Buh-Bye Freedom of Thought and Speech – Criminalizing The First Amendment

“Hateful Words” Will Be Prosecutable

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will end you up in prison.

That’s what the Marxists in Congress have just rolled out with the disingenuously titled “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 1913)” that passed the Judiciary Committee on Thursday for a full House vote for passage next Wednesday.

In it, the Marxist tyrants have added gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability to the list of protected categories under federal hate crimes law which in essence will criminalize the First Amendment and make anyone speaking out against Homosexuality or whatever else the government lists – a Federal felon.

Think I exaggerate?  

During the Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, Congresscretin Sheila Jackson-Lee (S-Texas) said that people could be prosecuted for having a particular belief by stating: “We also need to protect those potential victims who may be the recipients of hateful words or hateful acts, or even violent acts.”

Every attempt made to get the Marxists to exempt religious belief and speech from the bill was rejected.  Every attempt to get the Marxists on the Committee  to define terms of ‘orientation’ that are ridiculously vague, was voted down.

The juggernaut of tyranny is overpowering our ability to analyze them at the rate they are firing them out of this regime in Washington.

But then perhaps that is the idea, to keep even those who are watching, so bewildered that by the time the really big tyrannical crap comes down – we are so tired and numb from the Marxist onslaught, one more affront just won’t seem to matter.

Just this evening it is coming to light that Obama and the Marxist regime is planning to ram nationalized Health Care down our necks next week – with little debate allowed and no ability to filibuster, or hold up the measure before passage.

But then this is how the Soviet Politburo and most governments under dictators operate.

Perhaps we have already arrived at an Obama Marxist dictatorship and we don’t realize it yet.

Matt Barber has some interesting thoughts on this.

As has proved to be true in both Europe and Canada, this Orwellian piece of legislation is the direct precursor to freedom killing and speech chilling “hate speech” laws. It represents a thinly veiled effort to ultimately silence – under penalty of law – morally, medically and biblically based opposition to the homosexual lifestyle.

…Under the 14th Amendment, victims of violent crime are currently afforded equal protection under the law regardless of sexual preference or proclivity. If passed, H.R. 1913 will change all that.  It overtly and, most likely, unconstitutionally discriminates against millions of Americans by granting federally preferred status, time and resources to individuals who define their identity based upon aberrant sexual behaviors (i.e., “gay” and lesbian “sexual orientation” or cross-dressing “gender identity”).
 
Of course, this entire concept flies in the face of the 14th Amendment. It inarguably codifies unequal protection under the law, creating a two-tiered justice system made up of first-class victims such as those who self-identify as homosexual or “transgender” and second-class victims such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, veterans, the homeless and others who choose not to engage in homosexual or cross-dressing behaviors.

…This creates both a sociopolitical and legal environment wherein traditional sexual morality officially becomes the new racism. Those who publically express medical, moral or religious opposition to the homosexual lifestyle are tagged by the government as “homophobic bigots” to be treated no differently by law enforcement, the courts or larger society than the KKK or neo-Nazis.

 
In short, this bill places newfangled “gay rights” in direct conflict with our enumerated constitutional rights. It becomes the first step in the official criminalization of Christianity. It’s a zero sum game and someone has to lose. Ultimately, what we lose are our First Amendment guaranteed rights to freedom of speech, religious expression and association.
 
But the threat is not just some shadowy phantom looming in the near future. It’s a clear and present danger. While debating the notion of “conspiracy to commit a hate crime” in the last Congress, Representative Artur Davis (D-Alabama) admitted that the legislation could be used to prosecute pastors for merely preaching the Bible under the concept of “inducement” to violence.

And some people have tried to excuse the DHS report on ‘Right Wing Extremism” to be a simple misunderstanding of this regimes intentions.

Right.  And Hitler never really hated Jews either.

Free Speech and Press Police

It’s a funny thing that so many folks cannot see the correlation between the erosion of God from our culture, and the rise of tyranny and opression of men to replace what was once liberty.

In recent years and months, the power of the State has been increased at home and abroad to silence opinions and dissent that go against the mainstream thought process guided by the arbiters of Political Correctness. We have been warning about the efforts to criminalize Christians who oppose the acceptance of sinful lifestyles; the push to make thoughts and motives not approved, illegal.

What is notable, is that the Islamic enemies of the West have studied and have discovered how to best defeat us: from within, using our own squeamish sensibilities against us.

