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A readable and well-told tale filled with color, sensitivity, humor and plenty of research.
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A collapsed liberal speaks
SHAKEDOWN:
How Our Government is Undermining Democracy
in the Name of Human Rights
By Ezra Levant
216 pp. McClelland and Stewart $25.95
Reviewed by Tom Waldman
Like unemployed youth, liberals with too much free time can pose a problem for society. In America, we have seen proof of this repeatedly over the past two decades, as long-standing organizations dedicated to the civil rights, dignity, and respect of various groups continue to behave as if the country has not changed since 1950.
There are African-American leaders who will see no progress until every last racist either dies or renounces his former self; and feminists who rail against rampant sexism even as more and more women achieve economic and political power. The recent debate over same-sex marriage predictably has been personalized by a number of prominent gays who argue that advances in the status of their people are meaningless unless Adam and Steve can legally exchange vows in all fifty states.
In his entertaining and persuasive book, author Ezra Levant demonstrated to this Yankee reader that a similar disease afflicts the Left in Canada. To be sure, Levant is no disinterested observer: his target, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, in 2008 charged him with discrimination. He had been hauled before the CHRC—Alberta version—as a result of having published in his magazine Western Standard controversial Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed. The case was brought by a Calgary imam born in Pakistan.
Levant’s penchant for self-promotion, which is evident throughout the book, should not prejudice the reader against his sound argument that by refusing to acknowledge positive change, the left is destroying its own credibility. He also shows how the Canadian Human Rights Commission can disdain such cherished concepts as freedom of speech and freedom of expression in its zeal to obtain justice for a diverse collection of victims.
Though it may be too much to call Levant a lapsed liberal, he is unequivocal in his praise for the original conception and intent of the CHRC, which was created in the late 1960s. His opening chapter is entitled “A Beautiful Idea—That Failed.” Without any sense of irony, he quotes from the Commission’s own mission statement that “all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have...” To help ensure the desired outcome, the CHRC would investigate and expose discrimination based on race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, and other less glamorous categories. As Levant notes, “Who could object to that?”
Perhaps if the CHRC had either downsized or reoriented its focus sometime in the late 1980s Levant would still be an admirer. But in a kind of inverse law of politics, the more things improved, the more active the CHRC became in pursuing alleged human rights violators.
Levant chooses a tone halfway between dry and incredulous to recount a series of absurd cases in which the Commission ruled in favor of some aggrieved party. These include a male-to-female transsexual whose application to volunteer at a rape crisis center was denied because only women were selected to counsel victims; a McDonald’s employee who argued that she should not have to wash her hands “because it hurt too much”; and the pizza parlor worker who brought a charge of sexual harassment against her employer for permitting heavy metal music to be played on the stereo in the kitchen.
No doubt the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its defenders could offer legal, moral, and ethical justifications for taking these kinds of cases and routinely awarding payments of various amounts to the plaintiffs. But Levant’s book is not “fair and balanced,” as the term is usually understood.
Such examples are not provided by Levant purely for their entertainment value, although few things in politics are as funny as pious liberals trying to right a trivial wrong. The author’s prime goal is to get us on his side when the time arrives to discuss the details of his own case.
Levant gains our sympathy, even though his style, heavy on sarcasm and mockery, can get tiresome. By the time Shakedown covers at length the matter of the Danish cartoons, most of us will be rooting against the Alberta Human Rights Commission, the agency with jurisdiction.
Between 2006 and 2008, Levant successfully fended off three complaints, one of which had nothing to do with publishing the cartoons. The ordeal cost him thousands of dollars; his ability to raise the money constitutes a secondary theme of the book.
From the beginning, Levant’s strategy of exploiting new media proved to be a marvelous asset. He videotaped the Commission proceedings and uploaded the videos to YouTube, where viewers from around the world watched. He also worked closely with various bloggers, who gladly disseminated a plea for resources when cash was needed quickly.
“In short, the Internet saved me,” writes Levant. “In that sense, my story isn’t just about free speech. It’s also about new technology—and the way it’s leveled the playing field between big government and private citizens.”
If his situation is representative, in Canada as in America both conservatives and liberals have successfully used these vital and highly effective tools of political communication. It may be that the Internet, which is both individualistic—anyone can go on from almost anywhere at any time—and communal, best fits the conservative temperament. Lonely minorities can come together to form a powerful majority, which then retreats back in to the shadows to await the next battle. As the Obama campaign demonstrated in 2008, however, Democrats and liberals may well have surpassed their opponents in using the Net to win elections. It’s Republicans who have to make adjustments in 2010.
Levant has shown readers on the south side of the U.S.-Canada border that archaic, kooky, and vindictive liberalism is endemic to both those countries.
Tom Waldman is the author of Not Much Left: The Fate of Liberalism in America and other books. He is a former press secretary to California Democratic Congressman Howard Berman.
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