HATE LAWS SHOULD STILL TOP HEADLINES
By Harmony Grant
15 Jan 08
Hate crime laws haven’t gone away. There’s no more
dangerous threat to America 's freedom. In this busy election year
we may not hear much, but this battle is far from over. Just ask Ezra
Levant—the defiant Canadian publisher who printed cartoons depicting
the prophet Mohammed.
A Muslim imam filed a compliant with a Canadian human rights tribunal
and Levant was forced before a government agent for interrogation.
He was told not to record the meeting but did so anyway. Watch
Levant’s interrogation by a Commission officer on YouTube.
It’s an astonishing film. In a quiet office across a desk—as
if this were a civilized act—the government agent asks Levant
his intentions behind publishing the cartoon. Levant asked whether
a certain intent would be illegal. The agent was evasive.
You have to love Levant ’s response. He said he published the
cartoon to exercise his inalienable right “as a freeborn Albertan
to publish whatever the h--l we want no matter what the h--l you think…The
only thing I have to say to the government about why I published it
is cuz it’s my bloody right to do so,” Levant said, “And
it’s my right to do so for reasonable intentions and it’s
my right to do so for extremely unreasonable purposes.”
Levant refuses to concede that his political beliefs affect the legality
of an action. It’s “hunting for a thought crime.” He’s
right.
Levant ’s firm, eloquent response is worth watching. “I
reserve the right to publish it for whatever offensive reasons I want,” he
said. “I’m not a racist. I’m not anti-Muslim. But
I have the right to publish cartoons even if I am informed by racist
sentiments…That is my right. And I will not minimize my reasons
so that they’re palatable.” It’s a manly performance.
Many Westerners naively believe they enjoy an inalienable right to
free speech. Inalienable means it can’t be taken away. But freedom
of speech can very well be taken away. It’s a liberty fragile
as eggshells. It’s a miracle we’ve enjoyed it this long
as a nation. Freedom of speech is currently under assault by (primarily
Jewish) thought police like the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai
B’rith, architect of hate crime laws. The cases of speech silencing
just keep stacking up.
We’re not talking about Stalinist Russia or Saudi Arabia .
We’re talking Canada , England , Pennsylvania ! Fierce attempts
to silence politically incorrect beliefs—especially those of
conservative religious believers, most importantly Christians—are
finding scary success.
Government: “I’ll Tell You What
to Feel”
In the Vancouver Sun, Douglas Todd pens an article ridiculously titled “An
Object Lesson in free speech and democracy”. His article
describes a controversy over a statement—“I hate homosexuality”—by
a prominent Sikh religious leader. People called for the Sikh to
be prosecuted for a hate crime. No, Todd says calmly. The leader
could only be prosecuted if he said, “I hate homosexuals.” Oh,
thanks for the clarity. It’s good to know what emotions you’re
allowed.
Todd says the leader’s honesty about his hatred is helpful—now
we can fight Sikh “homophobia” and the stupid moralism
of immigrants who might make Canada more conservative. Todd closes
by saying it’s false that traditional conservative immigrants
could “be causing British Columbians to lose their reputation
as laid-back, freedom-loving liberals.” Wake up, dude. You Canadians
aren’t losing your image as “laid-back, freedom-loving
liberals” because of the morals of your immigrants. It’s
the Big Brother policies of your government!
National Review published a great
piece by law professor David Bernstein about these Big Brother
statutes. He reports, “The Canadian supreme court recently
turned down an appeal by a Christian minister convicted of inciting
hatred against Muslims. An Ontario appellate court had found that
the minister did not intentionally incite hatred but was properly
convicted for being willfully blind to the effects of his actions…”
Bernstein quotes a Canadian professor of law who observes, " Canada
now is a totalitarian theocracy. I see this as a country ruled today
by what I would describe as a secular state religion [of political
correctness]. Anything that is regarded as heresy or blasphemy is not
tolerated."
They’re having the same trouble in England . The Catholic
News Service reports the defeat of a bill to protect freedom
of speech for British Christians. The lawmaker who proposed the bill
said he could name "many occasions on which leading church people
have been visited, telephoned or placed under scrutiny by the police
for sermons that they have given in their churches."
