{"id":147,"date":"2002-10-05T10:16:57","date_gmt":"2002-10-05T14:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=147"},"modified":"2002-10-05T10:16:57","modified_gmt":"2002-10-05T14:16:57","slug":"hate-speech-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Hate Speech in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian Customs seems to believe<\/a> that pamphlets entitled “A Moral Defense of Israel”<\/a> may constitute “obscenity or hate-propaganda.” These were to be distributed for a lecture by the noted obscene hate-speakers at the Ayn Rand Institute. <\/p>\n

Of course it is impossibly stupid to confiscate this particular pamphlet, even according to the Customs guidelines, which say, according to the National Post<\/span> story, “that ‘full recognition should be given to freedom of expression’ and goods that may constitute hate propaganda will not be classified, for example, if they express a religious opinion in good faith or are discussing a matter of public interest.” Surely Israel’s right to exist constitutes a matter of public interest. The Customs officials finally released the pamphlets<\/a>, after three days. But the real evil is the guidelines — the idea that someone can decide what constitutes “hate speech” in the first place — not the particular stupidity.<\/p>\n

Silver Lining Dept.: I wouldn’t be surprised if this incident prompts a public reconsideration of “hate speech” statutes, simply because of its monumental idiocy. Hard cases often make bad law, and easy cases sometimes make good law, for similar reasons.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Arthur Silber<\/a> for pointing out this horror.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian Customs seems to believe that pamphlets entitled “A Moral Defense of Israel” may constitute “obscenity or hate-propaganda.” These were to be distributed for a lecture by the noted obscene hate-speakers at the Ayn Rand Institute. Of course it is impossibly stupid to confiscate this particular pamphlet, even according to the Customs guidelines, which say, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}