h Sh News

6 - Friday, June 11, 19

CVNG OF THO BENCHTS FROIN candle uT BUYING PUROLATOR...

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AMl hail pleasantness

HE PARTY of perennial pleas- antmess and other socialist hypocrisies is bent on making agreeability the law. Amendments to the Human Rights Act introduced recently by Multiculturalism and Human Rights Minister Anita Hagen

would make it an offence to publish any.

Statement that ‘indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate’ against a person or group or class of persons, or is “likely to expose’? aforementioned people .to “hatred and contempt’? based on ‘‘race, color, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age”?

-The intent, of course, is to rid the land of right-wing extremist bile. But such ill- conceived’ amendments, which expand original legislation covering ‘signs and

Speaking up on behalf of innocence

symbols to include statements and publica- tion, will limit everyone’s right to express opinion freely. ;

This assault on free expression, however, |

should be of little surprise to those famil- iar with B.C. NDP dogma. Democratic in- stitutions, you see, are not high on the list of NDP priorities. Nor is democracy itself. : The authors of such legislative bosh do not credit the public with the wit to tell nonsense from good sense. :

Government knows best is the NDP phi- losophy. And the NDP government believes that if you have nothing nice to say you should aot be allowed to say any- thing. And if you do, you should be in jail. Where avyone with a passionate and non-NDP point of view wiil soon:be if the phoney do-gocders in Victoria have their way. All hail pleasantness. i

Feet hei g wb

Dear Editor: On Friday, May 28 at about “1:15 p.m. my four-year-old daughter and I were on the 15th Street bus headed downtown.

At. the back of the bus, a few seats away from us, three teen- aged ‘‘wannabes’’ were attempting to demonstrate (quite audibly) how many ‘times they could use the same. piece of profanity in various different contexts.

I.sat, feeling grateful that my

daughter was still young and oblivious to the rot coming from the young men’s mouths and wondering just. how long in- nocence can be protected in to- day’s world where freedom of ex- pression is placed above decency and morality,

When the gentlemen spoke up from behind us and asked the crude-mouths to curb it (on behalf of the children on the bus), I was so taken off guard that. I

didn’t even think to say ‘“‘thank you.””

1 wish J had. I now realize just how heartening it is to know that chivalry may still be found even in our self-centered society, and that

some people are still daring enough to speak up on the behalf of innocence and purity.

Thank you. .

Kate Goetz North Vancouver

Publisher. ... ... .. . Peter Speck Managing Editor . .. Timothy Renshaw Associate Editor . Noel Wright Sales & Marketing Director. Linda Stewart Comptroller .... Doug Foot

North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independen! suburban newspaper and qualified under Scnedule 111, Paragrapn Ill of the Excise Tax Act, is oualished each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by Noith Shore Free Press Lid. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 0087238. Mailing rates avatlabie on request. Submissions are welcome but we cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited malenal including manuscupls and pictures whicn should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed envelope.

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speec!

ANY LINGERING doubts about the totalitarian leanings ef the Harcourt government were dispelied this week with its introduction of Bill 33 to muzzle the media.

Seems that recent Equity maga- zine cover carrying a doctored photo of Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark in military dictators’ uniforms may not have been so far off the mark after all.

All the pious platitudes by Education Minister Anita Hagen about ‘‘fighting hate groups’’ and “clamping down on hate litera- ture’ can’t disguise the basic in- tent of the new draft law — to gag freedom of speech in the media and other public forums just as surely as the Nazis and Soviet Communists ever gagged it.

The bill’s special targets, of course, are people like our tame pitbull Doug Collins who ex- presses in blunt, colorful prose what innunierable average, decent, fair-minded Canadians are think- ing.

That this same blunt, colorful prose also offends quite a few simply confirms that freedom of speech remains, so far, alive and well in Canada — much to the concern of would-be socialist dic- tators.

Of course certain individual liberties must be curtailed to avoid injury to others. I am not free to drive on the left inacountry — where everyone else drives on the right.

1am not free to cry ‘‘Fire’’ in a crowded theatre. I may not invite a rock band into my apartment and have them blast heavy metal until dawn.

But these limits to my freedom are easily defined and rob me of nothing really vital.

Freedom of speech and expres- sion is fundamentally different. It is concerned with the entire range of. human thinking, ideas and emotions —~ both today and from the beginning of time.

You can no more cut it up into halves and quarters than a woman can be half- or quarter-pregnant. You have the whole thing or you have none. .

So how can you allow me to at- tack forestry firms that clear cut, pulp plants that pollute or op- ting-out doctors — but forbid me in the same breath to attack mili- tant gays for undermining family values, or mad, ruinously costly Third World immigration policies

FLYING HIGH... North Van’ _ Lieut. Mike Ayling.

Noel W

yagee

HITHER AND YON

that Canadian voters have never approved? © a

Ms. Hagen’s fear that the ex- pression of such politically incor- rect thoughts may lead to physical violence, such as plagues Germany at the moment, is nothing but a smokescreen.

Expressing opinions, however - vigorously, has nothing what- soever to do with violence and can never justify it. Violence is a mat- ter for the police. Opinions are NOT...

Freedom of speech always hurts SOMEBODY ’S feelings — — especially those of the powerful, it’s the price we pay for liberty, which is why Hitler, Stalin & Co. . ruthlessly banned it.

1f Harcourt and his fellow. birdbrains in Victoria aim to copy such tyranny, they can hardly’ complain when history eventually, , repeats itself on therm. .

As it inevitably will if Bill 33 is passed, Because the lesson that all of history teaches is that there is ultimately no way to shackle the power of the human mind — and of ideas whose moment has arriv-

ed,

SCRATCHPAD; A smart salute, please, for Lieut. Mike Ayling of North Van, who recently gradu- ated as a pilot at Canadian Forces | Base Moose Jaw and also received the City of Moose Jaw Trophy for the student demonstrating the . highest flying proficiency. ... Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit continues

at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday, June 11-12, at Deep Cove’s Shaw Theatre, 4360 Gallant Ave. — fer . tickets, 929-3200..... Sunday,

June 13, brings Anna Wyman’s Concert of Dance to the Centen-

nial Theatre at 7:30 p.m. — tick-

ets number is 926-6535. ... Happy birthday today, June 11, to West Van Kiwanian Bob Iskander. ... Many happy returns of tomorrow, June 12, to his fellow West Van Kiwanian Bill Jackson. ... And also tomorrow, welcome to the “Golden Club”’ longtime North Van residents Rex and Edna Hundleby, celebrating their first half-century of marital bliss. —

WRIGHT OR WRONG: Lead- ership is action — aot position. :