Quotable quotes from the wonderful world of free speechers ... Part Ten

  Ezra   Levant ... the grand daddy of them all. 
I would have liked to browse through Levant's books for more quotes .... but found so much at his blogs (second link above).  I am sure I will find enough material for many more posts similar to this one, at a later date.


"Either we believe in the Criminal Code or we don't. Either we believe in non-violence or we don't. Either we believe in the equality of men and women or we don't.Either we believe that everyone is protected by the law — that no one is above it because they're a Muslim man, and no one is below it because they're a Muslim woman — or we don't."

"Hate is a natural human emotion, as much as love or sorrow, and it often accompanies those other two."

"We allow offensive people because we believe in freedom — and today’s hated idea may be tomorrow’s wisdom."

"The debates revealed Obama as a lightweight. But they also revealed that for four years, the mainstream media has covered up that fact."

"Hate speech laws, both in the criminal code and the human rights commissions, are applied arbitrarily and don't deal with real threats to real rights."

"But hate laws aren't really about hate.
They're about abusing and stretching the criminal code to criminalize political dissidents. And, for whatever reason, radical Islam has been granted a special exemption by the arbiters of political correctness."

"Defamation law has evolved through 400 years of legislation and litigation, and is an essential part of our British legal tradition. It strikes a balance between the rights of plaintiffs to protect their reputations and the rights of defendants to criticize those reputations (and the rights of the public to hear different points of view)."

"Offensive and anti-Semitic free speech didn't kill the Jews during the Holocaust. Murderous men did, and they only did when real rights and freedoms were destroyed -- the right to property; the right to life; the right to equality before the law; mobility rights; freedom of religion; freedom of association. Violent acts killed the Jews, not "feelings" of "contempt"."

"What a strange place Canada is in 2008, where the police care more about human rights than the human rights commissions do, where fundamentalist Muslims use hate-speech laws drafted by secular Jews, and where a government bureaucrat can interrogate a publisher for 90 minutes, and be shocked when he won't shake her hand in greeting."

"My crime was having illegal thoughts about poltiical and religious subjects."

"These commissions are staffed by commissioners appointed by their respective governments. To date, they have made appointments from the same stale pool of leftist activists -- people who view the commissions as political weapons."

"The logical conclusion of denying the legitimacy of the commission was to demand its worst. The point of civil disobedience is not to get off scot-free, but to willingly accept the punishments of an unjust system, to shame that system into reform."

"Why would my intentions as publisher be relevant in determining whether or not the publication was illegal? The answer is that these "human rights" commissions are interested in what George Orwell called "thought crimes". If my thoughts were pure, the publication might receive their blessing. If my thoughts were impure, the very same publication would be banned. It's worse than a limit on freedom of expression -- which is when you say or print what's on your mind. It's a test of what's on your mind itself -- a limit on freedom of thought."

"If you don't pay attention, you might not even realize that freedoms are being eroded."

Parts of  his Statement to the draconian Canadian HRC

"I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats “the commission” or “the hrc”, since to call the commission a “human rights commission” is to destroy the meaning of those words."

"For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values."

"I have no faith in this farcical commission. But I do have faith in the justice and good sense of my fellow Albertans and Canadians. I believe that the better they understand this case, the more shocked they will be. I am here under your compulsion to answer the commission’s questions. But it is not I who am on trial: it is the freedom of all Canadians."

On a Greenpeace issue:
"Hudema said two things that still have my head shaking.
He said the oilsands "feed our addiction to oil."
As in, people use oil because the oilsands supplies it. As in, if the oilsands weren't there, people wouldn't be driving."

"Hudema's second whopper was more of a confession: Greenpeace doesn't have a clue of how to run the world without oil.....
....Greenpeace is good at getting attention, because stunts and crimes make headlines.
But scratch beneath the surface and they really have no clue about how to get the world off oil. They just want the world to buy it from OPEC rather than Canada."