Silly Little Country

Ezra on Lynch's Silly and Pernicious Speech

I posted earlier on Mark Steyn's response to a rather silly speech delivered by Jennifer Lynch to CASHRA at one of their recent festive gatherings.
Ezra decides to invest the energy in a rather detailed fisking of her transcript., leaving it in tatters, and exposing exactly what a bureaucratic mentality appears to dominate her 'thinking'.

One excellent section exposing how seriously off some of her notions are:
I know what “chill” means. Chill means that if you are a publisher and print some Danish cartoons of Mohammed, some HRC will prosecute you for 900 days, with fifteen government bureaucrats and lawyers, and you’ll spend $100,000 in legal fees even if you eventually win. That’s chill.
Chill is not a critical letter to the editor, or someone cancelling their subscription, or someone calling you an idiot. That’s part of the fun of being in the public square – and part of democracy.
Lynch dares to equate the real chill or prosecution, fines, legal fees and the stigma of a government agency deeming you to be a “hatemonger” with the “chill” of having your foolish ideas criticized in some far corner of the Internet.
Can’t you see how these people despise freedom?
Ironically, those who are claiming that human rights commission’s jurisdiction over hate speech is “chilling” to freedom of expression, have successfully created their own reverse chill.

The reverse chill! I love it!
Critics of the human rights system are manipulating and misrepresenting information to further a new agenda: one that posits that human rights commissions and tribunals no longer serve a useful purpose.

Lynch has shown in this speech that she’s no slouch when it comes to manipulating and misrepresenting the facts. But that’s the thing about liars like her – they’re easy to rebut and discredit.

The impression I get from this fisking is that our commissioner is not mature enough to hold a job of this seniority that exposes her to any public debate.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:48 AM