Ann Coulter

Greetings everyone. I hope everyone had an enjoyable St. Patrick’s Day. Wednesday St. Patties days are tough, because there are still two days of work left. You know the people I feel for? The people who are actually sick on March 18th and have to call in to work that they won’t be in. Employee “Hello, I’m sick and won’t be in today”. Boss: “Really, the green beer flu?” I work with a girl who came into work legitimately sick on the 18th, because she didn’t want to call in sick on St. Patrick’s day.

American conservative best-selling author and columnist Ann Coulter has been on a limited speaking tour in Canada this past week. She had stops in London Ontario, Ottawa, and a couple days ago in Calgary. For those not familiar with Coulter, she is a very polarizing figure in the United States as she has viewpoints that are far right on the political spectrum. A couple of her books are entitled “Treason” and “How to Talk to a Liberal if you Must”. Her vitriol towards Muslims is well documented; as she has referred to them as “Ragheads” on occasion and made statements such as “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”. Naturally, her appearances have been met with protests in her three stops; although her Ottawa speech was cancelled because of security concerns about a reported threat to Coulter’s safety.

Ann Coulter, as a topic instead of person, is very interesting to observe with regards to free speech. For one thing, the head organizer of the Ottawa speech warned Coulter about her speech largely because, unlike the United States, free speech is not guaranteed in the same way in Canada. This surprised Coulter and naturally she was quite defensive as she is one of many people (on both sides of the political spectrum) that pushes the concept of free speech in the United States to its limit. In Canada however, the Human Rights Commission can charge someone with hate speech quite easily, and have shown in the past they are quick to do so. I believe that the speech organizer in Ottawa, at least, had Coulter’s best interests in mind.

The reason why is the case of Mark Steyn; a conservative, articulate columnist who often writes for MacLeans magazine. One of his key talking points in recent years has been the demographic challenges Western society faces (in particular Western European nations) with regards to low birth rates and immigration. Western European nations value their social democratic systems and are quite liberal in their policies and ideals. However, to make up for declining birthrates they turn to immigration primarily from Muslim countries in North Africa. Muslim birthrates are much higher than the Western European birthrates. Steyn’s concern, in my opinion a valid one, is that the Islam religion does not lend itself to a secularized society with liberal ideals, and if these demographic trends continue the fabric of the social democratic system the Western European’s hold dear is in jeopardy.

When Steyn wrote an article in MacLeans about this issue, he was charged under the Canadian Human Rights Commission as inciting hate speech and he was able to be charged in any jurisdiction in Canada (which by no coincidence was our most liberal jurisdiction – British Columbia). Steyn’s article was FAR less inflammatory than what Coulter often speaks and writes about. I will not be surprised if she gets a charge laid on her based on something she said in one of her speaking engagements.
I quite frankly have a problem with how some of my fellow Canadians behaved during this brief tour. She is not in any kind of position of power in the United States, let alone Canada, and yet she has threats made on her life based only on her often controversial viewpoints. This sounds strangely familiar to Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks getting death threats after her comments about George Bush in 2003 and Dutch talk show host Theo van Gogh being killed in the streets of Amsterdam because of his opinions on Muslims in the Netherlands. Although I disagree with 90% of what Ann Coulter says, I choose not to support her by not buying her books, or reading anything she writes.

Cheers, and have a great weekend.