Abu Wabu

Ezra Levant's government interrogator and dhimmi collaborator Shirlene McGovern, who was Just Doing Her Job at the Islamofascist Whiners Commission of Al Bhurta, has apparently resigned from Levant's case:

The human rights commission advised my lawyer that McGovern quit because of the public backlash against the commission -- and against her in particular. In other words, she didn't like being called a censor in the blogosphere.

I'm not sympathetic. I believe that any government bureaucrat who makes a living interrogating citizens about their political beliefs ought to be held in public contempt. McGovern truly doesn't get it -- she thinks what she does for a living is perfectly bland, just like her.

As I wrote in the Globe last month, at my interrogation, McGovern wanted to make small talk and shake my hand. I upset her by not being complicit in my own prosecution.

In the future, I suggest that, if asked at cocktail parties, McGovern tell people she has a less disreputable job -- say, tax collector, or parking ticket issuer.

And here's Levant on denormalization:

By "denormalizing", I mean bringing the public's perception of these commissions in line with the awful facts about them. Denormalizing the commissions means demonstrating how they disrespect Canadian values, showing how they have become a sword, attacking human rights, rather than a shield protecting them.

These commissions aren't normal. It's not normal to haul publishers before the government to ask them about their political thoughts. It's not normal for a secular state to enforce a radical Muslim fatwa against cartoons. These human rights commissions are counterfeits; they improperly benefit from the reputation of real courts, but they also destroy respect for the whole legal system -- that's just what counterfeit currency does amidst real currency.

Levant proposes five steps on a legislator's list of steps toward guaranteeing freedom of speech, the final one being the ultimate goal:

5. Abolish both the commission and the tribunal.

That's the only permanent solution. There is no need for government censors in Canada. Nor is there any need for the other jobs of the commissions, which were meant as solutions to problems that are now largely obsolete. We already have labour law and employment law to deal with people fired for improper reasons. We already have landlord and tenant law to govern housing. These might have been issues forty years ago, but they're largely solved now, which is why the commissions have moved on to other, ignoble tasks, like persecuting pastors or censoring cartoons.
Far better for a government to abolish those commissions, and take those budgets and invest them in civics programs -- teaching Canadians, especially new immigrants, about the most precious and valuable human rights around, the ones we have inherited from 800 years of tradition in the free west. It is not a coincidence that the two recent complaints against free speech were filed by radical Muslim immigrants from Egypt and Pakistan. Basic civics classes -- not partisan political indoctrination, but a basic primer in the rule of law; fundamental freedoms; the equality of men and women; non-violent solutions to problems, etc.

A week ago, I would have thought that this last option would have been politically impossible. But, given the overwhelming support I have received from the general public -- and the positive reception from even liberal and many left-wing commenters -- I think that an abolition of the commissions and their tribunals would be well-received.

Levant's approach to Canadian values and freedoms is immoveable: they are not open to negotiation or watering down so as to accomodate other values that are inherently un-Canadian; that's what this whole fight is about, and it begins and rides on freedom of speech and expression.

The difference between the United States and Canadian Constitutions and Bills of Rights is that the American founding fathers defined the fundamental freedoms as having been conferred upon man by God, an irreducible point. The Canadian version calls for "peace, order and good government," leaving the question of who decides that from day to day open to interpretation.

My freedoms are not "open to interpretation."