Americans! Christians! We are not doing enough!
Convincing the public of the danger of hate and speech crime laws
should be a top educational priority for every Christian organization.
It is not enough to howl in the last week before a hate bill gets passed.
The Christian community has displayed astounding dullness in her response
to hate crime and speech crime legislation over the last decades. For
that reason, most states now have hate crime laws on their books. And
the federal government—both House and Senate—passed the
federal hate bill last year. It was defeated only by the purest grace
of God. (See, Who
Defeated the Hate Bill?)
Fleeing the Pharisees Again
Why is there so much silence? Why isn’t this issue a screaming
headline for Christians in the West? It has something to do with who’s
behind hate crime laws.
The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith—a purely
Jewish organization—designed these laws, which are supported
and spearheaded by Jewish groups. Jewish leaders don’t even deny
this. New Jersey just passed hate crime legislation and the New
Jersey Jewish News says unabashedly that it was passed after support
from key Jewish leaders.
Evangelical Christians are in love with Jews, Judaism, and Israel —and
in bondage to them. Full of guilty pathos over imagined failure to
prevent persecution of Jews during WW2 and fueled by false definitions
of how to “bless God’s chosen people,” most evangelicals
are more likely to win the lottery than to think straight about Israel
.
I believe Christians also fail to effectively resist because they
have allowed themselves to be put on the defensive. Big media relentlessly
portrays Jewish and ultra-liberal “civil liberties” groups
as defending a “free America ” and basic democracy. Religious
groups—particularly fundamentalist Christians—are portrayed
as threats, not safeguards, to American freedoms. (That would be news
to the Bible-believing Founding Fathers who said American liberty depends on Christian faith.)
Christians increasingly face an intellectual battlefield loaded against
them because they don’t battle Jewish/leftist supremacism but “secularism.” That’s
the problem. Religious Jews who want to shut up Christians and get
every cross out of public view aren’t admitting their motives.
They masquerade as secularists defending a “free and open society.” Because
evangelicals are unwilling to even glance at the true religious motivations
and beliefs of religious Jews, they can’t defeat this false premise.
Christians refuse to examine their fantastically idealized view of
Jews as “God’s chosen people,” full of benign intentions
to live peacefully in the “ Holy Land .” They refuse to
think clearly about Talmudic Judaism, which continues to be self-defined
by opposition to Christ.
Believers have lost so much political ground and moral courage—how
do we expect to go on the offense against speech restrictions? We don’t
even proudly use the freedom we have. When Ann Coulter said Jews should
be perfected by accepting Christ, she was stating a kindergarten level
premise of Christianity. Every warm body in a church pew knows this—we
all, Jew and gentile, must become spiritually perfected through self-denying
faith in Christ. But it was hard to find any Christians willing to
firmly defend Coulter’s right to state that truth. The few spirited
defenses were from renegade Jews who oppose their community’s
attack on Christian speech. Christians were silent, frozen by fear
of offending Jews.
This is probably the most ancient form of Christ-denial: It started
from the very moment Jewish leaders first tried to kill Jesus. People
deserted Him. In the Garden, the disciples fled the jack-booted Pharisees
with their Roman soldiers. The first Christians were Jews. The first
Christian-killers were also Jews. That’s history. Gentile believers
must now decide which Jews to follow—the Son of David, Son of
God, Jesus Christ, and the self-denying followers who paid with their
blood for His gift of life? Or the unbelieving Jews whose kingdom was
of this world, who killed their Creator before they would give up their
own power and religious control for His sake?
Evangelicals will pay a social and political price if they speak
the truth about hate speech laws and their Jewish creators. They will
pay a price if they boldly preach the exclusive message of Jesus’ salvation.
But with the way things are going, they may end up in jail cells either
way. Long-term, Christians have relatively little to lose and everything
to gain by replacing fantasy about the Jews with truth.
Harmony Grant writes and edits for National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog group.
Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they
have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal
it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate
Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase
this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at www.truthtellers.org for
$24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this
topic. Call (503) 631-3808.
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas,
OR 97015
