A Call For Slogans In Support Of Mark Steyn

From Covenant Zone:

The Covenant Zone bloggers will be demonstrating in support of Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine, and against the ludicrous operation of "human rights" law in this country, when Mark's hearing in front of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal kicks off, next Monday, June 2. We will meet at 8 AM in front of the Provincial Court House at 800 Hornby where, according to the BCHRT website, the hearing will take place.

We welcome all bloggers, readers, and informed and outraged citizens to join us. (Also: we will be discussing this tomorrow at our regular Thursday evening meeting in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, central branch, 7-9 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee - look for the blue scarves.)

Now since many people interested in this "trial" are not in the Vancouver area, we thought we would offer people a way of participating in our demonstration. We intend to carry signs and hand out leaflets.

The problem we have is how to communicate the current "human rights" travesty in some catchy phrases or slogans. This is an invitation to send us ideas. We want slogans and/or aphorisms or short statements that can appeal to ordinary citizens, to communicate something of the evil that will be unfolding in the court house to those who may not know what is going on. We want phrases that will be memorable, perhaps even one day historical.

Now of course we will only be communicating slogans with which we agree, for which we can take responsibility. Anyway, if you have a good idea, why not let us know. If we get suggestions, we'll put them in a later blog post.

My own take on what is happening to Mark Steyn and Maclean's is that they are being held up as (potential) sacrificial victims or scapegoats, in an attempt to sustain a post-national and imperialistic ideology, a "human rights" world view in which the potential scapegoat is anyone who makes too much noise about the direction of history, and about the freedom of citizens in once self-ruling nations to try and shape history in the cause of their shared freedom.

For the "human rights" crowd, Western freedom has become too risky, a potential source of global violence; and thus the "human rights" advocates seek to keep it under reigns. More generally, the "human rights" bureaucrats have come to the view that the normal in Western society is always a potential source of violence towards those they certify as marginal groups exposed to victimization by the normal.

Theirs is essentially a response to the Holocaust and the Nazis who corrupted the normal and all the professions in Germany to their violent ends. And yet, the post-Nazi "human rights" world view has in turn become an ideology that requires its own parade of victims. Somehow it has missed some key element to a proper understanding of the history of victimization and antisemitism. It has become what it purports to fight.

The "human rights" worldview is thus rightly the target of humourists like Steyn. Mark Steyn, as we all know, is something of an icon for a post-9/11 world, calling on Westerners and all free citizens to take ownership again of their nations, to fight against post-national and anti-national bureaucratic elites who, in institutions like the UN, the EU, the global media, the academy, and the Canadian "human rights" commissions take the view that the protection of the modern global order requires, among other things, all kinds of regulations against risky language, language that might "victimize" and inflame those at odds with modern civilization.

As a kind of appeasement or paying of blackmail the "human rights" world view is one where Western left-liberal opinion implicitly allies with those opposed to modern freedoms and feeds the resentful with victims, like Mark Steyn, or any icon of the normal, successful, wealthy, corporate, American, Israeli, Christian, etc., in a vain attempt to keep the peace.

They also ignore many of the gross human rights violations in non-Western countries, and make excuses for the persecution of women, Christians, gays, etc., according to a nihilistic code of cultural relativism.

Of course, no cult of human sacrifice - and quite frankly that is precisely what I take our "human rights" commisssions to have become - is ever satisfied: it always needs more victims.

Thus "We are all Mark Steyn." We individuals, we Canadian (and other nations') citizens who enjoy freedom and want the right to publish and listen to any and all ideas as we see fit, with only the proper limits of civil and criminal law, are all potential victims of the falsely-named "human rights" world view. "I am Mark Steyn" is our unifying slogan, the title for our handout. Let us know what we might put under that.

Thanks to all the Mark Steyns out there.

Some proposed slogans:

Any idea offends somebody.

Free speech shouldn't cost you.

You will be silenced next. More speech, not less.

All totalitarianisms limit free speech.

Offending someone is not a crime.

Talk isn't cheap anymore.

The truth hurts.

Steyn's speech informs. Yours is useless...