Two recent situations have come to the fore regarding the efforts of government and lobbyists to silence the ideas and liberties of those who criticize Jihadists and Islam.

We’ve seen how beserk the Islamic world went over the publishing of cartoons critical of Islam in Denmark. Now, the Politically-correct enabling-of-Jihadist’s bureaucracy that makes up the Socialist regimes in Britian and Canada are demonstrating the efforts the state will take to silence those who dare cross the established lines of Political Correctness.

Recalling how Canada has made any negative comment about Homosexuality a Hate Crime – even in church, I gues we should find it no surprise that the same rule now applies to anyone making negative comments about Islam. But America should take note – because this very effort is now beginning to happen here too, albeit thusfar it’s in the courts. Just take a gander at what’s been been happening to radio talk host Michael Savage in his battle against CAIR.

Dead man writing

Up north, the Canadian Islamic Congress announced the other day that at least two of Canada’s “Human Rights Commissions” – one federal, one provincial – had agreed to hear their complaints that their “human rights” had been breached by this “flagrantly Islamophobic” excerpt from my book, as published in the country’s bestselling news magazine, Maclean’s. Several readers and various Canadian media outlets have enquired what my defense to the charges is. Here’s my answer:

I can defend myself if I have to. But I shouldn’t have to.

If the Canadian Islamic Congress wants to disagree with my book, fine. Join the club. But, if they want to criminalize it, nuts. That way lies madness. America Alone was a bestseller in Canada, made all the literary Top Ten hit parades, Number One at Amazon Canada, Number One on The National Post’s national bestseller list, Number One on various local sales charts from statist Quebec to cowboy Alberta, etc. I find it difficult to imagine that a Canadian “human rights” tribunal would rule that all those Canadians who bought the book were wrong and that it is beyond the bounds of acceptable (and legal) discourse in Canada.

As I say, I find it difficult to imagine. But not impossible. These “human rights” censors started with small fry – obscure websites, “homophobes” who made the mistake of writing letters to local newspapers or quoting the more robust chunks of Leviticus – and, because they got away with it, it now seems entirely reasonable for a Canadian pseudo-court to sit in judgment on the content of a mainstream magazine and put a big old “libel chill” over critical areas of public debate. The “progressive” left has grown accustomed to the regulation of speech, thinking it just a useful way of sticking it to Christian fundamentalists, right-wing columnists, and other despised groups. They don’t know they’re riding a tiger that in the end will devour them, too.

Lights Out Up North

Ezra Levant, my old boss at The Western Standard, has just (as I type) begun his grilling by the Alberta “Human Rights” Commission. He is charged with the “crime” of reprinting the Danish cartoons:

As a lawyer, I’ve been in different courts and tribunals, but I’ve never experienced a kangaroo court first-hand. I will have a more comprehensive report later today. In the meantime, I leave you with… the hand-scrawled complaint filed against the magazine by a radical, Saudi-trained imam who has publicly called for sharia law to be imposed in Canada…

And why shouldn’t he? He’s a member of the “Supreme Islamic Council of Canada”, and when the Supreme meets the chicken of the west’s one-way “multiculturalism” it’s no contest. No doubt some of the above “hate speech” is hurtful and dehumanizing and offensive, but that’s the point: The price of liberty is eternal offensiveness. There is a name for societies that successfully outlaw offensiveness from the public space: Totalitarian.

Nevertheless, in Maclean’s this week, there’s a fairly typical letter from an ever-so-reasonable reader, Lauren Demaree of Windsor, Ontario:

PLACING LIMITS on free speech is a slippery slope, but that is not the only issue in play here. There is often a fine line that is crossed between opinion and hate propaganda and our laws need to reflect this more effectively. Where do we draw the line…?

This is the future of “multiculturalism”: a society in which, in the interests of protecting the “collective rights” of various identity groups, individual rights are circumscribed and public discourse is ever more regulated by the state. Good luck making that work, Canada. The “Islamic Supreme Council of Canada” has your number.

Now despite the grilling by the Supreme Soviet – errr, I mean the “Human Rights Commission” – there are apparently SOME in Canada who have the fortitude and the guts to spit in the face of tyrants , and tell them where they can go. Too bad there are not more people like this guy – willing to risk it all to defy a tyrannical act of government: