is the tip of the socialist spear.

But, I hear you say, can’t this kind of talk lead to violence, riots, apartheid and pogroms?

Why yes it can.

So what do you say about that?

If you see a racial demagogue like Al Sharpton whipping up the crowd the way he did at Crown Heights or in front of Freddie’s Fashion Mart, call me. At that point I will stand beside you in condemning the act. But until then, I will just call it for what it is: somebody just expressing his personal opinion about something he doesn’t like.

But what, I hear you say again, would I say if the races were reversed, and it was a white person ranting about a neighbourhood turning black?

Same logic applies. When it is nothing more than an opinion expressed, then I stand with Voltaire when he said, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it.” But if it escalates to a KKK lynch mob, I will add my voice to yours in calling for federal troops.

Violence and incitements to violence is one thing, but if you can’t express you honest opinions anymore without fear of repercussions, then you aren’t living in the land of the free or the home of the brave any more.

A handy little compendium of thought-criminals

The Handleshaus blog has collected a list of individuals who have been “bullied and badgered, pressured and purged.” While many of them are on the right, more than a few are on the left and lot are simply apolitical victims of PC enforcers, who got blindsided and never know what hit them.

I have said it before but it bears repeating: one of the worst aspects of today’s intellectual climate is the eagerness with which people seek to win political and philosophical debates by trying to blacklist their opponents or get them fired. These days, it seems, not too many people have the same attitude towards their opponents that Thomas Jefferson had to his political enemies, as he expressed so eloquently in his First Inaugural Address:

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

While I am old enough to remember the seventies when liberals were fond of quoting Voltaire’s dictum, “I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," it is nevertheless true that most of the censoring and hectoring these days is done by left-wing thugs. In response to this, I have noticed one disconcerting trend among my fellow conservatives, that they apply Saul Alinsky’s Rule Number Four - “make the enemy live up to their own book of rules” - to their ideological enemies with a bit too much eagerness.

Personally, I am old fashioned enough to prefer Jefferson and Voltaire to a grubby acolyte of Al Capone, and believe free speech is a matter too important to be endangered by partisan score-settling. We need to start championing free speech, and that means for everybody, even our ideological enemies.