From time to time I brood that the media have not been giving enough coverage to the existence and operation of Victoria's laws which attempt to enforce Racial and Religious Tolerance. But I've concluded that the mainstream is not greatly interested in the topic.
I do wonder, though, how we ever managed for all those years without laws against "Hate Speech", and other "Hate Crimes"... These notions have been cooked up by a cozy cabal of legal and social-science academics, the sinecured sentimentalists who staff the multicultural and anti-discrimination industries, and the duffers we have installed in Spring Street. I am yet to be convinced that they are any improvement on the old, and much-breached, ideal of "good manners" (contravention of which did not put you in danger of prison). I prefer laws enacted by goverments to be wise and limited regulations responding to genuine social reality.
"Hate Speech" laws are an infamous deployment of State Power by one side in the Culture Wars, which are being fought between factions of the limited section of the population which has ideological commitments, or at least some interest in ideas. (This is why the debate has not really caught on in the mainstream media, but is raging on the internet.) "Hate Speech" laws will never be used evenhandedly, but always in the interest of one side and their fellow-travellers against the other. The attempt to prove that religious "vilification" has really occured will always be a subjective shambles - one that we should spare our hard-working judges.
For a positive Christian perspective on this shonky law, see Professor Gary Bouma's article in Online Opinion.
I do wonder, though, how we ever managed for all those years without laws against "Hate Speech", and other "Hate Crimes"... These notions have been cooked up by a cozy cabal of legal and social-science academics, the sinecured sentimentalists who staff the multicultural and anti-discrimination industries, and the duffers we have installed in Spring Street. I am yet to be convinced that they are any improvement on the old, and much-breached, ideal of "good manners" (contravention of which did not put you in danger of prison). I prefer laws enacted by goverments to be wise and limited regulations responding to genuine social reality.
"Hate Speech" laws are an infamous deployment of State Power by one side in the Culture Wars, which are being fought between factions of the limited section of the population which has ideological commitments, or at least some interest in ideas. (This is why the debate has not really caught on in the mainstream media, but is raging on the internet.) "Hate Speech" laws will never be used evenhandedly, but always in the interest of one side and their fellow-travellers against the other. The attempt to prove that religious "vilification" has really occured will always be a subjective shambles - one that we should spare our hard-working judges.
For a positive Christian perspective on this shonky law, see Professor Gary Bouma's article in Online Opinion.
