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-Land of the Free |
Mark Steyn: Bray New World |
2017-11-10 |
It is a testament to the wholesale moronization of our culture that there are gazillions of apparently sane people willing to take out six figures of debt they'll be paying off for decades for the privilege of being "taught" by the likes of Professor Bray. The reason "we don't look back at the Weimar Republic today and celebrate them for allowing Nazis to have their free-speech rights" is because they didn't. A decade ago, as my battles with Canada's "human rights" commissions were beginning, I lost count of the number of bien-pensants insisting that, while in theory we could permit hatemongers like Steyn to exercise their free-speech rights, next thing you know it would be jackboots on the 401. As I said way back when:"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's why "we don't look back at the Weimar Republic". If you're rube enough to sign up for Professor Bray's classes, here's more, from my book on free speech, Lights Out (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available at the Steyn store). On page 250 I write: This argument is offered routinely: If only there'd been "reasonable limits on the expression of hatred" seventy years ago, the Holocaust might have been prevented. Pick almost any leading Nazi propagandist of the Weimar era: Josef Goebbels? Theodor Fritsch? Both were prosecuted for anti-Semitism. You didn't have to threaten to kill the Jews: The publication of the statement "The Jews are our misfortune" was forbidden by court order. Der Sturmer was prosecuted dozens of times and just plain seized and destroyed on another dozen occasions. Its publisher Julius Streicher was twice gaoled. Read the whole thing at the link |
Posted by:badanov |
#2 I lost a lot of respect for Canada when they chased Steyn out. But a nice reminder that anything with "Human Rights" or "People's Democratic Republic" in the name isn't what it sounds like. |
Posted by: SteveS 2017-11-10 13:22 |
#1 Mark Steyn 2016 Melbourne - Freedom of Speech |
Posted by: Woodrow 2017-11-10 04:24 |