Gem of the Week: Oh Canada, What A-Houles You Are!

University of Ottawa's Francois Houle

Conservative columnist and best-selling author, Ann Coulter is visiting Canada this week where she is scheduled to speak at three universities. (Boy, I hope they’re paying her a lot of money for that!)  However, before she even got off the plane, a senior University of Ottawa administrator warned her to use “restraint, respect and consideration” when speaking at the school.  In an email to Ann, Academic provost and all-around douche-bag, Francois Houle, wrote:  “Our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or ‘free speech’) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here… Promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges… I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.”  He said some other things too, but I don’t want to offend the sensibilities of average Americans.  By the way, I wonder to how many Jihad-chanting Muslim speakers he sent that kind of an email before they arrived on campus to speak.

Anyway, it’s all good because Ann, being smarter than your average college guest-speaker and infinitely smarter than the liberal provost of some third-rate Canadian university, has turned the tables and is claiming that the provost, by his email, targeted her as a member of an identifiable group, namely conservatives, and as such she will be filing a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging that she is now the victim of hate speech.  Go Ann!

When jackasses like the University of Ottawa provost are able to wield a criminal statute like a martinet school master would a yardstick, any kind of insanity can ensue.  But should we expect anything less from a university administrator in the age of political correctness?  In addition to the liberal bias that is rampant across college campuses in the U.S. and Canada, this incident points out the utter absurdity of the Canadian “hate speech” law, and, for that matter, any laws that would attempt to criminalize speech.  And yet, this Kafkaesque theater of the absurd is precisely what Liberal-Progressive ideas about how to create a politically correct society inevitably lead to.

Well, thank God the Progressives in America have yet to accomplish this item on their agenda (though given the swift and corrupt process by which they rammed healthcare into law anything could happen!)  Until then, I will continue to exercise my right to free speech and, to prove the point, with all due restraint and respect, I cordially invite the University of Ottawa provost and every other French-speaking Canadian to suck frozen moose cock.

For related posts on this topic, link to:

https://culturecrusader.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/why-i-love-ann-coulter/

https://culturecrusader.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/gem-of-the-week-2/

Gem of the Week: Porn Exchange

As a publicity stunt, it seems a cabal of Godless young enterprisers at the University of Texas at San Antonio are offering their fellow students porn in exchange for their bibles.  According to the student atheist group, pornography is no worse than the text of the Bible, so why not do a fair exchange?  Well, not to get too technical, but the standard dictionary definition of pornography is: “films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and intended to cause sexual arousal.” (Emphasis added.)  While there appear to be arguments out there (way out there) that the Bible contains some passages that could be interpreted as slightly suggestive (eg., The Old Testament’s Song of Solomon), one can hardly seriously argue that these rise to the level of sexual explicitness intending to cause arousal.  Or to put it another way, if you’re reaching for the Bible to get your jollies, you’re pretty pathetic.

At any rate, there is nothing novel about yet another group of self-important college students employing sophomoric shock tactics to seek attention.  However, what is news is the school’s reaction to the event.  When asked for comment, school officials mildly replied that the atheist group is perfectly within its legal rights to conduct the swap.  According to University Spokesman David Gabler: “As long as students are not violating laws or violating the Constitution, they have the freedom of speech and assembly.”  He elaborated, “We are a marketplace of free ideas here at UTSA, and our students have all constitutional rights afforded to all individuals in the United States.”

Well isn’t that nice.  Apparently, the school is not the least bit scandalized by any of this.    At a time when colleges seem to think of every reason under the sun why a conservative group cannot have this or that speaker appear on campus, how refreshing it is to see the open-minded University of Texas officials suddenly standing up for free speech and assembly in the marketplace of ideas.  Given this new laissez-faire approach, one wonders if they would be quite so accommodating of other groups employing similarly obscene tactics.  Suppose a Christian student group decided to do a Bible for Quran exchange?  What if a white supremacist student group offered an exchange of Hitler’s Mein Kampf for copies of the Torah?  Or an even greater sacrilege: an exchange of Mein Kampf for Barrack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.  Would the liberal thinking administrators of the University of Texas still be so tepidly neutral?

Our rights are guaranteed under the Constitution and are there for our protection, not for our abuse.  On the spectrum of bad examples the school could set for its students, the only thing worse than condoning the abuse of a right (in this case free speech), is the picking and choosing of when and for whom a right applies, and when and for whom it does not.  And that is nothing short of obscene.

For a related post, link to:

https://culturecrusader.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/gem-of-the-week-oh-canada-what-a-houles-you-are/