We need hate speech like food needs spice

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Mar 21

RE: Are we doing enough to stop hate from winning in Canada?  Another tedious op-ed piece in the Hamilton Spectator 18 Mar 21.

Image a world in which all that was allowed to be said and only those who were allowed to speak were decided by Paul Berton.  This living hell is what Mohamed Fakih wishes upon Canada!  And he wishes it because of a personal problem he has with a particular native-born Canadian.

This fellow took extreme exception to Mr. Fakih’s heritage, and expressed himself in ways that fell far short of Canadian standards of niceness.  Mr. Fakih sued, won judgement, and – surprise - has yet to collect.  Suddenly, this is Canada’s problem.  Fakih’s experience means that all Canada has a problem with hate speech, and Canada has to fix it.  (Here Fakih implicitly accepts his opponent’s basic premise that there are no individuals, only categories of people.  His opponent is representative of all white Canadians.)

So far as the effectiveness of the civil courts go, welcome to Canada!  But the business of controlling speech because someone might say something a sensitive person might regard as hateful, well, the cure is worse than that disease.  A predicable drone that bores nearly everyone ultimately results.  Viz, liberal talk radio.  Viz a certain newspaper!

Speech police already regard Catholic teaching as homophobic.  There are passages from the holy scripts of Islam that, coming from the lips of an Imam, might sound like hate speech, especially to Jews.  So, be careful about what you wish for.  Your side won’t always hold sway.

Tolerating hate speech is better than controlling speech because somebody has to decide what wrongspeech is.  Cancel culture exists because we’re already too far into controlling speech.  One day, it could be someone like me who has the power to decide who gets cancelled!

-30-